Next week is the big 2010 Alliance for Community Media conference and people from access centers all over the country will be converging on Pittsburgh to network with one another and discuss community media, PEG TV and all the possibilities the future affords. Attendees will be able to choose from six different tracks this year including:

- Citizen Journalism & Social Media
- Community Media Center Management, HR & Board Development
- Fundraising & Collaborations
- Engineering, Broadband, Network management & Related Issues
- Media & Telecom Policy
- Community Engagement, Training & Marketing/Outreach

Our good friend Colin Rhinesmith from CCTV in Cambridge Massachusetts has been charged with leading the Citizen Journalism and Social Media track and I was lucky enough to have been asked to present on the “Using Social Media to Serve the PEG Community and NonProfit Organizations” panel on July 9th. I will be joining Colin, Lee Webster the iYouth Director at channelAustin and Jason Daniels the Executive Director at ECAT in North Easton, MA to discuss the way our centers utilize social networking to inform our communities and strengthen our alliances with NonProfit Organizations.

We were each asked to develop a short presentation on how our own social media strategies have proven to be successful. I have chosen to focus on how VCAM has used social networking in an attempt to build an online identity that is faithful to the values and spirit in our mission. The following are some of the bullet points that I have started putting together for the panel discussion:

Social networking is sharing culture:
- Social media, unlike the “dreaded” newsletter, we don’t have to think of everything to share with our audience.
- We frequently share news items (blog posts, tweets, photos, video – any content shared via social networking) from sources that aren’t directly related to our organization but are related to the spirit and values of our mission. Net neutrality, rural broadband, copyright and creative commons, media access, fair use, free speech etc.
- It is all part of illustrating a larger context and sharing the greater culture around our organization.
- Sharing is key: The power of the retweet or “share” functions: sharing content that originated outside oour center (news from a partner nonprofit org partner for example) = speed skating relay (i.e. teamwork, partnerships)
- By sharing information that others in our social media network have created, we are helping push information further and to more people than the originator of the content could do alone.
- Not only are we indicating to our own network of followers that we value the information we are retweeting, we’re also telling the creator of the content that we appreciate what they have to offer and are willing to help their cause.
- Why do nonprofits come to VCAM? A fundamental principle of ours: We’re here to help others get important information out to their community. Social media is an extension of that commitment.

Strategy around content created by our staff:
- We try to distribute all of our own news throughout our network, link to blog posts and newsletter (constant contact) via Twitter and Facebook, Tweet “round-ups” on the blog etc.
- Redundancy is OK in fact has proven quite useful for us.
- If we shoot a short PSA we’re going to put it on our channel, upload it to blip.tv & YouTube > embed the video in our blog > link to the blog post via Twitter > and share a link to the blogpost on our FB wall.
- Cast a wide net.

Direct benefits of developing our network:
- It has enabled us to offer more effective social media workshops to our nonprofit partners.
- More and more people are listing our social media network as how they heard about our organization and/or know about our workshops.
- Through discussions with many of our members we are noticing a growing familiarity with the larger context of community media (i.e. legislation and policy, challenges associated with evolving technology in relation to our funding structure, why advocacy is essential etc.) and many people have credited our Facebook page and Twitter feed for keeping up to date with important issues facing PEG.

Tips:

- These are things that have worked for VCAM and every center is different..so listen to your community, find out what tools they are using and shape your social media strategy around where they are interacting.
- When developing your social media network remember the phrase “Redundancy is a plus….consistency is a must”
- Lastly, for those folks just starting to develop their social media network and online identity: There are thousands of social media experts out there – feel free to ignore them all. (Just have fun with it)

I hope to update this blog post as the list develops……

Note: Post was updated on 7/9/10 in preperation for panel discussion.

VCAM is preparing to send it’s delegation to Pittsburgh, PA for the Alliance for Community Media’s national conference. The conference is taking place from July 7-11th at the Hilton in Pittsburgh. I (Rob Chapman) will be making the over-ten-hour drive, with Operations Director Seth Mobley and Production Technician Jim Kelty in the car. Scott Campitelli and Drew Frazier from RETN will also help with the driving duties.  The conference happens every year in July.  Over 400 people will attend the conference, including access center staff, access producers, board members and vendors. It’s an opportunity to network with community media minded people, to learn about the latest communication technologies and to develop strategies  for defending against threats to PEG access — whether it’s some piece of legislation, some regulatory changes or negotiation tactics for franchises. It’s also a great opportunity to see what PEG access looks like in other areas of the country and to bring our own skills to our fellow access providers. We’re very excited that our own Seth Mobley will be serving on a panel that deals with developing outreach strategies associated with social media. We’ll let you know what we find out.

Tired of waiting for all of the legal and financial issues that are involved with starting a local public access center to get resolved, some Portsmouth, NH citizens took it upon themselves to get the ball rolling online. According to wirenh.com, an online livestream channel was created over beers one evening.

Freund described his vision for an online media venue that would enable him and others to “shine a light on the interesting people from the community, the people that were making a difference, the people that stand out,” Freund said.

As he described the project, Herman buried his face in his laptop and began typing. At first, Freund thought Herman was ignoring him. But soon enough, Herman spun around the screen and displayed what he had created.

“By the end of him describing it, I had made it,” Herman said

What he made was a live community channel on the streaming Internet television platform Livestream. The site is now up at www.shortstream.tv. Freund and Herman view it as the public access channel Portsmouth has been trying in vain to create for the last several years.

Portsmouth has a governmental access channel but public and educational channels have been languishing in start-up limbo for some time. This online venue was a quick, easy and inexpensive way to get things going.

The wirenh.com article doesn’t mention it, but while this is a great way to bypass the hurdles involved in franchise agreements and non-profit start-up paperwork and the expense of starting an actual public access center, it’s important to note that this is not an adequate replacement of such a place. Public access cable channels reach a much more specific and diverse segment of the community than websites can due to the ubiquity of cable TV relative to broadband internet in households. Even in households with both cable and broadband, the cable TV menu of available options is at best a few hundred channels, even with the most robust digital cable service. By comparison, finding locally relevant community media online is much harder, even when an outlet like shortstream.tv exists.

Perhaps more importantly, a community media center is a physical location in the community for citizens to meet and collaborate and learn. Training and equipment are available there, and a knowledgeable staff is invaluable in growing a culture of local media-makers.

It’s fantastic that these Portsmouth citizens took it upon themselves to get the ball rolling, but it would be a shame if an unintended consequence of their efforts was the actual public access channel getting delayed further because of a sense that the community’s public access needs were already being met with the website. They aren’t.

Title Graphic for video content produced at the 2009 Alliance for Community Media’s Northeast conference.

A short while ago, nature-lover and VCAM member, Joanna Cummings, approached us with an idea and asked if she could use VCAM’s free public access resources to get her project off the ground. Her idea was to produce a blog “as a means to create social groups interested in sharing their thoughts, activities, videos, photos and knowledge in the areas of Vermont nature, agriculture and the environment.” Joanna indicated to us that she would likely need video production gear to go out into the community and shoot video content, digital editing facilities, a computer with Internet access, a couple different web-design applications, and access to video tutorials to help her get the ball rolling.

As it turns out, VCAM’s new workstation dedicated to web-design (a new iMac equipped with Adobe CS4 Web Premium) along with our video production gear, editing facilities, and subscription to the extensive Lynda.com video tutorial library, were the essential tools for her to get started. Over the last few weeks, Joanna experimented with different templates for her blog, using free web-based applications including Blogger and Ning, before deciding to go with Wordpress. Her goal was to have enough happening on her blog to launch it today, Earth Day 2009, and that she did. Please take a minute to check out Joanna’s new project, leave her a comment or two, and join in the greater conversation about preserving our natural environment by living thoughtfully on the land.

Pursuant to a relatively new California statute, 12 Los Angeles public access studios are shutting down, killing a vibrant and celebrated community of volunteer TV producers. According to the LA Weekly, the mayor reallocated the funds that provided the TV studios, staff and equipment to other areas of government, leaving only governmental and educational access centers operating, thereby eliminating the free speec aspect of LA access…

… due to a state law written for AT&T by former California Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez and signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in the fall of 2006, cable-television companies are being allowed to escape a 31-year-old requirement to give back to the public from which they draw their riches. Lawmakers in a few weeks can finally shut up the little guys.

“It was clear when the law was written that it spelled the death knell of public access,” says Judy Dugan, research director of Consumer Watchdog, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group in Santa Monica.

The LATimes offers some more perspective…

The new law is designed to make it easier for phone companies to enter into the lucrative cable market by relieving them of certain money-draining contractual obligations.

In Los Angeles, 12 public access studios that provided programming for 11 community channels have been closed by Time Warner Cable Inc. That means much of the city’s diverse, neighborhood-specific public access shows may disappear.

If that happens, Los Angeles cable subscribers would be losing an outlet for their particular communities’ programming, said David Hernandez, president of the Los Angeles Public Access Coalition.

“It’s the regional broadcasting capability that’s lost,” he said.

Twenty other states, including Texas, Nevada, Florida, Illinois and Michigan, have enacted legislation similar to California’s Digital Infrastructure and Video Competition Act, or DIVCA, according to the nonprofit Alliance for Community Media. In several of those states, the loss of production studios was bitterly fought by opposition groups to little avail.