Swiped from an idea by west coast videobloggers Casey McKinnon and Rudy Jahchan, New Media Office Hours is an attempt to bring new-media pros together somewhere out in the world (away from their monitor-lit caves) and get them to interact with members of the public who have questions about filmmaking, videography, digital editing, A/V compression settings, copyright issues, content management systems, how to get good audio, compositing, or anything else that’s even vaguely related to digital A/V media.

In an email, Casey McKinnon described NMOH this way…

New Media Office Hours [is] a way to reach out to new media creators and help answer questions, build the community and work through problems (technical, business, creative, whatever).  In a way, it’s similar to combining the Yahoo Videoblogging Group with the old Apple Store “Meet the Vlogger” events.

It’s especially about building the community. We want content creators of all sorts to come together and network and learn from each other and even to collaborate. If you’re a filmmaker or blogger or radio DJ or podcaster or TV producer — if you produce and/or distribute A/V content of any kind in any medium, this meet-up is for you. No experience necessary — this event is completely n00b-friendly.

So we’d like to officially announce that the first New Media Office Hours (east-coast) gathering will be this coming Monday evening at The Sapa coffeehouse in downtown Burlington at 5:00 P.M. A small group of new-media pros and arm-chair enthusiasts will be on hand to chat with anyone who stops by about whatever is on their mind (related to new-media, that is).

So stop on by on Monday, have some coffee or tea, and talk shop with some new-media folks! Hope to see you there!

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.

[crossposted at Candleblog]

By Bill Simmon

Okay, I admit that the title of this post, while technically relevant to the material I’m about to present, is probably a bit more dramatic than necessary, but I’m hoping to draw some clicks from my Twitter followers and I needed the auto-tweet to sound compelling — and nothing compels the tweeps like some new-media-hating. It’s crack cocaine to the web dev/social media types. If I’m talking about you, please retweet the link! Sucker.

First up, TV by the Numbers explains why being the number one download on iTunes doesn’t matter in the decision about whether or not Fox cancels Dollhouse. The fact is, the internets don’t make much of a difference to broadcast networks, math-wise.

If 25,000 downloaded a show from iTunes at $2.00 per download, that’s $50,000 in total revenue. Or one half of what the show would make for a single thirty second spot even at only 5 million viewers. And that assumes that all of the money goes back to the network, which of course isn’t the case — iTunes (Apple) gets a cut. Again, I’ve deliberately ignored many nuances and disclaimers here just for the purposes of keeping it simple. Adding all of that discussion and explanation back in just confuses things and doesn’t change the end result much. And the end result right now is simple. Watching television on television makes a lot more money — and I mean a lot more money — than Internet viewing of those same shows.

And Business Week debunks six “myths” about social media. This advice is right from the perspective of a reasonably large, corporate, for-profit business that’s populated by a bunch of business men and women who don’t operate in the online milieu daily already, but I think it’s ass backwards for small businesses and non-profits run by people with just a little bit of technical acumen, and whose goal is not necessarily to be the next Zappos.

2. Anyone can do it. A surfeit of whiz kids and more experienced marketers are claiming to be social media experts and even social media gurus. Search the bios of Robert Scoble’s 56,838 Twitter followers using Tweepsearch (www.tweepsearch.com), an index of the bios of Twitter users, and you’ll find:

• 4,273 Internet marketers

• 1,652 social media marketers

• 513 social media consultants

• 272 social media strategists

• 180 social media experts

• 98 social media gurus

• 58 Internet marketing gurus

How many of them have actually created a successful campaign for clients using social media tools? I bet you’d be hard-pressed to find half a dozen with real track records.

This is an uncompelling argument. Define “real track record.” What’s the business’ goal? VCAM has spent relatively little time and no money (beyond a few staff hours) reaching out via our blog, facebook, twitter and other social media and we’ve had great success reaching people in our community and furthering our mission. We don’t sell anything, so we can’t measure how effective the campaign has been in terms of “sales,” but our most recent orientation session was one of the largest we’ve had in recent months and I think that’s largely due to the social networking outreach that  Seth has been engaging in of late. And Seth would be the first to admit that he was hardly a social media guru going in. It’s not rocket science. You don’t need to be able to understand CSS and PHP to add value to your company via social media.

VCAM Production Manager Bill Simmon will be running a 4-week long multi-session workshop on videoblogging and podcasting beginning next Thursday evening, February 19. The sessions will run for four consecutive weeks from 6-8 pm. This workshop is open to any VCAM member who can demonstrate basic computer competency skills (file management, web searching, cut/copy/paste, etc.). There is an enrollment limit of five. (Not a VCAM member yet? Call 802-651-9692 to get involved!)

If you would like to reserve a spot in the class, email bill (bill@vermontcam.org). Please only enroll in the workshop if you can attend ALL FOUR sessions. The workshop description follows…

This 4-week course is intended for people who are curious about making their own podcasts and/or video-blogs.  Throughout the 4 weeks, students will build a blog, produce their own podcast or video-blog episodes and publish them online with subscribable RSS feeds.  No prior blogging or podcasting experience necessary.  Only basic computer/web-surfing skills are required.

Open to any VCAM member (basic computer skills required – if you’re not sure, ask the instructor) – 5 students per class.

NOTE: VCAM will provide the computers, software and cameras for this course, but we recommend that students have their own gear as well so that they can continue to explore the world of social media beyond the class.

Want to use your own gear?  Here’s what you’ll need, at a minimum:

•    A late model PC or Mac with firewire and/or USB inputs.
•    The latest version of Apple Quicktime Pro ($30 from apple.com).
•    A digital video camera with firewire or USB outputs.

Th is is just a quick post to see if the Twitter Tools plugin I just installed actually works. If we get this just right, I post on this blog, it sends up a tweet to Twitter, which gets picked up by VCAM’s Facebook feed, then sent to FriendFeed, which in turn auto-generates a blog post, which gets Twittered, etc…