Welcome to VCAM’s Friday dump of links we found to be of interest in the last week. We hope to bring you a list like this each Friday. These are links that we stumble across during the week that seem relevant to VCAM specifically or community media in general. We tend to post these links to our Facebook and/or Twitter feeds as we find them. We just thought it might be useful (to us here in the office as well as to our members and followers) to collect these in one easy-to-find spot each week. So here goes…

• VCAM is proud to be a sponsor of  The Vermont International Film Festival, taking place at the Palace 9 Cinemas Oct. 23- Nov. 1. The festival released it’s schedule this week. Check it out! (Also, follow the festival on Twitter and Facebook.)
• A Wisconsin Representative introduced a bill in the US House this week aimed at preserving community access centers’ funding. Congratulations, Rep. Tammy Baldwin, (D-WI) you’re the community media heroine of the week! Read more about the bill on Congresswoman Baldwin’s website.
• Check out the Open in Vermont booth at the Vermont 3.0 Innovation Jam at the Sheraton on Monday October 26. It’s run by a bunch of Vermonters committed to the free and open source software movement. Stop by and learn more!
• There was a lot of buzz this week about tiny Vermont craft brewers, Rock Art Brewery, getting hounded with legal trademark letters from the lawyers at the corporate offices of Monster Energy drinks. The lawyers didn’t like Rock Art’s use of the word “Vermontster” on their recent 10% barley wine release. Green River Pictures (our neighbors!) made a little informational video about the situation featuring an interview with Rock Art owner, Matt Nadeau.
• This week the US House Energy and Finance Committee unanimously passed the Local Community Radio Act. Now the bill must go the floor of the House for a vote. Another small victory for LPFM and community media! Contact your representative today to say it’s time to pass the Local Community Radio Act, HR 1147 (VT Rep. Peter Welch is already on board — thank him!).

It’s gotten to the point where we don’t really need to encourage people to stop by the VCAM/RETN studios for Art Hop anymore. We’re pretty slammed with folks all night long on the Friday of Art Hop, and we get a good number of folks through the door on Saturday too. Still, if you’re wondering where to start your hop, the 208 Flynn complex is loaded with art, performances, food and drink. The Flynndog Art Gallery, Outer Space Cafe, Select Design, Propeller Media Works, VCAM and RETN will all be hosting what has become the biggest party of the year in this end of town.

Here in VCAM we’ll have art from more than a dozen artists in many different media, great food (we’ve gotten a reputation for good food at Art Hop) and DJ Disco Phantom will be spinning in our studio.

If you’ve never been to VCAM for Art Hop, it’s worth stopping by. Look for the big lights on the roof!

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.

Watch Eva Sollberger’s latest Stuck in Vermont featuring VCAM! Hear many local cable access producers rhapsodize about the magic of television and the freedom of self-expression.

Two students in the BHS after school filmmaking club that VCAM Production Manager Bill Simmon runs won awards in the Vermont International Film Festival Student Showcase this past weekend!

Graham Raubvogel, who won first prize at the Santa Monica Teen Film Festival this past summer, co-directed The First Supper, which won the Best Short award, and Keith LaFountaine got an Honorable Mention for the film he made last year at Edmunds Middle School, If You Can’t Say Anything Nice.

It’s worth noting that Graham and Keith were the only two high school students competing in an otherwise all-college film student competition. Congratulations, Graham and Keith! Keep up the good work!