Thursday, December 17, 2009

More From Our Youth: Jose Rodriguez - The Media Center Family

Media Center Intern Jose Rodriguez has just released his seven minute video profile of the Media Center Family. Jose interviews several "family members" including yours truly, Annie, Dave, Louise and Becca. He put this piece together with minimal supervision by Becca Fisher, our Youth Services Coordinator. And he is only in middle school! The piece is very nicely put together and captures the heart of what we're about. Nicely done, Jose! You can watch Jose's piece on Channel 28. Click here for viewing times.

We have so much talented youth around here. We are grateful that Jose has taken the time to talk about us! We're so busy pointing the camera at other people and issues in our community, it's nice to remember that the Media Center is a worthy subject for the camera as well.

Jose Rodriguez comes to us through the SPARK program, which is a non-profit youth empowerment organization focusing on Middle School youth. He is learning about different careers in media as well as developing his own production skills. At the Media Center he receives one-on-one training and mentoring. Thank you, Jose, for choosing us as the subject of your first video here as one of our valued interns.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Interviews re: Media Center "best practices"

The Surdna Foundation awarded a grant to the Alliance for Community Media for "capacity-building" and disseminating "best practices." Elliot Margolies, of the Midpeninsula Community Media Center, was hired to conduct interviews with some innovative leaders working at community media centers and put the audio clips on a blog site called "Community Media 2.0."

The latest interview is with Tony Shawcross from Denver. He talks about the drupal web site they've constructed that automates ways to find crew members, reserve equipment, and even upload and schedule your own show! Other interviews on the site include Sue Buske, the first Executive Director of the National Federation of Local Cable Programmers (the ACM precursor) who talks about current state legislation that threatens media centers, while both Laurie Cirivello and Colin Rhinesmith talk about the thriving citizen journalism programs in their communities of Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge, MA.

Check them out and get a macroscopic view of what's happening at Media Centers across the country.

Monday, December 14, 2009

Edoardo's At It Again - Media Center Youth Productions

Our Interns and our Youth Advisory Council are hard at work developing their craft and they seem to be able to work at lightning speed producing relevant, edgy videos. Just a few weeks ago, Edoardo de Armas was in here talking about a project he is doing for polio awareness. And today he sent me the link to it. It is with great pride I embed the video here on our blog. By the way, listen up for Dave Sorokach's voiceover. Gorgeous.

Way to go, Edoardo! Making a difference doing the stuff you love. It's happening right here, folks, at the Media Center. We help you develop your skills; you help us develop ours and the results are often spectacular.

Edoardo is a high school junior, a current Intern here at the Media Center and a "graduate" of our Youth Advisory Council. Edoardo is also a 2009 recipient of the coveted WAVE award for his PSA on Suicide that he produced with the help of the Media Center. Thank you Edoardo for another thought-provoking piece.

Polio YCS video from Edoardo De Armas on Vimeo.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

VOLUNTEERS WERE THE CENTERPIECE AT LAST NIGHT'S GALA









Karen Adams and her elfin crew of staff and volunteers prepared for and decorated the Studio and Studio lobby for our annual Volunteer Appreciation Holiday Party last night. Tuesday night's elves were Brian Good, Steve Hall, Jim Seawright, Joanne Scott and Erik Baker. They stayed up until all hours setting up the studio for a sit-down dinner for a hundred. On the day of the party, Joanne Scott, Lupita Segura, Leena Elhousseiny, Interns Ola and Wes stepped up to put the finishing touches on the decking of the halls. Cathy Keys expertly carved the turkey and ham for the traditional holiday feast that Karen had arranged for. Warm and welcoming, our facilities sparkled for an evening of magic where we recognized the contributions of volunteers' time and talents. And when all was over we had an incredible turnout of staff and volunteers to put right the studio. After all the show goes on every night around here.

After everyone was served and seated in the studio, our Executive Director Annie Folger addressed the audience briefly on the very serious issues confronting PEG stations nationwide and the CAP Act being introduced in Congress to save PEG. Please read about the action you can take to help support the Media Center and other PEG stations here. Annie also spoke briefly about some of the exciting new things happening in 2010 around here.

Karen then hosted the rest of the evening. We watched short clips from all the series produced at the Media Center during the past year, including our WAVE award finalists and our WAVE award winners. This reel was produced by Nancy Brown, Becca Fisher and our intern Ola. These clips can be watched on our website. Additionally, we played our annual party game. This year, we competed in a trivia game based on the shows we produced here this year. Studio tech and volunteer, Stan Ng won the trivia game. He's volunteered for, teched on and done roll-ins for so many of the shows around here, well it's hardly surprising he'd come in first.

After the game, Karen announced the Studio Stats for the year thus far, carefully compiled for us by Lupita Segura. The Media Center has produced 335 shows thus far this year with 225 volunteers. Karen called out the names of the volunteers who had worked on 10 or more shows. We had fifty such persons! Can you guess who the number 1 volunteer was coming in at 235 shows? I'll give you a hint: It was the same guy as last year! Yep! Steve Hall! He was followed by Bill Lindemann at 156, Scott Van Duyne at 76, Eric Baker at 68, Marty Wasserman at 57 and there is Stan Ng again, coming in at 55. 8 volunteers worked between 40-50 shows, 12 worked 20-39 show, and two dozen volunteers worked between 10 and 19 shows! If you have a hankering to see the complete list it has been posted on bulletin board outside the gold room.

The gift hours represented by all this time and talent, well it's enough to restore your faith in the basic goodness of people. Sometime we can lose sight of what's important when there's so much misery, hardship and rough times. But we at the Media Center are doing what we can to offset the baddies out there. And because we are a media outlet, we are in a unique position to influence the messaging out there.

Thank you to our volunteers. We couldn't do much or influence anybody without you. WE LOVE YOU and thank you for another year of unparalleled, selfless service.

And thank you to Karen and the elves for giving us a magical evening of celebration and friendship.

Monday, December 7, 2009

Community Producer and MCMC Board Member Andrew Mellows Produces Annual Concert of the Midpeninsula Recorder Orchestra



The Mid-Peninsula Recorder Orchestra, directed by Fredrick Palmer presented its annual "Holiday Concert" at Grace Lutheran Church, Palo Alto on December 5th 2009. The concert was recorded and edited for cable-cast by Andrew Mellows. The concert includes music from the 1300s through the 1900s.

The concert debuts on Channel 27 this Sunday, December 13, 2009 at 8:30 am. You can watch it many times during the holiday season including Thursday, December 17 on Channel 30 at 7:30 pm. Follow this link to find out when you can watch this delightful one-hour program.

Andrew Mellows provides the Media Center with various programming throughout the year. He is the producer of the weekly cablecast of the Sunday service at Grace Lutheran Church.

What I want for Christmas this year is a handful of Andrew Mellows... locally focussed producers that bring us the local programming that just can't be seen anywhere else!

The Media Center is grateful for all our community producers!

Keep that great programming coming!

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