I'm back

I'm back from a nice vacation to the Eastern part of Mass.. We spent a day on Cape Cod, Salem, Plymouth, Lexington, Concord, and Boston. It was a very nice historical vacation. I would say DO NOT rent a car. Bostonians do not pay attention to lanes. And they have a lot of rotary's which take a bit to get use to. Other than that, nice scenery and a wonderful time.

Couple of house cleaning issues I wanted to touch on. Remember the importance of bringing back equipment on time. This includes any gear, mics, cameras, light kits. Failure to do so will result in fines and eventually suspension.

We also will be enforcing the studio strike rule. We have had issues with things not being returned to the Access desk and the prop/set storage area looking like a tornado hit it. Failure to return all items to the access desk by fifteen minutes before the end of your reservation and being ready for the walk through at that time, will result in a fine and loss of studio privileges. We work hard to ensure that everyone has a positive experience in the studio we ask that you help us too.

Also if you use the lounge area it is expected that you clean this area up, do the dishes and put them away. You can not just leave them in the dish drain. I am not your housekeeper. Failure to do so will result in fines. As the producer this is your responsibility.

ACM Conference

Hey I am at the ACM conference right now. ACM is the Alliance for Community Media. This year the annual conference is in Boston. Mark you calendars next year it is in Minneapolis. It will be more towards the middle of July around the 17th I think. It has been great meeting access professionals and producers from all around the country. We had a session talking about the Legislation that has been going through both the House and the Senate. It seems that the Net Neutrality issue will be the downfall of the Senate bill. The Senate majority leader doesn’t want to risk a filibuster so he won’t bring it up in the Senate unless assured that the sixty votes are there. Right now that doesn’t look likely. We should still be talking with our Senators and Congress people to make sure they understand the funding Community Television is important.

Other sessions I have sat in include a way to transcode programs into MPEG 2 then onto formats that would make it possible to either have it vodcast or podcast. Some interesting stuff out their right now. It seems to be the issues bandwidth and storage space. It looks like all kinds of things are possible.

Boston has been a great city to visit. I have never been here before. There is lots of history. I walked part of the freedom trail, Rode the “T”, walked around Boston Common- which is one of the oldest public parks est. in 1644 I believe. My husband is flying in on Saturday and we are going to Salem, Concord and Lexington and down to Cape Cod. I am looking forward to that.

That is all I have time for right now, hope to update letter on this week.