Transmission Project

Denise’s activities are focused around research and development of new media services and education. She has assisted with development of two new classes that focus on teaching participants how to prepare content for distribution via the Internet, and how to utilize online video and social networking tools to increase distribution of content, and to connect with target audiences. Denise also participates on the PR and Marketing committee, is helping to redesign our website with the goal of building capacity, is participating in grant research and writing, and helps with proofreading and layout in creation of new documents.

Denise researched and proposed a new project that was submitted for consideration to the Knight foundation. Denise’s proposal made it through the first round but has been dropped from consideration by the Knight foundation. PCM will continue to try to secure grant funding to realize this proposal. The proposal would create a new acquisition and distribution path for audio content via a new website portal. The focus of the project targeted increasing participation from immigrant, minority and youth groups using cell phone and Internet technology. Denise’s research identified very high cell phone and Internet penetration among immigrant populations in the Portland area. Denise’s project would also create a backbone for a large scale expansion of Internet based acquisition and distribution for PCM participants.

Denise revised our existing Media Education schedule to create a more polished document to promote Media Education classes and workshops. Denise has routinely been proofreading and editing public documents to maintain voice and consistency.

Denise was asked to submit a design mock-up for our upcoming website redevelopment. Her mock-up showed an advanced understanding of the kind of content rich site that many Internet viewers would appreciate. Denise’s research on social networking and how different groups consume information via the Internet comes through in her clean and rich design concept. Denise is currently assisting with implementation of our new open source database project being developed in partnership with Denver Open Media.

Nickey’s first success with OLLIE came during the culmination of our Moving Images summer workshop – a community screening event. Nickey leveraged her community connections and communication skills to secure donations from local businesses to support the event. She also assisted in a larger campaign to promote the event, which brought over 100 community members to Portland Community Media to watch and discuss videos created by 16 local youth. As a part of her larger efforts to develop ongoing youth involvement activities at the media centers, Nickey has undertaken a research project designed to understand community needs and best practices from other organizations. She has compiled interviews from youth media educators and facilitators from our parent organizations, as well as other local and national youth media projects. As a part of her work with OLLIE Youth Media Nickey has spent time in the field, getting to know the young people, teachers, and organizations we serve. She has excelled at motivating our students to express their ideas though video. Nickey also has made connections between OLLIE and other organizations, encouraging collaboration and outreach for the program.

Nickey has been a great addition to the OLLIE Youth Media team and is still working on several projects. Recently she has done some design work for the project that will be used for program promotion.

Elizabeth has assisted the education department in all of the stated areas, and has built a solid framework for a sustainable youth channel program. She launched the Youth Media Club, a new program which has attracted new youth to Media Bridges. She produced several videos with elementary school students as part of a 20-week outreach class at a local public school, which initiated an ongoing partnership with the school. She applied for a $1,000 grant to fund our summer camp program. She recruited two high school interns through a media internship program for minority high school students. She also established Media Bridges as a partner organization for a media career exploration program for high school students sponsored by an association of journalism professionals. She developed a youth policies and procedures handbook for Media Bridges, opening the door to more youth involvement in the future. She expanded the youth channel from a four hour block of programming per week, with an additional youth block timeslot for college student productions. She structured the youth page on the new web site, manages the content of the page providing information about the youth program to the public, and has also developed social networking outreach through Twitter, and avenues for video distribution through youtube, vimeo, ListenUp, and local youth filmmaking site IndieViz.

Establishing a youth leadership board was part of our original plan for the youth channel, but that was not completed. The initial lack of youth involved with the organization made that difficult and also unrealistic at this time. Elizabeth has been able to recruit youth participants, which will pave the way for a youth leadership board in the future. There has not been a full-scale volunteer management system put into place for the youth program. Although Elizabeth recruited volunteers and worked with staff to improve volunteer procedures, the Media Bridges volunteer management system is in the process of restructuring, so a youth volunteer management system was put on hold until a better structure is implemented by the operations department. In the meantime, Elizabeth has worked to create opportunities for youth volunteers and has streamlined youth volunteers into the overall volunteer process

Although it was not originally included in the project proposal, Elizabeth created, designed and maintained a youth section on the Media Bridges Web site, created social network outreach (Twitter, Youtube, Vimeo, Facebook) and established additional distribution methods for youth-produced videos online, through video-sharing sites. At the beginning of her service year, the Media Bridges Web site had no information regarding youth programs and was not being updated because we were in the middle of a redesign. When the new site went live, Elizabeth became active in overall site maintenance, specifically in creating the youth section

Over the course of Sarah’s Vistaship she has been instrumental in working with our various youth training programs providing a wide variety of skills. She was responsible for helping students make the best videos possible and teaching them to think critically about media and media messages. She took the initiative to outreach to communities we hadn’t worked with in the past including GLBT and the Triangle Foundation, and solidified relationships with them and our organization. She helped plan a film festival and worked on several video installations dealing with issues such as the war and discrimination. In addition, Sarah has helped out in our theater by operating the lighting board for concerts, selling tickets and running concessions. She teaches video production and editing classes to our members and so much more.

Here is a list of projects Sarah was involved in during her VISTA year:

1.Allegan County Community Mental Health: produced, shot and edited a documentary about the stigma of mental illness.

2. G.E.T. Girls Empowering Together: since January worked with a group of High School girls in a leadership mentoring program to mentor, produce, shot and edit a documentary about the program, “Breaking the Surface,” available for viewing at www.archive.org

3. The MOLLIE Club: a weekly video club for students in middle School that provides an opportunity for them to come in and Make videos.

4. MOLLIE (Mobile Learning Lab for Information Education): Went to area schools and non-profits teaching youth how to produce, shoot and edit videos.

5. Real Pride: helped start the planning process for a film and documentary series about LGBT issues.

In a lab used mainly by young people on a daily basis we run into many technical/equipment malfunctions that oftentimes have no explanation. Reel Works Teen Filmmaking operates on a “shoe-string” budget and would not have been as successful in the past year had it not been for Micheil’s superior troubleshooting skills. Oftentimes, the members of our skeleton staff would attempt to trouble shoot errors while simultaneously running other programs and teaching a class - making for a very hectic and crazy work day. The days we were fortunate enough to work with Micheil were always the most productive. The young people in our program owe a lot of their stress-free success to Micheil.

Stephen was the primary link between HOME, Inc. and Brighton High School. providing technical support to four teachers and supporting teachers in two media classes by helping to develop curriculum, provide professional development support including support to the teachers as they learned new computer applications. Stephen provided additional help to some of the students and helped our Media Lab Coordinator organize his work and program at Social Justice Academy. Stephen updated our website and helped develop and update our summer Teen TV content management system for our six week long summer intensive.

Stephen is a dedicated, sensitive and creative teacher who in his low key style gains the trust of hardened and skeptical teachers and students at the schools. He has outstanding problem solving skills and accepts most difficulties with grace and a can do attitude. Stephen was able to provide a high degree of leadership during our summer Teen TV intensive, providing both technical and creative support that encouraged staff and students to excel. His work on our website has helped to ensure that the content management system will continue to be an important factor in our organization’s growth and success.

This year, Kristofer took the lead in developing and formalizing the curriculum for our youth-led policy program, the Digital Expansion Fellowship (DEF). After taking feedback and evaluations from our first DEF summer project, Kristofer redesigned the summer curriculum into a full 8-week summer course for a new round of fellows. The new curriculum is a comprehensive training in media policy research; combing basics in digital journalism and an introduction to policy analysis. This summer the fellows used their newly acquired digital reporting skills to examined mobile broadband and cellphone policy from a community perspective. They produced a news feature looking at how a proposed bill requiring ID for prepaid cellphones would impact low income and immigrant communities. They also produced four cell phone literacy workshops that will be included in a collaborative tool kit project focused on expanding cell phone literacy.

People’s Production House proposed a large community media network project during the second application round of the Broadband Technology Opportunity Program. Our proposal brought together 21 New York City community organizations to imagine a constellation of community media centers across New York that would work as media production centers for a community news outlet. Kristofer was the main outreach organizer for this application. He helped recruit many of the organizations to the project proposal and coordinated a lot of the application process with the groups. While we weren’t awarded our BTOP grant, the organizing provided us with an opportunity to advance our goal of strengthening our community media network. We are taking the momentum from our BTOP organizing to develop a New York City Digital Justice Coalition. Throughout the year, Kristofer also engaged with other community media organizations to share or work, exchange ideas, and collaborate on larger national projects.

One of the goals that Kristofer set for him self was to help us develop workshops and training materials in Spanish. Kristofer lead our first Spanish language community journalism training in his first year as a VISTA and he wanted to take it further by developing media literacy tools that could accompany the trainings. This year Kristofer helped organize the first Spanish language track at the 2010 Allied Media Conference. In developing the Spanish language track, Kristofer engaged some organizations that serve the Spanish speaking in New York, helping to develop Spanish language community reporters.

In addition to the work completed in our project proposal, Kristofer also helped refine our 12-week media community journalism training curriculum. The curriculum needed an upgraded and he assisted with the process. Kristofer also helped strengthen ties to partner organizations through his involvement in organizing the Allied Media Conference and his participation in the Media Action Grassroots Network. Through these conferences and networks, Kristofer has helped facilitate projects on a national scope, including our upcoming Cellphone Literacy Toolkit, which is a collaboration between allies in New Mexico, California, and New York.