Transmission Project

- Started UTEC’s digital video library, archiving media from youth video projects
- Coordinated with LTC, the local cable access TV station, to develop youth media projects
- In the process of developing a curriculum and staff training program to continue offering youth media programs

He is good at working one-on-one with individuals and as a utility person on video projects. For example he helped set up and break down the mobile TV rig at a recent Lowell Symphony concert and at this summer’s Lowell African Festival. In between setting up and breaking down he participated as a camera man. He also has video editing skills and has completely edited a few TV shows highlighting community organizations, eg., a half hour show on (The Merrimack River) Clean River Project.

Tom has played a vital role in the LTC’s media work in a number of Lowell’s festivals such as the Lowell Folk Festival, the Lowell African Festival, the Southeast Asian Water Festival. He has worked as a youth project mentor with the River Ambassador Project, the Light of Cambodian Children project, Lowell Catholic High School’s media project, the UMass Lowell GEAR-UP summer project, the United Teen Equality Project and others. He has helps with one-on-one tutoring of new producers involved in two or three religious organization’s TV shows. He has helped out in our vast infrastructure upgrading program as well.

The VISTA conducted research into best practices, implemented the findings, and prepared monthly reports of social media participation data (twitter followers, facebook fans, myspace friends, etc). As a result, the VISTA has significantly expanded our social media outreach on MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter. The VISTA also worked with our food pantry manager to develop a blog to raise awareness, funding and food for the food pantry – see ffon.tumblr.com for the result. The VISTA conducted a social media use study of other nonprofits in St Bernard Parish, Louisiana, and a preliminary study of social media use by nonprofits in the greater New Orleans area that are doing the same type of work as the Community Center (long-term disaster recovery) has also been completed. Data from these 2 studies is currently being analyzed and the findings will be used by our next VISTA to further develop the social media strategy used by the Community Center.

The VISTA prepared 2 short videos which the Development Director integrated into the end of the year fundraising campaign (both available at www.youtube.com/ccstb), including the “Thank You” video which was the cornerstone of this campaign. The VISTA produced a 5 minute overview of the Community Center and a volunteer testimonial (all available at www.youtube.com/ccstb). The VISTA also compiled a CD that contains a comprehensive introduction to the Community Center of St Bernard. The CD includes video footage of hurricane Katrina damage to St Bernard and surrounding parishes, used by permission of levees.org, along with statements from the Community Center’s Executive Director, and a 12 minute video shot entirely by the VISTA that has interviews with key Community Center staff and details both the services available at the Community Center as well as ongoing needs. This CD is distributed to Community Center donors who give more than $25 as well as offered for sale for $10 to the more than 1,100 volunteers from all around the world who come to the Community Center annually. The 12 minute video will also be a key component in the various fundraising tours that the Executive Director is planning for coming months.

Activity 3, the online giving catalog, proved the most challenging of all the tasks undertaken by the VISTA. Deciding on items to include and whether to structure the catalog as a retail sale (eg buy t-shirt with the Community Center logo and part of the sale price goes to the Community Center) vs a sponsorship sale (buy a hot meal for 40 people for $10 or 200 lbs of rice for the food pantry for $50) was the first challenge. In the end, after a review of what other non-profits are using, a sponsorship sale based on that used by Heifer International and the World Wildlife Federation was chosen. The next step was coding this catalog, including setting up a shopping cart that automatically generates the ability to choose from a variety of “thank you” e-cards for the purchaser after the sale is complete. We are very grateful to the VISTA for his dedication to the project and his willingness to develop his technical skills which enabled him to finish this complex project.

In addition to completing most of the assignments originally envisioned for John’s year with New Entry, John completed assignments which went well beyond the stated goals in the original proposal. In addition to the three workshop videos to be included in the online curriculum, John developed a Seedling Training video for on-line curriculum use.

The sustainability of John’s contributions will remain significant, well into the future. In addition to developing solid working curriculum for on-line use, John developed important foundations upon which New Entry curriculum can expand. John established a formula for production of workshop videos, on-line curriculum videos, and Farmer-to-Farmer Moments. This formula will be repeated with each new video which is produced into the future. John also converted our lending library of VHS tapes into DVDs to both extend the shelf life of the videos and make them available to clients with DVD players. John also participated in outreach activities and made important partnerships throughout the area.

Vista Fellows were involved with the following:

• The development of research instruments and conduct of an on-going survey of 100 participants and adult and youth programs to better serve our community.

• The development of volunteer support program for the ongoing support of 10 volunteers and recruitment of 10 others.

• Oversaw teacher support assessments and provided ongoing support for 4 teachers in youth and adult programs.

• Provided technical support for our center to keep the 50 machines and network running smoothly

• Assisted with the development of 5-10 proposals to raise approximately $100,000

• Assisted in the development of our Job Training Program recruitment and development.

VISTAs have not had an easy time keeping in touch with each other, both during and after service. In some cases certain personal information wasn’t even kept on file, such as a home telephone number. I created a global addressbook last year and incorporated it into the redesigned VISTA website this year. Alumni and current VISTAs now have a simple facility on the Project website to share their information as well as access other VISTAs’ information. In enhancing VISTA alumni resources and communications the VISTA Leaders wrote a form letter to all past alumni announcing the creation of a new CTC VISTA alumni connections mailing list (January), which also served to connect alumni to the great CTC VISTA directory networking resource. We plan to use this addressbook to periodically send a newsletter to alumni and hold reunions.

Assistant Director Paul Hansen and I worked collaboratively to re-launch the VISTA website (http://www.cpcs.umb.edu/vista/), creating a mock-up on a development server before going live with the re-design. In addition to migrating the directory pages off the development server, I replaced the static roster listings (current VISTAs, alumni, all VISTAs, and organizations) with dynamic database- backed pages, laying the groundwork for a recruiting system in which potential supervisors can add and edit VISTA job descriptions directly on the website. (The rosters do not at present list who is a second- or third-year VISTA, and it does not indicate any special titles for people, like VISTA Leader, for example).

Developed enhanced VISTA resources. One of the biggest challenges any group of short-term workers faces is the loss of knowledge when the staff turns over. In an effort to combat the lack of knowledge retention between VISTA “classes,” Dan
Schackman and I erected a resource wiki on the Project website. A wiki is “a website that allows users to add content, as on an Internet forum, but also allows anyone to edit the content” (WikiPedia.org). The wiki technology is widely deployed across the Internet and was chosen for its ability to cater to both novice and advanced Internet users. Dan and I created a modest framework though which VISTAs and non-VISTAs alike can contribute to and maintain a database of resources exclusively targeted to CTC VISTAs. Dan and I fleshed it out with resources provided by VISTAs David Johnson and Michelle Rogers. I feel the wiki will serve as an effective tool enabling VISTAS to have greater participation

The Community Technology Review website (www.comtechreview.org) was beefed up and migrated from an obsolete web server to a server which hosts all other CPCS website properties (CPCS, VISTA, CBC, etc.). Of note are the new comment approval system and the PayPal order page. The comment page will ease the approval process for user-submitted comments, and the order page will streamline CTR hardcopy purchases which can now be handled with a credit card. I also trained Dan Schackman to use the administration interface and made some minor code changes for the Winter 2005 issue.

Finally, I became savvy with Final Cut Pro and edited a couple of small VISTA project videos for distribution on the web (http://www.cpcs.umb.edu/vista/video/). I massaged the swearing in footage for the 2004-05 crop of VISTAs originally shot on September 1 by former VISTA Leader James Fishwick, featuring US Representative Barney Frank and UMass/Boston Chancellor Keith Motley. A couple more projects have been added to the archives, including a Liz Cavano’s half-hour “What’s a VISTA” (2001) and Scott Hillier’s “CTC VISTAs: A Day in the Life” (2003).

The past few months haven’t been spent exclusively glued to a keyboard and monitor. I spoke at Faneuil Hall in October on AmeriCorps Opening Day, an ambassador of the CTC VISTA Project. A number of situations arose with a few VISTAs, some of whom I tried to help with varying degrees of success. For my part I served as a liaison with a VISTA in Minnesota, who ended up leaving the program after transferring from her first assignment and failing to make her second assignment work; I supported two VISTAs in Massachusetts, one in California, and one in North Carolina who had some conflicts with their supervisors and another experiencing some serious interpersonal conflicts with one of her co-workers. These situations have been very time and energy intensive, requiring frequent and detailed communication with VISTA support staff and the involved parties.

On a related front of Project responsibility, I assumed coordinating responsibilities for the monthly meetings among the Boston VISTAs, ensuring an agenda, chairperson, and minute-taker for every meeting as well as editing and posting the minutes

During the 05-06 project year, Saul’s supervisor said the following:
Saul has continued to lend his considerable technical skills to a number of projects– some to the benefit of the college others to the benefit of the Project. The addition of the reporting system to the Project’s ‘online application system’ has been an enormous help and was pulled-off pretty much without a hitch. Reports were submitted by participating organizations largely on-time! This was unheard of in the past and represents a huge leap forward in efficency. He continues to work on the application system. Currently he is revising it so that organizations can have and access more than one application– for multi-year projects. This revision is proceeding slowly however. In the role of VISTA Leader (and as the Leader of the other Leaders) Saul has performed well. Communication between the Leaders could be better (more frequent perhaps) but the improvement over previous years has been considerable largely due to his coordinating efforts which began well before the August 2005 PSO. Saul also plays a vital role as the person whom I bounce my ideas off of. As I often have bad ideas, the value of this cannot be underestimated.

She is currently helping to organize, write, and format BNN’s quarterly newsletter, our most important piece of literature sent to our members. The newsletter introduces new equipment in our facilities, editing and production tips, and production class schedules. BNN has been unable to produce a newsletter since last winter, due to lack of staff and time, so Alli’s assistance in this is especially crucial. Once the newsletter is completed it will be mailed to approximately 500 members and BNN typically receives a positive response from a large number of recipients.

Another example of Alli’s reach to the community is BNN’s Neighborhood Network News Program Highlights which Alli has been in charge of for the past six months. The Program Highlights require Alli to be in close contact to all of our producers and to contact various shows on a weekly basis. The Highlights also require her to send out a bulk mailing each month encouraging producers to contact her and let her know about their show, so that BNN can assist them in reaching as many people in the community as possible.

Not only is Alli reaching out to community members, but during the next six months a lot of her attention will go to reaching out to community organizations. BNN provides non-profit organizations in the Greater Boston area a chance to produce a PSA highlighting their organization’s cause. Alli will be responsible for the production and editing of these PSA’s, and she will assist BNN’s Education/Outreach department in contacting the organizations through phone calls, mailings and most importantly a “Get Your Message Out” seminar.

Over the last six months Alli has been a vital part in increasing BNN’s reach to the Boston community. She has kept daily communication with many of our producers and the productions that she has assisted on have gotten her out into the community and aided BNN in delivering community messages.

Gregory has designed an exciting new curriculum as well as a long-term multimedia plan for the school. Students truly enjoy and benefit from these classes and we look forward to building on this aspect of our program in the future. The students welcome the creative outlets these classes provide as a balance to the MS office applications and the technical computer repair classes we offer. As previously reported, this instruction has been given not only to students but to staff as well.

In the web design class students continue to work on non-profit site projects under Gregory’s advisory oversight. Several students are now independently building and maintaining websites for neighborhood non-profit organizations.

Gregory has almost completed the Spanish mirror of our bi-lingual website and he remains solely responsible for the web presence and staff accounts. He continues to work with staff and students in completing and maintaining CAMINOS’ website. (Please see http://www.caminossf.org)

Although Kourtney has not followed her workplan very closely but filled in many additional tasks that are of interest and helpful to her center. Most of the tasks listed above were not origianlly outlined in the workplan, but went along with the general theme of her job. When members of the community are looking for technology access and education, they can easily refer to her guide. It can be updated and reprinted as necessary.

One of the most successful procedures that I implemented was to have all members and staff wear picture ID’s while in the facility. Since I had a little knowledge of digital photography it was easy for me to make the adjustments in our new database.

The second success story for me was to learn Facil database for non-profits and help teach the rest of the staff the functions of the database.This program is really great for the members because they now can reserve things in an orderly fashion and they get the feeling of being a greater part of the whole process. The community as a whole benefits from the installation of Facil.

My other accomplishments include mail server. I learned how to maintain the accounts on the e-mail server service and recently on our new list-server. I am now certified in Field Production. Who would have guessed.

I have managed to put up a web site, sparse as it may be, and to shoot and edit a thirty minute video for airing. The web site sort of took a back seat when I became involved in running a camera on a television show. My interest really peaked when staff members told me that I could do a show of my own. The patience and help of my co-workers enabled me to increase my knowledgeable in non linear editing. And with practice I am sure I’ll become proficient.