Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Meeting Minutes October 18, 2007

We had visitors from the Town of Harvard with us today along with a documentary film maker from Canada.

Keith, Jackie and Tim are from Harvard. Keith and Jackie are volunteer community media makers and Tim is an elected selectman. They do not have a physical space to house a community access center, but they were able to obtain equipment and some money through their franchise agreement. They would like to take their community media efforts to the next level and are looking for help defining what that next level is and how to get there.

Cathy Edwards worked for a community television station in Canada and is working on a documentary about community media around the world and how it helps build and strengthen community. She spoke about her travels around the world and how community media was being used in some developing countries. We saw a segment that was shot in Fiji. Because of political unrest and racial issues between the Indian and Native populations, community media has become an important tool in educating each group about the other. Its being used to build community. The call in shows are popular, where locals can call in and express an opinion on a topic. Cathy filmed some of our class and interviewed members afterwards.

Cathy aslo spoke about the Challenge for Change program in Canada, how it started and how useful it was for conflict resolution.

Aaron is soliciting help with organizing the Wiki. If you have any documents out there please make sure there is sufficient introduction to them. We are looking to make the Wiki more user friendly so any ideas about organizing it should be discussed in class next week. Jay is suggesting that we organize the links on the left into a more general yet focused table of contents. The table of contents can link to an index for that subject. The p0int is that every document out there doesn't have to link from the table of contents.

We discussed the Technology Grids again. We need to firm up the attributes we want to compare and analyze. The idea is that we can use the grids as part of primer to help non-profits understand the potential use of these technologies.

Monday, October 15, 2007

Tactical Media Minutes 10-11-2007

Tactical Media Minutes 10-11-2007
Taken By: Denae P.

Attendance:
Aaron Bagelman
Cisco
Crystal
Denae
Peter
Rene
Sam

Agenda:
Announcements
Project Discussions
Organization of the Wiki

1. Announcements

Cisco-Friday November 2nd U-Mass Boston Dinner thrown by Casa Latina 7:00 November 2nd -Campus Center Ballroom $5.00 donation, music, local bands (performers) Cisco did a video for them and they want him to do it again.

Sam-Sent out an E-mail to Tactical Media about it. Sam has a show at the Middle East tomorrow @ 10:30 PM (Friday October 12, 2007) $10.00 for 20 minutes (5 songs)

Rene-Alternative for community & Environment annual meeting 6:00 PM Dudley Sq 2181 Washington Street in Roxbury. October 24th. They also do tours around Dudley to visit sites that used to be contaminated but are not being revamped. You can E-mail Rene.

Fred-
* The documentary class will be using the camera for the next 4 Wednesdays. (They will be on hold and people will not be able to use them).

The classes are going to be camera training classes: camera, lighting, white balancing etc. The rest of the semester will be final cut pro. Anyone can attend. Wednesday nights from 7:00-9:30PM.

* Next class we are having a Canadian filmmaker Kathy Edwards. She is going to talk to us about Community Media (Show footage) She is also going to tape us working next week. We will also be talking a bit about the considerations concerning Myspace, Second Life etc. Make sure to review Jay’s grids and enter your comments etc. Our discussion might also end up in her documentary. Think about how it relates to community.

* Next Week Jason Pramus is doing an update on the current issues and trends and opportunities in community media. He is also going to talk about the social and political implications of these tools. Happening October 25th.
Aaron Stenton-Did put up a Myspace shell for Tactical Media & Sam put up one for Facebook.
#1. How to use them in class
#2. How to use them for your projects & or community building

2. Project Annoucements (Ideas) / Questions
Aaron- (Wiki Discussion) Aaron is doing the organization of the Wiki. He could use help please. Fred and Cisco will be assisting him.
These are the suggestions from last semester for the Wiki:
* Our photos to link to blog (Who are we?)
* Link to Tactical Media blog
* Introductory blurbs
* Table of contents with order changed
* Reorganize the policy stuff
Fred, Cisco, and Aaron plan to meet next Thursday during class in order to discuss these matters. Kathy could possibly tape pieces of the discussion for her documentary.

Crystal-Wants to know if we need to re-register for Benton. Fred said that we should all be getting them. Fred says that you need to Fwd him at least one E-mail that you get from Kevin Tagline in order to get the compentency for the class.

Cisco-Is in the process of working with Casa Latino to work on the Latino Studies website.

Peter-His fathers photo exhibit at the Boston Arts Academy (174 Ipswich Street 174) went very well.

Aaron is going to start to figure out what blurbs he needs to organize the sections on the Wiki.

3. Freds Agenda:
Communications Policy Project-Taping
Aaron Bagelman is going to be taping some policy people but needs help with filming. They are going to be taping Reebee talking about intellectual property. Reebee will also be doing this in our class as well. If you are interested in getting a social research compentency, this can be arranged. You could also use this in place of a presentation. If you are interested in doing this contact Aaron or Fred.

Communications Policy Project-Phone survey research

You will be making phone calls to people regarding communication policy. This is not cold calling.

Primer (Guide) on useful new organizing technology-
Jay’s grids are a start
We need to assess who is interested in helping Crystal on it. We also need to figure out if this needs to be an entire class project. It would be useful thinking for all of us to do. A guide for community leaders-activists, how to organize your newsletters, to how to write a PSA, how to write a press-release. Sam volunteered to help. Fred suggests looking at things that are already created so that you don’t re-create the wheel.

Crystal will develop an outline to see what areas people can help with. We are going to take into effect the time lines-projects that other people are doing so that not everyone would need to do the same amount of work.
Everyone will work on it.

We are looking for a collaborative media coordinator to set up two sessions on what: Possibly second life.

Digitizing things up onto the Internet. Blip TV, You Tube etc. Possibly a podcasting session.

Peter is volunteering to do it.

Crystal wants to know whats going on in the world (media wise) possibly on a weekly basis.

Discussion around the quality of youtube some programs vs. other programs. Some people get the footage directly.

Fred wants a pretty intensive session getting information back on different compression options-putting things online etc. Aaron will do the digitizing session for us. Any day besides November 8th.

The overall topic is uploading, downloading, and being strategic with online video.* What will the night look like?
* Aaron doing refreshing-helping on uploading video
Software options-Different kinds of media players, what options do we have for dong this?
* What is the politically progressive versions of YouTube, are their non-profit versions?
* Are their some that are better than others.
* What sharing site do you want to use? What are the details between all of them?
* What terms are important?
* What programs can assist us?
* What educational-technical level do you need to have? (Terminology and language).
* Cisco will explain how to get things onto podcasts.
Aaron will bring in a 30 second clip of video for us to upload.
Youtube, BlipTV has a Tactical Media Account too
November 15th is when this workshop is happening.
You HAVE to be at the December 13th class.
Scheduling Reebee for November 1st.

Friday, October 05, 2007

Notes: October 4'th

Hope to get schedule organized and straightened out.

October 25'th Jason is coming in and doing an update on social media. Current issues and debates of social media.

We need to set a date when we will make a decision about tactical media expanding into the following things :
1. Second Life
2. Myspace
3. Facebook

We need to decided what we are going to do with Second Life, Myspace, and Facebook. Contact Aaron or Sam if you are interested in helping.

Technology matrix is to help new students understand some of the basics of the group. It is up on the wiki and open to changes.

Make fred find notes on wiki for changes, and determine date to get ideas for finishing changes.

Discuss podcasting, is it possible for our group to have a podcast?

Fred wants us to set two times when we are going to get policy updates from people. There also needs to be another time when we have some discussion about what we think policy is. What are the most important policy issues this semester.

Fred thinks intellectual property is increasingly important, fred wants Reebee Garofalo to come talk about IP, (Copy right, patents) need to talk to him and set a date.

Jay wants to Audit editing sweet and is looking for input from anyone who is interested in helping.

Wednesday, October 03, 2007

Tactical Media Minutes 9/27/2007

Hello, I am going to post the minutes for the first time for the Fall 2007. Also, going to try to do my best that can in posting these minutes. This are the minutes for September 27, 2007.


Housekeeping

• What is the plan for the Tactical media for the Fall. Making the list for notes taking and facilitator on the wiki site.

• Fred- mentioned about different projects about collaboration media work and making sure you do your presentation. Fred talked about last semester. Talk about communication policy.

• Crystal talked about her project with the community, she wants to learn how to do a news letter. Building an e-news letter for her project and if the class should help build one and post the news latter online.

• Daniel ask what is going on with the Wi-Fi problem in the Boston. What is the City doing about the wi-fi. Fred mentioned that there is new type of wireless system that ia more powerful has longer range than Wi-Fi that is called WiMax.

• Aaron is going to work on the wiki for more improvement.

• Peter, Father has a photo gallery event on, October 10th at Newbury St the Class is going on field trip to the event. This event is a communication event for class.

Project

The tactical media class is trying to design a myspace page or facebook so we could use it for class. Also there was a discussion in how to defined what are myspace, facebook, youtube and many more social communication network that are in the web. The class is setting up a grid or matrix to define this social communication network and place this grid on the wiki space. All this is just an idea in how to make definitions for social communication network web sites. The tactical media group only has three week to come up with a brief definition for communication grid.


Tuesday, October 02, 2007

Tactical Media Group use of Technology

The nature of the Tactical Media Group guarantees a constant turnover of its members. My tenure in the group introduced me to a number of new concepts and technologies that I would like to share. We studied telecommunication policy and learned to blog. We learned about collaborative media and Wiki. We learned how to upload video to a web server and embed it into either our Blog or Wiki. Have you ever heard of social networking or My Space? What about Web 2.0? Free media tools on the web make it easy for any organization, no matter how small or obscure, to have a presence on the internet. The Tactical Media Group has used these tools to share information and should continue to explore these technologies and their potential use. The following are tools used for participation in the Tactical Media Group.


Blog

Definition (Wikipedia)

Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject such as food, politics, or local news; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art (artlog), photographs (photoblog), sketchblog, videos (vlog), music (MP3 blog), audio (podcasting) or sexual topics (Adult blog), and are part of a wider network of social media.

Tactical Media Group’s use of Blog

The tactical media group blog provides an outlet for commentary regarding media and technology policy. Its entries are chronological and usually archived monthly. The blog also provides current updates on projects and meetings. The guidelines for use are general in the hopes that members will contribute more regularly.

Current Blog Address: http://www.tacticalmedia.blogspot.com/

Wiki

Definition (Wikipedia)

A wiki is a medium which can be edited by anyone with access to it, and provides an easy method for linking from one page to another. Wikis are typically collaborative websites, though there are now also single-user offline implementations. Ward Cunningham, developer of the first wiki, WikiWikiWeb, originally described it as "the simplest online database that could possibly work". One of the best-known wikis is Wikipedia.

Tactical Media Group’s use of Wiki

The Tactical Media Group Wiki is a repository for the group’s research and collaborative work. Where the blog provides a chronological venue for current affairs and commentary, the Wiki allows the group to work collaboratively on a “database” of information that promotes awareness and understanding of media and technology policy. Although you can search the Wiki, the information here should be grouped and indexed appropriately to allow for easy browsing. The main navigation bar is always visible and should act as a table of contents. When there are multiple pieces of work that fall under a broader category, the broader category should be found in the table of contents with a link to a page that lists and links to the individual pieces of work.

Current Wiki Address: http://tacticalmedia.wikispaces.com/


Video Sharing

Definition (Wikipedia)

A video hosting service, also said a video sharing service allows individuals to upload video clips to an Internet website. The video host will then store the video on its server, and show the individual different types of code to allow others to view that video. Because many users do not have personal web space, either as a paid service, or through an ISP offering, video hosting services are becoming increasingly popular, especially with the explosion in popularity of blogs, forums, and other interactive pages. The website, mainly used as the video hosting service, is usually said the video sharing website (see List of video sharing websites).

The mass market for camera phones has increased the supply of user-generated video. Traditional methods of personal video distribution, such as making a DVD to show to friends at home, are unsuited to the low resolution and high volume of camera phone clips. In contrast, current broadband Internet connections are well suited to serving the quality of video shot on mobile phones. Most people do not own web servers, and this has created demand for user-generated video content hosting, which the likes of YouTube are catering to.

Tactical Media Group’s use of Video Sharing

The Tactical Media Group uses video sharing servers to host its member’s video work. Members are encouraged to share their work on our blog. Although there are multiple free services to choose from, they have different attributes worth considering. Allowable video size and time are the most obvious considerations, but license to distribute and/or modify your work as defined by the terms of use is a consideration that is not as obvious to casual user.


RSS

Definition (Wikipedia)

RSS is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts. An RSS document, which is called a "feed", "web feed", or "channel", contains either a summary of content from an associated web site or the full text. RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with their favorite web sites in an automated manner that's easier than checking them manually.

RSS content can be read using software called a "feed reader" or an "aggregator." The user subscribes to a feed by entering the feed's link into the reader or by clicking an RSS icon in a browser that initiates the subscription process. The reader checks the user's subscribed feeds regularly for new content, downloading any updates that it finds.

The initials "RSS" are used to refer to the following formats:

· Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0)

· RDF Site Summary (RSS 1.0 and RSS 0.90)

· Rich Site Summary (RSS 0.91)

Tactical Media Group’s use of RSS

The Tactical Media Group has explored the use of RSS to help its members keep up to date about media and technology issues along with updates to the group blog and wiki. Each member of the group is encouraged to use RSS as an effective way to keep abreast information important to the group.


Social Bookmark

Definition (Wikipedia)

Social bookmarking is a way for Internet users to store, organize, share and search bookmarks of web pages. In a social bookmarking system, users save links to web pages that they want to remember and/or share. These bookmarks are usually public, but depending on the service's features, may be saved privately, shared only with specific people or groups, shared only inside certain networks, or another combination of publicness and privateness. The allowed people can usually view these bookmarks chronologically, by category or tags, via a search engine, or even randomly.

Most social bookmark services encourage users to organize their bookmarks with informal tags instead of the traditional browser-based system of folders, although some services feature categories/folders or a combination of folders and tags. They also enable viewing bookmarks associated with a chosen tag, and include information about the number of users who have bookmarked them. Some social bookmarking services also draw inferences from the relationship of tags to create clusters of tags or bookmarks.

Many social bookmarking services provide web feeds for their lists of bookmarks, including lists organized by tags. This allows subscribers to become aware of new bookmarks as they are saved, shared, and tagged by other users.

As these services have matured and grown more popular, they have added extra features such as ratings and comments on bookmarks, the ability to import and export bookmarks from browsers, emailing of bookmarks, web annotation, and groups or other social network features.[1]

Tactical Media Group’s use of Delicious

The Tactical Media Group has explored the use of social bookmark technology to help its members seek out popular content related to the interests of the group. Members of the group are encouraged to use a Social Bookmark service like Delicious as an effective way to connect with information that is popular to other people with like interests.