LibraryTechtonics

At the Boston Media Makers meeting in April, Steve Garfield, BMM master extraordinaire, mentioned that they were hoping to expand things a bit, offering possibly two more meetings a month: a presentation sort of deal (no vendor pitch, just talkin’), and one that serves as training (media making), like, say using a Nokia N95 to broadcast on Qik or something.

The first ever Boston Media Makers training session, dubbed a “Tech Tonic,” is coming up later this month, and it’s free!

Boston Media Makers presents Media Tech Tonic #1
What: Blogging with WordPress: A Crash Course
Where: Massachusetts College of Art and Design
When: Wednesday, May 21, 2008, 6pm – 9pm
Instructor: David Tames
Fee: Free and open to the public
Optional: Bring a laptop w/ wireless card
RSVP: david@kino-eye.com

Building and Room TBA (RSVP via email and you’ll be sent the room and location)

Agenda:
1. Setting up a WordPress blog
2. Basic care and feeding
3. Using a custom template and tinkering with a custom template
4. Questions and Answers
5. Resources for further study

If you’re in the Boston Metro area, and you’ve always wanted to know how to do this, sign up, since this is a FREE workshop taught by a super guy.

Other brief notes from the April meeting:

Steve is also pitching the idea of gutting this little internet cafe attached to the Apple store in downtown Boston and making it into a new social media meeting space… a trend that’s happening all over the world. I kinda think libraries should do this, too. I kinda think libraries are ideal spaces for this, if for no other reason than to continually prove to teens that we’re relevant, and give the 25-38 year old unpatrons a reason to come to the library.

Gravityland: apparently, episode 6 was written entirely by viewers! Nice.

Jason Praymus talked about Open Media Boston, which sounds super cool, and like a great, well-managed application of the future of user-generated content:

Open Media Boston is an online media outlet dedicated to regularly publishing fair and accurate news, views, arts, and entertainment content in text, image, audio and video formats from a progressive political perspective for the Boston, Massachusetts, USA metropolitan area. We are an audience-centered publication that will constantly solicit submissions and commentary from the general public using the latest social media technology while maintaining professional journalistic standards at all times. We will always strive to balance open participation with editorial control in the service of this goal.

Steve will be happy to know that, attached to this post, is the *super long* recording that I made of the April BMM with my snazzy new Zoom H2, acquired a PLA in March. It’s a whole different ballgame from a cutie little Olympus D-70 pocket digital recorder, and I’m still feeling out it’s maximum potential. Feel free to listen to (or even skim) the Twitter-style madness of one of our breakfasts!

 

 Boston Media Makers 4/6/2008 [1:46:31m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (251)

Boston Media Makers meets the first Sunday of every month at Sweet Finnish in Jamaica Plain, MA. It’s “live Twitter“-style, where everyone around the table gets 3 minutes to talk about what they’re working on, ask questions, do little show-and-tell demos, that sort of thing. Steve Garfield, local vidcaster extraordinaire (check out his tutorials and resources on how to video blog), has been working on a method of live broadcasting the meeting, and this meeting was broadcast on a new streaming net TV site called Mogulus.  We were even able to take questions from the Mogulus chat room for the stream, which was nifty. Hurray for trying new stuff using practical applications.

This is the first time I’ve been to a BMM meeting, and I’m one of two women in the room. Not surprising, but worth noting (especially if you’re a techie gal/librarian or a gal interested in tech looking for something like this).  I was also one of the few people in the room with a PC.

Attendees range from movie maker types, new media marketers, programmers, designers, people from companies and organizations looking to use the media to help somehow, and more.  It’s great to be in a room with so many different types of people listening to their ideas, discoveries, demos, debates, and more.  Face-to-face communication is awesome.

Some of the nifty things that were talked about at the meeting, going around the room:

• Giant Squid Audio Lab mics: the Tram 50 is an awesome quality but budget option (although I can’t find it online… I’m worried that I heard it wrong). The cute fuzzy mic covers for filtering wind are excellent stocking stuffers (making them DIY is really easy, though, too).
• Got an iPhone, iPod, Zune, some other portable? Get iYule. The money goes to a charity, which is awesome.  The nice gent who mentioned it said that his iPhone even felt a little warmer in his hands when viewing it. ;D
• A really interesting discussion on the rise of sites like Utterz and Seesmic, pros/cons, feature comparisons.
• Social Media Breakfast 4 has been scheduled, and they have their own site now. I’m already registered, if you’re in the Boston area and wanna meet tech & media folks, you should come.
• A fellow all the way from London with a company called Windfalldigital, working on some really super interesting multimedia exhibit stuff on science, including a “choose a character” interactive exhibit on genetics (much akin to the Holocaust Museum and the Spy Museum). He showed a really interesting video… I hope it shows up well in the session recording.
• Someone just starting out with video and audio, looking to broadcast interview for his blog about how life online leads to life offline.
• The new WordPress for Dummies book is apparently really good, and includes an excellent section on WordPress MU.
• All sorts of love for Voxci. I’ve been rolling around ideas for using it, and Jack Hodgson is going to help me help him by encouraging me to use it.
• Gravityland looks like an intriguing experimental take on interactive fictionalized web media entertainment.
• Comparing Networked organizations (less hierarchy, more task-oriented roles) vs. traditional top-down organizations (managers, middle managers, underlings), and the recommendation to read The Starfish and the Spider.

Boston Media Makers is an example of how social media online isn’t always a digital vacuum, and that social media can and usually will lead to IRL (in real life) interactions, especially with people who really get it.

Do you attend meetings like this in your area?  Why or why not?  If you do, what types of social media types attend?  If more meetings like this were streamed live, would you watch/listen?