JMS

Last week I was at the New Media Institute in Jackson Mississippi, put on by the National Black Programming Consortium (NBPC) and hosted at Mississippi Public Broadcasting.

NBPC is one of the 5 minority consortia in public broadcasting (the others are Native American, Latino, Pacific Islander, and Asian American), and Executive Director Jacquie Jones pioneered the idea a year ago of putting together a week-long training and convening event for minority media producers focused on technology and new tools and platforms.

I missed the inaugural meeting last year in Boston (in my own backyard at WGBH too), so I was really glad to be able to join for at least a day and a half this year.

PRX was well represented. John Barth came down to co-present a session on reversioning documentary film for radio/podcasting. The Talent Quest got props in a CPB speech, and I helped facilitate a meeting with NPR, PBS and the minority consortia about diversity and collaboration for future public media.

There was a mix of panels and presentations, but the main activity of the Institute was the work of 9 different teams of young producers working with mentors and spending a mostly sleepless week creating digital media projects from scratch for debut and discussion on the last day. Jackson and surrounding areas provided the raw material, and the teams came up with a dazzling variety of projects, from video podcasts, online games, Google earth media mashups, and web-based narratives. The final dinner on Friday featured a raucous final presentation and celebration of the projects (Leslie Rule has posted some of them here on the PBS MedaShift blog).

John and his co-presenter Grant Clark (a producer at BET) talked about the possibilities for repurposing documentary film into audio for podcasting and/or radio. They were given a tough one to start with, Linda Goode Bryant’s “Flag Wars” – a narrationless and impressionistic film about gentrification in Ohio. There are certainly easier examples of films with more two-way interviews, introductions and voice overs that would lend themselves well to an audio-only version, but it was interesting nonetheless to hear a draft version that still captured the intent of the film.

Of course there are excellent examples of audio narrative with no narration – work by Joe Richman (here’s Joe on “The Invisible Narrator”), Jay Allison, Dave Isay among others – but it takes ingenuity and planning and is much harder to achieve with material gathered for another purpose.

Grant and John’s basic point is that there are opportunities for reaching new audiences, cross-promoting film and television releases, experimenting with form, and making use of the extra footage and material that every project accumulates. There are also potential collaborations with radio producers who bring a complementary set of skills.

No doubt documentary film and radio are two very different beasts, but it would be an interesting creative challenge and a potentially a source of valuable new audio work to start reversioning a few.

Some more highlights:

The Bay Area Video Coalition’s Producer’s Institute. BAVC was on the scene and helped out with the mentoring too (read Wendy Levy’s post about it here) Their Institute sounds great and the applications for next year’s session just went live, due on Feb 1 2008.

The Producers Institute for New Media Technologies is a ten-day residency for eight creative teams (independent producers or public broadcasters) with a shared goal of developing and prototyping a multi-platform project inspired by, or based on a significant documentary project. The intention of the Institute is to develop socially relevant media projects for emerging digital platforms.

The AFI Digital Content Lab also talked about their process and presented some beta projects coming out of the lab – amazing stuff. You could see everyone in the room start thinking about how to pitch an idea or volunteer as a mentor. Here’s the application.

The AFI Digital Content Lab (AFI DCL) incubates new forms of entertainment programming on digital platforms from idea to audience. Placing the highest value on creative excellence, the AFI DCL pairs design and technology experts with professionals from TV, film, games and an array of programming initiators in an R&D environment to adapt new and existing concepts to digital creation and distribution. In short, we create content for new and emerging digital media.

The 930 Club. Friday night we headed out to a genuine juke joint with a bunch of folks – great band, cheap beer.

Seven Studioz. Goog 411 couldn’t find this place, but after some searching we landed there later that same night to find a warehouse with 3 different DJs in different rooms, including one of the Institute Mentors – Anthony Marshall, founder of Lyricists Lounge and now at Current.tv. I caught my first ever serious crumpin session…

I had signed up for the automatic reminder weeks ago and it came bright and early this morning:

Give One Get One starts today!
From all of us at One Laptop per Child, thank you for your interest in our mission. Today marks the first day of our limited-time “Give One Get One” program. Starting today, when you donate an XO laptop to a child in the developing world, you’ll receive one for the child in your life. The price for the two laptops will be $399, $200 of which is tax-deductible.

So a quick paypal link later and I’m the expectant owner of one of these super cool machines, and glad to know I’m sending one off to someone in the developing world. It would be cool if somehow that created a pen pal relationship of sorts at the same time, I’d love to be able to track the journey of the other laptop and the kid(s) who end up using it.

I’m not sure what I’ll do with the one we get, but if I had the means I’d buy one (two) for everyone in my family.

Home sick with the flu, what better time to edit together leftover footage from the Talent Quest announcement?

Out of over 90 minutes of tape I grabbed about 10 minutes of reactions from some public radio industry types, prompted in stellar fashion by the one and only Maxie Jackson. Maxie is Senior Director Program Development at WNYC, he was a Talent Quest judge, helped us plan the project, and generally has been a big PRX friend from early days.

I left out some racy stuff from the post-party, Glenn doing karaoke, Al in the elevator shooting the breeze with Pat Harrison (President and CEO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting), and some Rebeca antics. If I find myself home sick again some day I’ll compile that into another highlight reel.