DoingMedia

As we (OK, me) get older we start to think about the stuff we accumulate. Personally, I have 4 large totes (those plastic boxes with the two-part lid) filled with my life’s work. It goes back more than 20 years to television programs I shot in grad school. I’ve always kept them in the house, in a closet, much to the chagrin of my wife since they chew up a lot of space.
So what do I do with my media archive?  Well, it sits in the boxes in the closet. I purchased a DV camera with AV pass through with the intention of transferring my stuff to DV or archiving to it to DVD. But that hasn’t happened.
I came across a great resource on media preservation and an organization that conducts workshops.
Two organizations have partnered to produce workshops on media preservation.
Independent Media Arts Preservation, Inc. (IMAP) is a nonprofit service, education, and advocacy organization committed to the preservation of non-commercial electronic media. They conduct workshops on media preservation. And they have some basic information in the form of handouts from their Introduction to Media Preservation workshop.
Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) has a very complete section on their website about media preservation. (from their website) Founded in 1971, EAI is a nonprofit organization that distributes and preserves a major collection of new and historical video artworks. For 35 years, EAI has fostered the creation, exhibition, distribution, and preservation of video art and, more recently, digital art projects. EAI is committed
to providing audiences with access to media art.
I realize that everything is new, everything is digital, but there is an awful lot of history back in the analog archives stored in our basements, storerooms, (heaven forbid) storage units and, in my case, a valuable clothes closet. Once that material is gone how will we know where we’ve been or what mistakes we made that aren’t worth making again?

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Tags: media, formats, videotape, preserve, preservation, VHS, U-matic, 3/4 inch, Betacam, quad, Type-B, Betamax, one inch, 1, 2, two inch

The focus here at DoingMedia is media communications and production. But to “do” media you need to “do” the business stuff too. One of the things I do a lot of is network with other people. Actually, I’m a serial networker. And one of the ways I network is coworking.
What’s coworking? My elevator speech for it is: Coworking is executive suites for the new millennium. But it’s more and different than just office space. It’s a way to work with people like you would in a cube farm without all the managerial hierarchy or nasty office politics. Working at home by yourself sucks. Coworking is an open environment where you can collaborate, or commisserte, with other people. Coworking can take place at someone’s home, at free locations like a library or coffee shop or at commercial spaces where you rent by the day, week or month.
I organized a weekly coworking session every Tuesday from 9 to 5 at a local coffee shop (La Taza Coffee House). On Tuesdays that’s my “office”. I lock my laptop to the table, plug in and go to work. It’s a bright, comfortable space that’s different than my home office and I’ve met some interesting people in the process.
Today, the San Antonio Express-News covered my coworking session and other coworking events on the front page of the Business section, with pictures and everything!
If you’d like more information about coworking visit…

• Coworking San Antonio - home sweet home page
• Firecat Studios - First Friday Coworking in San Antonio
• Launchpad Coworking - commercial coworking in Austin
• Coworking Google Group - nexus for coworking happenings world wide
• Coworking Wiki - international home page for coworking

Thanks to Susan Price and Julie Gomoll for the idea that got me started, Jennifer Navarette (Morning Brewcast) for her support and Laura Lorek for the article and Tech Clicks blog post.

Tom Clifford and I are members of a group on Facebook. A group affiliated with a professional association, MCA-I. So, it is with wonder, but not necessarily surprise, that one of his blog posts popped up in my Google Alerts.

In “Huh? A “YouTube Video?” What’s That? ” Tom hits the nail on the head. It echos the tail end of my post “Figuring Out Social Media: Marketing on Facebook“. The post’s last line says it all: “YouTube is a distribution channel…not your video story.”

Ah, another ally in the good fight!

I’ve been working with a couple of associations on marketing, conference and policy efforts and was looking for some info on using Facebook Pages. I came across this post “The Facebook Marketing Bible: 24 Ways to Market Your Brand, Company, Product, or Service Inside Facebook“. This is a very comprehensive but high level look at using Facebook to get your message across.

Up to now Doing Media has been about doing traditional media. But as the line gets fuzzier and fuzzier I find myself drawn to how the traditional and “new” and/or social media converge. So I thought this piece on marketing with Facebook would be interesting.

Social media has the same upfront work as traditional media like determining audience, objectives and goals. But it’s where you start figuring out methods or the media to use that it gets interesting. Is a Facebook Page “text”? Is a Youtube post “video”?  Is a podcast “audio” or Flash “multimedia”? Does it matter?

I’m thinking no. But it does make managing your messaging very important. Instead of one video “channel” to watch over like when you might distribute a tape, disk or satellite feed now you may have all of those plus video posting sites, blog posts with video, video podcasts and on and on.

Didn’t the Internet used to be “easy?”

Technorati Tags: social media, new media, old media, traditional media, facebook pages, multimedia, video, audio, podcast

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