Welcome To The Public Studio Collaboratory

The experience of digital convergence is exciting and baffling. The development of the World Wide Web and the vision of an interconnected globe is a splendid , constantly shifting evolution of technologies that feels like magic to most of us. But learning how to use it effectively can be a nightmare for people born before 1980. An interconnected global community is coming together. How does our region fit in?

For the next two years or so the Media Lab of SalsaNet, (San Antonio’s oldest internet organization and the South Central Chapter of the Internet Society) will incubate a laboratory in community radio, television and world wide broadband production. A facility we are calling Public Studio.

Public Studio will become an independent non profit multimedia production group, serving the Alamo Area through Broadband Internet and Public Radio and Public Television. Public Studio will provide space, mentoring and equipment to young people and encourage and enable the exploration of community media and interactive world wide collaboration. Public Studio will explore ways non-profit organizations and creative people can integrate this new media into their lives and missions.

Public Studio will assemble a community pool of equipment and crews that will test out new technology and demonstrate its uses.

Public Studio will work to more closely integrate public radio and television with the regional community using local professional grade local production gear and local crews.

In collaboration with Public Radio and Public Television and the Internet Society, we will locate a place near the center of San Antonio and fill it with professional audio and video equipment and bright young people. From here we will go to locations around the Alamo Area to produce demonstration audio and video for broadcast and web delivery. Through the Internet Society we will establish collaborations with people all over the world.

Non profits will learn how to use digital media by helping to select the demonstration projects and participating in the production. At the end of the project (two years or so) we will choose the first employees of Public Studio from among the project participants and have a party and press conference.

The Public Studio collaboratory will enable the next generation of community media professionals to help us share the sights, sounds and challenges of our home region with each other and to link South Central Texas with the global community.

More Information

Pleas McNeel - pleas@salsa.net

Has to be one of the coolest way to build out web forms I have seen in quite some time. There is even a free version of it for peeps who don't want to waste money. You know the whole " pay for something" model that people use to eat;)

Might also want to take a look at the article Chris, one of the founders wrote, about starting your own company. best part for me was:

"To launch our web development magazine, Treehouse, we gave out the
first issue for free in order to generate a little buzz. Even though
thirty thousand people downloaded the free issue in its first week,
only about 300 of them felt it was worth paying for. According to Ryan
Carson, cofounder of Dropsend, that’s a lot closer to the norm than we previously believed."

What's It All About
The San Antonio 48 Hour Film Experience

The SA48HR Film Experience is a local, filmmaking challenge event in the tradition of other 48 Hour Film Events, which are two-day intensive filmmaking experiences.

Teams preregister to participate, and can consist of as many team members as desired, and the event is limited to 10 teams total. Each team is given specific criteria to incorporate into a film, and then have 48 hours to write, produce, edit, score and master the final film. Films are limited to 8 minutes in running time, and may be shot on any format, but must be delivered on mini-DV.

The rules of this challenge are similar to most other film challenges, and are outlined below.

- Each team must preregister, and pay the $35.00 registration fee (payable to SALSA.NET)

As reported on LifeHacker and Arstechnica Google Earth has a new treasure trove of featured content online now to play with. One of the standouts is the real-time reporting and monitoring of earthquakes around the globe. The ability to zoom in on quakes around the globe is great. It's amazing to see how many quakes take place in a given week...more than I probably care to know about.

The CBS Seismic project shows the effects of the 6.0 quake that hit 260 miles of the coast of Florida a few weeks back (read about it here and here) even allowing for overlays of the shake maps.

Thanks to my buddy Jon Lebkowsky for passing this along. This report brings up some great point about the obvious pitfalls and rewards of using online technology in non-profit work etc. It speaks at a level where most users should be able to appreciate what is being discussed. Worth the read;)

For the third year, the URBAN-15 Group has united with The Manhattan Short Film Festival and over 80 other venues across Europe, Canada and the US, to create the world’s largest short film festival to be held throughout two continents this September.

Over the span of a week, venues from Russia to Ireland in Europe, four provinces in Canada along with 35 states will screen a selection of twelve short films that have made the cut into this prestigious event. In the past, the Festival’s finalists, who have gone on to win Oscars and move into the Hollywood mainstream, were judged by a celebrity panel which featured Susan Sarandon, Laura Linney, Eric Stoltz, Tim Robbins and a host of studio reps. This year, the Festival has thrown the judging out to audiences, who will be handed a voting card upon entry to each venue and asked to vote for their favorite film. Votes will be tallied and the winner announced in New York City’s Union Square Park on Sunday, September 23rd.