Community Media in Transition

So, the wiki’s up and running. There’s some really nice participation on the site so far. Even if you’ve never edited a wiki before, I would recommend checking it out (particularly those in public access, hint, hint). You’ll have to email me though to get access to the site.

I’m still bummed that we can’t seem to figure out how to change our passwords, yet. But the good folks at Emerson’s ITG are looking into this. I don’t think they’ve really ever done anything like this before. Meaning, I believe this is the first time that a wiki has been used for outside-of-Emerson collaboration. But, I could be wrong (which is pretty much always the case).

Unfortunately, you need a user account even to see past the front page. But, I should probably look into this little barrier as well. If anyone else has any thoughts please let me know.

So, for those who can’t see what people have been contributing, I’ll give a brief summary of what people have been up to:

Jason Daniels added to the Background Resources section, including Dee Dee Halleck’s book, Hand-Held Visions: The Impossible Possibilities of Community Media which I really look forward to reading.

Ben Sheldon’s contributed a bunch of great resources, questions, and topics to consider in thinking about this transition from PEG TV to PEG on the web. Under Local v. Global, he asked “How can local/narrowcast content be viewed as relevant in a massmarket/broadcast environment?” In another extremely relevant tid-bit to the project, Ben asks

“A major topic of interest is how this relates to the greater technology needs of the community and how Access centers are uniquely centered to provide broad technology support. As a direct application of this is community mapping projects, which while they need not be high tech (East Somerville Community Mapping Project (http://island94.org/node/22) Access centers could be a natural facilitator for other community organizations or projects.”

Danielle’s mentioned she’s also got some goodies for the wiki. And I look forward to hearing Jason Crow’s feedback on his experience “vlogumenting” citizen journalism.

As for me, I’ll be shifting gears a bit to dig a bit deeper at how the early days of access (founding tenets) are still extremely relevant not only in the context of cable tv, but in the context of the whatever the media access needs for local communities will be in the future. If you have any idea about any of this, please consider sharing it here or on the wiki.