Meeting Report: February 26, 2006

The Boston Media Makers met at Sweet Finnish this morning for what was billed as an Amy Carpenter Fan Club meeting. In fact it was gathering of friends.

Sam Allis from the Boston Globe came by and interviewed us all about videoblogging. What is it? When did it start? How many videobloggers are in the Boston area? What do you vlog about? Who watches? Do you make money? Why are there more vloggers in NYC and San Francisco?

Watch for an article about vloggers and vlogging in a future Boston Sunday Globe.

Amy told Sam all about the S.S.D.S. and their plans for world domination. We talked about the power of blogs and sites like MySpace to get the word out and foster a community around things of interest to people. So much is happening in the video blogging space these days. It’s exciting to try to keep up.

Steve made sure he got a picture with Amy.

D.C. Dennison talked about how he was really interested in seeing my video from the New Media Munch at WGBH from earlier in the week on my blog. I said it was a perfect example of the long tail and the immediacy of citizen media. I’d taken a video while at a meeting at WGBH and immediately posted it to my blog. This furthered the discussion of the power of vlogging.

Carl got an Amy Carpenter original, autographed by the artist. Lucky Carl.

Abby related how she uses her blog to post info about new things that she finds on the web and was searching different things that we were talking about as we discussed htem. Someone coming into a meeting like this might think it rude to have a computer open while meeting, but in fact it enhances the meeting, where you can look things up that are being discussed and add to the conversation.

Michael Oh was working on setting up the Boston Globe Pulse point during the meeting and some of us were logging on, setting up our user accounts and doing trial posts. Michael says the Pulse Point will be up and running at hte end of the week. I tried uploading a 385MN video file, but Mike suggests reducing hte size of videos to under 100 MB and using H.264 compression. I’ll compress a video and bring it in mext week.

We also talked about various hosting options for video ranging from free to paid services.

NEXT MEETING
The next meeting is our big one, Sunday March 5th, and will feature a visit by the Four Eyed Monsters.

All the details are on the Boston Media Makers Forum.

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Lazy Sunday Coffee With Carl

The Boston Media Makers met on Sunday Feb 19th from 10-12 AM at Sweet Finnish in Jamaica Plain.

Brittany and Carl wanted to meet for coffee so we had what I like to call a lazy Sunday morning having Coffee with Carl and other Boston Media Makers.

NEXT BIG MEETING
Our next BIG meeting is March 5th at 10:00 AM.

We also might get together on Feb 26th if people are interested.

Visit the Boston Media Makers Forum to contribute your ideas for our future meetings.

MEETING NOTES
We had a nice group that was able to sit around a few tables and talk media making. Joining Brittany, Carl and myself were Tim and Pat.

BRITTANY
Brittany showed us her new Canon SD400 which she got on ebay for $250. It has a 2GB memory card that she got on Amazon.com for $75. Brittany is thrilled with the ease of use of the camera. She shoots in 640×480 at 30 frames per second which allows her to drop her files into Final Cut Pro, render, and edit easily.

Brittany has a really great idea for a new videoblog based on her roommate. I won’t give it away here, but can’t wait to see it. She’s also going undercover on a secret video assignment. We’ll hear more next month.

We talked a lot about web video, including video sharing sites, and NBC’s recent decision to ask YouTube to remove Lazy Sunday.

Here we are watching Lazy Sunday on Google Video.

PAT
Pat showed us his new video Sprout Rap. He hosts both his videos and blog on blip.tv.

CARL
Carl told us about his new project, Worcester Diaries and entertained us all, especially me, with his dry sense of humor. Yay Carl!

TIM
Tim told us about a documentary he’s making on credit, and how he tried to get an interview with the Save Karyn girl, who now has a book that’s been translated in to a number of languages.

STEVE
I told a much to long story about how I got into videoblogging, but people seemed to enjoy hearing it, especially Carl who recorded some of it.

At one point we all professed our love for Amy and decided that what we were actually doing was having the first meeting of the Amy Carpenter Fan Club.

NEXT BIG MEETING
Our next BIG meeting is March 5th at 10:00 AM.

We also might get together on Feb 26th if people are interested.

Visit the Boston Media Makers Forum to contribute your ideas for our future meetings.

Meeting Report: February 5, 2006

Boston Media Makers
Node101::Boston
Meeting Notes
We started off migling and having coffee and pastries until 10:30 when we adjourned into the Sweet Finnish meeting room.

I had them turn up the heat.

I started the meeting with a a brief introduction of the day’s agenda and then called for New Business, which drew a laugh from those in attendence.

Nathan brought a friend Evan who was excited to be here, but did not know quite why.

This promoted us to go around the room and introduce ourselves.

AARON ON IMPROVING SOUND
Next Aaron showed us how Rocketboom‘s sound was uneven and explained that when watching it on your TiVo the loud parts make it almost unwatchable.

He then showed us, Waves, a neat tool that smooths out the levels for your audio. Works on both a Mac and PC.

AARON ON VIDEO
After much technical talk, Aaron showed a video of Amy’s, Why Not, and mine, Wage Peace, to move the discussion along towards video editing.

MICHAEL OH’S PULSE POINT
Next was Michael Oh to show how the Pulse Point works and how we can add content. If you want to add content to the Pulse Point, just drop Michael an email. You’ve got to head over to Sweet Finnish to see the Pulse Point.

MEDIA MAKERS FORUM
I then showed everyone the Boston Media Makers Forum, where we’ll be able to self-organize and decide the topics and form of the mini-meetings we’ll be having between the monthly BIG meetings on the first Sunday of each month. Go take a look and joint the discussion for what you’d like to see happen at future meetings. We’re looking for people to come forward to make these meetings fun, interactive and un-meeting like.

SHOW AND TELL
Next up we looked at a few attendees vlogs.

Brittany had a new vlog, bshoot, with her first post. The audio speakers had been put away so there was not great sound, so you can look at that from home. We’re going to get some speakers and leave them in the room so we’ll always have them.

HOORAY FOR FUNN, NOT A VLOG
Nathan said he made up a vlog. The last time he introduced himself as not having a vlog, he was booed. I said that wasn’t right, but others felt that the booing was warrented. They were kidding, I hope. 😉

So we looked at his site, Hooray For Funn, and saw that he had video on a web page. I said that it wasn’t a vlog, since it didn’t have a permalink and Nathan asked what is a pemalink, in addition to asking, ‘What is a vlog?’

So everyone wanted me to explain, and as I started to explain what is a vlog, three video cameras came out to record the explanation.

WHAT IS A VIDEOBLOG
Video by Jeff from podsea.com, Steve Garfield explains, what is a videoblog? [ QuickTime Video ]

I basically said a video blog is video on a blog. What Nathan had done was not a video blog because it had no permalink to the post and no real mechanism for how you would post video #2 and have it displayed and linked to.

VIDEO PODCAST
Next came the question, “Can you have a video podcast without a video blog?” The short answer is yes. That’s a lot of what you see in the Apple iTunes Store. RSS feeds of video where the videos are no where on the web to be viewed. These video makers want to make you subscribe to their RSS feed in the iTunes store so that they’ll get a high ranking in the store and get more viewers because they are highly ranked.

It’s one way of doing it. Audioblog.com can do this for you.

BLINKING AND WINKING
Following this, we had a discussion of Blinking and Winking lead by Holland Wilde and joined in by Amy Carpenter and others.

It was one of my favorite parts of the meeting.

UP NEXT
I think we’ve got a really good thing going here. What form it will take in the future is anyone’s guess nad that is a good thing. Head over to the Boston Media Makers Forum and let’s plan the next meetings. The next BIG MEETING is going to be on March 5th, with little meetings each Sunday until then, if people are interested in self-organizing them.

After the meeting I spoke with DC Dennison about having attendees go out and shoot video of parts of Centre Street nad bring back edited videos for the next meeting. I think that would be really interesting to see what peopole shoot and how they edit it.

I also started talking to a few people about filming out own version of a telenovela, that would be JP based, include Spanish speakers and have blogs and vlogging in the story line.

Looking forward to the next meeting.