Beyond Broadcast and other items

Aside from seeing a One Laptop Per Child computer, this year’s Beyond Broadcast conference (at MIT) was underwhelming. But then I had a similar impression after last year’s. It took months for the ideas to start bearing fruit. The session on the future of public access TV, for example, just sort of drifted around, but I think it will catalyze discussions about this topic at my local public access station. And those discussions could have a real impact.

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OLPC, with metal hand sign for scale

Dave Winer:

I have no idea what they’re talking about. They use terms that I don’t have a sense of what they mean in real terms. When they talk about the “grass roots” I guess those are the people you see on BART or the Red Line. How do these people meet them? When these guys go to work, what do they do every day?

The term “grassroots” doesn’t bother me, but this discussion weirded me out, too. On the electronic forum during the panel, somebody asked how these grassroots projects are supposed to be funded. Answer: with your day job. If the core of the funding isn’t people’s personal money, and the core of the work isn’t being done by non-professionals, I don’t see how it’s grassroots.

After the conference, I had dinner with family. My cousin (an MIT grad) works for a firm that does architectural law, and she told me that the aesthetic criminals behind the Stata Center have not, to her knowledge, been brought to justice.
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Tell Grace Ross to run for City Council

I talked to Grace Ross last week after an event at Assumption College, and asked her: Are you going to run for City Council? She said she’d run if she thought she had enough people interested in volunteering for it to be a real campaign. I asked her if I could spread the word, and she said Yes.

Consider the word spread.

If you’d like Grace to run for an at-large seat on Worcester’s City Council, and you’d be willing to put some work into a campaign, e-mail her at gracegrnrnbw@aol.com.

Coffee in Worcester: The Pickle Barrel

This Presidents’ Day, Bruce, I, and five friends packed a booth at the Pickle Barrel.

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Bruce: I had a pretty good time there with all those people there.

Pie and Coffee: What’s the Pickle Barrel like?

B: The day we went there, everybody was in good spirits. Because I’ve gone in there a couple times before, and it wasn’t such a good vibe. I really got a good vibe that day, because everybody there was on MySpace. My MySpace friends.

P: Not everybody, but a lot of them were.

B: A lot of them sitting at the table were. I encourage more people to be on MySpace.

P: What’s the coffee like at the Pickle Barrel?

B: Very good.

P: What’s the service like?

B: The service we had was very good.

P: It’s actually a pretty well-known place. It’s “the place” in that neighborhood.

B: Yeah. I mean, if you lived in that area, then you would go there. In the case that you lived downtown, you would go to the Midtown Mall, to that diner there.

P: The Pickle Barrel’s a lot bigger and busier than the Midtown Dinette, though.

B: One thing, The French toast is good, but the Midtown Dinette’s was better. One thing about the Pickle Barrel, they forgot to bring me syrup. Other than that, it was pretty good.

P: Well I gotta say too, it would be awesome if the Pickle Barrel had some vegan options. I know that’s sort of insane, and has nothing to do with their being a neighborhood diner. But I throw that out there as a suggestion.

So what is that paper that you’re wielding?

B: I was writing this down last night, abbreviating what the Snow Ghost would be. The rest, the rest, depends—this is two different sayings. The first one would be: shit-nude-out-whore ghoul-horror-out-sick-toll. The nice one would be: so-nice-to-weather good-host-original-snow-transport.

The other one, the Black Death, would be: the bastard-loud-arse dat-eat-arse-to-hell.

P: Any final thoughts about Worcester?

B: It’s kinda cold out today.

Looking back at Beyond Broadcast

I’m attending Beyond Broadcast again this year. I wrote up some notes last year after the conference. Funny how the stuff I wrote about isn’t the stuff that stuck with me. Might as well look back at those notes anyway.

  • Public Radio Exchange is still around, though I haven’t thought about it since last year’s conference. On the other hand, last year I got to meet the people behind Radio Open Source, which didn’t seem to merit a mention at the time, but which is now the model I point to when public access TV producers ask me how to connect their blogs to their shows.
  • Digital Bicycle seems moribund.
  • Echo Chamber Project is still in action. I hope the documentary gets finished soon.
  • I’ve built a test Indymedia site on Drupal 5.0, and am waiting for a server where the production site can live.
  • The best way to post video to the web is on the Internet Archive. So when formatting video for the web, the real question is: what does the Archive want? Answer: MPEG-2s. At my TV station, we’ve downloaded suitably-licensed DVD-quality MPEG-2s from the Archive for later broadcast, which accomplishes most of what Digital Bicycle set out to do.
  • Holmes Wilson/Dan Gillmor/drinking with WGBH: I don’t think Holmes will be there this year, but Dan Gillmor is back and talking about the future of public access TV, a subject close to my heart. He’s blogged some of his thoughts here.

    Gillmor is famous for saying:

    My readers know more than I do.

    From this follows that when readers can share their knowledge without the pro journalist as intermediary, the pro journalist must reinvent the job.

    Sometime when I’m drunk, ask me to explain my corollary:

    My readers drink more than I do.

Shadow of Wal-Mart falls on Worcester

I regret that the time has come to tag a post both “Worcester” and “Wal-Mart.”

Telegram & Gazette:

A 209,000-square-foot Wal-Mart Supercenter is part of a shopping center planned on 44 acres in Quinsigamond Village where U.S. Steel once operated foundries along the Blackstone River.

Buck Paxton:

I consider myself to be the single biggest proponent of hard core, blood thirsty capitalism this side of Iowa, but Wal-Mart still manages to make me ill.

I’ll be blogging this issue over at Worcester Activist.

Ash Wednesday, 2007

Last year’s Pie and Coffee “Lent” articles were an eclectic bunch.

Most Catholics either give up something, or take on a new responsibility, for Lent. They also stop eating meat on Fridays (except fish). Since becoming a vegan, I’ve been wondering what I should do. Last year, I gave up soy on Fridays, which was a pain in the neck and not very productive. This year, I think I’ll just observe a juice fast on Ash Wednesday and Fridays, since the combination of prayer and fasting always does me good, and I should try it more often.

Chinese New Year: Indymedia has an article and movie about the celebration in Worcester, courtesy Matt Feinstein. Are there Chinese Christians who feel a conflict between celebrating these first weeks of their New Year, and observing Lent?

Television: You can submit your questions about prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and other topics to Worcester’s Mayor and City Manager via Soapbox.

Catholic Worker: Houston Indymedia reports that the Houston CW is being harrassed by the Klan.

Cirignano hearing

Larry Cirignano appeared at the Worcester courthouse this morning for a probable cause hearing in connection with an alleged assault at a marriage rally late last year.

I couldn’t hang around the court all morning, so you’ll get no news from me. Kevin Ksen of Indymedia and Ethan Jacobs of Bay Windows are on the scene, so some reportage may surface.

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Update: Sounds like the Cirignano case is moving forward. One photographer on the scene tells me he tried to get a shot of Cirignano leaving, but that he’d eluded the press. I wandered by the court on my lunch hour, and while my photo isn’t good, it’s something.

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Larry Cirignano

Update: Rock on, Ethan Jacobs:

Following the hearing, which was not open to the public or the press, Cirignano confirmed to Bay Windows that the magistrate had found probable cause on both charges, but he declined to comment further.

Telegram & Gazette update (the next morning):

Criminal complaints charging Larry Cirignano, 50, of Arlington, Va., with assault and battery and a civil rights violation were issued yesterday after a show-cause hearing in Central District Court.

[…]

Ms. Loy initially told police she was not injured, but investigators later photographed a small bruise on her elbow.

Three witnesses said they saw Mr. Cirignano push Ms. Loy “with force,” according to the [police] report.

Mr. Hetero—one year later

Yesterday I staggered into the Bean Counter, ordered a coffee, and found that I’d left my money at home. A kind stranger paid my bill. So in the interests of “paying it forward,” I’ll try to emulate that generosity of spirit while recalling the fiasco of one year ago today, the Mr. Heterosexual Massachusetts competition.
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