SF Commons Update 3/30/10

REMINDER: Membership required as of March 1!

Please remember that membership fees were waived from September 1, 2009 - February 28, 2010, but were required of all producers beginning March 1, 2010. Any producer who has an existing program must obtain and pay for this membership by March 31 to retain any existing time slots or equipment reservations. http://bavc.org/membership

IMPORTANT: New systems launch event and producer training - Monday, April 26

Join us on Monday, April 26, 6:00 - 8:00pm for a launch event for our new web site and program submission systems, developed in collaboration with our partners at the Open Media Foundation in Denver. They run public access in Denver, and will be out for a visit to train BAVC staff and you. What's new? Here are some highlights:

1. User empowerment -- The systems will put more controls in the hands of producers, who will be able to ingest, schedule, and categorize their own programs, as well as add descriptions to their shows, an icon or logo, and other information to help potential viewers find your content online. There are also tools that allow you to make your own equipment and facilities reservations, so you can plug in what you want to reserve and make reservations yourself rather than calling or waiting for a call-back from staff.

2. "File ingest" instead of "DVD drop-off and Playback Applications" -- Producers must stop by at BAVC and log into the system to submit and schedule their programs. In addition to burned DVDs, the new system will accept many other types of files to make this process easier to output from different editing systems, and authoring a DVD will no longer be required if a producer chooses to submit a file. In addition to the April 26th event, we'll hold additional training and orientation sessions monthly to show everyone how to use this and the other features. Eventually, we hope to expand our front lobby "ingest stations" to include other access points and kiosks at community sites so producers can ingest programs from multiple locations. For folks who have small files to submit or a fast internet connection, there will also be a way to submit content from home or another location.

3. Show pages and archive -- Each program gets a "show page" with all of their past programs archived for search and future discovery, a more user-friendly broadcast schedule, and an archive of all programs that anyone can search for, browse through, and watch, making the content accessible online to a much wider audience for years to come.

4. Community tools -- The systems have tools to help producers find crew, post requests for volunteers, view past shows, promote their programs, subscribe to shows you want to see, interact with your viewers, and more. For example, a producer could create a "project" on a topic of interest, and invite others to join the project. The project could eventually become a series, but in the meantime, it gives everyone working on a project a way to get involved. The tools are very cool, to say the least.

5. Theme blocks -- Don't worry, you're not "losing your timeslot!" However, the new system will allow us to generate "theme blocks" with broad categories, such as community, politics, religion, music, health, youth, environment, etc. Producers can choose to schedule their series or special within those theme blocks, where they're more likely to be surrounded by like content, and where viewers interested in that content may be more likely to discover it. The theme blocks will also allow us to promote the content actively, including running short PSAs encouraging viewers to watch upcoming programs in a given theme. For example, we could create a 30-second interstitial encouraging viewers to watch all of the "talk" programming from 3:00pm to 7:00pm on Thursday evenings. Luckily, the theme blocks are flexible -- meaning if more content is submitted in one theme, it can "stretch" to accommodate the content, or "shrink" to make way for other theme blocks to expand. Again, no one will be forced to move their program into a relevant theme block, but everyone will be encouraged to do so. The entire system is truly revolutionary, community-based scheduling.

What does this mean for me? Do I have to use this?

The only new thing you have to do in order to have your programs broadcast on SF Commons is to ingest and schedule your programs yourself. We'll show you how to do this and will walk you through it the first couple of times. All of the other features are optional, but we encourage all producers to jump on this new media bandwagon, set up your own beautiful show page, interact with your audience, and see how it all works. Please join us for the first sneak peek on April 26!

Interested in learning more? Watch "Opening Access," a video created by
our partners from Denver Open Media. The video presents a brief history of public access, and how the
emerging model for public access television and alternative media will
address financial challenges while engaging new communities and voices.