"I attended the ACM NE Regional Conference on a scholarship!"  by Joe Cunniff

First, thanks from all of us in Albany for all you’ve been doing to help ensure our next stab at PEG TV has a chance of survival! Your trips up here and numerous emails energize us to stay focused and work for the proper funding and equipment.  And what better way could we prepare for that than to attend the Alliance for Community Media’s conference in New Jersey the 13^th and 14^th of this month?  What a fantastic opportunity!  Thanks for letting us know about the scholarship to “The Power of Partners” conference. 

The conference provided a few pleasant surprises for me. You may recall the document our group of PEG enthusiasts presented to Albany’s Common Council back in February that included screen shots of ChannelAustin’s website as examples of what a PEG station’s web presence should look like.  We included their home page, online access to video, and their training schedule and description.  What an enormous coincidence that the director of ChannelAustin and their manager of training would be at your conference!  I had the chance to chat with both of them and exchange business cards, as well as their insistence that we share follow-up conversations while (should we emulate them to this extent?) ChannelAlbany gets up and running.  In addition to meeting my ‘idols’, I had the opportunity to meet plenty of PEG folks that clearly re-emphasized your point.  An all volunteer station won’t work!  I was able to chat with people from quite a few stations, asking how many FTE’s they had, their town’s population, and number of subscribers. It was very enlightening information that we can share with City Hall.  

Then there were the workshops.  There were so many wonderful topics, I couldn’t make up my mind!  I did end up focusing on video streaming and the single and multiple camera no-edit shoot, subjects that I feel are important to the implementation here in Albany.

The trade show was very important to us.  This was a great place for us to validate our thought that some of the equipment that is part of the Albany agreement with Time Warner is not appropriate for our cause.  For example, fixed, wall mounted tape based (1 hour) HD cameras are not a good idea in City Hall.  Robotic cameras with presets combined with proper video switching technology and streaming would be much better.  We’ll try to keep ourselves and the City focused on the types of technology appropriate for each application.   

Thanks very much to you, Executive Director Nancy Richard, and the Alliance for the scholarship that allowed us the opportunity to learn so much in so little time.  We know there’s lots more to learn and hope Albany provides all its’ citizens the chance to do just that.

Best Regards,

Joe Cunniff

Albany Community Television
www.albanycommunitytelevisioin.com