Reading Response: April 9th

Reading Response:

Community Outreach Strategies for Media

Assigned: April 9th

This brief reading certainly provides useful information for media groups here at Rollins. The idea of promoting a community event seems like a an excellent way to create a buzz, put faces to the organization’s name, engage with the community, and raise money for a good cause. In RTV’s case, for example, this made me think of RTV working with the Winter Park Day Nursery on something like their “trike-a-thon.”  Aaron and I heard about the trike-a-thon last semester, and were planning to volunteer, but later found that it got cancelled due to a lack of funds. Perhaps if RTV could partner with the nursery for the event, film, it, and provide volunteers, it could get off the ground and really become a big success here in town. At the same time, it could be good practice for RTV members to practice filming and have a good time. Also, perhaps we could turn it into our own competition somehow, maybe encouraging volunteers to also walk along with the kids and do a “walk-a-thon” sort of thing along with it. 

Reading Response March 26th

Reading Response

Hager and Brudney: Volunteer Management Practices

Assigned: March 26th

Today's reading by Hager and Brudney regarding techniques for volunteer management at charities definitely has parallels to sustaining volunteers at campus media organizations. For example, the authors mention that organizations should “invest in recognizing volunteers, providing training and professional development for them, and screening volunteers and matching them to organizational tasks.” They also stress that, “poor volunteer management practices result in more lost volunteers than people losing interest because of changing personal or family needs.” This really drives the point home that having the correct incentive and recognition for your volunteers is key to success. I also found it interesting that the authors suggested that, “charities that use volunteers to recruit other volunteers have higher retention rates. Having volunteers represent the charity implies trust, evidence of a positive organizational culture, and confidence that the charity provides a worthwhile experience for volunteers.” It is one thing to have a professor or administration member advocate a certain club or organization, but when actual student volunteers do the recruiting it becomes more meaningful and effective. That is what we are trying to achieve with our projects, but it is easier said than done. If, for instance, RTV had access to professional grade equipment and perhaps an intern program at a TV station, many more students might be interested in participating. 

Reading Response Downtown Community TV

Reading Response

Downtown Community Television:

A couple things stood out to be in the reading about the Downtown Community TV station in lower Manhattan. First, this station seems like the model for what a community TV station (and a college TV station) could be. They have great facilities, an energetic and active volunteer base, and talented people involved who are willing to teach others and pass on their craft. In addition, they are funded by the financial successes of the films created in their studios. Crucially, they also produce content which is (1) extremely relevant to the immediate community and (2) underreported by the mainstream media. Their wikipedia page shows that they have made award-winning films on a variety of important topics including homelessness, hunger, drug abuse,  the struggles of immigrants, and prostitution. I truly believe that RTV has the potential (further down the line) to be an engaging member of the Winter Park community, and touch on significant issues like these facing our own community. 

RTV weekly progress 3/25/12

This week, my contribution to RTV involved filming the unfortunately lightly attended discussion with Hot Coffee Director Susan Saladoff. As a fan of her film, (I've seen it a couple times now), I was definitely excited to hear her speak. Its not often that we get to have a discussion with a major documentary director. What I found most interesting about Ms. Saladoff's talk was the fact that she went into the process of creating the film with really no prior knowledge of how filmmaking works. Hearing her talk about the difficulties of raising money, licensing content, editing, etc. was sort of inspirational in that it gave me a sense that anyone can pull it off if they have the right will, intellect and a story to tell. Hopefully, sometime soon I can splice up some of the content and make interesting sound bites for airing on RTV.

As far as the filming itself, it was somewhat of a challenge. I obviously don't have much experience in being a cameraman, so I just tried to frame the shot how I saw fit. I also noticed that I would become engaged in what Susan was saying and therefore not pay attention to how it looked on camera. If nothing else this definitely served as some good camerawork practice in a lecture setting. However, ideally, it would have been better to have a much bigger audience (obviously) to be able to film, as well as multiple cameras working together. Overall I thought it was a fun experience, at least enough so to skip Dr. Cavenaugh's 11 o'clock class... whoops.

RTV progress and future ideas 3/18/12

Chris -- RTV progress

I honestly don’t have much to say in terms of tangible contributions to RTV just yet, but I do have an idea that seems feasible to pull off this week. I would like to do some filming of the Susan Saladoff discussion panel. As a fan of her film, Hot Coffee, I am definitely interested in hearing what she has to say about filmmaking, the judicial system, “frivolous lawsuits,” and anything in between. I figure we could have two camera persons and have someone film the entire panel and another taking shots of the audience and other more creative shots. Maybe we could even get Susan to do a plug for the TV station at the end of the event. I think this could be a great way to kill two birds with one stone so to speak. We could contribute some content for RTV while also showing a decent attendance at this special guest event, making the school look more engaged in current issues. I will definitely talking to Tómas and Jaime about this possibility, and I am interested what you (Ted) think of this idea. In addition, I was thinking of suggesting a potential additional meeting time for RTV. For me, at least, the Monday night meetings are not always the most convenient, and maybe we could arrange a second time for other members. Just a thought.

Outreach proposal stuff

RTV---Chris

After further discussion with KC and Rachel, I think we have really narrowed down our approach in terms of our cross-organizational group vision. As the content editor’s of our respective campus media groups, it is our job to find potential content and uncover opportunities for media to shine. We must constantly review what is going on around campus and find interesting stories for ourselves and others to tackle. Importantly, this responsibility for content extends beyond just finding stories, we want to be there to help out in as many ways as we can. For example, I will be offering help with editing for fellow R-TV members, as well as shooting original content of my own at the alumni weekend and with Tomás’ crew. While contributing consistent quality content is of course separate from recruiting members, it is a necessary prerequisite. We firmly believe that the best way to recruit people into campus media is to have fun with it, know your audience, and get them excited through showing them what you can do. This is especially true for RTV, the organization with the least established credibility of the three. After yesterday’s discussion, we now have a better grasp on our organization’s character: “The Rollins Family.” Keeping this in mind, we will be producing content for the website and hopefully the channel that may vary in subject matter, but contains a common theme and a sense of cohesion.

Pearson Reading Response

The problems with campus media addressed in the Pearson article definitely apply to the situation here at Rollins. Campus media has largely (with the possible exception of WPRK) lost its relevance, and as we have seen in the first few weeks of class, lost its funding as well. I think Pearson’s suggestions will come in handy when we have to decide how best to recruit, train and retain willing participants in our respective media organizations. First off, to recruit students, we have to specifically focus on creating a fun, yet creative environment and forming a functional, skill-diversified team. Then, for training, as Pearson suggests, we want to have our people get some hands on experience as opposed to just classroom mumbo jumbo. Finally, we need to better the organization as a whole and find underclassmen to assume the future responsibilities and keep the tradition going. The ultimate goal here, I believe, is to not just make a brief splash for one semester, but to have a lasting impact for campus media here at Rollins.

CMC 350 Journal Post # 1

When we began our group discussion, I had a vague idea, but was not positive what exactly a "program director" does, so I asked KC if she could describe what she does as the Program Director for WPRK. KC explained that she has the responsibility of scheduling programming, deciding on time-slots, even filling in on air, among many other roles. As I will be working with R-TV, however, the dynamic will obviously be different than that of WPRK. There probably won’t be too much to decide on what to air and when to air it, so I envision myself working more within the technical aspects of producing content. For example, we talked about doing some short spots on local food trucks, which students would probably enjoy. Those would not be difficult to shoot and produce, and they could go a long way in making R-TV more enjoyable/relevant. Also, I would definitely like to see R-TV get involved in the Rollins sports scene. I believe it was Rob who said in class that most sports teams already film their games. If this is the case I don’t see any reason why these shouldn’t be re-aired on R-TV (or re-mixed into some sort of highlight reel). Overall, I would like to contribute wherever needed, but specifically would want to focus more on generating content in both the pre and postproduction phases. Teaming up with classmates and friends I believe we could create (a modest amount of) original content and improve the structure of R-TV, hopefully making it increasingly viable and successful in the future.