[Editors note, this entry was started last Sunday]

As we speak, I’m just groggily awakening from my post Media Makers nap. You see Boston Media makers is a group that meets the first Sunday, of every month, from 10AM (roughly) to 12 (roughly) in Jamaica Plain Mass (think Boston). Making it for me often involves mass sleep deprivation.. which then takes some time to recover from.  But, it’s generally worth it.

I wouldn’t know the best way to describe the group. On a basic level, do to modern computing and the internet, all digital media comes down to ones and zeros.. so photography, sound, video, whatever.. its kinda all the same at some point. So the group is filled with folks whom, one way or another, make media and put it on the net. Some of what’s so exciting about our times is the new kind of democracy technology is bringing us, where literally anyone can become a content producer, where you can do something not that dissimilar from becoming your own TV station on the net… only for a lot less money and without having to worry about distribution. So it’s a pretty groovy revolution.

When you find your self in the position of being an independent content producer, of the net making sort, it helps to find other folks whom are dealing with the same sorts of challenges as you are, enter the Boston Media Makers.

Should you be interested in this sorta thing, and in the general area, you might want to stop by.. here’s a link to the group’s blog were more information can be found. 

Our tradition is to go around the room and have people talking about what they are doing.. here’s some of that:

Steve Garfield 

Steve Garfield, a pretty famous video blogger, introduce a couple of things to the group:

• Qik: Software, that when paired with an apparently expensive phone with a video camera attached to it, allows you to stream live over the internet from anywhere.
• A Live In America, from the folks who brought us A Live In Baghdad, is coming soon, and is looking for contributers. I’m thinking about participating.
• There’s a tweet up at Boston Beer Works at 7PM this Tuesday (tomorrow as of my writing this) Which looks interesting. Steve will be live casting it via Qik…  I forget the other details.. which make it sound even more interesting.

I’m fascinated by technologies like Qik: You wonder “what could be some interesting applications for this?” Or you wonder how you might use this kind of technology as a part of whatever it is you’re doing. As I put my budgets together, I don’t see where a seven or eight hundred dollar cell phone could fit into my shtick, particularly as Qik is still in an early phase of development, which roughly translates into “integration is less then perfect.”

That said, I was on Twitter the other day when Steve put a link to a live cast he was doing, interviewing some folks from the Obama campaign whom where, I guess, doing door to door.. which proved fascinating. From the Qik site, you could type in questions, that Steve could then ask the people he was talking to. You can find Steve’s Qik page here, along with archives of past casts.

Another interesting application for Qik, and I’m not sure if this worked out or whatever, but Steve was talking about a group who would do a live show, not through Qik mind you, where different people at there computer web cams.. would be talking, and it would be like “and now to George in Austin Texas.” So sorta like a live news show.. where you could cover whatever.. and of course what Steve wanted to do was to have it passed to him.. not in front of a computer, but off in the field somewhere.. fascinating stuff! 

Rebecca Herman 

Rebecca, is involved in a documentary project, having some connection to Duke university. This project involves documenting undocumented migrants in the hispanic community. This would be a video project. The project is inspired by, or of a similar vain as, 6millionothers.org. (what a great Flash project.)

I messaged her a while back in response for a call for help… as far as getting her blog / web design / social media strategy stuff together. We were going to get together to talk a bit, at one of these Boston Media makers, but that didn’t come to pass.

Well now she’s looking to do a kind of instillation project, using video. Made me think of some classes I took with this guy:

 And check out this clip from one of his instillations:

Pretty groovy, ha? 

And then, why just a week or to ago, I went to a bfpug meeting on “Interactive Design and Physical Computing with Flash.” Basically, you plug a circuit board into your laptop.. the circuit board has “ins and outs.” You can set up various types of “switches” as inputs into the circuit board.. and you can plug these small “engines” / whatever into the board’s out puts, which the computer can then control. The “engines” can work like robotics.. or you could use the board to turn on and of lights, and what not.  

Here’s an example..  Here, if someone stands between the TV on the bed, and the other TV, a switch makes the TV on the bed play the clip where the bed person says “move it, common, move.”

Think “Tony Oursler does Warhol 2.0?”

It’s kind of amazing, isn’t it? So this isn’t about technology, this is about.. well other things..  that the technology makes sort of magical. From an artist’s process perspective.. well, in this case it’s a little conceptual.. they way it interacts with the audience.. you see those themes from the earlier clip of Tony talking about personal and impersonal.. etc, etc.. how this plays with personal space / gallery space, in a certain way… or..  well you get the idea.

How this would translate to an instillation about immigrants is another question. Further, Flash is primarily a web app, so how might you take advantage of what Flash has to offer on that front? Would there be a way you could integrate that with a technology like Qik?

Rebecca has a blog at RegardingRebecca.Com.

Jason Stevens

Jason Stevens does Beyond Event Marketing and Advertising. He’s looking for people with media design type skills for work.. so I messaged him.

Jessica Burko 

Jessica Burko of JessickaBurko.com…. She’s an artist.. she does marketing and promotional type stuff for artists, and is just starting to explore some of this social media stuff. She’s associated with Boston Hand Made, a group of Boston area artists, who meet up on the first Thursday of every month. Ok, now here’s a group I need to explore!

Rick Burnes

I keep running into Rick..  He does 9neighbors.com. 9 Neighbors aggregates local news blog content, local to Boston, to one place. It uses a Digg like system, where in, community voting / ranking, impacts a stories prominence on the site.

Usually, when we think internet we think Global.. but.. perhaps particularly when your thinking mobile web, the importance of local is on the rise.

Tom Beach

This is where my notes gets a little shaky.. There’s supposed to be a blog, but I get an error message on the page. Anyway.. seems web design orientated.  Find out more at TRBDesign.com.

John Herman

Check out JohnHerman.org, he does great stuff. He’s an artist / writer / media maker / performer. He’s doing a web video series you can checkout at gravityland.com. This will involve user interaction, where users will effect elements of the series…  So you know, go participate. It’s still early, not officially.. well official yet.. so there may not be too much going on there at the moment.. indeed there’s not.. but stay tuned, or bookmarked / rss-ed if you will.

Jack Hodgson

Jack is clearly a very smart guy. I haven’t had to many opportunities to interact with him, but I’ve been seeing him around these circles since I started entering these circles. He’s doing a podcast called Uncontrolled Airspace. Uncontrolled Airspace is a podcast on general aviation.. in the “hanger flying tradition,” which is to say when pilots get together in the hanger, and talk flying.. in a colorful sort of way I understand, and I hear it’s a very good podcast.

Brain Christiansen

Brian works at User Interface Engineering. Jared Spool (his boss at UIE) was on episode 77 of Mitch Joel’s 6 Pixels of Separation a few months back. (a great episode on web strategy) I met Jared at PodCamp Boston 2, and he came, virtually, to a New England Podcaster meet up some time ago… Brian has a site at briandigital.com. He does the UIE podcast, and various other things.

Linda Shah

Linda’s involved with Beanywood.com, soon to be New Film Nation. Beanywood is a social networking site for people working in Film, and related stuff. This is some amazingly cool stuff.

BJ Hill 

BJ is doing a project called Walk Across America. During the Massachusetts gobernatorial race that elected Deval Patrick, BJ walked across Mass filling a note book with things people might want to say to whomever might win the election. This project had a social media component.  He won a lot of press attention for the project, which lead to an opportunity to meet Deval Patrick, and hand him the note book. Walk Across America is essentially the same idea, but on a national level.

Cool stuff.

Amanda Van Scoyoc

Amanda is an artist: photographer, documentarian, writer, and painter… Indeed she even has a BA in psychology. (you know me, how can I not bring a thing like that up?) She’s got some nice looking work, and a blog, that you can check out at Amandavs.com.

Steve Albanese

Steve runs Tutorial Depot, which provides video tutorials on how to use… well various sorts of technology. Currently he’s focused on music production tools like Pro Tools, Logic, Digital Performer, etc.. He’s looking for people to author tutorials. 

At Podcamp Boston, Steve asked me if I’d like to be a Reason Tutorial author. Can I get a Hell yea? I had planned to get right to work on it.. but life got a little crazy.

My mom was sick, and got really sick. I had to learn the new version of Reason, and as a part of this I worked on my Zar Matt A Thustra Deep Space Adventures project.  I’ve blogged about this here, you can find links to the actual music at mattsearles.com/music/. 

This was a part of NaSoAlMo, which was a challenge to make a solo album in the month of November. My participation was, at least in part, a tactic to hold myself together while my mom was as sick as she was.  Shortly after, in December, my mom died. 

More Links

After this, my notes break down a bit, but here are some more links:

• Project Think Different
• Left Ahead
• FloPrompter
• Boston Biker
• Bicycle Film Festival 

So you see, its sorta an amazing group. I mean it’s amazing what people are doing… what’s going on in this space.. and the potential of this space. It can be hard to go to one of these meetings without feeling inspired. 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 5th, 2008 at 5:19 pm and is filed under Media Arts, blogging, film making, social media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.