Homelessness Marathon!!!

Just wanted to add to Bonnie's note, and say a big thanks to everyone that came together to make the Homelessness Marathon a great success. First off, Alex did an amazing job producing this event, as well as being our on air talent, coordinating with Jeremy's team, taking care of Megan and I and well bringing me coffee, he was a pleasure to work with and I hope to again. Megan did a splendid job on camera,  she really pulled through on such little sleep and I commend her professional nature when we were slowly burning out. Another great thank you to Eric for helping with quality control and suggestions and Than for making himself available for all of the technical issues. And finally, the Social Media Team. Thank you so much Bonnie and Giselle for taking the lead on rounding up the interns for blogging and pushing out to social media sites. Leland and Colleen deserve a thanks for helping with social media as well. Without the pre-production planning, this event would not have been so successful. Last but not least, Andrew, Eliza, Mark and Kim. Thank you so much for taking the time to learn Livestream, research radio outlets, create blogs, and carry out the tasks for the event. I'm so glad you could be a part of the Homelessness Marathon.

Well another Big Thanks to everyone!
Looking forward to Boston!

-Lauren

Radio Outreach

Today I finished up my half of the radio station outreach. I called up stations all over the countries and explained that I was offering them our video embed codes for free. When I actually got someone on the phone, people were really grateful and receptive. It pleasant knowing that I was calling people out of the blue and offering them something valuable. It most be the opposite of how telemarketers feel. After that, I dug in researching blogs on homelessness and poverty for our social media push. FYI, there is an entire blog out there about someone's homeless Sims characters. People are strange.

See you all tomorrow!

Editing, Researching, and Blogging

Hello,

I spent the afternoon editing the Your Voice Here (Egypt Episode), and I think it turned out pretty well. I did have a couple ideas to try out next time though, that I think will improve the final product. I think next time it would be better to try out some different shot angles for the interviews. They were fairly static this time around it didn't really add to the excitement of the piece. I also want to make sure that we are getting the best lighting possible. It was kind of tough to get people to face directly into the sun, so their faces tended to be half in shadow. I guess that problem will subside as we move further into the summer and the sun moves higher into the sky. I would also like to try out some more complex motion effects next time, like the way the the Martin Luther King Day YVH was done. Other than that I've spent some time researching sites and blogs for the homelessness google doc and have found that their are quite a few resources out there. I posted some tonight and will continue to research before this Wednesday rolls around. I guess that's it for now. Also, here's a video I came across on youtube that has a few facts.

Social Media Reminders...

Hey Guys,

I posted this on our internal publishing blog for the Homelessness Marathon, but wanted to post here too.

Just a few things to keep in mind while working on social media for the Homelessness Marathon...

• Please create a FB and Twitter account if you do not have one already. Again, if you do not want to use your personal FB or Twitter accounts, please create new ones to use for work.

• On Facebook, please “Like” Free Speech TV (http://www.facebook.com/freespeechtv) and the Homelessness Marathon (http://www.facebook.com/HomelessnessMarathon). When posting on FB, please tag Free Speech TV and the Homelessness Marathon in your posts (you can write @Freespeechtv and @homelessnessmarathon in your posts and will link back to both FB pages).

• On Twitter, please follow Free Speech TV (@freespeechtv) and the Homelessness Marathon (@homelessradio). When tweeting about the marathon, please include the tag #hmkc and @homelessradio and @freespeechtv in your tweets.

Please refer to the shared google doc “Social Media – Homelessness Marathon” for the task list, team contact info, and blog/website list.

Stroome

Hey Everyone,

Can you all make it a priority to research and test out the Stroome site. The site is http://stroome.com/
You can also use this tool on the Action Calendar as well as Your Voice Here. Thanks!

-Lauren

Returning from the dead...

Sorry for being out almost all week, guys. I tried to keep up with my work here as well as school and my other job, but apparently my body just needed a break.

Today I created a blog specifically for us interns covering the Homelessness Marathon event. You all should have received an author invite for the blog. We will be using it as new media and information is updated, and using those posts to transfer videos, pictures, interviews, links, etc. to other social networking sites. We should all be adding new sites to the document sent out by Bonnie. She mentioned that it is more important to keep adding contacts to that document (even if it is unlikely they will support us or let us partner with their website for this event) than to not have enough potential contacts to branch out to, to share our coverage with. We want this to be a successful broadcast, and our generation is more than capable of allowing videos and popular information to go viral in a matter of 14 hours. I think the key is to find sites that are already heavily populated with active followers and subscribers and searching hash tags for homelessness, poverty, etc. to lead us to other sites or users that are oriented around this issue. I know the blog isn't fancy, but I ought to be heading out soon and I will customize it later. See you guys next week, can't wait to talk more about this in detail!

-Kim

Homelessness Marathon Social Media

Hey-O!

As you guys know, the 14th Annual Homelessness Marathon is coming up very soon. Thanks to everyone for pitching in and helping out.

Giselle and I are planning on meeting with you all next Weds, but please take a few minutes to get started on some research. I've started a google doc that I'll share with you all. Please use this doc to list websites, blogs, etc where we can post info about the event and approach about possibly embedding our player to stream coverage of the event. Please list the org name, the URL, and any contact info for the org (Media, Development contacts) if you can find them. Any websites or blogs about poverty, homelessness, etc would be great.

Please let me know if you have any questions! Let's try and get a jump on this list before our meeting next week. Thanks again for all of your help. Looking forward to working with you guys on this!

bonnie

Snow makes everything better

So, I just finished the graphics for tomorrows Progressive Action Calendar shoot and with that hopefully tomorrow's production will start sooner and run smoothly. I have also been looking at the Action Calendar on Free Speech's website and we are lacking events!! We have whole weeks with NO EVENTS listed and I know there are events for those weeks happening somewhere in the nation. ALL INTERNS need to help by researching events, posting them and emailing the links to Eliza. Also, look at the Calendar before you start doing research and see what days have only one event or no events posted. Now I am off to work on Promos... Stay warm!

-Megan

Yesterday was the first day I was truly on my own working on PAC/in the intern room, and I'm excited have a lot more responsibility over the Action Calendar.  When I started interning last month, I had never seen or heard of After Effects, and Final Cut Pro was just something I had seen on a shelf at the Apple store.  Now, After Effects is not nearly as scary, and I'm feeling a lot more comfortable with using the template and tweaking graphics as I enter the events.  It's also a great relief knowing I have Megan, and that I am surrounded by lots of other interns who are more technologically competent than I.  Finding the events has been going smoothly for the most part, but still, it would be a HUGE help if everyone could send me just a couple of events for the upcoming weeks.  Before he left, Adam sent me a folder containing about 20 links to other action calendars to find events.  It's been handy for the most part, but I've noticed many of the sites are either outdated or just infrequently updated.  So over the next few weeks I'd like to find new sites that can be used to find events for the PAC!  

See you all on Wednesday!

-Eliza

Week 2

Hello everyone. This my second week at FSTV and I can't wait to start learning new things. Last week week was Dan and Shay's last day working on Your Voice Here, so I didn't get to go out and work on that yet. I wasn't entirely disappointed  considering the weather was staggeringly cold. I do look forward to going out this Wednesday though! I was reading and watching some of the coverage on the Egyptian uprising on freespeech.org this last week, and comparing it to the coverage i've been seeing on some of the major networks, like Fox News. It struck me how the mainstream media coverage of this historic event has portrayed it as a state of chaos, while the coverage from Al Jazeera and NPR has shown a much more peaceful revolution. I also found myself wondering what it would be like if this had occurred 20 years ago, before the advent of youtube and camera phones. It would undoubtedly be a much more violent, much less publicized event. Those average citizens on the rooftops in Tahir Square, shooting and streaming video, are the true muckrakers of today. It seems like corporate media and government will almost always skew, spin, and withhold information, so it is up to the people to refuse to be owned and misinformed. Well, that's what was on my mind today. Bye now.

-Mark

Excited to Get Started

Hey y'all, I really excited to get out on the streets for Your Voice Here this week. Last week, Aaron, Dan, Shay and I got some fascinating footage at the Denver Rescue Mission for the Homeless Marathon later this month. People's stories and thoughts about the experience of homelessness were diverse and thought provoking, but once again it was difficult to get people to agree to interviews, especially when the subject matter was so personal. It got me thinking a lot about how important it is to ensure that the way we approach people is respectful and not abrasive. Every time I've done a Your Voice Here shoot, we've gone to the 16th Street Mall. This week, I'd really like to try a new location and would love to here suggestions for where else we could go. Also, for every shoot we've been under a serious time crunch because we usually don't leave the office until well after 12. This week I'd love to ensure we leave ample time to ensure we can get at least ten interviews.

See you all Wednesday!

Ginny

Bye Bye!

It's my last day. I've really had a great time working here with everyone. I will miss this place. I hope to stay in contact with everyone, so feel free to hit me up!

Shay

Too Cold for a Zombie Apocolypse...

I hope everyone is staying warm in this crazy cold weather! I know I am and it was kind of nice waking up and having all of today responsibilities notify me that it is just too cold out to do anything and to stay home! I am really excited for tomorrow though and to keep being a large part of the Action Calendar. I actually remembered to research my events this week! Well that is all for this week, I suppose, you stay classy, Denver!