Alliance for Community Media Northeast Region

Without a doubt, the summer has had a very soggy start here in the Northeast. One positive aspect of the endless dreary wet days is that we're really getting a lot of stuff done. One of my big projects in the next couple of weeks is kicking off the 12th (can you believe it?) Annual Video Contest. Every year we get more entries, which is a wonderful thing. So this year, we're trying something new to make ourselves more efficient and save time. Our Entry Form is going on-line!

I don't know if any of you have ever attended an Emmy Awards ceremony, but last night I had the surreal pleasure of being at the one in Boston. It occurred to me, as I sat there waiting to hear if my daughter Jul3ia's name would be called, that access folks often underestimate our own value in the general scheme of television media. So many times I've heard people say, "Oh, it doesn't matter if the show isn't as slick as what you see on the other channels.

ACM conferences are a great time to connect with your peers. The recently held ACM-NE Spring 09 Conference in Burlington VT put a new spin on this connection. Not only were we talking in the vendors' area and meeting up in the hallways, we were checking our phones for tweets and looking at just completed sessions on blip.tv, while uploading our status on Facebook and sending photos to Flickr.

I have to say that Jason Daniels is doing a bang-up job with the website. And, in creating a blog space, a Twitter account for the conference and using other great new media stuff, he's dragging us, (some of us kicking and screaming) into the 21st century.