Archive - 2006
May 5th
Friday Five
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 05/05/2006 - 11:54Cinco de Mayo brings a special meaning to Friday Five. I’m not sure if this will really end up being five unrelated topics or not, but it will have a bunch of different tidbits, much of it follow up to various things I’ve written about recently.
I just got an email from the Media Bloggers Association giving me an update on the Maine Web Report case. It is great to see bloggers across the politics spectrum work together to defend free speech.
Peter Turner, whom I met at the New Organizing Institute training in DC back in February sent me an email about The Katrina Project. They are trying to keep the Gulf Coast tragedy fully in the public eye and promote a serious national conversation about poverty and inequality through helping rebuild the New Orleans Public Library. A very cool project. Please, check out their site and contribute a book or two.
The schedule for Personal Democracy Forum 2006 is up. I will be on a panel, The Rising Power of Local Political Blogs. Two of the other people on the panel are Liza Sabater, whom I’ve met at various events around CivicSpace, last year’s Personal Democracy Forum, and probably other events, and Juan Melli, whom I’ve met online several places. It should be a good conference.
I’m also gearing up for the Media Giraffe conference. With that, I’m spending a bit of time looking at various video sharing sites. A few quick comments on this: Apparently blip.tv has cleaned up its interface and is easier to use now. For example, you no longer need to create a separate thumbnail. DailyMotion and ClipShack allow loading videos from cellphones. Kim’s cellphone records videos, so I’ll give that a try. Unfortunately, neither of them have a nice feed into other blogs, although DailyMotion does include RSS feeds and group abilities. Grouper has moved out of the ‘Coming Soon’ category, and I should probably explore that a little.
Also, Kim uploaded this picture of Reilly resting in the sun yesterday. It fits nicely for cat blogging on Friday.
So, that’s a little bit of what’s going on with me.
Reilly Resting
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 05/05/2006 - 11:49
Kim took this picture of Reilly resting, yesterday and it fits well for Friday
May 3rd
Media Giraffe Grassroots Filmmaking Workshop and Festival
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 05/03/2006 - 19:23As digital video cameras become more popular, as people start taking videos from their cellphones, and as new sites emerge online to distribute these videos, citizens’ filmmaking is set to take off. Many people will be simply sharing home movies. Others, however, will want to create documentaries, political advertisements, and citizen journalism.
The Media Giraffe Grassroots filmmaking workshop and festival will celebrate noteworthy citizens’ filmmaking and provide workshops for those wishing to learn how to become more involved.
Okay. That’s the idea as it stands right now. Can I pull together this as part of the Media Giraffe Conference I’m helping with? I’m getting interest from various parties. Now, I need to see if I can find some good folks to lead the workshops, a good keynote speaker, people making good grassroots videos, and people interested in attending the festival.
If you have any ideas, please let me know.
UPDATE: Things are taking shape nicely for the conference. Details can be found here:
http://www.mediagiraffe.org/filmmaking/
April 29th
On the road with Ned Lamont
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 04/29/2006 - 20:36“I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills.
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;”
Today, Kim, Fiona and I went to the 28th Annual Daffodil Festival in Meriden. For Ned, it was an opportunity to meet with people from Meriden and surrounding towns and talk about the issues that mattered to them. For us, it was an opportunity to enjoy some of the simple pleasures of our home state that too often gets overlooked.
Fiona was particularly interested in the swimming pool filled with trout where youngsters could try their hands at fishing. She also enjoyed a pony ride.
Last week, Kim and I joined Ned as he worshiped at Faith Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church in Stamford. It isn’t our regular church and we enjoyed a different style of worship than we are used to.
As I’ve traveled the State with different campaigns, I’ve found myself looking for these special times, chances to savor what Connecticut has to offer, from daffodil festivals, county fairs and oyster festivals, to a rich tradition of spirituality and innovation.
It struck me that this is perhaps what I like best, being on the road with a candidate I believe in.
Ned at the Daffodil festival in Meriden
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 04/29/2006 - 19:36
Ned talks with various people at the Daffodil festival in Meriden
