Much like living organisms are classified into groups (say, spiders) where many individual species (say, daddy long legs, black widow, tarantula) exist, we still have some distinguishing characteristics (eight legs, no wings) which separate it from other similar living organisms (say, bees).
I'd like to hear about what you would define as the distinguishing characteristics of a community media organization.
What I am getting at is this, I understand that every community has unique needs and every community media center, PEG Access operation operates differently because of it. However, like the example above with the spiders, there are some commonalities which separate us from other organizations and businesses (the bees if you will).
I'm thinking of things along the lines of: working with volunteer producers, distributing media to a defined geographic area, variable funding structure -- maybe you can think of something better. I hope so, anyway.
Let's strip down what we do to the essence, gain a holistic perspective on things.
Then I would like to continue a process by getting more specific.
For instance, working with volunteers breaks out into:
- sign up for productions online
- production calendar
- volunteer sign up form
etc.
Specific tasks can then be addressed to Drupal's core and contributed modules. This generality will help compliment the high end Drupal development we see from New York, Denver, Vermont and Cambridge.
This will begin to help shape a common set of core functionality that address the whole community media enterprise. This will hopefully help more centers adopt Drupal and provide a road map for doing so.
So, what are the distinguishing characteristics of a community media organization?
Comments
I've got three
I feel like Drupal has 90 percent of what we as CMCs need. I'm going to categorize these thoughts around some of the intrinsic values of our organizations:
CMCs are a platform for community discourse and enable civic engagement through the use of media technology
Video programming has been our forte for a long time partly because the means in which we communicated was very limited - since the recent web revolution we have new means of communication which are now as relevant and revered. Harnessing some of the tools that Drupal already mastered, like blogging, organic grouping, and user profiling, is paramount the success of all other services an access center should offer in a website. Drupal already does it, we just have to leverage it for our purposes.
CMCs dedicate resources to specific cities, towns and municipalities
Media outlets do business in profitable markets, not cities and towns. And while Youtube could provide local content, our organizations specialize in it. Drupal has got a lot of projects in motion for leveraging localities and specific geographic communities. Gmap, location, geo, and some event management, etc. Again, Drupal already does it, how can we best use it.
CMCs provide free or low cost access to technology and training
PBS, Youtube, Blip, Currents, etc, are all great distributors of content but as far as making content you are on your own. They don't have production equipment to lend or classes to enroll in. There are a couple of modules out there in both CMC development and wider Drupal community development that would give users of the site access to book, reserve, manage, cancel, budget, etc, their experiences at our CMCs.
CMCs have relationships with real people
Our organizations provide tangible things to real people. Two points here. Users need a window to our organization where their experience on the web can be as meaningful as their experience inside our doors (see first point). And CMCs need a more effective way to manage and administer our users and the things they do that are not web-related. I saw some great developments from MNN and DOM and thats a good start to simulating proprietary database systems, but we need to put a lot of thought into "real people management". CiviCRm isn't going to cut it in the long run.
I feel pretty strongly that we actually need very little custom development of modules in an access environment - many of the solutions we are looking for were developed already for someone and we just need to find the recipe. I wish that all the modules that are under development in their little PEG pockets would release what they have so the larger PEG -and- Drupal community can contribute to them.
nuts and bolts
A Little more nuts and bolts-ey but here's what I came up with:
PEG Has:
A Mission
This is where each center is different, but a mission statement is integral to PEG
Non-commercial/participatory
PEG has non-commercial / participatory values embraced in its culture
A Geographic Constituency
There is a primary geographic service community for PEG.
Members
PEG has people in the community who participate
Volunteers
PEG has people who want to help
Channel Availability
PEG has access to high bandwidth channels
Media Education
PEG offers education on the media both in use and understanding
Equipment
PEG offers access to the tools of production
Partners
PEG has partners in the community ranging from the cable office or regulatory commission to community groups or clients
A Board
PEG has a board of directors
Funds
PEG is funded