PEGspace + Radio + Knight = a good thing for broadcast websites

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drewish's picture

I'm cross posting this because until I came across the PEG space Birds of a Feather session at DrupalCon I had no idea that there were two Drupal groupsworking on the resource and scheduling problems faced by community broadcasts. The other group had camouflaged themselves by using the insider name of PEG instead of something I'd have recognized like Public Access TV. Hopefully this can serve as the catalyst to get the two groups cross pollenating. In any case I had some brilliant discussions today and saw some the amazing development that they've done and wanted to get the word out.

Andy(? not sure couldn't find the card he gave me) demoed the resource checkout module he'd written for MNN. One of the really killer features was that if you were overdue returning a piece of equipment you'd borrowed it would send you a message. Best of all it would look ahead and tell you if someone else had scheduled it out so you'd know how big a problem you were causing. At KPSU we had a book of forms we used to to keep track of loaner equipment and it was a huge pain in the ass. I'd always wanted to write something to handle it but he did a way better job that I ever would have. The code is for 4.7 but hopefully we can get them to post it in a sandbox some place so that I can update it for 5 and steal the best parts for the station module ;)

Joe Golden wrote the PEGevent module for a public TV station in Vermont (I've forgotten which one). It has some some really cool integration with their setup, basically the Drupal site drives the program scheduling for the station through some export magic. Talking with him about some of the design decision he made was also very interesting, it's given me some good ideas for the station module.

The one thing that was really clear to me is that in order to live up to it's generic name the station module really needs some serious work to make it suitable for all types of stations, not just radio. Based on the usage I've seen, at this point it seems if you're going to setup a college radio station website, you'll use Drupal because the station module makes it dead simple. I'd love to see it enhanced to the point that Drupal+station.module is the obvious answer for every PEG station as well. And up to this point everyone's been doing a ton of work but it's all been in our own little silos. I can't imagine what we'd be able to come up with once we start unifying our efforts. During the discussions one thing that kept coming up was how do fund this? As much as it's a passion, we've still got to eat. That's where a big DrupalCon announcement comes in.

On Monday the Knight Foundation announced a new, followup contest to the News Challenge. This one will be focused on Drupal projects that make it easier for communities to to participate in the new media (well, that's my rough summary of it). The cool thing is that they want the Drupal community to help the filter and judge the ideas.

Keep and eye out for the official stuff to be posted to the new Knight Foundation group. I think we can put together several compelling proposals that will make Drupal the platform for any type of community broadcasting, that anyone can setup and use.

Comments

I'm in

Fool2's picture

This is exactly what we're look for at WUSB (radio)

I think we can make the station module a basis and fork out the medium-specific code into media specific modules. So, for instance, stream recording/archiving can be a station_radio_archive.module or something like that.

I was a panelist at the Intercollegiate Broadcasting System conference this weekend and most of the people I talked to seemed to be clueless about content management and many didn't have any volunteer talent and couldn't afford to pay someone

Resubmit

agentrickard's picture

Now that the process is finalized, you should resubmit this as a full proposal.

Create Proposal here.

--
http://ken.therickards.com/

RadioDrupal

bexecho's picture

Interestingly enough, there was a Drupal project that won a Knight News Challenge award called RadioDrupal, but seems to have switched its name to Radio Engage. The firm is Quiddities. I don't know them, but if anyone does it'd be great to find out what they are planning and to try to work with them.

contact for quiddities

susanmernit's picture

they're excellent, based in Santa Cruz, lead is margaret rosas--margaret@quiddities.com

susan mernit
peoplessoftware.com
susanmernit.blogspot.com
twitter: susanmernit
email: mernit@peoplessoftware.com

A Bit About RadioEngage

johntynan's picture

Thanks rorris for mentioning this. I blogged about my introduction to this project here:

http://johntynan.com/archives/143

It looks like they are asking for input from other developers here:

http://pubforge.org/pubwiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

(Specifically with the initial intent of putting together a survey for public radio stations). A discussion group will likely be formed in the near future.

Look forward to collaborating on this project and to the continued discussions.

BarCamp for Public Media this Weekend

videohead's picture

There is some kind of BarCamp going down here in Santa Cruz for the RadioEngage project. I'm hopefully going to go by and check it out.
If you are in this area or want to participate,

check out http://publicmediacamp.eventbrite.com/

Hmm, not sure why they aren't using Drupal events or Calendar for this.

Not much notice

drewish's picture

I'd have loved to attended but there wasn't much notice. I got an email a week ahead of it announcing it. Hopefully they'll give everyone a little more lead time for the next one.

Lucky you

videohead's picture

I didn't even get an email ; (

I took the day off and went - it was very interesting, but poorly attended by Drupal dev folks.

I did get to bond with Peter and Kwai from Santa Cruz Community TV, so that was good and PEG-y. No staff from SCCTV, though. Not surprising.

Mostly the attendees were marketing and social media folks, KUSP programmers/staff, or your usual Santa Cruz "visionaries and lifestyle enthusiasts". As a result . . . not very technical, and not much tie-in between the efforts in Drupal space and the efforts of Quiddities.

I'll be posting more on the Open Media Project page, and probably on the Radio page - I think there is more cross-pollinization possibilities between OM and RadioEngage than PEGSpace directly, so this doesn't seem like the right place to post.

Huge tie-ins between RadioEngage and Radio group.
Drewish, if they don't end up using Station then I will eat my laptop.

Radio

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