Reflections About the Power of Community-authored Video and Hyperlocal Platforms

This Saturday afternoon, I am reflecting about three things:  1) Community authored video can be really powerful - See this video produced by Camellia Blossoms that I just viewed done for the Clean Greens Farm and Market project located in Seattle's historic Central District. 2) Hyperlocal web applications can be a powerful resource for the economic development and re-vitalization of communities ...if these mega-applications are wrapped around quality television like this produced by community stakeholders...instead of being wrapped around content controlled by corporate-owned commercial television stations not owned by local community stakeholders themselves. 3) How to make this all work? The answer to that one begins by searching deeply within for the answer and for guidance, and then acting on that inspiration and direction to develop the capacity and the business over time.

I welcome your own thoughts and reflections -Let's connect  - 425-780-6872

New World Communications Does Google-powered Website for Seattle-based Not-for-Profit/NGO SavingVillageLives.org

This afternoon I am reflecting and resonating about recent Google-powered website ...SavingVillageLives.org that I designed and developed for a not-for-profit/NGO client with ties here in Seattle's Greater Puget Sound region and in rural Ethiopia where my client comes from. They are just starting up.The direction we took, working with  new Google Apps/Google Sites architecture was straight-forward and elegantly simple to work with and administer.  

We even designed, produced and embedded a 3 minute 47 second web television overview of the organizations mission and vision on YouTube that integrates nicely with the architecture. We also used a Picasa web slideshow to create a nice Photo Gallery page.. with automatic slide changes. Google Sites architecture also supported the creation of helpful List pages that list the kinds of volunteer help and the kinds of in-kind donations that the organization needs in order to achieve its mission... saving village lives.  Their vision is to do this by helping people out with things that many of us..here in the Pacific Northwest take for granted...like plenty of clean water, public sanitation and having schools and healthcare resources close by. Next to do will be to enable Online Giving once the organization completes its non-for-profit incorporation 501(c) 3 process. A blog page will also be forthcoming once more volunteers are recruited to help write it. 

This project and relationship has and continues to be a wonderful experience supporting such a great initiative and working with such great clients. Do you also have a need to develop a non-profit website with a modest budget...and get similar great results? If so, call us today and maybe we can also help you to move forward as well. 425-780-6872.

Google for Non-Profits - Some Amazing Resources We Can Help You With

What's on my mind this morning are all those non-profits that still have not taken advantage of the powerful resources from Google. We are talking about Google for Non-Profits and its now part that New World Communications Landscape that I have been telling you about. Just look at all these powerful resources from Google that we can practically apply to help grow your non-profit business. There are so many of them we couldn't list them all. Working with these resources, we can help with communications and learning in three major areas:

Reaching More Donors

• Google Grants - Did you know that Google will give your free advertising?
• Google Analytics - We are working with a team of experts here that can analyze your traffic.
• Google Checkout - Wow is their Donate Now button great and so is their Google Checkout Store Gadget Wizard that we have been working with
• Gadgets - These drive traffic to your website so that you can interact with supporters
• Trends - This resource tells you where your donors are searching
• Website Optimizer - This helps you figure out the best landing pages to turn site visitors into donors
• Webmaster Tools - These tools help you see how Google sees your sight and helps you correct for errors.

Improving Operations

• Google Apps - This robust resource helps you reduce IT costs and helps staff and volunteers collaborate more effectively.
• Google Mail - This is fast, searchable email that can even have your domain name... Cost-effectively managed in the cloud
• Google Docs - This is a virtual file server... with a suite of office applications - Docs, Spreadsheets, Forms, and Presentations that are elegantly simple to use.. and Google does all the updating, and file sharing and collaboration is amazing.
• Google Sites - This allows you to create websites and secure group Wiki, with low cost hosting and and elegant content management system (CMS) architecture that is highly extensible. We prefer to Google Sites architecture over all other website architectures... including WordPress because its more robust, is easier to administer and is more robust.
• Google Calendar - These are wonderful and have excellent collaborative and meeting invite capabilities that allow you to communicate powerfully with both staff and volunteers.
• and much, much more - These go on and on.

Raising Awareness

• Google Earth Outreach - Did you know that you can now visualize your cause and tell your story on Google Earth and Google Maps?
• YouTube - Did you know that Google and YouTube supports you in broadcasting your cause to the world's largest online line video community, and that I at New World Communications have a public television background and can help you with that?
• Blogger - Blogger is a robust blogging application owned by Google that we can embed right in your Google Site. In just a few clicks your Blogger post can also be "Shared" on other social media sites, and Google Search loves your "tags" which help you get found. 
• and much, much more.

New World Communications role in all this - Our mission is to not only provide the most intelligent communications ..just by ourselves... but also to deliver "the mission-critical learning a new world needs"... so we are building a world-class remote consulting and e-learning practice with world-class subject matter experts to do that. So what would you rather have, just another lone "web guy" or "web girl" or a communications professional and educator aggregating a whole team of people to support you way better? CALL US TODAY, and as a professional consulting/project management firm, and working with a whole team of  experts and strategic partners... including Google... we can help you move forward with Google for Non-profit resources for phenomenal advantage.... NOW!. 425-780-6872

VideoVolunteers-Voices Unheard is a Best Practice..and a "Virtual Field Trip" from India to Learn From

This morning I am thinking about changing the world via the power of the new television and how to communicate that to my friends and colleagues. I don't know what's messing with them...consciousness-wise but they still don't seem to get it... so I searched Google Images for "Community Television" images to get some inspiration and some positive thoughts and feelings resonating... Then BINGO! ...the Universe responds by having me discover ...just what I need... a volunteer community-based television best practice being done in Goa, India by a non-governmental organization (NGO) called Video Volunteers - Voices Unheard - See their website at http://www.videovolunteers.org/ .... the first thing you see on their homepage is a most provocative question that they pose....

"What if the poorest ONE BILLION people in the world had their own MEDIA INDUSTRY?"

Even to be able to pose that kind of question, people  had to develop critical consciousness to ask it...but more than that... they already are outreaching and empowering entire communities to create that media industry...themselves.. as they develop community...using the power of the new television. The other pieces to this are also all there... the powerful issues that they focus on and care deeply about with excellent well-done fundraising website, and  nice presence on Facebook and  Twitter. Most important is that they evidence the fact that they have gotten themselves...ORGANIZED... They have developed the organizational capacity to raise funds and develop donors... sustaining themselves...moving business forward to accomplish their mission and achieve their vision...obviously driven by an excellent Strategic Plan and high-performance organization....in order to be able to accomplish all of what they intend....and evidence.

Goa, India is a poor community...with less resources than we have...but one advantage that they have that communities here still don't have is this degree of critical consciousness,  media sophistication and organizational capacity. It's like other communities that we are now noticing...across the world... the best recipes for learning and for social change ...are now coming from those one billion poor people themselves...on the way to creating their own media industry... We just need to learn from them. Check out this excellent site, get inspired and see what I mean....this is most "instructive"...as well as "prescriptive" http://www.videovolunteers.org/.. especially with respect to the way that they effectively communicate across multiple venues in our now 21st century world. 

Then call me and in addition to just talking about taking "field trips" to national parks after watching Oprah and Gayle party in Yosemite...and "journalizing"... let's talk about producing our own powerful community-authored television...to help our own communities.. and change the world. 1-425-780-6872

Adobe Premiere 9 Video Editing Software Makes Consumer-authored Television Even Easier

This morning I got an e-mail from Amazon.com about new Adobe Premiere 9 video editing software. I clicked through to watched their features video. Then I looked at the under $70 price ...after rebate... and the experience  put me into deep contemplation, thinking about how far television technology how now come and what the possibilities now are. 

Back in the day when I was a broadcast/industrial video systems sales engineer, everything was way more expensive, and it did  way less than what consumer gear over the Internet can do now...shooting for birthday parties?...  I not worried ... because often times things are not like they appear. The same mom that learns how to videotape her kids and tell stories about them can also develop into being a full-blown "new world communicator'' creating television that change the world.

Now is never a better time. From end-to-end, television technology has been radically transformed and put right into peoples hands. The only thing that still in the way...is awareness and consciousness...but even that is changing..as people get more comfortable using the medium. Wow is this a great time to be alive, awake, and aware of some the possibilities...like creating whole television channels even that this year will show up even on HDTV screens. The possibilities for business development, for economic development, for community development and for reforming education are nothing less than phenomenal. Call me and let's connect if you too are interested in seizing television in our now 21st century world - 425-780-6872

Now is the Time to Re-Think Television in All of its Manifestations

Older-think "public access" studios are like dinosaurs destined for extinction

What's on my mind this morning, after hearing about Seattle Community Access Network (SCAN) public access TV being eliminated from City of Seattle's 2011 budget,  is our need to "re-think" television, in all of its manifestations...not only "public" television...but also commercial television...and government television ..and for a number of reasons, all having to do with the technological change, economic change, media literacy, consciousness and it's growing  impact on the television marketplace itself.

• Technology change - Public access television saw its birth driven by the explosion of cable television and the fact that cable companies gave up a few public access, education, and government (PEG) channels in exchange for being able to lay cable and access thousands of cable subscribers. More channels also drove the development of analog broadcast/industrial video and teleproduction technology that costed considerably less than professional broadcast technology. Back in the day, as a former broadcast/industrial television systems sales engineer, I used to design and sell public access studios to cable companies working with municipalities, experiencing and taking advantage of the growth.
  
  Then the digital revolution and the Internet hit changing the game from the early 1990s until now. Now the Internet is a much bigger "Internet-work" than cable. Any consumer who accesses YouTube, or Vimeo can create their own "channel" that can be be watched on the Web and new Google TV will even allow consumers to create their own channels that will be able to display on HDTVs without having to "access" an older think public access television channel.. at all. Consumers now even have access to easy to use HD-capable recording capabilities on ultra compact digital camcorders and  mobile devices.
   
• Economic change - What has also radically changed from end-to-end has been the cost of television production and dissemination technology. Fast-forwarding my life a bit,  I was at KCTS Public Television when they brought in and started using first huge experimental hand-built High Definition camera in from NHK in Japan to do gorgeous Over Washington content. The technology then from camera to TV transmitters was extremely cost-prohibitive and broadband access over the Internet was non-existent for consumers and very expensive, affordable by only a handful of corporate users.
  
  Then the broadband explosion and the introduction of YouTube and its phenomenal success has now changed the game...for ALL television... both public and commercial. The price for everything, from cameras came way down as the quality continued to improve. A few years ago, a music video produced by consumer was virally shared by more sets of eyeballs than watch the SuperBowl. Advertisers paid attention, and this changed the commercial television marketplace forever. Now as television moves to the web, advertisers are following and as virally-shared Web 3.0 consumer-authored.... and consumer-recommended  television...will come to dominate even HDTV home television sets...with the advent of new Google TV. With it you can even watch TV and chat on Facebook...picture-in-picture... all at the same time.  (See below).
  
  
• The Development of Media Literacy...and Consciousness - Changes in technology, making it more accessible and easier to buy and to use have also resulted in the development of media literacy..from "critical viewing".... to "critical doing"... Producing television ourselves...and understanding that now we don't have to access tightly controlled...older think "public access television" facilities or commercial stations... or pay for cable advertising... in order to do television....both public... as well as commercial... is what's radically new.
  
  The only thing that's preventing us from taking advantage of this is lack of consciousness and awareness of how people themselves are creating... and driving the development of a new television marketplace that promises to change a whole lot of things - e.g. education, economic development, community development....and over time the world itself. This is is where delivering the mission-critical learning a new world needs can come in. See the new series of  new world television workshops that I am putting together.

....Therefore, my recommendation is for folks to "re-think" how television can now be done...in all of its newer-think manifestations rather than waste a whole lot of time and energy attempting to keep older-think government-controlled public access facilities going....because now in this exciting 21st century world... there are now "way bigger fish to fry".  See my New World Television Channel page and "What is Google TV?" for instance.. at least to get the conversation going. Call me and let's connect if you too are ready to "re-think" television in all of its manifestations. 425-780-6872

Jaycut - Free Online Video Editor will Help Fuel the Google TV Explosion

This morning, still resonating with the Google TV announcement (..see my New World Television Channel page and "What is Google TV?") and just for fun I decided to search Google for free online video editors... and BINGO the search returned JayCut.com, an online application that lets you edit your videos online... for FREE...without even having to pay a cent! All the basic features are there, video layers, transitions, audio, titles and instant rendering, so it's yet another way to do more complex projects than just creating a plain video "mix" with Flipshare software that comes with the Flip. 

I have a project coming up where I can have my clients use this if they need to.. even though I didn't have budget for editing software. Nice!... and right on time too! I also intend to watch the folks from Jaycut.com closely. They really are software application designers and developers who even have a free API that even let's you host their application in custom developed web applications, and I wouldn't be surprised if this video editing software "engine" didn't also go mobile at some point in time. 

Of course its not a Final Cut on a Mac or an Adobe Premiere Pro type editor (on a PC) but the higher cost of these local installable applications have been barriers to a larger, explosive new marketplace that is rapidly becoming more and more television literate. Adobe Premiere Elements 8 also is a great choice but it will set you back for about $130 and you'll have to upgrade your laptop's memory to get it work right  

Wow is this television... revolution something... Already YouTubers can create their own playlist and web television channels, and new Google TV..released first via the DISH Network as on option, will put your television channel even on HDTV screens. See my blog about it. 

Wow, is it great to continue to grow with new developments in television.. in our now 21st century world. I have been in television systems and programming before some of my younger clients were even born. It's nice to have the long view and to be able to seize the new television in a strategic way. Call me if you'd like to know more about how you can use it too to phenomenally grow your business - 425-780-6872

NWC Offers New Google TV Workshop Series...Create your own Content...Create your own Channel... Create your own Empire

With most of the pieces Google TV (See "What is GoogleTV?" on my New World Television page)  already here and in place... and with the home television piece about to be released, it's time to get the jump by ramping up quick... to reach multiple television audiences...on the web, on mobile devices, on YouTube, and on HD television screens... with your own CONTENT, with your own CHANNEL, and building your own television-based EMPIRE. Here's the workshop series we have just put together to help you move forward:

• Workshop One - What is Google TV? - This 90-minute session provides a more in-depth overview of the new Google TV and its implications, for the smallest micro-business, to retail businesses, to government, to large business, to non-profit groups, and NGOs, and the largest nation-states and developing countries.
  
  
• Workshop Two - Planning and Producing Your Own Content - This 3-hour session provides a hands-on crash course on planning and producing your own Google TV content, complete with hardware/software choices and approaches. You will learn how to plan, shoot, and edit complete programs withs special with insider tips for doing quality audio voice-overs, etc,. and how to render and upload to the web.
  
  
• Workshop Three - Creating and Programming Your Own Television Channel - This 3-hour session covers Google TV channel creation from A to Z from targeting your audiences and learning about their needs through virtual focus groups to creating your channel on your website... and on large screen HDTV displays in homes and in businesses for point-of-sale and training applications.
  
  
• Workshop Four - Distributing Your Own Television Content - This 3-hour session covers exciting new ways to reach multiple audiences via the web, via mobile devices, via home and business television, in your blog and across Facebook and Twitter. Special time-saving "insider" tips will be shared. We' also cover how your Google TV content can be used in e-meetings, and webinars...and even in multi-day virtual conferences and virtual trade shows...for phenomenal advantage.
  
  
• Workshop Five - Business Models for Television in a 21st Century World - This lively 3-hour session will briefly cover the history of television and the impact of new technology and a more media-literate, empowered viewing audience ...and doing audience...that is now capable of authoring its own high quality television content on business... challenge-wise...and new opportunity-wise... even for the smallest micro-business. We will also focus on not-for-profit economic development, community development, and educational reform applications for the new television. 

Get the jump! Call us now about these sessions...for you, for your staff and possibly for your customers: These sessions will be offered on both a group basis as well as on a one-on-one consultative basis. The new Google TV... is a huge opportunity for multiple stakeholders.  For more information, contact me at 425-780-6872.

Google TV...The Experience is Almost Like Having an Epiphany

Today is an afternoon publish ... after allowing more time... to have powerful ideas come tumbling forth as an outcome of deep contemplation of the phenomenal implications of the new Google TV.

Here's a nice little exercise and experiment to try. Watch this little well-crafted two minute and 21 second video ... What is Google TV?.. with nice female voice...on my New World Television Channel page... and then try to go about business as usual.. Then watch what comes tumbling forth to the foreground of your consciousness... in a few days.

For me personally, the experience because of my television systems and programming background...is close to having an epiphany ...close to my intellectual and spiritual core... as a communicator... as a educator... and most importantly as a living breathing 21st century... human being. Google's bringing Web to TV and TV to the Web...in such an elegantly simple way...completely changes "The Game" ...for me in my ability to serve multiple audiences from the smallest micro-business... to the largest nation-state.

And shared with other, minds, and hearts...and souls...it can positively change the world...in a marvelously powerful and joyous way. That's all I can say about this experience for now. What, after viewing this video.. comes forward for you... in a few days after trying this little experiment? Call me and let's connect. The entire world has already changed for me personally...resonating positively...thinking about... and now working with this stuff. 425-780-6872.

Peace