February Is Ending

Well much has happened in the past five or six weeks...

Planet Forward (my internship) has taken on some serious power of its own that we could never have for-seen. We finished our three and a half weeks of production with a total of 13 videos. Each video was shot in 1080i HD format. The videos were about everything from wind power and public transit to biofuel and green buildings.

The nine students on the team put in a lot of hard work, as did the three administrators that we worked under. In the end we had a bunch of videos and a bunch of people to show them to.

First, we showed our work to Lynne Fawthrop who is the dean of students at our school. This served as a preliminary for our meeting with the president in that we were able to get an outside reaction and could also work out the technical kinks for our meeting with him.

The next step was showing the University President Roy Nirschel. Our first meeting had its fair share of technical problems including some issues that arose from the exporting of the movie files from computer to dvd format. We were able to resolve these issues, however, upon arriving to the conference room (luckily thirty minutes prior to the meeting) we encountered an unforseen issue that the outlet we attached our computer to was supposedly fried.

However, with quick thinking we decided to scrap the idea of projecting the videos from the tv screen and simply put the lap-top directly in front of the President. While at first this seemed to be a major cut in resources, it ended up being great to have the team crowded around the President at the end of the table. Rather than sitting down at the end and staring at him, we shared the viewing of the videos with him.

In both of our meetings within the university our projects were received with great appreciation and excitement. This was incredibly rewarding and the team was very releived to have been through with the experience.

The big step was for team leaders Mike Scully and Judi Johnson, accompanied by team member and software tech Mike Spark, to fly down to PBS in Washington, DC to present our work directly to the head of Planet Forward Frank Sesno, formerly of CNN. The team was tense. Although our work passed the preliminary test with our educators, we now buckled down for the reaction of TELEVISION PROFESSIONALS.

And wrongfully so. Our apprehensions were once again proven folly. Sesno and his associates at PBS were thrilled with our work. They found it to be just about everything the program is supposed to be about. After talking and thinking about it for a while, PBS extended an invitation for the team to go down to Washington DC at the PBS headquarters to be there for the filming of the April 15th television broadcast. The school considered it and decided to send us down on a working trip.

Needless to say, myself and the team were thrilled beyond beleif and are supremely excited to be heading to DC for the filming.

So there it is, workin for PBS. No big deal, right?

Post X-Mas Break Post

Well, mostly for the benefit of Mike Stewart, but also in the name of consitancy, here we go with the most recent and admittedly overdue blog post.

I am currently in the throes of my Communications/Journalism internship in which I have been shooting video, planning shoots, making contacts and also producing original music for the videos.

The internship revolves around a PBS submission contest which is open to the public. My school decided to make a winter intersession internship out of it and boom bang I cut my winter break short to get some credits.

The process has been many things, among them interesting, challenging and gratifying at times. If we end up getting our videos on to the program it will be appearing on PBS this April 15th so stay tuned for that.

On the musical front, McDermott and Toomey are in collaboration to work their way up the Burlington Vermont music scene. Come this summer, I am moving up for an indefinite amount of time to the great Mountains of Verde.

So, hope you enjoyed it Stew!

Videos and Election Results

I am gradually beginning to post all of the videos I have helped produce with my digital journalism group. Unfortunately I have been experiencing a constant issue with uploading the videos to the blog.

For now I will have to post the youtube links to the videos while I try to figure out what the potential solution is to the video upload feature.

Cooking With Jessica - A profile piece on Jessica Goldstein and her love for cooking

RWU 2008 Mens Basketball Preview - A look at the 08-09 Basketball crew while preparing for their winter season.

RWU Mascot Swoop - An investigation of the mascot that was virtually unseen on campus prior to homecoming weekend.

I'll keep attempting to post the videos directly to the blog but until then, the youtube videos are actually a lot more visually pleasing.

The 2008 Presidential Election finally came to a close. As myself and so many people had hoped, Barack Obama won. I think it is still hitting me how historic an event this is. I think the most remarkable image that I will remember from Tuesday night for the rest of my life is The Reverend Jessie Jackson standing in the crowd with tears in his eyes. I found this particularly powerful because of Jackson's historic involvement in the civil rights movement.

I cant express enough how excited I am to be able to see light at the end of a tunnel that is growing. I cant say for sure that Obama will be a great president. Nonetheless, the promise that Obama represents is beyond speculation. Things are changing in America and hopefully it is for the better.

Weekend Report

Gotta love Halloween weekend. My constituents and I have made it through the weekend in one piece and are now looking forward to the evening Patriots game.

I am working on figuring out the whole Template situation for my blog...so far I haven't been able to find what I want and then successfully upload it. I'll be looking through my "Blogging for Dummies" book sometime soon to get some answers on that. But for now Mr. Bean is what you're gonna get. I'm considering leaving it up but who knows.

Finally, I'm real excited about Tuesday's election. It's sure to be a big mess and when the dust settles it will all have been an historic moment. This will be my first time voting in any respect at all so I'm looking forward to that.

First Independant Blog Post

Well it's time I officially became a blogger of independent status. I have been part of a blog so with a group from a class and so far that has been an interesting endeavor. I'm looking forward to posting the content that I have produced with that group on this blog in the near future as this blog will serve as a commentary and exhibition of both my personal life as well as professional.