I attended my first Net Tuesday meet-up event a few nights ago. Toronto’s Net Tuesday is a once a month meeting sponsored NetSquared. Here is NetSquared’s elevator pitch.

“Social changemakers and technological forerunners come together at Net Tuesday events to mix, swap stories and ideas, build new relationships, and reinforce the online NetSquared community.

The session last night was called Online Story Telling – How to Plan & Produce a Compelling Video . I had a lot of take aways from this Meet Up.

At break I introduced myself to Billie Mintz, President of Artists Raising Consciousness. His talk resonated with me more than the other presenters. Being relatively new to creating online videos, his references to learning from the many mistakes he has made and his fly by the seat of your pants style (but organized and professional) appealed to me.

Billie said “I know you from your videos’. I couldn’t figure this out as my work has being pretty minimum to date and I hardly have a following. Anyway Billie explained that he stumbled across my video interviews taken of my elderly mother (96 and going strong). She talks about her political beliefs, making biscuits, speaking Gaelic and life on the Cape Breton farm. He thought they were great videos and was the first person to comment on my very first video. What a magical serendipitous moment. It really inspired me to continue with my video story telling projects. Here is my YouTube channel if you would like some advice from a senior elder of the community.

First off, the workshop was pretty informal, bordering on chaotic at times but I like informal and chaotic so I didn’t mind that too much. The registration table was not set up properly, chairs were late in getting arranged, it was stuffy in the room but I managed a front row seat (my favourite) with lots of leg and breathing room.

Here are some of the takeaways:

• Creating a story from your clips is high art… I have just being shooting and producing what I have…time to be creative!
• Story telling is an art form that is fundamental to our existence as humans…we need to learn to be story tellers because telling stories is a powerful mediums for change
• Audio is the single most important component after your video…use a LAV mic setup…about $500
• Use earphones to ensure you are not picking up ambient noise that messes up your video
• Find and understand the role of negative space and white balance… got to unpack this more..
• Work with cause/charity groups with their budget – give what you can with what they have to pay…. I liked this as budget negotiations have always being  a difficult dance..
• Royalty free music is available but make sure you own the rights rather than who you hire…the rights will travel with your vendor
• Garage band is a great resource…not a Mac guy so don’t know much about this
• Use a clear, logical “code system” to organize your files
• NFC has a call for proposal out that fits with new media productions telling great stories… must follow up with this opportunity as I’m involved in a great story with mental health survivors.
• Find equipment to rent from the Toronto Video Coop and their network of supporters – couldn’t find the link but the suggestion is still good.
• Rent stuff at Trew Audio for reasonable cost

Link resources where you can download release forms, find film producers to hire and more…

http://dependentfilms.net/

http://worldwideshortfilmfest.com/

http://www.braddworkin.com/

http://www.craigslist.org/about/sites

http://arcinstitute.net/index.html

http://www.mixandmash.tv/site/index.php

That about sums it up for me. I will definitely attend other NetSquared Meet Ups. I did have time to meet a few people and exchanged cards. Some of the work I’m doing in York Region is about poverty, homelessness, mental health, consumer survivor, street youth etc.

There are great stories to share from these sectors and causes. Billie Mintz gave some new ideas to think about as I plan these videos. I appreciated his offers of assistance. With a few suggestions from him, I am sure to make fewer mistakes..yet learn as much.

Related posts from workshop attendees:

techsoup Canada

The Invisible Mentor

We had a great discussion and Marco helped me immeasurably by letting me know about the Net Tuesday group that meets monthly and discusses common interests and issues related to using social media in non profit organizations. I look forward to continued sharing, learning, refering and collaborating with Marco. I made a brief video that talks about my meeting and also gives me a chance to test out my new Kodack Zi6 camcorder.

You can’t start the Voice Thread in this post as Word Press does not support this tool. You can click here to view the results of the community engagement tool. I think you will be impressed in how easy it is to use and the quality of the comments demonstrate the impact the photo exhibit had on visitors to the exhibit. Since then, the engagement tool was used at the Poverty Day event held at the Newmarket Municipal offices and we will continue using this tool as the exhibit moves around the Region.

The PhotoVoice Project is a project of the York Region Alliance to End Homelessness and the Krasman Centre. PhotoVoice is a participant action research method that puts cameras in the hands of those with lived experience to document their voices n efforts for social change. Hidden in Plain Sight is the Exhibit of photographs and narratives that the PhotoVoice Project put together over 18 months. The United Way of York Region and the Region of York provided much needed resources to launch the exhibit at the Varley Gallery in Unionville.

The PhotoVoice Project was launched at a wonderful opening night session on Friday, Oct. 3rd. On the following Monday the Exhibit was used to highlight the release of the Region of York Community Plan to End Homelessness.

You can click on this link to take you to the Hidden in Plain Sight community engagement tool that the planning committee used to gather comments and feedback from Exhibit visitors. Once you are on that page you can view all the comments made by those who viewed the pictures and listened to the presentations. You can also add your voice to the exhibit by following the simple instructions on the page. You can create your own identity or use the window blinds picture as a generic identity..

Week 1- Social Networking–Ning, LinkedIn and Facebook
Week 2–Social Bookmarking and Tagging
Week 3– Blogs
Week 4–Aggregators and RSS Feeds
Week 5–Wikis
Week 6–Pulling it all Together

Below is a post I made on the subject of reflective practitioner.

Week 3: Blogging for Personal Learning – Work Literacy

“Don’t tell me you don’t have time or that other things are more important. Is anything in your work life more important than continuing to be better at what you do? Because that’s what reflection is about–considering what you can learn from your experiences and then doing more of what works and less of what doesn’t”.

“After reading the blog post from Michele (quote above) on Becoming a More Reflective Practitioner I was motivated to write. Her comments really address my own inertia and the inertia I see in others when I’m promoting the use of blogs and social tech/media for learning, working and professional development.

I’m an active blogger for personal learning over the past 5 years and I use blogs in my projects over that time period. I’m a dyed in the wool blog evangelist however I’m not the best at adopting a more rigorous approach to my reflective practice. I think that at times I am stuck in the shiny toy syndrome where I become enamoured with the latest social media tool. I get distracted in my reflection time by my interest in consuming new ideas and concepts that others are writing about.

Michele’s post especially resonated with me today as I’m facilitating a workshop tomorrow titled “Thinking Critically to Improve Programming”. It’s a series of workshops coupled with online learning via our blog that tries to help youth work practitioners be better at what they do – working with youth experiencing poverty and homelessness. I’ll be adding some of the resources that Michele used in her post to the mix of activities in my workshop.

Like Charlie Bluglass who commented earlier, I’m introducing social media to the youth service community in my Region and really enjoy the challenge of showing how these tools can increase impact and engagement outcomes. By following Charlie’s post, I found the larger Youth Work Online ning site which was very inspiring for me as I plan on doing a similar initiative as my project winds down over the coming months.

In closing, I am leaving my highest recommendation for a book that taught me a lot about learning and reflective practice. It’s called “crucial conversations – Tools for talking when stakes are high’.
There are many books out there that help me learn, particularly with social media but for me, this one tops them all. It is about communication between people and the bonding that can occur when crucial conversations happen. I believe these crucial conversations happen within the blogging community, creating unique learning experiences for a wide variety of writers and readers. So this exercise has got me to reflect about how I’m blogging and how I can be a better blogger by taking time to reflect about my important conversations and experiences. I’ll be working on these practices in the coming weeks, months and years.

This video was produced at York University Advanced Broadband Enabled Learning Department (ABEL). My interview with Dr. Uzo Anucha from York University was very informal as neither of had time to discuss what we would say. Uzo is so relaxing and casual in her communication style it was easy for me to open up about Streetjibe and what we are aspiring to achieve with our Project. Her knowledge of community development work addressing poverty and homelessness is very extenisive, both in Canada and internationally. We are very fortunate to have found Dr. Anucha through our collaboration with the Knowledge Mobilization Unit at York University.