After two days of pouring over the entire online manual and editing with Final Cut Pro X I have to say there are things I love about it that I’ve always wished Final Cut Pro had (performance, integrated metadata support, background processing), and things that are deep disappointments (lack of XML import/export, lack of multitrack audio editing, splitting tracks, exporting stems). Final Cut Pro X is like a precocious teenager that still has some growing up to do before they are ready for the adult world, but they have prospects, and we simply have to take a wait and see attitude. I can’t depend on it for mission critical work, however, I will use it for editing and see what it can do, and over time, and as it evolves, it might become part of my professional workflow.

I like the product and I think Apple did more things right than wrong. We have to take a moment to pause and reflect this is a version 1.0 product, not 10.0 like the splash screen states. But the things that are missing are not consistent with the hype, and there lies the rub. It’s possible that the way this product was released at the same time support for the current version was dropped may have done huge damage to the brand among professionals, but on the other hand Final Cut Pro X bring excitement and sizzle to the majority of people editing everything besides professional productions that require complex workflows and resource sharing. This much larger group is the future. Sophisticated editing has become democratized. Apple is betting on the new generation. When it comes to shareholder value and market share, there is no room for nostalgia or catering to the old ways. Leave the pros in the dust, their days are numbered, at least that’s the message I hear through Apple’s actions. Apple can say they support professionals, but their actions say otherwise, and as Aristotle reminds us in The Poetics, character is revealed through action. It’s clear that the future lies in tens of millions of individual editors, not in tens of thousands of professional editors. I’m sure many of the missing pro features will be added.

Here are three interesting threads I’ve been following this week:

Larry Jordan: Ain’t Nothing Like It In the World

My response to Larry’s blog post:

Larry, this post has been very useful and thought provoking. While Final Cut Pro X has a slick interface and provides sizzling performance, I can’t imagine using it in a professional environment. Without the ability to place audio in individual tracks for exporting to a sound editing and mixing application, without multi-cam, without the ability to import legacy Final Cut Pro projects, without EDL or XML export for transferring work I can’t take it seriously in a professional environment. This resets the clock back to version 1.0 and it’s a travesty. [PAUSE] sip on Apple Kool-Aid [PAUSE] Final Cut Pro X is revolutionary, it’s awesome, it’s what we’ve all been waiting for! 64 bit performance, background rendering, new interface, none of this could have been done in an evolutionary way the way Adobe does with their applications, Apple is about revolution and what Apple tells us we’re going to like, we’re going to like, and two or three versions later, we’re all going to say, why did we not do it like this all along?

Philip Hodgetts: What are the Answers to the Unanswered Questions about Final Cut Pro X?

My response to Philips’s blog post:

At the end of the day, I think much of the anger and frustration is ultimately about the gap between what works today (Final Cut Pro 7) and what is promised (some future version of Final Cut Pro that supports a professional workflow). In this interim many of us will have to continue using Final Cut Pro 7 with no idea how long this gap is going to be with our work, our livelihood now depends on an unsupported product. Imagine the outcry if Avid did the same thing to their users? But Avid would never do this, their editing applications are their livelihood, on the other hand, Final Cut Pro is a tiny sliver of Apple’s business, and so given this fact we have plenty of justification in being concerned, it’s hard not to feel as a professional and educator that the rug has been pulled from under me and there is no soft landing in sight.

DVinfo.net: FCP X Now available to buy and download from App Store.

One of my contributions to the discussion thread:

Goes to show that in the wake of all the hype, reality is now setting in. This is becoming a fascinating case study in expectations, and the meaning of the “Final Cut Pro” brand. It’s a risky strategy to kill off an old product, replace it with a completely different one, and call the new version “awesome” as if it was the second coming. As “iMovie Pro 1.0″ FCP X is brilliant. As the next version in the Final Cut Pro line? It’s ludicrous. It’s going to take the hyperspace edition of the reality distortion field to fix this situation…

In some ways this break between the old ways of Final Cut Pro and what would have better been called iMovie Pro 1.0 gives us all a chance to re-evaluate our choices of editing tools. I started on Avid, perhaps it’s time to take a look at where they are at, I stopped using Avid with the introduction of Final Cut Pro 4.5 in what now seems like ancient times. This might also a good time to see if Premiere Pro is worthy of this role, since Adobe has a good track record of evolving applications and not leaving their professional users out in the cold as they evolve their products (I’ve been using Adobe Photoshop since version 1.0).

The time has come to look around and play the field, for no matter what happens in the future, one thing is for certain, Final Cut Pro as we know it has come to the end of the line, it is a dead product with no support. We have to consider the tradeoffs of jumping over the chasm between where we are with Final Cut Pro 7 and the promises that Final Cut Pro X will grow up fast enough to meet out needs and fulfill our desires. For now I will continue editing my mission critical work with Final Cut Pro 7 and experiment on short projects with other tools and see what happens. The day Final Cut Pro 7 stops working due to an OS X update or new hardware incompatibility will force a change, but for now, it’s still smooth sailing with a lot of underlying anxiety that comes with editing on a dead platform.

Video from Abattoir Rising, a work-in-progress documentary by Audrey Kali

Steve Garfield announced that we’re going to have to change meeting venues, as Sweet Finnish in Jamaica Plain has closed. We also want to expand the scope of Boston Media Makers, nothing changes regarding these meetings, but starting in May, we’d like to host a technical and/or creative in-depth demo of a tool or technique one evening in the middle of each month. We’re in the process of crystallizing this idea, so make your suggestions known on the Boston Media Maker blog.

John Herman has been working on Gravityland a new websodic. The current episode (Episode 6: Joni’s Dream) was writtend by viewers who pitched their ideas on the Gravityland blog. He just did a 48 Hour Film Project film which debuts on Tuesday. I recorded an interview with John Herman after the meeting for the next episode of my audio podcast, Art Film Talk, so if all goes well, I’ll post the interview tomorrow.

Mike Mooney, FM Crew Productions, has finished What is Joppa and he’s now involved with Dr Dunbar’s Mystery Spot.

Curtis Henderson, General Manager of Boston Neighborhood Network (BNN), reported that they are now settled in their new headquarters at 3025 Washington Street in Egleston Square, formerly an MBTA power plant. They are right in the midst of the analog to digital conversion. BNN is having an Open House Ribbon Cutting next Saturday at 1:15pm w/ Mayor Menino and other local ploticos in attendance. BNN operates Boston’s two public access cable television channels: BNN’s News & Information Channel (9 Comcast/15 RCN) and BNN’s Community Access Channel (23 Comcast/83 RCN). Membership is open to Boston residents and non-profit organizations serving the Boston community. You can learn how to create your own TV program, have it broadcast on BNN cable, or produce projects for the web. Their facilities include two studios, digital cameras, non-linear edit systems, and a mobile production truck for doing multi-camera shoots on location.

Adam Green, CEO, Grazr, talked about his social networking application which allows you to create reading lists. Adam is currently looking to hire MySQL coders, Perl programmers, and CSS experts. The basic idea behind Grazr is that Everything is Miscellaneous. Grazr is a collection of tools to create and manage multiple reading lists, and share them with others. It makes it easy to keep up-to-date with the ever-increasing number of blog posts, web pages, and tweets of interest. The key insight is that they post-filter as needed, rather that requiring you to tag and sort in advance. Grazr can search each stream by keyword, date, or media type. Free accounts can merge and filter up to 50 feeds. Paid accounts can process up to 1,500 feeds in a single stream. And you can share your Grazr results on your web site using a widget they provide. Adam also blogs at Feedonomics. And speaking of tools to make sense of all the bits in your life, check out this video from Michael Wesch: Information R/evolution.

Jason Pramas, Editor/Publisher, reported that Open Media Boston is off and running. Their next meeting will be held tomorrow (Tuesday, April 8, 2008) from 6-8 p.m. at Encuentro 5, 33 Harrison Ave., 5th Flr. in Boston Chinatown (corner of Beach St. and Harrison Ave. close to the T Orange, Green and Red Lines). They will be talking about making the site really go now that’s it’s and running and start thinking about what direction to take the site design for full launch next month). Open Media Boston is a project of Media Working Group (a non-profit organization), Open Media Boston is a new audience-centered online media outlet dedicated to publishing fair and accurate news, views, arts, and entertainment content in text, image, audio and video formats from a progressive political perspective for the Boston area. They want to balance open participation with editorial control. They are soliciting submissions and commentary from the general public using the latest social media technology while maintaining professional journalistic standards at all times. Their site was built with Drupal, an open source content management framework that has become a popular choice for people building online media community sites.

Anna Pinkert, a media producer, talked about the Women, Action & The Media Conference that was recently held at MIT. In attendance were some really cool people, but she was surprised that the ratio is still heavy on print media. She’s getting into editing and asked the group, what are the differences between Final Cut Express and Final Cut Pro? Basically, Express only comes bundled with LiveType and the older 1.5 version of Soundtrack Pro. Final Cut Pro is part of a complete bundle that includes Soundtrack Pro 2 (much better than 1.5), Motion, Compressor, DVD Studio Pro, and Color. The interface is pretty much identical, especially now that the latest version of Express adds key-framing. Express does not support third party capture cards and the full range of video formats, however, it does support DV and HDV, so that covers it for most people. Express only has the secondary (two-way) color correction tool, it does not have the three-way color correction tool which once you start using it, you’ll really miss it. Also, Express limits undo to 32 levels. If you want to explore the differences in great detail, take a look at Final Cut Express Technical Specifications
and Final Cut Pro 6 Technical Specifications on the Apple web site.

Andrea Mercado, co-manager of PLA Blog, the official blog of the Public Library Association, recently aquired a Zoom H2 digital audio recorder and she’s very excited about it. I can see why, it’s a cool little recorder. One thing that makes the little H2 unique is that it has 4 built-in microphone capsules that simply put provides excellent stereo imaging.

John Carr has done short films and documentaries and is now venturing into audio. He’s getting involved in some podcasts and writing a radio drama. He’ll be doing a show at Improv Asylum on Saturday night (April 12, 2008). He’s been using Zhura, an online screenwriting application. Zhura is most easily described as Final Draft meets Google Docs. It provides a way to create formatted scripts with revision control online. Youc an create a private group and invite friends and colleagues to collaborate in a workspace. You can also use it in public mode to collaborate with others under a Creative Commons license, letting other people read and comment on your script, they can even help out with edits. Software is rapidly becoming a service and Zhura is making a play for the screewriting sector.

Jeff Cutler, who does Bowl of Cheese (self-described as “gentle, and not so gentle, ramblings about the inane and insane”) is taking some time to write.

Reiko Beach of TRB Design talked about Geek Girl Camp (which takes place on April 17, 2008 at the Heritage House in Hyannis). It’s a meetup and unconference for girls/women of all ages geared to empower, educate, evangelize, excite and improve the overall knowledge of the ever-evolving world of consumer products, computers, and the web.

Tom Beach of TRB Design recently aquired a Sony HVL-LBP LED camera light ($500, add $100 for NP-F970 battery, $100 for single charger $150 for dual charger). After the meeting we experimented with the light and I did some shooting with the light and a Sony HVR-V1 camcorder. The light is a little heavy mounted on-camera for handheld shooting, but it certainly works as a daylight balanced battery-powered LED light to add some fill or act as key when there’s not enough light to shoot sans light. It works with Sony L-series camcorder batteries, Tom discovered the smaller L-series batteries do not work with the light, it requires the higher capacity models.

In terms of price/performance I think the HVL-LBP fits somewhere between the more expensive Litepanels Mini ($740, add $164 for rechargeable battery) the less expensive Litepanels Micro ($300), a lightweight alternative to both lights that is well suited for handheld work with smaller cameras, but not as bright as the HVL-LBP and Mini. And on the high end of LED camera lights is the Zylight Z90 ($950 w/ mounting accessories, add $180 for rechargeable battery and cable) that lets you dial in any color. It has two built-in preset colors (5600K, 3200K) and two user preset you can program to display any color. This is where the Zylight differs most sharply from the Sony and Litepanels, no gels are needed, instead, you dial in the color you need. It also has a plus/minus green mode, or tungsten/daylight mode, allowing you to choose the color of “white” you need quickly. The number of LED lights is proliferating and expect to see continued price drops and innovation.

Alecia Orsini will be putting her film, Combustible Russ , on the net for sale. She’s interested in hearing from people the pros and cons of the various options available for filmmakers who want to sell their work online.

I suggest checking out a recent New England Film article by Rhonda Moskowitz, Distributing Your Short Film in the Global Marketplace. Also, in New England Film you will find two related pieces by yours truly which ran last year: Delivering Video on the Web, and Prepping and Posting your Video to the Web, most of what’s in there is still relevant, however, the field is in constant flux. Another suggestion is to take a look at Video on the Web: A Resource Guide, an evolving guide of compression tools, hosting services, and video players for delivering video on the web. It’s a work in progress, so let me know what else should go in there.

Steve Albanese, Tutorial Depot, provides tutorials for users of Logic, Pro Tools, Digital Performer, and more. He continues to do his very fun video show, Friday Brew, check it out.

Media scholar Heide Solbrig , a Professor at Bentley College, and her student Mai Huynh talked about Bentley’s program in Media and Culture. Mai is a graduating senior and the first graduating media major at Bentley. She had a Zine at 12, has been with new media for a long time. She’s doing a project mapping bloggers in the Boston area and hopes to talk to many of the people here at this meeting and beyond.

I’m fascinated by Bentley’s new program, and how forward looking it is, requiring students to balance their media major with a business minor and students do a media-related internship or project. Given the rapid change in the media industry, this fresh program strikes me as a savvy alternative to craft oriented programs that only teach tools and techniques on the one end, and traditional film schools on the other end, which definitely provide a good liberal arts education, but your major prepares you to enter an industry that will most likely not look anything like it does today ten years from now. It’s very fresh and timely that Bentley is providing students the opportunity to mix of business and media studies, along with a good solid liberal arts education, this strikes me as a very smart way to educate the new generation of media makers who grew up using editing tools and cameras in high school and don’t need to learn the craft so much as building their knowledge of history, trends, aesthetics, critical thinking, and business. You can’t go wrong with a good liberal arts education focused on the future yet still firmly planted in the fundamentals.

Joe Cascio continues to work on Social Logic and he’s also involved in starting up Providence Media Makers, their next meeting is on April 20th.

Mike Walsh is putting together another Barcamp on May 17th and a MacCamp on May 10th.

Phillipe Lejeune has been creating amazing video using Flash and lately he’s been using Seesmic which he really likes, he finds it “ten times more powerful that Twitter ,” especially as a visual artist. For him, Seesmic offers “something extra,” allowing you to see the “personality of the other person.” Phillipe also mentioned that for people who find using WordPress difficult, Phillipe suggested taking a look at Jimdo, which is very easy to use.

Brett Stilwell is involved with Pecha Kucha Boston. He talked about Pecha Kucha, an event format for presenting creative ideas. The name is onomatopoeia, the sound of conversation in Japanese. Fifteen or so speakers each present exactly twenty slides. Each slide automatically advances after twenty seconds. The next one in the Boston area will be focused on architecture, design and technology: Pecha Kucha Boston 4, hosted by Harvard GSD on Thursday, April 10, 2008 at 8pm in Gund Hall, 48 Quincy Street in Cambridge, MA. The event is free and open to the public. In June they will be doing another one with a more diverse speaker set. He had with him a copy of a beautiful book, Pecha Kucha Night: A Celebration, celebrating the phenomenon now running in over a hundred cities around the world. The book looks at how the event has grown, where it’s been held, how to run one, and why it has gone viral. Brett has put some videos on blip.tv

Adam Greene, Marksman Ship Pictures, does family history videos, he’s looking for people w/ web skills needs help with production and promotion. He’s also a certified Final Cut Pro trainer, so if you need help with Final Cut, give Adam a call.

This month I did show and tell about using an MS Stereo microphone (in my case an Audio-Technica BP4029) for hand-held documentary in-the-moment shooting. In the past I used two microphones to capture what’s in front and to the side of the camera, but it’s a drag to do a two handed technique. I’ll be posting a detailed article on this in the future covering both production and post-production details, so stay tuned.

Monte Ladner is a medical doctor who does Fitness Rocks, a health and fitness podcast. He suggests that there is something missing in the interaction between doctors and their patients around the dissemination of research on lifestyle and health. Health care costs are a big issue these days, and the shocking statistic is that 75% of the money is spent on chronic disease, over a trillion dollars a year is being spent in the United States on things that could be prevented if people were more active and ate healthy.

Brian Agusta has a show he started last summer, he’s an actor, performer, and singer, he helped form the professional vocal group, Almost Recess. Brian is looking for opportunities to do acting and performing, his first standup show is this Wednesday at Improv Boston.

Mike Ball talked about the wonderfully progressive Left in Lowell site, which is an excellent example of local progressive journalism. He has been running into some podcasting and Joomla problems, so if you know about both, he can use some help.

I’m sad we are no longer meeting at Sweet Finnish Cafe in Jamaica Plan, which closed its doors. We will miss the lovely cafe, it was a perfect environment for our meetings. Coffee, old-world pastries, new media, conversation, more coffee. We will miss Ulla’s hospitality, she hosted us for the past two years. This month we met in the back room of Doyle’s pub in Jamaica Plain and had what came close to record attendance.

I did not take notes about everything we spoke about, or everyone who spoke, so if I left someone out, sorry about that, nothing was meant by it. I think we might need to find some real-time wiki technique for taking notes at these meetings. It would be nice to explore how we could write notes of the meetings in a more collaborative manner. Any ideas? Until next month, keep making the future of media.

Just this morning I put together a DV-16×9-Anamorphic sequence with source material I shot with a a Canon PowerShot TX1 (720/30p, Photo-JPEG), Sony HVR-Z1U (1080/60i, HDV), and Sony PDW-F350 (1080/60i, XDCAM HD), in addition to DV media (480/60i, DV Anamorphic) that matched the sequence settings. Some formats require good unlimited-RT performance (a faster machine) than others, but on the new generation of Macs mixing media formats on the timeline works quite well.

The Photo-JPEG clips showed up with Orange (Unlimited RT playback) along the render bar and while this format might not be played back in real-time without dropping frames, it’s better than having to render to play back. The XDCAM-HD and HDV footage showed up with Green (Real time preview) along the render bar and it played back perfectly without rendering. So you might see some stutter, depending on the format and the system. On my MacBook Pro (2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo) all three “foreign” formats played fine on the DV-Anamorphic timeline. Of course, once you introduce effects like a dissolve and a foreign format, you will have to render for full-frame-rate playback, but I was still able to preview (with some stutter) dissolves between the Photo-JPEG and XDCAM-HD footage on the DV timeline.

If you’ve not yet upgraded to Final Cut Studio 2, what are you waiting for? The upgrade is well worth the $500 (some vendors sell it for as low as $450) upgrade price. And add to that that Final Cut Studio adds Color to the mix, a professional level color grading application that used to sell for way more than the cost of Final Cut Studio, this upgrade is one of the best values ever to come from Apple. Another new feature of 6 worth looking into for high-end work is ProRes, a high quality format which makes a good choice as a mastering format or common format when mixing various video formats. ProRes is a 4:2:2 component format that does not mungh the color of materials originally shot in component formats the way DV and HDV does.

So start mixing media and defy the old wisdom of sticking to a single format. Now that Final Cut Studio 2 has removed the multi-format media editing barriers, you can shoot with whatever digital format you want, shooting each aspect of your project with the camera and format that’s right for that particular shoot, and all your archive and found footage from various sources call all be mixed in with ease. Viva La Difference.

Thanks to Josh Snider for asking me the question that led to writing this post. Many of my blog posts originate as my answer to a question posed to me, so I encourage you, dear reader, to send me your questions.

Boston Media Makers meetings are held the first Sunday of every month at Sweet Finnish in Jamaica Plain. Meeting notes include Len Edgerly’s video of Friday’s iPod frenzy, Christopher Penn’s demo of his new camera stabilization device, and many interesting updates. Here are my notes:

Steve Garfield has been webcasting the meetings using Ustream.tv, but today we’re using another tool, blog.tv which offers the additional capability of having participants link in their webcams and you can switch between the main stream and other streams. It has really livened up the meeing to have participants out on the net and offering their sending in their questions and comments during the meeting. An archive of the live stream is available.

On Friday, Len Edgerly (VideoPodChronicles.com) went to the Apple store at Cambridgeside Galleria at 3am to be first in line for an iPhone, at first security guards gave him a hard time for shooting video, but once the euphoria of people walking into the store took over, the security guards could not stop him from shooting this wonderful video of being first in line walking into the Apple store:

Click To Play

Len’s first reaction to the iPhone is that it is “unbelievably cool,” and he said, “I went to sleep that night hoding it in my hand, Steve Jobs is right.” He points out that some stuff does not work quite right yet and it’s not quite perfect, for example, notes do not sync, it does not shoot video, the headphone jack does not take his Bose headphones, and it will not play Flash video embedded in web pages. But he added, “if you were crazy enough to be there [on the first day of sales], none of this detracts.”

I’ve completed my one year contract at MIT and so I’m back doing freelance production work and media technology consulting. I just completed a short film, The Smile Boston Project, that will premiere at the 16th Woods Hole Film Festival on August 4th. I gave Steve an M4V file of the trailer to show on his fancy Vista laptop, but it crashed trying to play the video. In other news, I’ve been organizing three panels and a seminar that will take place at the Woods Hole Film Festival, visit the festival’s Panels & Workshops page for more information. Woods Hole is a wonderful festival with an amazing program in a beautiful setting, I encourage you to attending this year.

Reiko & Tom (TRB Designs) are media makers who’ve been producing video including GymSmarts.com gymnastics instructional videos. Their question to the group was they are working with a local nursing association to take seminars and PowerPoint presentations into the video realm for remote access.

Safa suggested looking over the video streaming comparisons on the Beanywood web site. I suggested that free video streaming (for example, Ustream.tv and blog.tv) solutions provide a cost-effective option if you’re on a tight budget, however, they come with many compromises. They may or may not neet the needs of the client, depending on their expectations in terms of image quality, frame rate, and licensing issues (most free sites are working on ways to monetize content, so there are content licensing and access issues to consider).

If enterprise class presentation capture is required, the Accordent Capture Station, as an example, might provide the right solution. It takes in video of the presenter and VGA of their presentation slides and makes an integrated video and slide presentation available. And for live streaming of an event to many viewers, the Accordent can provide a Real or Windows Media stream uplink to a CDN like Limelight Networks PowerStream, or Akamai who in turn can deliver multiple video streams anywhere from dozens to hundreds of viewers. Safa suggested that Adobe Connect offers a viable solution in this arena.

Frank Wing (Wings TV)does video production, sports videography, and has done work with George W. Bush. It’s quaint to meet a Republican once in a while in Democratic Party dominated Massachusetts.

David La Morte continues to work on his Teaching for the Future podcast, he’s looking for a better transcription solution. Christopher suggested using Dragon voice recognition, I suggested Via Voice might help. Any other ideas for David?

Mark, a media artist and teacher, is moving out of the Medieval era of OS 9 and getting an iMac with Intel processor, he said it’s like “Dorothy and Toto,” everything is in “Technicolor” now. Congratulations, Mark, and unlike Steve Garfield’s Windows Vista laptop that crashes and does strange things on a regular basis, Mark will not have to live in a virtual Apple ad, he’ll be able to get work done without hassles.

I myself ordered a MacBook Pro last week, I’m counting the days to it’s arrival. Every time it’s time to buy a new laptop, I ask myself, has Windows caught up? Should I go over to the dark side? And all it takes is a demo of Microsoft’s latest operating system to convince me not to switch. Maybe in another three years.

Kristen Crusius, a.k.a. kroosh (kroosh.tv) is a design student at New England Institute of Art who was doing new media marketing for a company that was doing fake blogging, and from her perspective a general disservice to their marketing clients, so she quite her job (good for her) and has moved on. She’s available for freelance design and would like to do audio and video production, podcast production, etc. Twitter has been very helpful, made friends, found work, etc. Social networking at it’s best.

Laura Fitton (Great Presentations Mean Business) has been thinking about the online equivalent of Beer O’Clock, making online gatherings more social, she was watching Chris Brogan and Jeff Pulver do their show, her daughter was learning to crawl, she turned the camera to her, and her husband was able to see the first 20 minutes of her crawling, she relayed to us that Chris Brogan made the comment, “that’s really persona media.”

Matt Searles (Asymmetric Biz Cult) is a media artist and continues to cover “the new asymmetric business of culture creation,” in his podcast.

Safa Sadeghpour (Beanywood) updated us on his New England Film Movement Digital Media Database and is looking for a Drupal programmer. Anyone out there interested in programming in Drupal for some equity in a start-up?

Christopher Penn (Financial Aid Podcast) demonstrated how he created a reasonable equivalent to the $300 Fig Rig using some PVC pipe he purchased from Loews, which he describes in his Stabilization Equipment for Handheld Video blog post. blog post. Here’s a movie of Christopher demonstrating the rig with his Sanyo CG65 Camera which can record 76 minutes of 640 x 480 H.264 video on a 1G storage card.

Click To Play

Christopher also told us that the Student Loan Network is looking for a Senior Web Developer with PHP and MySQL experience to work in their Quincy location and they are offering a $10K finders fee for anyone who refers someone they hire if the programmer stays in the position for a minimum of 3 months. They would rather pay someone in the media maker community $10K than a recruiter $30K. Both the community and the employer win. The internet in general and and social networks in particular are changing the nature of business that depend primarily on inefficiencies for their profits rather than creating real value, and recruiting firms are yet another example.

Also attending the meeting were Lindsay Shah (Beanywood), Wayne (new to Boston Media Makers and looking for some help with video production for Brookline Access Television), Philip Shevitz (who’s here to keep on top of stuff), and Mike Wall (working with audio and involved in redoing the web site of the Society for Technical Communication).

After the “going around the table” portion of th meeting participants discussed Andrew Keen’s book, The Cult of the Amateur. In our discussion we raised several interesting issues in terms of the reliability of “the wisdom of the crowds,” especially in terms of Wikipedia; how are we going to find “hard-hitting journalism” in the age of citizen journalism; and the validity of the professional vs. amateur duality. During the discussion, Christopher Penn suggested the book, The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto and I suggested The Wealth of Networks by Yochai Benkler. I also think Henry Jenkins’ Convergence Culture provides an excellent and thoughtful counter-point to Keen’s argument.

It was another wonderful meeting, a delightful mix of coffee, pastries, conversation, sharing, and learning around a table. Some photos are available on Flickr.

Click To Play Video (FLV, 320×240)

The video was shot casually in a matter of minutes with a Canon PowerShot S410 digital still camera in movie mode and edited using Final Cut Pro on the train ride from Boston to New York on the way to Podcamp NYC. Once I got to Podcamp, I uploaded the video to blip.tv thanks to the WiFi access provided by UrbanHotspots. Piano performed by Howard Apley.