Wow, summer has been AMAZING! I’m working on the website for my business, and going in depth about the services I’m to provide both immediately and in the long term. For now, I’m able to provide Social Media and Video/Photo consulting services to small businesses. In the near future, I’ll add Training/Seminars around Multimedia to these same clients.
If you’ve been watching the blog (on the right-hand side), I’ve been twittering my little behind off about, well, everything. Of course, I love sharing anything I’ve learned as it could be useful to my community. Feel free to follow me!
So, along with the Tech Ministry at my church this past saturday, I had a chance to talk to some teens about Social Media and Social Networking. I honestly had no clue what to talk about since I wasn’t sure how they used (or wanted to use) technology in their everyday lives.
They were a great group though – most of them use Myspace and they have some really awesome career aspirations (Event Coordinator, Inventor, Shoe/Apparel Designer, Architect, Accountant, Graphics/Software Designer, etc). I wanted to show them that social networking is kind of like a playground and social media is what you create in order to share. Also, I included some interaction pieces in there to get them involved and to find out more about what they wanted to do with technology and what interested them, so most of the slides were for discussion.
The kids were really eager to talk and we got useful feedback – they wanted more hands-on stuff and also, pizza was the food of choice rather than subs!
After seeing posts from Tracy Boyer & Megan Taylor’s blogs on their own speaking engagements, I’m really excited to share more information with my network/community of techies, designers, writers and filmmakers (young and old alike).
In fact, I’d love to find speakers/attendee’s for a MultimediaCamp in the DC area this summer. I feel it would be a great chance for those that don’t traditionally work in creative technology to learn to bring their craft or story to a “global platform” (as Brian Storm put it) with multimedia. If you’re interested in speaking or attending, please let me know by filling out the interest form.
I’ve been more “behind-the-scenes” than usual, getting more and more involved with all the areas involving multimedia in my life and trying to figure out how that transfers into my business.
It’s weird now, but as I look back, being out of the spotlight, backstage and behind the scenes has been a recurring theme in my life. When I was 12, I chose to work backstage at the church fashion shows over trying out to be in the show. In high school, I worked on a student-run TV show through Fairfax County – traveling to nearby schools interviewing kids on relevant topics, then turning them into news packages with guidance from an advisor. In college, I interned with Voice of America – running audio boards, working in Master Control (with some really cool people!) and doing camera work for Mandarin, Russian and Spanish talk shows – awesome stuff!
I guess when I started my business, in some odd way, I expected to be in the spotlight…somewhere I’m not used to being! But in the last couple of weeks, I’ve discovered that I’m right where I need to be for what I’m doing: behind-the-scenes. It’s exactly who I am and where I, personally, have more influence and access to make powerful & necessary changes. It’s where I have a say in what goes on in the spotlight.
So, back here among all the wires, curtains and cables, I’m still making connections, developing ideas and building JMG!
…Meeting Spaces for freelancers, creatives and people who just plain want a change of scenery to do their work.
photo from Springwise.com website coverage of Meet
So, one of my truly design/multimedia/creativity obsessions has been Meeting Spaces. It was sparked by a write-up about Meet at The Apartment on Springwise (one of my favorite places to track inspired business ideas). Apparently, the Meeting/Events industry, especially with the current economy, is starting to get innovative in order to draw revenue. They’re providing spaces for those that may not have the brick and mortar, or the technology, to pull off meetings and conferences.
Meet is only one of a diverse many. Not only are these spaces for meetings, they also fall under the category of incubator, product testing spaces, or what Trendwatching likes to call “being spaces“. Anyone with a service, design or creative business with a storefront could probably offer up meeting spaces for groups and even drive new sales in the process!
Whatever customer they serve, these small to moderate scale meeting spaces can be found in many major metropolitan areas.
I love the flexibility of this idea and it seems in these odd times, having affordable spaces for businesses to meet or conduct business would make good use of abandoned retail real estate.
I’ve decided, with the Ladies Who Launch Incubator, to start a part-time multimedia consulting business focusing on providing multimedia services of all kinds to Education and other organizations by way of crowdsourcing.
It’s similar to how government works. They identify a problem, designate money to it, put out an RFI or RFP and chose the best of the best. I believe this could work with multimedia projects in the same manner – helping people solve a particular multimedia issue by reaching across all the varied ranges of what could fall under multimedia: broadcast engineers, IT professionals, audiovisual engineers, graphic/web designers and even “green” technology specialists. (Also, I feel we would be nothing without Interior and Industrial Designers )
My key service, however, will be in training. The biggest issue with existing multimedia is in the operation and management of existing solutions. There are also a great number of Education/Government entities dealing with the issue of having outdated technology and trying to make it work without dedicated on-site support. Or even the opposite – they have brand-new technology and no one on hand to, well, give them a hand!
I want to change that. I want to provide solutions that meet these needs. With the help, knowledge and dedication of other multimedia professionals, I’m sure this can be done.
Challenge #1 is finding other professionals willing to work on projects.
Challenge #2 is finding entry-level projects to help build the business.
Examples:
- Your church wants to podcast/stream their services.
- A small school wants to record special events for parents and sell the DVD’s as a fundraising effort.
- Your agency no longer has on-site conference support and you need documentation on how to use the equipment.
If you can help with any of those, I’d truly appreciate your help. A wise person once said “How can anyone help you if you don’t ask?”. So there.
In my Multimedia Journalist research, I’ve come across some AWESOME blogs on the topic. But being a Multimedia Specialist (not just editing, but also pulling wires, terminating cables, programming user interfaces and such), I wonder if some of the audio tools being used are really giving the quality of sound that the final package deserves?
At the moment, I’m only using a cheapo Panny voice recorder and capturing it through Audacity. But if I could dream for a sec? I would totally get a Marantz PMD-660K . Yeah, it’s totally clunky looking, but with the card option, XLR & USB options…it’s completely sweet. I have a suspicion that I’m still stuck on the lessons I got from grizzly old broadcast guys, though. I see the need for an external storage or a raid setup is in my future.
As far as cameras, I’m hoping to upgrade to a Canon (Powershot SD 700/800 series…maybe). Multimedia Shooter recommends the SD series in their Starter Kit. I’m tackling audio and photo composition now, as well as testing out Windows Movie Maker and Soundslide. I have a bit of experience with Final Cut Pro at work, so once I get the audio/photo/video down I can test my newsmaking skills with that as well.
Maybe I won’t have to go to grad school if I can scrape together my kit, skills and j-abilities? (Speaking of which, I came across a great blog about whether or not people should go to grad school for journalism from Mindy McAdams. I don’t know if I’m in the execption, but plan to post a question and possibly get some advice.)
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