Rob Chapman VCAM's blog

Wanted to thank everyone for coming to Hyde Park on Friday and participating in a great annual meeting.  It was a pleasure to see everyone and I think it went off pretty well.  My appreciation to Tim and his staff at GMATV for hosting and putting out such an awesome lunch (the standard has officially been raised).

And I also wanted to welcome the new VAN Board of Directors members, Jake Stradling from FACT TV in Bellows Falls and Sharon Chouinard from Windsor On Air in Windsor.  And of course my deepest appreciation for the Board members who stepped down this year - Dick Thodal from MCTV in Middlebury and Lauren-Glen Davitian from the Center for Media and Democracy in Burlington.

My batteries have officially been charged.  I hope yours were as well.

So I've come to the last hour or so at my desk that I've sat at most of the week busily preparing materials for tomorrow's meeting in Hyde Park (thanks for hosting Tim!).  I think it's going to be a great meeting and I'm looking forward to seeing you all.

One of the most important things we have to do is evaluate VAN's role in community media for the future.  We have a number of things to address and it's important that the VAN leadership hear your views on what you expect from us.  The annual meeting is not the only place for that dialogue to take place (and I hope to create more), but it is a very important one.

I hope you all are prepared to speak your mind and listen to the views of your associates in Vermont community media.

See ya there!

So this will be the first Annual Meeting with the new VAN Bylaws in place (attached).  One thing I wanted to remind you about is that each access center is now entitield to one vote.  This means that the voting procedure for the VAN Board of Directors and the VMX Governance committee will have to be adjusted.  It won't be a matter of just a show of hands.  We will have to register the vote of each AMO. 

There is also the matter of who gets to vote.  It is assumed that the Exec. Director is the designated voter unless we are told otherwise.  It is up to each access center to determine the designated voter though.  I did notice there are a couple of access centers who have representatives attending but the ED won't be there.  I just need to know beforehand if the representative is designated to vote for the AMO or not.

Thanks.  

I wanted to remind everyone that one of the items of business for this Friday's Annual Meeting is the election of the VAN Board of Directors.  Director's serve staggered two years terms. 

If anyone is interested in serving on the VAN Board of Directors, now would be the time to give it serious consideration.  If you have any questions about what the committment might entail or anything at all, feel free to contact me. 

We'll see you in Hyde Park!!

Just a reminder that in addition to the VAN Annual Meeting in Hyde Park next Friday, the Alliance for Community Media, Northeast Region is having it's spring conference in Vermont this year.  It's going to be at Champlain College in Burlington on May 21 & 22.  It would be great to see a large contingent of Vermont access people so we can explain to the rest of the region the right way to do access.  To download the registration go the the ACM-NE website at www.acm-ne.org.  The Sheraton has extended it's $109 rate until the end of next week if you want to book a room.  And to further entice you, we're having a party at VCAM the evening on May 21.

Hope you all can come to Burlington for the event.

Here is the agenda for the VAN Annual Meeting being held on May 8 at Green Mountain Access Television in Hyde Park.

Please feel free to let me know if you have any comments/concerns/clarifications about the agenda.

Hopefully you have the date in your schedule and we'll see you there.

And please be sure to register for the day so we know you are coming.  Here is the link

Agenda

9:30am            Coffee & Donuts

10:00am – Noon    “VAN’s role in the future of access in Vermont”
The morning session will be a discussion on the future of access in the state of Vermont and VAN’s role with regard to that future.  We’ll start by working from the position papers VAN has been developing this year by VAN, take the time to digest and discuss our positions and finish by developing actionable items for the next few months.

Noon-1pm            Lunch

1:00pm-3:00pm        Breakout Sessions
We will break into smaller groups centered around particular areas of knowledge and concern.   
Session 1 -     Comcast Negotiations
Access staff currently in negotiations with Comcast for renewal of contracts have an opportunity to discuss with peers the experiences they’ve had in the negotiation process and talk about benefits/detriments of certain strategies. 
Session 2 -    Revising the Annual Report
As VAN works with the Department of Public Service and Comcast to revise the Annual Reporting template, attendees will get a chance to talk about the areas of the report that fall short and the areas that may be too cumbersome.
Session 3 -     Maximizing Sharing Content on VMX
As the deployment of the VAN’s VMX service, where do we go from here? How do we maximize the potential of this important tool and identify obstacles to efficient usage?

3:00pm-3:30pm        Closing Session
We will reconvene for closing comments. We also have VAN business to tend too, in particular the election of the board of directors, future meeting dates, etc.

It has just been brought to my attention that the links in the email do work, they are just footnoted, i.e. the links are actually at the bottom of the email. I guess Drupal is smarter than I took it for.

Rob.

Just a quick note.  Many of you get these emails and are confused by the fact that the links don't work.  This seems to be a Drupal issue.  The links work just fine if you go to the post on the VAN web site.  And the post about the annual meeting is right on the front page of the web site at vermontaccess.net.  So please go there for the working links.

Of course you all knew I really meant the Friday after next, May 8.  Sorry for my confusion.  I really need a fact checker.

Rob