Random Sarah » internet

BarCampNYC4 NEEDS A HOME

Sarah Cooley — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 22:16:14 +0000

DEAR NEW YORK INTERNET PEOPLE:

(and internet people EVERYWHERE!)

BarCampNYC4 NEEDS A HOME!

BarCampNYC is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from participants. The Fourth BarCampNYC is looking for a home, and we need your help!

Some of my friends and readers might know that I am helping to organize barcampnyc4 and we have been having trouble getting a space.

What we need

Capacity: 300 people
Classrooms: 7ish + Auditorium
Cost: we can afford $1,500ish for space
We Need Internet: Wifi or wired
BarCamp is traditionally an Overnight event: (but we can move the overnight to NWC)
Prospective 2009 Dates:
- 3/28-3/29- 4/4-4/5- 5/2-5/3

WHAT YOU CAN DO?

Help us find a space! Maybe your school, work, or exceedingly large home could be a venue. Help spread the word! Blog, twitter, email your friends, shout it from the rooftops.

Please, do contact us if you’re interested in sponsoring BarCampNYC4!

For more information: barcamp.org/BarCampNYC4

Contact: info@barcampnyc.org

#barcampnyc4

Unions and New Media

Sarah Cooley — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 22:13:56 +0000

Earlier today I was reading a letter from an IASTSE union crew member sent around to his fellow union members. You may not have heard of the IASTSE (The official Web Site of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, Moving Picture Technicians, Artists and Allied Crafts of the United States, Its Territories and Canada) but the members of this union often will work very closely with SAG (Screen Actors Guild) members. The letter was in regards to a contract that is on the table to add a “New Media clause” to the union contract.

“If ratified by our members, the ridiculous “New Media” clauses will guarantee that the vast majority of New Media productions will be made non-union for decades, if not forever. What little New Media production our members do under this contract will not be paying fair residuals into our Health and Pension Plans, if they pay any residuals at all (most will not). And on top of that, our members will have to negotiate their own rates, conditions, crew size, job responsibilities, etc., ON THEIR OWN, on a PRODUCTION BY PRODUCTION BASIS, since the proposal does not contain any of that.
If our members must negotiate their own employment contracts in New Media, and the majority of the members have little chance of ever getting health coverage, just why is it we need a union, anyway? For the magazine subscription?
And forget the new “organizing” plans – what have we got to offer the crews on New Media (most of whom will already have IATSE cards in their pockets) to help us organize? No wage scales, no working conditions, and virtually no chance at health coverage? Good luck with that.

….

Let’s send the negotiators back to DO THEIR JOBS, and bring us a contract that protects our members and their families, and that guarantees that New Media productions will be made by our members under a fair contract with fair residuals.”

Now to fully understand how I feel about unions you would need to know more about me than most people do. My father is a SAG member, and has been my entire life. When I first started doing internet video he immediately wanted me to join the union. At the time that made absolutely no sense, especially since I was just doing a video blog. But as time went on and I started producing more internet content he really wanted me to take a look at SAG union contracts to make sure I was getting paid fairly. I still had never taken a look at anything that SAG had to say about New Media, because I was sure that it didn’t apply to me.

However, after reading that letter today it really got me thinking about unions in traditional media, and how it will all shift over when the lines become more and more blurred. So I went digging through the SAG website to see what they had to say about New Media. I have to say that I was surprised by what I found.

“Screen Actors Guild has been busy both getting out the word on its contracts for New Media and collecting information from producers and others working in the space. Here are a few of the events SAG has attended over the past year.”

This all really got me thinking about productions that I am currently involved in. Currently I am a creator/producer/talent for my own podcast that is in production with a new online television company. This company certainly falls into the category of a start-up, and I never really thought to bring up SAG or the IASTSE in any of my conversations with the founders there, and I still am not convinced that I should have.

If these contracts were to become standard across all podcasts, and web video projects; would we all really benefit from it? Or would it just squash so many bright hopeful start-ups right out of the gate just with rules, contracts and pay scales.

I admit that I have zero experience with unions, and I would really like to start a discussion here about what this all means for our industry.

Goals for 2009

Sarah Cooley — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 01:42:35 +0000

So the first year of Random Sarah has come to an end. But I can only look forward to the future with great joy and high expectations for myself. So I thought I would post some of my goals for the upcoming year in hopes that all of you might be able to keep me on track with my goals.
But first a look back at Random Sarah in 2008

here is one of my favorite early videos posted on April 14th

then on August 1st, this happened!

and everything changed!

here are some of my favorite posts from this year:

Generation Wh-Y does it matter?

A Vegetarian’s Favorite Burgers

Hacked my iPhone 3G

The State of the Web: Summer 2008

Generation Wh-Y Does it Matter?

Sarah Cooley — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 03:37:45 +0000

Yesterday I attended Jeff Pulver’s Social Media Jungle. With only a total of 50 people in attendance, SMJ08 quickly became the #1 trending topic on twitter. It was amazing to be in a room full of such influential people in our industry. Chris Brogan, Jeremy Epstein, Leslie Poston, Howard Greenstein, Dean Landsman, Jeffrey Sass, Nelly Yusupova, Brett Petersel, Oz Sultan, Steve Lubetkin, Jonathan Yarmis, Ben Grossman, Jamie Thompson, and Justin Oberman were the discussion leaders who talked about many different topics.

However one thing I noticed was that the term “Gen-Y” or “Millennials” came up a lot. This term of course refers to my generation, people who were born between 1982–2001. They are sometimes described as an “overachieving, over scheduled” generation. Many people will also sub-define this generation into the “MTV-generation” born from 1985-1990.

One of the reasons that these terms are used so much in social media is because of all the stats associated with this generation.

97% own a computer

97% have downloaded music and other media using peer-to-peer file sharing

94% own a cell phone

76% use instant messaging and social networking sites

75% of college students have a Facebook profile and most of them check it daily.

60% own some type of portable music and/or video device such as an iPod

49% regularly download music and other media using peer-to-peer file sharing

34% use websites as their primary source of news

28% author a blog and 44% read blogs

15% of IM users are logged on 24 hours a day/7 days a week

8% have confessed to having an online gaming addiction at some point in their life

While I am sure all of this is true, I feel that as an industry we really need to stop categorizing our users into stereotypes. I am not a big person on terms and studies so the idea of categorizing all people born from one year to another as having the same habits, behaviors, etc, really upset me. Of course this is my personal belief and I’m am sure someone can argue the other side just as well, but I for one am so tired of hearing the “don’t put up drunk pictures on facebook” speech. (we know already, we aren’t stupid…well some of us are)

When I first started making videos and blogging a lot of my friends seemed worried. “What happens when you want to find a job, your employers are going to see this!” I answered, “I SURE HOPE SO!” What I do online speaks for me, but it speaks in a good way! I know that I have managed my digital life well and in a way that will only work to my advantage when I am being interviewed for a job.

I think in social media we should try and consider everything on a user-to-user basis, while you might not think that someone who is 50 wants to twitter, they might! What surprised me the most about all the talk of Gen-Yers yesterday was that I know so few people my age who are anxious to try new digital tools. The masses are happy with facebook and myspace! (I have no idea why) But maybe we should start to figure out a new term for people who use the tools that we use, cause I don’t think it has anything to do with age!

Yesterday one of the presenters was saying how he always says he is the oldest guy in social media and then he made a joke about how he still remembers his CompuServe ID. HELLO….I STILL REMEMBER MY COMPUSERVE ID! I have been using the internet for just as long, heck I still remember DOS prompts! We need to stop talking about age and start talking about the level of the user! Age is just a number.

That’s just my 2 cents!

We Feel Fine

Sarah Cooley — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 04:41:45 +0000

wefeelfine.org is a website connected to a program that scans blog posts across the world for the word feel, or feeling and then gets the hole sentence and uploads it to a server that collects the locations, time of day, country, weather, age of blogger, and gender and put s it all into a server that yields the most interesting user interface I have seen in a while. You have to check it out.

Also check out the creator of this program talking at TED about it

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/144