In the public interest - 1995 Alliance for Community Media International Conference and Trade Show

Video dial tone, wireless communication a whole s high-speed data streams, digital video, information networks: we are in the midst of a vast technological revolution. Rapid exhibitions in the computer and telecommunication industries force us to reevaluate and adapt the ways information is produc distributed and consum The mixed web of information resources known as the internet is no longer a clos society of scientists, academicians and hackers. Personal computer cellular phone and multimedia yields pressed on CD-ROM are no longer exotic playthings of the wealthy. Like the printing pres these fresh technologies are opening up fresh worlds of information. The question is, who will have access to the production and distribution of this information?

The Alliance for Community Media (ACM), which shows about 950 community television center and their constituencies, is individual of the few organizations advocating for public, non-commercial access to information networks. With the core of its membership coming from PEG (public, education and government) cable access center and local origination stations (both of which are made possible end franchise agreements between local communities and their cable television provider), ACM has traditionally focused upon the concerns and needs of the community television agriculturist However, the nearly 20-year-old organization, which was lay the foundation ofed as the National Federation of Local Cable Programmers (NFLCP) changed its name in 1992 to mirror the shifting landscape of communications technology and the evolving part of the community media producer

By reaching without to community computing and media arts center as well as redefining cable access center as community communication center ACM is preparing for a futurity in which television, the telephone and the computer are single and the same. A time to come in which moving images will pour through fiber optic cables or beam directly into an individual's abiding-place without the need for coaxial cable. A coming time in which cable franchise pay s may no longer support public access facilities. A coming time in which the voice of the public may be increasingly muffled

Intended to address the impact of novel communication technologies upon local communities and freedom of articulate utterance ACM's 1995 International Conference and Trade exhibit entitled "Community Media: Thriving in the Technology Revolution" was held this summer in Boston, a location talk organizers described as the "hub of technology and community media." The message looked to be that community media and the public's access to the means of communication (no matter what the tools may be) is a vital and essential part of democratic life. The four day talk was expansive in format and designed to befitting the needs and interests of the diverse constituencies serv through the Alliance: access center managers, trainers, farmers educators, activists, policy makers, technicians and artists engaged in panel discussions and workshops focused upon public policy, education, government, activism, youth, capital raising, training, community participation, the internet and computer-based applications, technical how-tos and international partnerships. With up to 11 agreeing workshops, 11 pre-conference seminars, six special incidents and over seven locations, the ability to completely participate in the entire talk was an impossible task flat for the most energetic of talk goers.

This wide scope was a lock opener element in the planning of the circumstance Chaired by Rika Welsh of Malden Cable Access Television, the discourse program committee aided by a Boston-based planning cluster was diverse in its membership. With individuals from area cable access, computer access and media arts organizations, the committee purposefully designed the conversation to meet the concerns of ACM's multi-faceted constituency. greatest in quantity notably, ACM has formed fortunate bonds with constituencies concerned with computer-based networks and community access to them. With prominent input from organizations similar as Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, the Boston Computer Society (BCS) and Playing To Win (a national alliance of community computing organizations), the 1995 ACM talk blended internet information sessions, a cyberschool, and a at liberty internet access center (sponsored through BCS) into its agenda. This blending of technologies appear to bes natural. Many public access stations are now incorporating or forming partnerships with computer learning center With compatible organizational mode of buildings and complementary missions, the desire to lose PEG access and community computing networks into community media center is muscular With the merging of telecommunications technologies, and common debate in the public policy arena upon their use, ACM views these alliances as crucial to the survival of First Amendment rights to independent speech.

In addition to continual First Amendment battles, ACM members are facing threats to franchise funding (the small price cable companies must pay for their monopolies), and the possible elimination of PEG access owed to technological and policy shifts. of recent origin technologies such as video dial tone and microwave transmitters promise to replace coaxial cable. Telephone companies vie with cable interests to dominate information/entertainment networks. Legislation publicly being voted on will shape telecommunications networks and the public's access to them well into the nearest century. [Ed. note: see article by dint of Laurie Ouellette on p. 3] Therefore, it is not surprising that ACM's leadership dioceses the need to be aggressively involved in the shaping of public policy upon telecommunications.