President's Message | September 9, 2019

Ideas for chicago?

Now’s the time to start looking ahead to next summer’s ACM Conference in Chicago, IL, June 29-July 2. Do you have an idea for a workshop you’d like to see? Want to hear from an inspiring speaker? Have a technology you’d like to evaluate or a vendor you’d like to meet? Well, we’d like to hear from you.

Here’s our Call for Proposals for next year’s conference. Fill it out and send it back to me by November 1 to help us determine our speakers and agenda for 2020. Let us know about speakers, discussions or presentations you’d like to see in Chicago – or if you’d like to make presentations yourself!

And if you’d like to volunteer time to help put the conference together, let me know as we are forming the conference organizing committee in the coming month!

Public Policy Call

If you want a DropBox link for a recording of the ACM Public Policy Call last week, let me or our staff in Minneapolis know. It’s available for ACM members – as is the call itself which happens every First Thursday at 4pm ET. We spent the 90 minutes on the call talking about implications from the FCC’s cable franchising Order, which takes effect on September 26.  Our next call will be on Thursday, October 3.

Found Footage on Chris Gethard Presents

Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher of the Found Footage Festival were special guests of the ACM NorthEast Conference last fall in Schenectady NY – and they continue to make the access television rounds highlighting the worst in VHS culture of the 80s and 90s.   

Last week they were guests of Manhattan Neighborhood Network’s Chris Gethard Presents. It’s got some interesting moments, including an interview with filmmaker Jeff Krulik who directed Heavy Metal Parking Lot when he was an access coordinator in Prince George’s County, MD. For me, most of the material is cringeworthy – and is kind of the comedy equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel. And it reflects a specific time (pre-digital tape) that doesn’t exist anymore for all sorts of reasons. Unfortunately, the tired cliché of access television being for weirdos, kooks and incompetents seems to be timeless. Sigh.

Mike Wassenaar
President & CEO
The Alliance for Community Media