April 14th, 2008

After nearly 1 year of work on the green podcasts for health care, Sustainable Compositions has accomplished a great deal, including state-wide and nation-wide exposure to health care organizations, an advertising/sponsorship donation, and the distribution of a half-dozen podcasts!

Current efforts include posting another half-dozen podcasts over the next several months, getting paid subscriptions from health care organizations in Pennsylvania, and launching a companion podcast service that goes beyond Pennsylvania and addresses the nation and the world. - UrthBound

UrthBound is having his minidisc recordings converted to .wav format right now, at which point there should be the content online ready to be mixed and remixed into a pilot ecopodcast! An ex-roommate is responsible for the conversion, and ex-roommates are notoriously slow at doing what there asked to do. Yet, they are notoriously reliable at eventually completing such tasks...

Check out this excellent, humorous environmental e-mag called The Grist: they just released a Podcast! Let us listen to it and evaluate the cross-over value to our podcast efforts (which shall continue unto the future)!

We were denied the grant, and these were the issues raised by the review committee. We are encouraged to resubmit the grant!

OK!

It's time to make another Podcast session happen. I think the question and answer session style that Dwayne and Rich and I UrthBound employed flowed well and could be used to describe the rest of the Center's site as we walk around it. In addition to that, we should decide conclusively what are first audience will be, and deliver some specific, tailored advice to them to wrap up the podcast. The bus can be mounted again as a final narrative cap. I propose this week on Thursday before class at 2:30, or Wednesday afternoon, same time. What do you say!? - 11-27-06

Friday afternoon, UrthBound visited OldMan in the studio to talk about sustainability on DJ Geezer's 2 hour 90.7 WPSX (or WPSU?) radio show. The relavance of the content oscillated from very direct addresses towards the audience regarding the future of sustainability and their role in process, to crude jokes about people in the studio. Nevertheless, I believe that a message went out,and we should have been able to capture a few minutes of the whole session for use in podcasts. Unfortunately there a lapse in the taping regime, and the audio information escaped into the atmosphere.

Gwrganmawr: The recording for the podcast went well on friday. After I left, however, I thought about how we should probably have a little more description of what we're looking at, since this is an audio-only media. Just saying that we're winterizing the greenhouse does not give an adequate idea of what is present visually. It also seemed that we really don't need a script with Jamie's knowledge on the Center and his way of putting it into words. It worked out pretty well as just a question and answer session. For other podcasts a script could indeed prove necessary, but with just an introduction of the various parts of the Center, improv works well.

Update on Podcast Recording: On Friday, October 27th, Dwayne, Rich and Jamie recorded about 15 minutes of discussion and narrative describing the Center for Sustainability, focusing on the processes of winterization, insulation, and energy/heat conservation. Later that day the ever-present "info-format-transformer problem" slept as the minidisc files were converted to ".wav" files. They will be uploaded to the wiki shortly for editing. Some more recording may continue, for sound effects.

Podcast worksession: Friday, October 27th, 3/3:30ish until 5 or 6, at the Center for Sustainability, unless there are large problems. UrthBound (Jamie) will generate outline for describing the Center for Sustainability by then. We will complete the Podcast with descriptions of activities that students and community members can undertake to enact sustainability. These activities will be large and small, some involved and some simply consumer-based. The recording of these activities will continue on throughout the next few days, if we can't generate them all on site Friday. See you then!

To reduce confusion, here's a list of all the podcast-related pages we've created so far:

This article on science podcasts is relavant to our work, but certainly does not exhaust it.

I'll type up the notes from Thursday's podcasting pre-game. In brief, with an outcome goal of enlightenment, the podcasting effort tunes toward the sounds of transition.

Gwrganmawr:Podcast 1: Image/Scene Transitions

I like the opening on the bus. While we covered some sound options in class, I was thinking of ways to open the first image. I first thought of the image of a tailpipe to segway onto the bus, and then thought better of it. That would easily have us being viewed as propaganda from the start, and I think that Peak Oil has taught us better.

For the first image, I was thinking of either starting with a bus tire or the first step from the ground and onto the bus, panning upwards as if the narrator/questioner were entering the bus. I like the script that Kelly has presented to introduce the Center.

I really like the image of the windmill to transition to the Center, but the idea of leaving the bus invokes the bus door ‘hiss’, and that would firmly establish us away from the bus. I’m always fond of leading an audience by the hand. However, as Jamie suggested, the sound of the bus engine fading to the sound of crickets would be great.

Later on, the transitions inside the center should be fairly easy: gurgling water, flower close-ups with ‘buzzing’ bees, the ‘crackle’ of electricity paired with solar panels are just a few ideas (anyone around those huge powerlines that dot the countryside will know what I mean by that sound, it’s fairly distinctive and slightly disturbing).

I just wanted to get a few ideas out there for transitions….

Nonprophet: Since we've talked about making this a 10-15 minute episode of introduction (vs. a 45 minute or 2-hour thing that people won't listen to in its entirety), we shouldn't spend too much time on the introductory bus-sequence where people are expressing confusion about what sustainability is (although it's a good way to start). We should find a way to get from that intro into the topics we want to cover.

For instance, we could include a basic definition of sustainability, here is one I pulled from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainability (I don't know why brackets don't work for me with links, maybe they only work with images? forced to use html!):

Sustainability is a systemic concept, relating to the continuity of economic, social, institutional and environmental aspects of human society, as well as the non-human environment. It is intended to be a means of configuring civilization and human activity so that society, its members and its economies are able to meet their needs and express their greatest potential in the present, while preserving biodiversity and natural ecosystems, and planning and acting for the ability to maintain these ideals in a very long term. Sustainability affects every level of organization, from the local neighborhood to the entire planet.

But we have more than one thing we want to introduce in this episode, one being sustainability itself, and the other is PSU's Center for Sustainability. These should be introduced together, with a basic definition of sustainability and some basic facts about the Center (ie. where it is, how long it's been around, why it was created and by whom, etc...).

Great! - Jeff (sp?) has blank minidiscs that he will bring to class on Thursday.

UrthBound: I have a minidisc recorder and a microphone - but no blank minidiscs (yet)..I like the idea of natural sound and image transitions at the Center very much. There's been a proposal put forth to also attempt a very practically-minded podcast aimed at informing the audience (i.e. Penn State employees) about smart energy and resource consumption. Could we meld the more discursive exploration of sustainability and the Center with the the practical take-home-knowledge podcast?

ArizonaCitrus: I think all these ideas so far are great! Opening on the bus, then fading to crickets would be cool. If we are going to have future podcasts that concentrate on specific areas/aspects of sustainability, maybe for the pilot episode we could just give an overview of the history of the Center, the location, what sustainability means (I think we were planning on doing this already), and what "green" processes are currently in use at the Center. Maybe just list the processes and we can go into each one in depth in later episodes. Ending each episode with a small way the common person can alter their lives to become more environmentally friendly would be neat as well. Because I don't own an mp3 or Ipod player, is a "podcast" just an audible recording or is there viewable video that goes with it?

Gwrganmawr: Just some ideas before my drive to Indiana…

Maybe we should begin the Introduction to the Center as an interview with Jamie and have him take a small group of students around the Center. Through the tour, they can touch on the connections between the areas of the Center and the philosophy of sustainability that we’re trying to introduce.

Bring in the learning aspect. What has Jamie learned about plants by having to grow them and then preserve them. How can this be used in such a way as to promote the preservation of the environment? Can we talk about plants breathing, and harvesting the wind, just to use some terms that would break down the barriers between humans and the rest of existence, as we have done in class?

I really wish that we were doing this podcast in the Spring or summer when there would be a few more colorful images around to work with, but perhaps that could be a theme. This is the Center in the Fall. What needs to be done? What needs planted and why now, can we link this to a symbiosis of different plants in the same soil at different times (legumes providing Nitrogen fixing, etc)? How are we preparing for the winter, and how can we make that into the process that is the Center?

I definitely agree that a good way to end would be to demonstrate a tip for others to follow to help save energy.

Kelly

~At the center-que windmill~

5. So what do you guys know about the center?

1 and 4. nothing. we don't even know what you mean by sustainability.

5. defines sustainability as it relates to the center.

1 and 4. That's cool. So what does the center do to promote sustainability?

5. Some stuff.

1 and 4. That is cool. How can people help?

5. Like this:

1 and 4. That is really interesting, but are there ways that I can incorporate some of the stuff that you do here into my life at home or in the dorms?

5. Of course, and we plan to talk about those activities in future podcasts. We even have a section on the site for you to let us know what you are interested in learning about!

1 and 4. Let's learn something right now!

5. Ok. Here's something little you can do right now:

1 and 4. It has been really great learning about the center.

5. Thanks for stopping by! Come back soon! windmill