Boston Media Makers meetings are held the first Sunday of every month at Sweet Finnish in Jamaica Plain. Check out the site at http://bostonmediamakers.wordpress.com/ Meeting notes include Len Edgerly's video of Friday's iPod frenzy, Christopher Penn's demo

of his new camera stabilization device, and many interesting updates.

Here are some of David Tames' notes which he so kindly lent for Beanywood to check out.

You can check out the more detailed notes with links to all things relevant at http://kino-eye.com/2007/07/01/bmm/ While you are there spend some time exploring the vast resources that David provides for media makers.

Steve Garfield has been webcasting the meetings using Ustream.tv, but today we're using another tool, blog.tv which offers the additional capability of having participants link in their webcams and you can switch between the main stream and other streams. It has really livened up the meeing to have participants out on the net and offering their sending in their questions and comments during the meeting. An archive of the live stream is available.

On Friday, Len Edgerly (VideoPodChronicles.com) went to the Apple store at Cambridgeside Galleria at 3am to be first in line for an iPhone, at first security guards gave him a hard time for shooting video, but once the euphoria of people walking into the store took over, the security guards could not stop him from shooting a wonderful video of being first in line walking into the Apple store:

(blip URL: blip.tv/file/285290)

Len's first reaction to the iPhone is that it is "unbelievably cool," and he said, "I went to sleep that night holding it in my hand, Steve Jobs is right." He points out that some stuff does not work quite right yet and it's not quite perfect, for example, notes do not sync, it does not shoot video, the headphone jack does not take his Bose headphones, and it will not play Flash video embedded in web pages. But he added, "if you were crazy enough to be there [on the first day of sales], none of this detracts."

David Tames just completed a short film, The Smile Boston Project, that will premiere at the 16th Woods Hole Film Festival on August 4th. He has been organizing three panels and a seminar that will take place at the festival, visit the festival's Panels & Workshops page : http://woodsholefilmfestival.org/pages/2007EventWorkshops.php for more information.

Christopher Penn (Financial Aid Podcast) demonstrated how he created a reasonable equivalent to the $300 Fig Rig using some PVC pipe he purchased from Loews, which he describes in his Stabilization Equipment for Handheld Video blog post: http://www.christopherspenn.com/2007/06/30/stabilization-equipment-for-handheld-video/. . Here's a movie of Christopher demonstrating the rig with his Sanyo CG65 Camera which can record 76 minutes of 640 x 480 H.264 video on a 1G storage card.

(blip URL: blip.tv/file/286956/) to watch video

After the "going around the table" portion of the meeting participants discussed Andrew Keen's book, The Cult of the Amateur. In our discussion we raised several interesting issues in terms of the reliability of "the wisdom of the crowds," especially in terms of Wikipedia; how are we going to find "hard-hitting journalism" in the age of citizen journalism; and the validity of the professional vs. amateur duality. During the discussion, Christopher Penn suggested the book, The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto and I suggested The Wealth of Networks by Yochai Benkler. I also think Henry Jenkins' Convergence Culture provides an excellent and thoughtful counter-point to Keen's argument.

It was another wonderful meeting, a delightful mix of coffee, pastries, conversation, sharing, and learning around a table.

And thanks again to David Tames for his thorough capture of information during the event! Check out his Flickr photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/kino-eye/sets/72157600591613397/

You can also check out additional photos on my Flickr page http://www.flickr.com/photos/7937077@N03/sets/72157600606562105/