BlogAsheville, MAIN, WPVM, and URTV event

Hi y'all. Sorry I had to cut out before the last drink was drunk, but this nasty cold has got my head feeling heavier than Carl Mumpower's moral compass. I'm posting this here to tell everyone to go to Cecil Bothwell's blog to read his liveblogging of the event.

I put together an email list of attendees, and I'll send y'all something soon about the future. We've agreed that something terribly organized will happen next. We'll come together to have a focused session on building a common, executable agenda within the next four weeks. It was very exciting meeting folks from all these various media who are passionately pursuing their goals. It was another great milestone in the evolution of BlogAsheville and in the growing community media sector.

We are stronger together.

Go read Cecil's post! Comment here, there, or everywhere about your impressions, ideas, and hopes for the future...

This Saturday!

Community Media come together to storm the brains and blend the circles this Saturday, Feb. 2nd at west Asheville's Rocket Club. BlogAsheville, MAIN, and WPVM are gathering to see what strange alchemy might result.

From 7-8 pm, BlogAsheville bloggers will meet with folks from MAIN and WPVM to imagine how community internet providers, community radio, and community bloggers can innovate and partner. Wally Bowen, archguru of MAIN already has oodles of interesting ideas, and he'll put some of those out for us to consider. Asheville Pizza and Brewing Company is providing some pizzas for this hour, so come if you're hungry!

From 8pm until the last conversation is conversed we'll be meeting new folks, catching up with BlogAsheville compatriots, and hanging hardcore at the Rocket Club. If things get too crowded or too noisy there, we may bail across the street to The Admiral.

It's been too long since BlogAsheville got together, and it seems crazy that MAIN, WPVM, and BlogAsheville haven't gotten together before now.

So come on out to a landmark event in Asheville's growing community media juggernaut. Intelligent, witty, well-read, media savvy, and beautiful - our community media grows, develops, and celebrates.

Net Neutrality on WCQS, 88.1 FM. Wednesday at 6pm

The fight for Net Neutrality is about ensuring that the internet revolution that's taken place over the last two decades continues to move in the most innovative, most universally accessible ways. Big Telecom companies are, as you might imagine, trying to figure out how to squeeze every last nickel out of the internet. Their ideas include having premium sites that cost more to access. These "premium" sites are made so at the discretion of the telcos.

Save The Internet: "Internet service providers like Comcast have claimed that the only way to manage their networks is to either disconnect customers that exceed undisclosed bandwidth limitations or secretly block applications like BitTorrent and Gnutella."

There have been a lot of folks paying attention to this struggle. Big corporate interests who want to control and exploit the internet are about to be investigated by the FCC, and you can send an email about it here.

This is another reason I'm excited that BlogAsheville and MAIN are getting together. Internet users and content providers like BlogAsheville have a unique perspective in this fight, and so do non-profit internet providers like MAIN.

In an email, Wally Bowen says,

"The threat to our civil liberties from the growing corporate control of the Internet -- enabled by the FCC and US Supreme Court -- is real. This control also threatens to stifle the kind of technological innovation and economic growth enabled by the Internet over the last 15 years or so.

As one of the few surviving nonprofit Internet service providers (ISPs) in the nation, MAIN is in the forefront of this nationwide and global struggle to preserve an open, non-discriminatory Internet.

I believe the outcome of this struggle will shape the future of our democracy for decades to come, as did a similar struggle for control of the public airwaves in the 1928-1934 period."

You can catch Wally Bowen and UNCA Professor Mark Ward Wednesday night at 6pm on David Hurand's show, "Conversations", on WCQS, 88.1 FM. They're going to explain net neutrality and discuss the option available to preserve an innovative, democratic internet.

Give a listen, and give a call if the spirit moves you. Ensuring net neutrality ensures continued breakneck innovation and continually expanding access. If you like democracy, you love the internet. And if we're not fighting for it, then who will?

{crossposted over at Scrutiny Hooligans}

February 2nd: Community Media Coming Together

Mountain Area Information Network (including WPVM) and BlogAsheville are coming together on February 2nd at the Rocket Club in west Asheville for the chance to put our heads together and get our community media on. This get together is long overdue.

Wally Bowen is the founder and leader of MAIN. He's working on a lot of different angles and planes, and when we got together for a cup of coffee last month, the ideas started flying fast. When we were running out of time, having only just scraped the surface of our common interests, I realized that we've really got to get all the bloggers' brains in on the conversation. Then it occurred to me that MAIN and WPVM would be really fun to party with. Let's get even more motivated, intelligent, witty, media-savvy folks with common interests in the same room together.

So in the twin interests of being as creative as possible about community media in Asheville while having a good time with really interesting people, we're co-throwing the MAIN/BlogAsheville night at the Rocket Club. 7pm - 8pm we'll have a relatively organized discussion. Keep your eyes on BlogAsheville, where we'll post ideas and get your creative juices even juicier. Wally's been thinking about this stuff for a long time and has a lot of well fleshed-out ideas to run by BlogAsheville, and my hope is that we'll have plenty to bring up as well.

So those of you who don't want to have anything to do with all that organized whatnot, 8pm - late we'll do away with any sort of attempt at organization and just hang out Community Media/Rocket Club style. If Rocket Club ends up being too loud or too crowded, we may bail over to The Admiral, which is right across the street.

So there's something for everyone. Meegan from MAIN is working on getting some kind folks to donate some good food for the event. There's big ideas to bounce around. There are relationships to create. There are scores of motivated, intelligent, witty, media-savvy Ashevillains who've been orbiting each other at too great a distance for too long.

I don't know how many of you folks know about MAIN, so here's a brief intro:

"When MAIN was launched in 1996, only two counties in western North Carolina were being served by commercial Internet Service Providers (ISPs). As a non-profit ISP working with many local partners, MAIN now provides reliable, low-cost Internet service both in western North Carolina and nationwide."
[...]
"...projects include the Blue Ridge Web Market, which provides a free, customizable Internet presence to hundreds of small businesses throughout the region. The ReBoot Coalition, spearheaded by MAIN, places recycled computers in the homes of economically disadvantaged WNC residents, and our Latino Digital Literacy Project is helping one of our area's growing populations access the Internet through hands-on training and online classes.

MAIN is also the driving force behind WPVM, WNC's low power FM radio station broadcasting local news, views and music over-the-air in the Asheville area and throughout the region (and the world) via webcast. The station shares MAIN's goal of providing access to voices that are overlooked by the mainstream media. WPVM is on the air now at 103.5 FM.

As a full-service ISP, MAIN is able to provide free or reduced-cost web hosting services to businesses and non-profit organizations throughout our service area. As part of our mission to extend Internet access beyond the middle-class and wealthy, we also offer reduced-fee dial-up accounts to people in need of such help."

Please spread the word at your blogs. If anyone wants to create a killer graphic, that'd be awesome. If anyone wants to come up with a terrifically witty name for this event, go for it. BlogAsheville hasn't gotten together since the Extrava, and I can't wait to catch up with y'all while shaking it up with the MAIN/WPVM crew. See you there!

Asheville Bloggers - Input please.

Bloggers,

Mountain Area Information Network and 103.5 WPVM want to get together with Asheville Bloggers to meet and put our heads together. They're all about community media, and it's seems a little crazy we haven't all gotten together before now.

We're suggesting a night out at the soon-to-be-opened Rocket Club on Haywood Road, Feb. 2nd.

What do you think?