Blog

Open-source music is a hot topic right now, and it is in the best interest of public media stations to help promote it. This post is meant to serve as an overview of open-source music, and in the coming weeks -- leading up to a special broadcast at Wisconsin Public Radio on June 24 -- I will explore this topic in more depth.

On Wednesday this week (May 30), I will be taking part in a "first of a kind webinar" about the state of audio and video on the web. I consider myself very lucky to be speaking beside some esteemed leaders from the public media technology community.

I met Robert Douglass in person for the first time at DrupalCon Denver this year. We immediately hit it off due to our shared interests and background in both music and Drupal.

In the coming month or so, I will be giving a number of talks concerning Drupal and public media:

February 2
"Open source software in public media"
Wisconsin Public Radio (Madison, WI)

Febraury 22
Drupal in Public Media
Twin Cities Drupal User Group (Minneapolis, MN)

February 27
"How ttbook.org makes use of Drupal"
PRI: Public Radio International (Minneapolis, MN)

In preparation for an upcoming database migration -- converting a web site from a homegrown CMS to Drupal -- I've been spending a fair amount of time learning Drupal's Migrate module. Although I knew that Drupal 7 could connect to SQL Server, upon further scrutiny I found out that the sqlsrvr module requires the PHP SQL Server Driver 2.0 from Microsoft, a Windows-only driver. Since I work primarily on a Mac, I decided to first convert the SQL Server database to MySQL.

The trend in public radio is to move away from the term “public radio” and, in many cases, embrace the term “public media.” For instance: the Public Radio Development and Marketing Conference recently became the Public Media Development and Marketing Conference; Louisville's Public Radio Partnership became Louisville Public Media; American Public Media calls itself "the second largest producer and distributor of public radio programming"; and, of course, National Public Radio changed its name to NPR.

This is not a how-to article. This is more the story of how I found out why making even a simple map is so darn complex, and why ultimately I plan to rebuild the map I made. Going from an idea to an end product is no simple task. In this case, my idea concerns the distribution of WPR pledges throughout the state of Wisconsin by zip code. I am curious about which areas of the state (and country) produce the most revenue. I'm not exactly sure what I will do with this information, although I have a few ideas.

In June 2010 I attended Flashbelt in Minneapolis, Minnesota. This annual conference focuses “around Adobe Flash and related technologies." Two of the speakers that I found most informative, Jeremy Thorpe and Wes Grubbs, seemed to focus not so much on Flash, but on their use of a “related technology” called Processing.

PRESS RELEASE: For Immediate Release

Madison, WI (November 2004) – Lisette Kielson, Artistic Director of the Madison-based chamber group L’Ensemble Portique, collaborates with Matthew Tift, UW-Madison musicologist and AIDS activist, to present “Positive Music: Musical Responses to HIV/AIDS” on Saturday, December 4 at 7:30 p.m. at the First Unitarian Society Meeting House, 900 University Bay Drive, Madison. Tickets are $10 and available at the door. Proceeds from this event go directly to AIDS Network of Madison.