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Upcoming Public Events at The Media Center

Tonight half of our channels are devoted to the democratic process by cablecasting LIVE meetings from the seats of local government.  Usually we reserve channels 26 and 29 for government programming, but tonight we are spilling over onto Channel 30 so that we can bring you 3 LIVE MEETINGS.  We apologize in advance to Channel 30 producers whom we have pre-empted for this night only.

We think it's important to bring these meetings to you.  You can't always get down to City Hall but you can watch right in your own home and stay on top of what your elected leaders are talking:

Menlo Park City Council Special Meeting Live on Channel 29 at 5:30 pm
Palo Alto City Council Live on Channel 26 at 7:00 pm
and
East Palo Alto City Council Special Meeting Live on Channel 30 at 8:00 pm.

Click here to watch any of these meetings streaming from our website.

Click here to see the government meeting broadcast calendar.

Published 2012-01-30T17:59:00.000-08:00 by Becky Sanders

Jean Ramacciotti

The producer of Spirit Talk has won the prestigious "2012 Martin Luther King Jr. Drum Major for Service Award."  Jean Ramacciotti received a letter from President Obama, thanking and congratulating her.  The award is presented "in recognition and appreciation of your commitment to strengthening our Nation and for making a difference through volunteer service, addressing the most pressing needs in your community and in our country."

Jean was nominated by the Islamic Networks Group (ING) for her interfaith work.  Jean has been a regular speaker at the Interfaith Speakers Bureau (IFSB), speaking at schools, colleges, companies and service clubs about promoting understanding and cooperation amongst all religions, particularly Hindu, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam and Judaism.  She is passionate about justice, tolerance and the individuality of faith.

We congratulate you, Jean.  What an accomplishment!  We are so proud of you and glad you produce your TV show with us!

A recurring theme of Jean's long-running show, Spirit Talk, is  finding points of intersection, compassion and empathy among faith communities.  To watch Jean's Show, click here for the schedule.

Learn more about what this significant award means.  Check out the website

Published 2012-01-20T17:01:00.000-08:00 by Becky Sanders

Published 2012-01-04T22:12:00.000-08:00 by Becky Sanders

Published 2011-12-22T15:44:00.000-08:00 by Elliot Margolies

In this month's Future Talk, host Martin Wasserman discusses robotics with Chuck Colby, who has worked for more than 50 years as an inventor, and whose work now deals mostly with robots. Chuck has scored numerous technological firsts in his career, including the first home satellite receiver station, the first low cost telephone answering machine and the first low cost TV camera. He created what's believed to be the world's first commercial pocket transistor radio at the age of twelve. Chuck demonstrates several of his robots on the show, including the T-Bot, which allows the user to be in virtually two places at the same time.

We also have videos of two very different kinds of robots. Honda's humanoid Asimo robot is shown pushing a cart, unscrewing a lid from a bottle, pouring a drink, and handing it to a human. The MULE, a driverless military vehicle developed by the U.S. Army, is shown climbing over walls, carrying large quantities of equipment, following the troops wherever they go and figuring out the best route to get there.

Click here to see the TV schedule for Future Talk. Future Talk is one of several dozen local TV series produced at the Midpeninsula Community Media Center, a nonprofit agency that provides a TV studio and video production equipment to the public.

Published 2011-12-12T11:11:00.000-08:00 by Elliot Margolies

Producer Johanna Gereke hosts an inspiring television special tonight Thursday December 1 at 7 o'clock to highlight World AIDS Day.  The half hour program:  The Impact of HIV/AIDS on Children in Africa features a discussion about the impact of HIV/AIDS on the lives of children in Sub-Saharan Africa. Studio guests Amber Stime, Founder and Executive Director of African Cradle and Peter Laugharn, Executive Director of the Firelight Foundation each explore different ways their groups help children adjust when their lives have been affected by AIDS. Amber and Peter's work includes not only children, but also their families and in some cases, adoptive parents. Short video clips from the documentary film Whose Children Are They Now? complement an engaging conversation about personal experiences, breaking down stigma and the hope for future generations.

To learn more about Stime's work visit African Cradle, Inc. -- providing adoption service for African orphans.  To learn more about Laugharn's work visit  Firelight Foundation.

This World AIDS Day special program will be followed by Seeds of Hope: Meeting the Challenges of HIV/AIDS in Ethiopia at 7:30 pm.  This five film series was produced and directed by Dorothy Fadiman and explores recent efforts in Ethiopia to battle the stigma and break the silence surrounding HIV/AIDS and find innovative solutions to prevention and education.  Dorothy Fadiman has been making documentary films around social justice for 40 years through her Menlo Park-based production company, Concentric Media.

This 3-hour block of programming pre-empts regular programming on Channel 28 and provides an evening of reflection and acknowledgement that although HIV/AIDS is  still very much a deadly epidemic, transforming work is being done abroad by people in our own communities -- whether they be non-profit leaders like Stime and Laugharn or investigative filmmakers like Fadiman.

Click here for additional playback times for The Impact of HIV/AIDS on Children in Africa.


Click here for additional playback times for Seeds of Hope: Meeting the Challenges of HIV/AIDS in Ethiopia.

Published 2011-12-01T08:47:00.000-08:00 by Becky Sanders

Did you know that Palo Alto has a symphony orchestra? I didn't, and I'm apparently not alone, even though I enjoy classical music. The PA Philharmonic are local, they are dedicated and they want to share their passion for symphonic music with you.

The Palo Alto Philharmonic, under Music Director Thomas Shoebotham, is a full sized (~65 member) community orchestra which performs 4 orchestral concerts a year at a very reasonable price ($20) at the Cubberley Theater. In addition to full orchestral concerts, they perform several smaller concerts at other venues around town. Their upcoming concert schedule can be seen on their website.

The orchestra has been around since 1988 and is a non-profit organization. The musicians are volunteers, and generally have non-musical careers in the community.

The orchestra concert programs begin with an informative pre-concert talk, discussing the pieces to be heard in the program. Their repertoire ranges across all periods of orchestral music, including 20th century music and even original compositions from their Assistant Conductor and award-winning composer-in-residence, Lee Actor.

Volunteers from The Media Center were at the Philharmonic's October 2011 concert in force. Six of us operated six cameras and three high-quality microphones scattered around Cubberley Theater. We've posted to YouTube the Philharmonic's performance of Bernstein's "Overture to Candide" and Liszt's "Totentanz" featuring guest piano soloist Péter Tóth.

The Philharmonic's performance of Tchaikovsky's 6th Symphony from that October concert will be shown at the following times, on Channel 27...

• Friday, November 25 9pm
• Saturday, November 26 10pm
• Friday, December 2, 9pm
• Saturday, December 3, 10pm

Published 2011-11-23T13:14:00.001-08:00 by Stan Ng

submitted by Martin Wasserman:

Modern information technology is having a huge impact on the health industry, enabling patients to have much greater access to information and helping them to be much more active participants in their own health care. It's now possible to get quick information and advice online from your doctor without having to wait for an appointment, and to compare experiences with people who have similar conditions to your own via social networking programs. Also, increased knowledge of genetics is making it possible to tailor medical treatments much more closely to the physiology of the specific patient.

On this month's Future Talk, host Martin Wasserman interviews several people who are directly involved in finding ways to apply modern information resources to improve public health. The in-studio guests are John de Souza, CEO of MedHelp, an online health community with a wide range of services that boasts 12 million unique visitors a month, and Bruce Cohen, CEO of VitaPath Genetics, which does individualized DNA analysis to enable more precisely tailored medical treatments.

Additionally, Future Talk attended the recent Health 2.0 Conference in San Francisco, where we spoke with several people involved in this rapidly growing field. Karl Ulfers is V.P. of Consumer Solutions at Optum Health, whose products provide better online communications between health care consumers and providers, Brent Poole is CEO of Mindbloom, which seeks to promote mental, physical and spiritual health through a social gaming experience, and Damon Ramsey M.D. is CEO of Healthism, which offers social networking tools aimed at preventive health maintenance.

The message of all of these people seems to be consistent: the more information and access to resources you have, the better you can maintain your own well being. Here are the cable TV Playback times. This episode may not be scheduled just yet.

Published 2011-11-16T14:37:00.000-08:00 by Elliot Margolies

How did you make your voting decisions? Did you use any of the videos linked on our Elections Page? If so, how helpful were they relative to other resources you used such as mailers or news articles? We'd love to know.

We were pleased with the number of folks who viewed the videos online. We hit a new high of 463 views for an election video - the San Mateo County Measure H pro and con arguments. In Palo Alto, there were 245 viewers of the Measure D debates and 427 viewers of the Measure E debates. When you factor in those who watched the debates on the cable TV channels - for which we have no measurements - we believe that we reached at least 5% of the voters.

Perhaps, the most impacting video was the one featuring candidates for the East Palo Alto Sanitary District. While it got the lowest number of views compared to the other videos - 106 - that accounts for over 25% of the voters for that race! And that doesn't include those who watched the candidates on cable TV where it played numerous times.

The videos provide a chance for voters to evaluate the presence and communication skills of the candidates in addition to their ideas and policy positions. We're glad that the videos multiply the number of people to see the candidates - well beyond those who actually attended the public forums. We hope to see the number grow with each election. We've already begun to plan for the 25+ races we expect to cover in 2012.

Published 2011-11-10T13:46:00.000-08:00 by Elliot Margolies

Here's a tip for all our great TV studio crew volunteers. Find out which producers are scheduling talented chefs to come in and cook a televised feast. Then sign up as a camera person. The crew members for "Frente Unido" ("United Front Presents") were the happy tasters of celebrated Chef Maritza Hurtado' s enchiladas and secret sauces this evening. Chef Hurtado, of Special Touch Catering, was unloading boxes of yummy ingredients as this disappointed writer had to leave the Media Center. I'll be imagining her strawberry dessert concoction while munching my cauliflower this evening. Hurtado recently won an award from the Renaissance Entrepreneurial Center for her community involvement. Do you think more community producers should include a cooking show episode now and then? If so, what kind of cooking would you like to see?

Here is the Frente Unido playback schedule.

Published 2011-11-08T17:22:00.000-08:00 by Elliot Margolies

On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing the Secretary of War to designate certain areas as military zones.  This order paved the way for the unlawful incarceration of Japanese Americans in "relocation" camps.  This effectively ruined the lives of more than 120,000 American citizens and cast the dark shadow of racism across our country while our armed forces were ironically fighting fascism abroad.    After years of shame and silence around this dark page in our national history, the stories are emerging, often told by the children and grandchildren of the internees.  An unusual perspective will be unveiled this Saturday night at 8 pm on Channel 27 -- that of a teenager whose experience as an aide in one of the camps changed her life forever.

The Media Center is proud to cablecast a documentary detailing the personal experience of fifteen year old Ruth Mix who volunteered at the Gila River Japanese Internment Camp's Butte Camp Hospital.    During the summer of 1942, she moved into the camp to work full time with her mother who was a teacher there.

Charles Class, an established Media Center producer, served as one of three executive producers for "Gila River and Mama - The Ruth Mix Story." The 49 minute documentary includes historical reenactment and tells  the moving story of Ruth and the people she met and befriended during her time living at the camp.

The documentary was produced, written and directed by Claire Mix, the daughter of Ruth and granddaughter of teacher Frida Mix.  it wasn't until Claire was an adult that she became aware of her famlly's passionate involvement in the lives of the internees at  Gila River.  Claire slowly teased the story out of her aging mother, who, along with Claire's grandmother, had risked arrest in order to bring some relief to the suffering of the persecuted citizens at Gila River.

At this time of year when we celebrate the gift our veterans have given the nation, sacrificing their very lives, it is important that we remember Japanese Americans, many of whom wanted to serve their country, but instead were interned under most draconian and inhumane circumstances during World War II.

For additional playback times click here.

To learn more about this project visit the website:  http://www.gilariverandmama.com.

Funding for "Gila River And Mama:  The Ruth Mix Story" was provided by a grant from the California State Library through the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program.

The Media Center thanks Mr. Class for bringing this important story to us.  And we reach out and thank the California State Library and the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program for making this production possible.

Executive Producers Hy Shishino and Charlie Class with Shig Murakami (Murakami  was  one of Frida Mix's 2nd Grade Students)

Published 2011-11-02T12:38:00.000-07:00 by Becky Sanders

Published 2011-11-01T06:28:00.000-07:00 by Becky Sanders