good evening welcome to the annual meeting of the belmont media center and as you will hear me and others refer to the organization this evening as the b m c jeff messer chair of the board of directors of the belmont media center as is custom i would like to recognize and welcome officials who have been elected by the citizens of delmon and everyone knows that behind a good man is a good woman and welcome to a role as well i would like to introduce the current members of the belmont media center board of directors and i would just ask them to waive their hand and hopefully they were in the room it is our vice president frenzy now here's the sincere part of these introductions although i do appreciate all the all those who are here but what i'd like to do is recognize the members of our highly competent staff first a full time b m c staff really just stefanos in the control room adam dusenberry is our technical director in directing tonight's program all of these individuals are very knowledgeable and form the foundation of the excellence achieved by the belmont media center i work with each of them as a volunteer from time to time and i am always impressed with their dedication to  viewership and those who produce content here at the b m c also helping us achieve success of the following part time and also valuable contribute is richard biscoe who works at the front desk and is on the we're also very honored this evening to have joe's sister virus a senior vice president of the corporation for public bug probably public broadcasting as a speaker i just got a new glasses now my tongue is broken he will be introduced by thames and later in the program at which time he will learn about his process of impressive achievements at both here in boston as well as the national corporation for public broadcasting board for two terms will be retiring from the board since laws restrict her ability for reelection i am pleased to announce that has graciously agreed to continue her participation on our marketing committee as a volunteer likewise edu one of our original convene is b m c is is no longer eligible for reappointment having reached his two full terms and has also made outstanding contributions in a number of ways particularly in the service on the technology committee as is the case with lucia and has agreed to continue to serve as a member of the technology committee as a volunteer loser and as willingness to continue their service assures continuity and continue to excellence here at p m c having served as a director elected by the membership for the past three years erin mcneil plans on standing for reelection this evening but we beat her to the punch because of her consistent and excellent contributions to the board over the past three years the board and action taken before tonight's annual meeting as elected arun as a board alerted director effect of the adjournment of tonight's meeting to serve as a tree is filling a board appointed directorship i will now ask to introduce the candidates for the two member elected directorships that are open this evening please come forward good evening the current vice president of the board soon to retire stepping down from the board after nine years on the board i was also on the board of conveners that helped that want to nominate themselves tonight to be considered for as part of the vote so first let me ask how many people here are belmont media center members so those of the folks that can vote in the elections so you like the members that are well vote for the two board already have your on are other than the loris and joanna all right well that makes it easy and i like easy so well number one i'm going to have each of the candidates come up here to me that's say a couple things about why you should be nominated and elected and then sit down so we also have erin who a lot of people don't know will give her three minutes since she's already been a play been appointed in which case since we don't have more than two nominees and we have two seats so yes i truly am and i lived in boston in belmont for thirty five years quite attached to the community and i have been hosting co hosting a program  here at belmont media center which is what's going on which i'm sure you've seen and follow regularly i'm very attached to the community and i would love the opportunity to be able to get through to the people who live in this community with whatever a pivot to use going on whatever we can promote that useful to us as a whole thank you where i can you all hear me ok and you have to lean in i like to tell jokes so maybe i'll start out with the joke i take on the class once a week i really wish it could be five days a week i would look a lot different than i do right now and last night on the way out a member of the class said do i know you look familiar and i was like oh i am kind of famous in town but so anyway i don't know if you get the joke know i like to think i am but i'm not i love what i do i've had many opportunities to move on from being editor of the belmont citizen herald and i've chosen to stay in my role because i love it so much and what i love about it is the community it's the people and lucia is one of those people who have had the up to i've had the opportunity to meet so many people and it's been three and a half years tony chanelle was the editor before me i had no training coming into belmont i lived in belmont maybe about a year when i took the job so i wasn't familiar with the town you know wasn't that familiar with the town and he didn't fill me in on anything so i kind of went in blind but the number one thing that i learned from my previous job which was being the editor of the burlington paper was this all about the community just being the voice of the community and so i had  people thanking me for putting their announcement in and i was like well did the previous editor i read your wedding announcement didn't get it but you know that's what it's all about and there's also a lot of politics involved which which i've learned and i've always i always just try to be always just try to be fair as fair as i possibly can be and i met jeff through the telethon which is the gifts of hope annual telethon to benefit the belmont food pantry we do the week we've done it this is our fourth year working together and really so that's why i've gone to know the belmont media center and the staff and i love the staff i love working with the staff and i sat with jeff one day kind of jokingly i said i'd love to have my own show and i didn't think it would take me seriously but he did and we started citizen herald reports and that was great and i love i still enjoy doing that i've worked with jeremy on that we started out in a little studio in the front which is just for two people then we moved into the big studio and that's this one that we're in right now and then we started moving out in the field we one day i stood out in front of the thomas clark house when it was in its temporary location and i interviewed people walking by  what do you think about the thomas clark house is it worth saving it i don't even know what the thomas clark house is they didn't even know the history of it but that was just one example then we did a show at ruth foster's house the farmer's market underwood pool and it was a lot of fun and i hope to continue doing it and i hope that all the experience i've gained as editor of the belmont says and how it could be i mean i know that it would be come to use being a board director for the belmont media center and that's just what i love it's all about the community and i want to be part of the future of the moment media center i have a lot of a lot of ideas that i'd like to to just present and see if they can come to life and again people really watch like people read the paper people really  the last three years have been really a time of we've gotten a lot done we've really we've really done a lot and one of the things that we did was we had a strategic planning meeting and we've been working we came up with some goals and objectives at that meeting that we were working toward with making good progress and one of the things that we decided to do was to be an important source of for media literacy education for the schools so we're moving forward and i want to take this opportunity to ask if anybody is interested in helping out with that work please let me know also we have a technology committee that was mentioned earlier and we'd like to extend an invitation to them to participate in that technology committee letting us know what your priorities are for equipment video cameras audio etc and in the studio i'd love to hear from you on that and thank you very much you position there's a lot of hard work and you're going to be working with a lot of talented wonderful board members to help guide the future of don't want media center welcome to the market i will tell you all about all those budget policy and strategy ok well thank you very much thank you and welcome aboard to doris and joanna i look forward to working with you over the past two years todd has served as our treasurer with distinction  i call on top to review our strong financial results thank me also be the first to point out what i think's a nice little piece of symmetry here tonight because the genesis of the belmont media center began ten years ago with a group of conveners that i think ed alluded to earlier and they were sponsible for electing the b m c s very first board of directors and i happen to be one of those conveners along with ed who soon to be retiring after filling nine years on the board and also our guest speaker tonight joseph of ours was also a member of those  and here we are a whole decade later in the three of us of reconvened and b and c is now in really great standing why who you know ten years ago if you asked me if i know whether i could have pictured myself as a future b m c board member let alone treasurer for the last years i would have said you're more likely to see time off for sports talk still on the airwaves oh wait a minute that is still going to decade strong now at a live show monday any away i am here again for the fourth straight year to bring you the state of the b m c from a financial perspective and at this point i think i've run out of ways to sum up what's been another successful year so i guess i guess this kind of to me this sums it up  scrolls of belief spiny scrolls of belief how about what if i said fiscally responsible yeah you know i'm running out of fresh ideas here when i have to resort to anagram what do this for years in a row and that's what you're left with thankfully there were no we had a green is used in our recently completed annual audit instead the auditors agreed that the belmont media center does continue to be a fiscally responsible nonprofit organization and that remains possible due to all the generous funding that the mc receives four times a year from comcast and horizon to provide this community with a first class media facility and it's also because jeff to be emcees executive director regularly meets with our entire board of directors to discuss and deliberate how those funds could be best spent while maintaining a few monies in reserve and one of the more significant capital purchases we made this year was a van which maybe some of you have seen around town it's greatly improved the b m c's ability to go out and cover all the town's big events for example la next week's big belmont watertown thanksgiving day football game of the ninety third edition between the long time rivals i'm very pleased to be a part of so on that note i want to introduce jeff our executive director here at b a m c he's going to tell you about those new wheels and many other good things that have happened here over the last twelve months jeff welcome everyone thank you todd and you were you've been through all ninety three editions of the game ok i'm going to actually todd is passing out a ten year report that we did for really encompasses a lot of what we've been doing and in fact what we are planning to do and it's also going to serve really as the foundation for next year which is our ten year anniversary and we're going to publish a ten year report with pictures a lot of the statistics a lot of information about what we have done and again what we are planning to celebrate that and if you think this party was great just wait till next year right so on one hand we have spent a lot of time what i would call document creation right which is probably better than document destruction but we've been creating a lot of documents relative to our strategic planning project and to our to the very franchising process with comcast and we've been out in the community getting feedback we've been gathering information from the schools from the government and from you all that's on one hand and as i say next year the ten year anniversary we're going to present it an then report this year it's going to be a little more serendipitous so we're just going to i'm going to talk a little bit about what we've been doing and what we're going to do and i think we have some photographs that adam is going to refer to also going to talk a little bit about the staff because we've had some changes this year as well at the end and i don't know if like to recognize recognize one person who just walked in representative dave rogers if you'd like to stand  we'll be speaking next so please start working on it so as i said in the past in the past year we spent a lot of time on the franchise process and you can roll those pictures any time you'd like to  them this is something that it's interesting these are the old modes of recording video we started in archives project thanks with a lot of help and ambition and drive from missouri here in the back we are so lucky to have him here because he has a degree in archives and he works here at the media center and we have a digital archives that we're starting we're one of only two centers in the in the state that has started this where we're documenting the community and it's called the community archives we were able to secure a twelve thousand dollars grant from the community preservation committee to help us jumpstart the operation of this so that's something that we started this year that we're very proud of  next you see maybe a couple pictures from remote production this is at the spelling bee it is the largest event that we do every year i think there are as anybody got a spelling bee every year or you're in it all right  ok i think there are thousands of parents that go through that auditorium families who go through every every year and we've been doing it for seven years and we started it when i think we had one camera and but we did it live and we've continued to live every year what people like about it is when they're getting ready to go on they can watch it on television and know when their team is coming up so it's always a fun event it's a great way for us to get out and meet the community and a lot of volunteers are in that you can go to the next one if you like to  hammarlund who's a former staff member here and they invited us and encourage us to do a telethon sort of program to raise awareness about domestic of domestic violence and we're going to be doing that this year as well so it's a new program but it's truly a not just a local program but a nationwide program and i and i was one which maggie rose march is also involved in that program as well which i think are one of the few again few centers that took the challenge of one billion rising and did a locally so there i am ok so this is election belmont what you saw you may or may not know that one year last year when we won an award for our elections and the team of people who volunteer every year are always asking just before the election you know when do i want to be part of it i want to i want to do the coverage and i know that when we haven't done it we inevitably get a call one time that we didn't do it we realized ok the community wants to see this we're going to make an effort to do the best that we can and that's some of the folks that are there paul roberts and reynolds olson and can't justin and i can't remember the fellow's name julie who is that lee thank you ok next this is an important part of what we did in the last year the town of belmont asked us in collaboration to convene a community assessment and it happens every time the cable company these just to sign a contract not just with come up with any town in massachusetts and literally a town and states to figure out what the community needs are relative to local access  group a nationally recognized consulting firm has been doing for thirty years did a great job of convening focus groups we didn't all line survey we did a lot of educational meetings which i think were maybe the best things that came out of that people who didn't really understand the process walked away and then said ok now i get it now i get it and out of that we the report that i passed out became part of the assessment that the selectmen entered into the public record and i  think while i wouldn't be the one to talk about the negotiations or couldn't anyway i think it is helped our case here to a great deal and i get i now get calls because of what the town of i want to put on their website about the process that we went through and asking us for advice about how they should do it in their town and so i think we made a big difference and you know like i always hear it at meetings people say well what's watertown doing what's wrong to do and then people say what's belmont doing so i think that's a good thing you can go on there i don't feel like this is the brendan grant home run race home run five k we started out of a couple of years ago and are continuing that we'd like to expand our coverage it's just it's a fantastic community event and we figured out a way to actually shoot the race as it's happening and maybe next year we will figure out a way to do it live it's a little bit difficult in belmont and the conditions but it's it's just a great community event for obviously a very good cause and the big headline this year really is sports and the increased coverage of sports and you know the thing that i know about community media and what we're doing is nonprofit is things don't happen overnight you have to sort of cede the ground a little bit and we've been doing sports the first year we didn't think there was a lot of response a second year of a sudden we're getting the response so we think that's just going to keep building and the support for particularly  women sports where there's a lot of competition this year of course the football team has come up and we have a competitive football team as well but germany and adam deserve endless thanks for their dedication to  there last thursday it was really really cold out of course they were sitting in the van that's why we got the van oh i get it and the volunteers were outside but i bought them all so m and we took him on a tour of e s p n and since he came back from that he's you know we have game day belmont now and he's just producing all sorts of things i think the coverage from thanksgiving day is going to be the best thing that we've ever done and we're collaborating with  watertown in the coverage of that on thanksgiving so look for that and there's jeremy you know he is a really a happy guy and enthusiastic but i think every picture of him looks something like that so i don't know what that is but that's it the patient park music festival and thanks to again the ambitious staff we've expanded the way that we cover that event and become a really interesting and again  event where a lot of volunteers can participate and just let you know we were at the last ok so everybody knows that guy that's a telethon and todd has been instrumental in really driving our coverage as representative  erger and another fellow you recognize there as well and there is time for sports are some of the crew that has been on there hasn't victoria been on for quite a long time  volunteers and here's an event that was really driven by the board of directors and really i would say lucia was one of the main drivers of that in helping us to really raise our community profile town day and we actually went all out in that to not just make a present for ourselves but cover the town the funny thing is of course where we were located there were a lot of elected officials running and when they saw the camera you know get out of the way way and they all lined up i mean later one point there's this line of people waiting to get to characterise and there's marion ryan the district attorney there's the van we have some smaller labels on that but we're we're planning on putting painting that and making it with our logo and some other display to show off and it's also of course for us it's a great way to transport equipment around rather than using  adam's car so that's that that's a snapshot of what we've been doing in the past year i mentioned a couple of other things briefly you know i said something about seating the ground and we do a lot of outreach to the schools and government and it doesn't happen overnight again but this year a lot of school groups have come to us with requests to start producing programs or start training we're starting a program with  sport program where the kids are going to come in and learn how to use the equipment and produce their own regular program and to me that's that is i mean that's the goal right there when you get that kind of group in here and it and i've seen how o so but you see what i'm saying there's a lot of groups of parent groups student groups that are asked to start producing programs and we've just increased our coverage we've also  started a partnership with the belmont historical society to do regular programming that's something we're very proud of and of course some of the other shows that we've started in the last year or so is representative rogers marion ryan mr attorney has some programs that we started now in the next year and you'll see some of that in that document i gave you really it's news and more news community news we've been developing a program unfortunately has not really taken off yet but we are working on it too to make that go we're also going to be starting a program called belmont now a monthly program documentary and with newsmakers from belmont from government from schools tell us what's going on as of this month or next month and the and then sports coverage increased government access coverage you would be surprised and i say this every year but it's a funny story the very first time we did the w other meeting going to be on and i said we just started and it's like people see it and they realize oh that's something i really need that's something we this community needs and so the demand started immediately three of the things that we're working on that have been in the works is our website overhaul and everybody knows where the website if it works the tendency is not to mess with it too much if you can keep it working because it's a lot of work to do to redesign it but we've looked at a lot of the feedback from the community a lot of the feedback from the board to redesign the website to make it more user friendly to make it more interactive and so we are working on that to freshen the website up as well simplify it really and we're also working on a an application mobile app because we found that there's a lot of people from the cystic set watch meetings and programs on their devices so we need to be able to make that much easier for people to watch  and then we're looking at our all programming grid and a complete overhaul of that to figure out what programs people we have some of that information from the surveys so that we are making b m see must see t v as well and with that i just want to mention one more thing and then i will be done but i do want to just just thank the staff because i wouldn't be able to do anything this center would really be nothing without the dedication of the people in the in the booth and everything julie just stefano does her job she does not seek the limelight ever and she works on the weekends got his foot the door and he pushes pushed his way in because he learned he focused on what he needed to know to do a better job and he's kept at it and kept at it and he's a great addition he's overcome some obstacles to be where he is today and i'm just looking for a lot more growth from jeremy as well and he brings a lot of passion to the job adam does and very i don't know what to say about him he probably doesn't know what to say about himself but he's he's he's the answer man again somebody who comes out every week and i don't even have to ask him and it's not that i have formed the question yet and he's already doing the thing that needs to be done and we wouldn't have half this facility we have without him it's very clear and then patty my halasz as the administrative manager has been a great addition and is really keeping us organized and is that was the missing link really for us to be able to be of a julie inland who actually took the place of one guy paul kerry who's in the audience tonight all you want to stand up back there and melinda and julie he's watching your coverage so be careful and they have come in and done a great job of keeping of filling where filling job filling policies  earlier i was going to say about jeff that i can assure you he's the maestro for the accomplishments that have been made by the media center and he is well known not only to us here in belmont but throughout the access world in massachusetts and and somewhat nationally as well and we're very fortunate to have jeff with us dems and kaplan is another effective board member  tamzin deals helps us deal with a lot of personnel and kinds of issues because that's a part of our training and when we were planning this evening's activities she indicated that she knew joseph to virus our personal and that he lived in belmont and we jumped at the opportunity to have her invite joseph to be our speaker this evening so tams and i will turn it to you to tell you i am so excited about joseph being here and i'm so happy to be able to introduce him i haven't felt happier since they started paving propellor road to what could be better for joseph is one of the smartest coolest people i know yes and he is very it's amazing that he's even here because he's here from washington d c today in spite of to flights to postpone flights one canceled flights and he literally just just got here so thank you from the board of directors for being here joseph we really appreciate your effort joseph is currently the senior vice president of diversity and innovation for the corporation for public broadcasting in washington d c he formerly was a g b h for many years as executive director of la plaza and previous to that as a director and serious series editor at  thank you very much it is great to be here in the boston area in belmont and this place that over the years became my home in a place where i have many many close friends some of whom are here tonight so thank you  for showing up i appreciate the support i say became my home because i grew up in san antonio in texas a place geographically and culturally very far from here in my family goes back there many many generations stood before the alamo where one of those families mexican families that never crossed the border the border crossed us and for many years i never thought i would be able to call another place home but i love it here and although i work in washington i come home as often as i can i feel very connected to this place and to a community of people who i love very much and i was thinking about all that connection as i was preparing these remarks and i was struck by the fact that in the end i'm kind of a local kind of guy and i think maybe we all really are right we like to belong to a place to a small place and so when  kaplan called and asked me to speak i didn't hesitate one because no one says no to tammy it's just not done and two because my lovely wife money is here even though i'm in c and i don't get a chance to see her very much during the week and she's not in the studio but i hope she's still outside listening so it was an easy decision so thank you  jeff for the invitation and it's great to be here with selectman sammy and former selectman frenzy and of course state representative rogers someone to share with you tonight  a few things about myself about public television and public radio which is the system in which i work a little bit about the overlap between our system and the system of community media coming on his picture of which the belmont media center is a part of and all conclude with some remarks on innovation and the future of public service media and when i see public service media i'm really talking about both the traditional public television public radio and community media and if there's a theme to what i'm speaking about tonight as i reviewed this i think it's really about change and those of us in public service media need to be ready to respond to change so i grew up in a very mexican a bit in san antonio and i say mexican because back then that's what we call ourselves even the word in the u s right no one said hispanic or latino or even mexican american and my the world was very easy back then it was intent to tell you anywhere we were there was mexicans and if you want to the north side of town that's where be anglos lived and there was a section for african americans for black people it was just like a pilot you could have been to three is really easy and my dad was a sheet metal mechanic at a local air force base and my mom took care of us kids and even though was kind of a tough neighborhood a rough place i fe pretty safe it was sort of a like a mexican mayberry sort of life right easy you know surrounded by family and friends and family neighborhoods it was great and we were the first in the neighborhood to have a t v and it was a black and white t v this was probably this probably four or five years also was the late fifty's and for me and i think for us it was magic right this little box that had pictures and you and you could hear sound and my mother and people the neighborhood are really interested because the divorce had a v and they wanted to watch in the kids especially but my mother didn't want all these ruffins in our house so she would put the t v in the window and into the garage and in the morning the kids from the neighborhood come with sit outside and we'd watch we'd watch captain kangaroo doesn't remember captain kangaroo and i think he had a sidekick named mr green jeans that's right in there the dancing bear right now crazy as that but it was it was great and it was sort of magic and it was through television that i really learned to speak english without a mexican or texan accent t v got me started on the road to sort of walter cronkite english and that job was finished at the local parochial school by some very demanding one so it was not that long ago that we were amazed by black and white t v which now seem so primitive and in our lifetimes we've seen the appearance and the disappearance of things like the transistor radio and it tracks cassette tapes v h s tapes v h s machines sony beta and then in the early seventy's this thing called cable sort of emerged right and we would not be here tonight if it weren't for cable so the past fifty years of this incredible technological run force but when i think of technology i think of it on its own as an empty promise what matters to me and i think to all of us is what we do with technology so the coolness of technology is really not enough for me you need to come with a bigger idea attached if it's to mean something and i've been very lucky to work most of my career in mission focused media and that is by by intention and by design make well that's not entirely true early on i had dreams of becoming a famous filmmaker that didn't work out but i found a home  in public television soon after college and i stayed so what began on that lawn outside my home in san antonio i think it was sort of a love affair with media and with my parents support after i start producing at a very early age some of it under pretty weird or inappropriate conditions i would say my first paid job as a photographer was at the age of twelve and i would hustle patrons at a local bar for polaroid pictures of them with the women they were drinking with when looking back to probably not their wives i never took two bucks a pop for and my dad would front me the money for a pack of polaroid film and i and i double my money basically and then pay him back and my father i think thought he was teaching me about being an entrepreneur i think it was just an excuse so you could spend all day at the bar and i spent the day there too but before too long i moved on i started developing my own negatives and printing black and white photos and then my brother and i started making super eight movies modeled after these four films that we saw on the local public television station on channel nine and santa tonio and those movies were sort of a window to a world that i desperately wanted to be a part of and to make a long story short within a few years i was accepted to boston university the first time i moved here and i studied it be you and i was here for four years and then soon after completing deal within a couple of years i started working in public television i started at kentucky educational television in lexington and i became i started as a camera and i became a director and then eventually a writer producer and eventually an executive producer and about twenty years ago i arrived to dilute g b h and i stayed for fifteen years and then five years ago i left media production of it all behind and i took a job at c p b and i say i left a media production because it seemed to be we have no editorial or programming role and  we are strictly funders of public media the official language is that we are this stewards of the american people's investment in public media what that means is that congress on october first gives us them with the federal protection for public television and public radio and then we disperse those funds and we manage those funds according to the public broadcasting act of one thousand nine hundred fifty seven a document on which we base which we all our work and we go back constantly and refer to that document almost on a daily basis can we do this can we do what is the statute say because we have to be very careful and stick to the to the rules of the statute otherwise that money could disappear so i think of that act as a very sort of artful work that established public media in this country as a public private partnership limited government support without government interference and when i say limited government support each of you in this room and every american contributes a dollar thirty six per year the public television public radio through taxes local stations leverage those federal dollars and they raise more money in their own communities and i think of the public broadcasting act as part of the legacy of l b j who signed it into law so we make grants to say sions and public media institutions and i work with discretionary dollars earmarked for television projects at c p b the world is divided between television and radio i work almost exclusively on the television side and most of my work is in support of content projects so the origins of public media go back a lot further but i think of the public broadcasting act as the start of the modern public there so unlike public media community media institutions like the belmont media center as a comet or peg stations are commonly known are supported by cable operators in accordance with section six eleven of the communications act which says that a local cable franchising authority like the town of belmont can require cable operators to set aside channels for public education or governmental use b e g peg so the main difference i think between our systems is that we are primarily over the air channels and you're primarily cable channels and i see it primarily because we're all trying to explore different ways to deliver content right with both streaming content primarily so the funding models also differ a little bit the federal dollars that we give to stations represent on average about fifteen percent of a station's budget now that that varies for fifty percent of us station like w t v h but for a small radio station on an indian reservation west it may represent eighty percent of their budget so it varies you know support for local cable operators through that fund paid channels represent significantly more than that i think most community media channels probably ninety percent of the budget comes from the from the cable companies so because public media stations television radio or over the air were subject to oversight b media is not subject to oversight of the f c c so some of those are some of the differences in our systems but there are similarities and i think the key similarity is is a shared commitment to what i call local m i think of public media public television public radio's greatest strength as a system is our presence in more than a thousand communities across the country we have about nine hundred radio stations and almost four hundred television stations and you're very blessed here to have an abundance of public media you have first of all g b h which is a major supplier of television content to the system and they're an emerging power and radio as well and you have w b york which has this great legacy of of radio journalism so what makes the belmont media center unique i think is your service to the local community and some of that material that jeff showed us i think is fantastic it's what we in the world  communication called hyper localism your community in the end is your greatest asset so it's reassuring to see so many of our neighbors here and so many of your neighbors on the screen so it's a b b we place a high value on this idea of local in my opinion if a local public still edition station is really broadcasting content it's not really fulfilling its mission we have to be more than just television and radio and stations that ha deep and meaningful connections to their local communities are the ones that ultimately will survive and prosper and a big part of my job is supporting content around specific issues that is used by local communities local stations excuse me to build connections to different parts of their communities you know we do things like american graduate which is about the dropout crisis so in addition to making content grants we also make grants in support of engagement efforts stations all across the country and help them build connections with foundations with community leaders education leaders civic leaders with caring adults who want to help children succeed and the data tell us that with our national local partners we're actually making a difference and that effort as i said is called american graduate and you should look it up it's actually really amazing and it's the kind of thing that people don't imagine public television and public radio and we also do similar things with returning veterans and we have a project c home it's around the issue of veterans from iraq and afghanistan men and women who serve the country and who need our help in reintegrating as they return home so our work is very much very much about content but very much about engagement these days so in much the same way i think the belmont media center is more than just a media center and i think we saw that on the screen so the bigger idea behind all this great technology is that the center has become a part of  cultural fabric a bill much like the like the belmont memorial library like the underwood pool the schools the town meeting and it's important not just because it's the right thing to do but i think it will help ensure your success in the long run and i think you're doing the right thing so so in my world public television stations that engage with their communities have more members and they have members who write bigger checks and those stations have better connections to foundations and those from that foundation support that work in short stations that understand their role in the community are doing well by doing good so all of this is important because if you remember that list of technologies that i ran through earlier the walkman the transistor radio the cassette all that stuff the takeaway from that list is that things change and they change sometimes very quickly technologies coming though and with change comes challenge and it's challenge for both public media and community media i'm sure many of you are familiar with the term cord cutter people who are not using cable anymore and just going to internet service some people especially young people are saying no to cable and watching t v on their desktops and they're like times and some like me are going ot tea which stands for over the top so i have maybe some of the also to have apple t v so i can  can bypass the cable system if i want and on an apple t v i have an app that connects me to netflix connects me to showtime to h b o go and what's interesting is i made a call recently i was making confession here i've been in belmont how many years my wife is now here i think it's seventeen eighteen years we're actually moving the world i'm not very far just across the road and they offer r c and cable like it was just because i was writing this at the airport  stuck i called r c m just to check on something and i said well what if i decide not to get cable and i just order an internet package do i have to pay a peg fee and the person on the phone said no surprise so that's  something for something to think about because the big fear is how you survive it's something for us to think about too because most of our viewership is not over the years through cable so but on apple t v there is a p b s so we're thinking about i don't remember seeing a community media app that was localized to my washington area location so it's things we need to think about something else to consider is a planned f c c spectrum auction i don't know if any of you know that the f c c is planning to free up a lot of digital spectrum for use to create a more robust mobile system and they are offering options to a bunch of media center and what does it mean for public television stations radio by the way is not in fact not affected by this auction so these are the kinds of things we have to wrestle with with and think about all the time the thing is i'm not here to to rain on your parade i don't think there's a need to panic i think cable's going to be around for a really long time but those of us who work in public service media need to anticipate changes in technology and we have to innovate in response and more than anything we have to advocate for our communities the public broadcasting act and the requirement that cable companies sponsor things like the belmont media center didn't just happen people made them happen so we have vigilant in the end i think the media centers commitment to the local community is what will secure your future i said at the start of my remarks that i'm a local guy i think that i think we're all local and i think we all appreciate local and no one can provide the service to belmont that you do the way you do it so you're in a very unique position i watched celeste under a really folksy interview which is great  from don't want is great so i think you're already doing the right thing are the challenges ahead sure there are there are challenges for both for community media and for public media but both of us have met challenges in the i think in ten years when i have a vague memory of serving on that commission in ten years the people here have accomplished so much and really a few short years so all of you should be very proud and i'm really honored that you asked me to speak tonight so thank you josef will you be around people who question is about the public broadcasting well thank you thank you very much now comes the time for our recognition and awards and i would invite julie my first responsibilities to this evening is to give out two awards to two very special people our first award will be going to for volunteer of the year award goes to megan rose marsh for the past four years maggie has covered and studio way this is a program created to spread awareness of violence against women her dedication and enthusiasm is greatly appreciated and we are delighted to percents you with this awar gentleman if you've been by his house it's awesome to see all of your sculptures there octavia so i tell you a forte is our second volunteer of the year i take it i take it has covered a number of community events for us over the past h that's a commitment in itself he has become a regular crew member for you've on science for the public shows we thank you for his commitment and are pleased to present him with this award i can speak to tavia oh so wonderful fortitude i worked with him the other night at this precious child meeting running a camera and julie was having difficulty recognizing a home that was in  microphones and octavio solve the problem and then what little bit was left out of it julie tells me that she used a program called audit audit audacity  octavio like to just briefly say that when you go to the your computer and look at these on demand programs you have no idea how much effort is taken by the staff to put these programs on an on demand system julie was at the general middle school at four o'clock in the afternoon putting up microphone and establishing our connections back to the studio so she worked from four in the afternoon until almost midnight introducing that special town meeting for this community and it is an example of not only the volunteer help that we have but in julie's performances as in i'm an employee of the belmont b d s and now the board service awards are assisting me in the presentation of the board service awards we susie spidey and susie will present the first was to lucia thank you lucia arno bernsen has been a bright light on our board i met lucia six years ago at this meeting and we were talking and dilution mentioned that he now i might want to consider you know being on the board but i'm not sure and i'm not sure if i have the time and what i would really contribute and without actually getting her approval i nominated her for the board and it was quickly approved and i feel like i made a really good recommendation that night because lucia has brought so much dedication and passion the board and along with her many years of experience in cable and in sales and marketing as third generation belmont resident she loves this community and it shows in all that she did to bring to her role as a board director of the media center and i know i'm personally going to miss her greatly you've been an inspiration to me and we appreciate everything that you've done for the media center and are so grateful that you're going to continue to help us on the marketing end of things so i would like to extend this service award to you and thank you for all of your your work know i have an award to give i always hope to learn something one new thing each day in my life and today i learned that joseph and ed work together convening the belmore media center ed has been a stalwart and terms of asking the right questions at board meetings and sometimes we thought he was getting a little bit to question a but the results of his question is have made this a much better organization and a much more effective organization and he has a particular skill in dealing with technical issues and so we're earlier we're happy that ed will stay on and be a part of the technology committee moving forward there aren't enough words that i could say that would describe all of the things that ed's done ed just recently had a serious operation so you see him with a cane but he's recovering well he said and we look forward to his continue to participate in an ed it's with heartfelt thanks that i present and i can't read can't believe how long it's been since they threw my head into the ring at the border conveners it's been nine years and go back to two thousand and four the town had put together the bord the nine years i think the board and though i media center has evolved in a positive way of the time much has been done to build up a strong  engaged board we have a very engaged board so you'll learn we're very active a lot of questions get asked and we need more expertise we need to bring in new board members with fresh ideas and skills to enhance the board so those are things i think a very key to engaging and vibrant board but as i told you  are you sure you want to be a board member because a lot of the things the board members get involved with are operations policies budget staffing expansion strategy which are the same things as doing productions and then going out there and doing marketing although there's a there's a space for marketing and getting out there and helping the staff get all that done but you'll find that there's a lot of challenges and things that the board has to struggle with to keep excellence within yourself a lot of planning and you know some of the things technology that's my focus and i agree with you joe the technology is important but it's really an enabler it's not itself the magic it's what you do with technology how do you take new technology look at what's happening in the future and how can you take advantage of that technology i mean you look at cell phones today you tube if you don't have all the cell phones you will have all these you tube videos out there so those are some things that the board should be looking at and i hope to guide the board in terms of asking questions about their chronology what's coming what's what is this going to do to us what happens when cable gets cut where is our revenue going to come from i don't have answers for those but those are the things that we need to look at in the future to make sure that we have a funding source but right now because of the cable act that's how we get our franchising fees and if that goes away and people are cutting the cord we don't get the franchising fee so how do we keep that funding source coming so we need to look at different things learn video production all about nonprofits in the last couple of years nonprofits are different animals and then commercial entities and i have observed my fellow board members put in lots of original board members leaving the board in b n c in good hands so a lot of challenges and work to be done to maintain the high excellence of b m c and i'm extremely grateful to have been played a part on the board in the last nine years so i'm stepping down i feel good about this and this allows new blood new board members to come in and use their ideas you stay up here for a minute in two thousand and eleven just before our annual meeting david t nelson who was a founding board member passed away and in honor of him the board created the david nelson spirit award for lifelong disorder in my view could also have been named after ed you know for the same for the same reasons particularly adventure as ted alluded to ed has been an adventure here and has been has asked questions that needed to be asked and without him i don't we certainly wouldn't be where we are today he is a person who in a board meeting will say the question has to be asked if we out the door and just go oh shoot  how did you miss that and he's he's contributed in due diligence in the research he's made us a lot smarter than we were before by demanding that we really do the research that needed to be done and without a doubt a great night thank you it's very bittersweet tonight have really enjoyed my you know six years in the board each board member brings so many special gifts and i've learned so much from each and every one of them especially you know turning a one room belmont high school to this you know there was so much technology involved in there was so much operationally and you know i just sat there like a sponge i learned so much from all of you and you really are a nd so deserving of that award so congratulations i grew up in belmont has susie said three generations here and i was thinking today about growing up here women the one time in high school coming home i said mom what yeah and i'd also wanted just mention here that we've been talking about this is just a vibrant maybe your home for all ages you know to create to be behind the camera to be in front of the camera to help cover govern meetings and so much more our lives can be described so much by our stories by our cultures where we come from the choices we've made decisions we've made i want to thank jeff so much because personally i have a story that recently was told and it was about my great uncle and he lived in the attic when i was a kid and he was a composer of music and he had come from l a and there was all these newspaper clippings he was very famous over there for all the classical music that he had written and he passed away a long time ago but he lived in our attic and i just remember this man you know with the going harry really intense and you know he used to teach at the conservatory and he'd be  working to get his music published with a musicologist and played and compile and so anyway long story we did have a concert at the center and beach straight and how emotional moving it was to hear these two violence in the soloist the piano bring about twenty of about three hundred pieces that are sitting in these boxes that he's written so to hear it come alive and it's a story that the belmont media center thanks to jeff and jeremy was told and recorded and now on and archived and we have it and it's i just can't say what that means but it's a great example of the stories that all of people in this room i'm sure have in the community has and that's what the center can do it's it's you know you can doesn't matter what it's about it doesn't matter what what it is it's it's meaningful it's meaningful to you you want to tell it's your vision it's your voice and this is the place to do it and i couldn't be more proud to be part of this team for six years and i really look forward to sneaking in there and doing some marketing here and there with susie and carolyn and it's  appreciate that up at unity as well so thank you again for coming really do appreciate it and i wish you all a happy thanksgiving