good morning and welcome to what's going on i'm jan knight and with me today is jeff hansell the executive director of good morning jack good morning how are you doing right thank you so you want to tell everybody what we're actually doing here besides the show what we're doing for the first time i don't know oh ok that's a first time we don't even know what we're doing right well you can't see it from the hey hang on a second i'm actually for better or worse directing the show from right here from this little i pad all the the technology but also thanks adam dusenberry our technical director who's helped make that possible and i don't know if this is always the right thing to do but we thought it would be kind of fun the tenth anniversary of belmont media center to try something that we haven't we are soon to celebrate a great event in in the belmont in the center of the tenth anniversary and since you have been here since two thousand  six let me see oh you know a good deal about the history and the highlights and the upcoming celebration yeah and i'm just learning that it's really hard to direct a show while you're on the show why did i do this well tell let's maybe some people don't know about you jan who you're one of our co host for the this show what's going on and let me and you're from you've been around here for a while and belmont well i've lived in the hot for twenty five years you are actually a little longer than that so you kind of you're still kind of new then right yes same here and you know we thank you for being here and helping to host the program with the last few doll yes he's been here for since we started what's going on a few years ago how long ha been going on dave do you remember talking to a camera man over three years fifty years i don't know four ok all right so it's been a while and so we're  happy to have you here as well very much and so hopefully what my idea is that hopefully we can get both you and dolores on here once and  big tenth anniversary and you're meeting and dinner yes on october twenty ninth are you going to be there i hope to be there a great ok well we'll look for you yes ok thank you  that's at the beach street center october twenty ninth six fifty six fifteen pm and i think on your screen right now you can see just call or email patty at belmont media dot org to make reservations so if you're seeing this show after the twenty ninth he didn't make it you know we hope we will have seen you there and they'll be a lot of stuff going on we have some special guests very impressive gues just i'm having fun with her i'm sorry we're going to have the district attorney of middlesex county marian ryan who is a woman resident yes and we have a special guest andrew feldman who actually was a student here when we were in the high school ten years ago and today ten years later he's a political communications director he runs his own political strategy in washington d c and he was chosen as one of the top ten rising stars in washington d c in that field and he started here i don't want media center and got his kind of feet wet with media and politics and it was it's a great success story because he was he had some obstacles in his life and he kind of threw his involvement in media center overcame them and has gone on to be very successful so it's a great very interesting people and mostly it's fun we want to give people a chance to socialize and just talk give them a chance to get to know people that maybe they haven't i meet people they may our volunteers and some other interested people people have been involved in the media center for a while including our board of directors and i think we've been blessed with the board that we've had the board members that we've had over ten years particularly you know those people who serves its beginning who served for quite a long time and i'm i don't think we would be anywhere near where we're at today in terms of  i mean things like organizational stability in the facility that we're at this just a with a foundation that we have a media center it's maybe hard to see from the outside but someone who works here who's been here i can tell you the care and attention that they put into putting together the organization you know looking at sort of the things that may not be is interesting to people like the founding documents and the bylaws and even the extent that they went to we figured out the logo for the media center and a number of other things it just gives a lot of care and attention and good management from the board and i'm always as executive director i mean i'm always learning from them on what i should be doing in addition to learning from the staff finding out from the staff you know what we can do so it's a great position to be in  this show because we had the idea to do it and we tried a couple of we made a couple of tries at it and finally found the right group of people and i think the folks to senior center the council on aging have been instrumental and help coordinate in the program recruiting volunteers keeping the crew together overseen it it's been a great help to making this go so you know we have an idea but it's only because of folks like yourself and the people behind the cameras here who are show up every week and volunteer to do the show so that i'm really proud of me as one example yeah  but there's a lot of things it is it is hard to direct show why you're on it i don't know where ok it's and i'll get the hang of it here but i think and i guess the obvious thing that you know i would say is the technology that how it's evolved you know everybody a lot of people have one of these right  and some brand or another and that's really changed a lot of things and were so we're always looking at how we can utilize the newest technology to make what we're doing easier more interesting more relevant that sort of thing to the community and so expanding into those that area and particularly local news hyper local news and using media that way one thing for example it's kind of  a way that illustrates that excuse me we have there's an event this weekend called no fly day well there are some folks in the community interested in that issue as and  whatever the issue is i mean we're not necessarily i mean it doesn't take a position on issues per say so but they want to come in and cover that issue that's important to them we're giving them the equipment doing some training the air time and but the interesting thing about it is they're all going to take their cameras there i phones or their androids or whatever brand they are and also take some footage and you see that on the news now that use of cameras because they're right there you don't have to find somebody to bring them there they're already there so we'll utilize some of that footage in the event that they're doing this weekend the no fly day october twenty fourth and we'll see what that comes out in our  attempt and efforts to produce hyper local news for the for the community in conjunction with the newspaper the government system herald and with the belmont tony and edited by franklin tucker we're also want to use that sort of technology to gather news and find the news and that's the area i think i'm most interested in in terms of how we can best serve the community to find you know to inform people about what's going on because like show what's going on but the lack of the decrease in reporting overall nationwide worldwide and the availability of reporters has sort of changed the entire news industry in that what's become more and more important worldwide is the coverage of local issues and how do you do that economically and how do you do it so it's available to people and one of the things i just wanted to mention which is probably going to put a lot of people to sleep but i'll be busy brief as i can't is that you know i've spent a lot of time reading and thinking and studying what's going on in terms of media news i work for c n n for a while so i've been in the news business it isn't my main main career work in advertising but you know i looked at what was going on worldwide today in the next few years and you see that large news organizations like the british broadcasting company are relying ever more so every day on local coverage to figure out what's going on in the world so what they're doing in the u k and other areas around the world is making sure that there's good coverage of local events of local government through the kind of technology that we have so they've said to them to their audience and to their people look we've got to make sure there's a camera in every boardroom in every council room across england to record these government meetings to record what's happening that's the only way we're going to find out what's out there because there's nobody reporting it and so that's basically that's about third of what we do is to cover cover events and what i've seen since i've been here is people what not just they want more of it and they want to be able to access it anytime and that's basically what we do so when you think about what's happening worldwide we're kind of leading that i mean the media centers like develop media center are part of that movement that someone anywhere in the world can go online and search up a topic or a person and find out information about that topic through sort of what the news that we're feeding into the internet and into the they are helping to drive that process and being a part of it so and the town government deserves a lot of credit for their interest in it and some of the politicians some of the elected officials who've been involved have a lot to do it as well so excellent what else you want to ask me how i see you have you been here for for quite a long time since in the media center and  us a little bit about the beginning of it ok so yeah the what camera on again let's see camera one ok it worked we were in the high school when we first started and ok thank you our excellent floor director is telling you how much time we have left by we've been talking for a long time already can you believe that yeah  volunteer and i find it very interesting what's going on here and how we reach the community as a whole through this channel and people can they can get it on television or they get on their laptop or whatever and it just is really great well what would you i mean again i'm not i don't want to put you on the spot but let me put you on the spot what issues do you think what what occurs to you that might be of interest to people or is important do you think that we could that the media center could do not not me personally or staff but maybe even more than that the things happening in the world or the community you think are i think there's a very great emphasis right now on being open about what's going on behind the scenes in politics and in local well not big politics but also in just local government why are things happening a certain way and what are these meetings you know what are the people saying and what how do they come to these decisions and i think it's something like this makes it possible for you to bring in someone and say well so why are you designing the roads that way or why are you doing whatever you're doing that way are they changing the flight paths of planes or  open up to celebrations and we do have a lot to celebrate around here we've got a wonderful town and we are very blessed with so many things so the the music in the park for instance having somebody there to record that and  show what a great place we live in all of that makes a difference do you do you think there are issues that are relevant to you personally not not issues like politics but like education  or food safety or environment or issues related to seniors you know was there something there that you think is important that that's affecting you right now or you see in your family members anything that that's a tough question yeah i one of the things that impressed me greatly was finding out that the the belmont the gallery of art shows not only local artists which is fabulous and wonderful but they also show artwork from the children in the schools that's a big thing i think for encouraging them to go in that direction and express themselves and i just i leverage it creative expression it's a very creative expression and it's important the whole thing about the the music in the park the business is opened up and hand out and the recall right is right wonderful collection of beautiful children that we all get to see on halloween and celebrate with them and be part of it and i think it's important part of the town that you're in you know yeah i think that's maybe that's the challenge we have how much time we have left anybody know this is live television really ok ten minutes so i wish we could go another hour now you  part of the community i think that's one of the challenges we have is to figure out what are people you know how can we help facilitate that process so that people feel like they're part of a community and it's not just a place they come home to at night you know flick on the t v or yeah phone these days and feel like they're part of something that maybe concerns and i think that what we do see at least what i see is every time we're doing something that is affecting the largest number of people in belmont we get the largest number of interest we get a great deal of interest or when we been covering sports for a while now thanks to germany missouri robert hofmann i mean everybody on the staff who gets involved that's been we've had a lot of feedback from community about that so you get the people that are interested in that a lot of people watch those programs or ask about those programs but it's i think that's my challenge and our challenge is to say well what's it what is important to people and how can we make life in belmont how can we gauge people how can we get people to engage which with each other and to solve problems you know that's really and i think the other thing that you asked me earlier about what you know i'm proud of or what i interested in and  maybe the board as well and staff is looking at the part of the community that's in the most need and to try to serve that so we do a lot of work with special populations whether it be people exiting mental health care a mclean and having a place where they can come and do vocational job training was working with our neighbors here beaverbrook just step next door with a special needs adults and training them for independent living  education and again vocational training and also working with the as we have done mass rehab one of our staff people here actually came to us to mass rehab on a training grant and we were able to work with him and develop his skills so that now he's a full time staff person here doing that and to me i'm really proud of that that that's because what is unfortunate really happening is there's less  assistance you know through the government local state federal to those people in need whether it's people in mental health industry special needs education and also like people looking for  work maybe their mid career maybe their tours or in their career but they want to keep active you know obviously one of the biggest things in our society is people are living longer healthier are more active and that's really important that we all recognise that you can't you know we're all part of the same community and yes it's sort of i think making people shift how they look at other people like well you're not just a senior you're actually part of the community you're an important i mean we're all on the same in the same boat as it were so i think engaging those kinds of populations of all parts of the community is important anyway i just to and i as a member of the  senior center i can see that that has a huge impact on the seniors of this town and what it offers for them and and it's been a life changing thing for many of them and not to them about it and then it's just very special and wonderful what goes on there all the activities and things that are available to people yet one of the things that we're doing with the senior center actually in this next spring is we're going to be part of the story corps project and we're going to do it locally but also for story corps on a national basis so we're going to record we're using the facilities here people's memories and stories of their lives  and making that available to people to record the history and you know maybe we'll call it something like the belmont memory project but it'll will also be part of story corps so what we record will actually go into the national archives and be there  and i think that's you know you talk about collective memory people need to have a place where they can access that you know and easily write so what he's using the encyclopedia britannica anymore right as we used to look it up and yeah my dad used to say look up in the encyclopedia now you information is instantly available and now it's important what information is out there and you know what is important that's true yes wow do we have anything else we need to to touch on again you know maybe remind people when that when the event is right oh absolutely tell us more about the of that because now that is that open to the public open to the public to expect for dinner and so they can plan accordingly for that yeah it's october twenty ninth so six fifteen pm we'll have some socializing dinner of a sit down dinner catered by vicki lees here in belmont and that's next thursday next thursday that senior center excuse me one of our staffs mother who's a classical pianist will actually be providing some musical entertainment there alice dusenberry so you'll be able to hear that special guests marian ryan and will have a little bit of fun with it as well so again it's really just a celebration time to gather and celebrate and look forward to what we can do