Rada Film Group Hears From Christian Ugbode, Web Conceptualist for NBPC

At Day Two of the Public Media Camp (#PubCamp in Twitterverse) at American University, Nonso Christian Ugbode, web conceptualist for the National Black Programming Consortium (NBPC) led a brainstorming session on the creation of a Public Media Corps.

The Public Media Corps, an idea in development by NBPC, is inspired by the Peace Corps and a vision to connect with underserved communities while bridging digital generation gaps – a group of young new media professionals would partner with their local public TV or radio station to train staff and help establish or strengthen their new media and web presence. An additional goal is to use public media to engage communities that currently have limited access to new media and in some cases, computer technology in general.

Ugbode explained the need for the Corps. “The way the system works right now, there are disparate stations without enough resources” to undertake innovative and engaging new media campaigns.

Some local public media stations “think they need to be on Twitter and that’s it,” said Ugbode. As a result, “social media engagement is passing them by.”

The goal of the Public Media Corps is to “help stations and non-profit arts organizations develop a new relationship with their audience. It can grow to libraries and other non profits, which can then get a following of their own,” said Ugbode.

One idea that was proposed was for the Public Media Corps to utilize existing PBS and NPR programming to create workshops for high school and community college students in which the students would ultimately create new media projects inspired by the program.

The question arose of how to recruit these local new media ambassadors. The idea that excited Ugbode the most was proposed by PubCamper Katie Kemple of Public Media’s Economy Story. That was approaching commercial entities such as Google to sponsor their employees to take part in the Public Media Corps. This would manifest as a residency program for their employees, in which participants would work for one year in the Public Media Corps, while still being paid by their commercial employer. “There is space for a public/commercial collaboration that is more equitable,” said Ugbode.

Ugbode said it’s all about engagement via social media. He said that the Public Media Corps has the potential to “create a social media ecosystem that helps people develop sustained relationships so that no one is excluded.

“The job of social media is to bring the new tools to underserved communities, as opposed to the same people just talking to themselves. We need these spaces to provide more perspectives.”

This entry was posted on Monday, October 19th, 2009 at 8:14 am and is filed under new from rada film. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.