Technology Report for PNB, Summer 2006

• Managing seamless national broadcasts from any location, including remote locations
• Leading technical planning meetings and discussions with entire network staff, coordinating ideas and resources for technical and operational parity and smooth functioning.
• Providing operational services and support for Pacifica stations and their personnel.
• Providing operations and distribution services to affiliates, as deemed appropriate, as a client service representative.
• Providing streamed meetings for PNB and other parts of the network when requested

1.Major  Functions

Regular tasks associated with national operation include:

1.Special  National Program Operations

• Facilitated (see section II)

• Engineered (see section II)

2.Network-Wide Operations Coordination

• Needs Assessment
  A cooperative process between the national technical staff and the technical managers of the local unit to determine technical needs of each aspect of the unit, exploring needs for improvement, re-evaluation, and plans for future needs.
  Initiating a network-wide collaborative process with a focus on addressing the growing needs of the sister stations, PRA, and other parts of the network, including affiliate network, as seen appropriate, keeping Pacifica on pace in the broadcast world.

• Network Operations Group Meetings
  (see section IV)
  

• "Tech Talks"
  Organized technical workshops, conference calls, and meetings for operations staff throughout the Pacifica & Affiliates Network and various other technical experts. The goal of the Tech Talk initiative is to provide long-range strategic planning for community radio and to leverage the wide range of expertise and skills in community media at our sister stations and beyond. So far, two conferences have occurred, and dozens of technicians have attended. We plan to re-invigorate working groups that have been identified, with the addition of a National Technical Director and new tools like the TechPort Wiki (more on this below and in the Internet report.)
  

3.Network Wide Support
(see section IV)

4.National Meeting Streaming
Streamed and archived all the National PNB and PNB Committee telephone meetings.

5.Documentation
The start of an ongoing project to produce network-wide technical help documentation.
The TechPort Wiki (see section II)

2.Major Accomplishments

1.National Broadcasts
One special broadcast facilitated start to finish, and two specials engineered start to finish:
Facilitated the technical side of the Katrina National Broadcast on April 15th
Setup and Engineered The Iraq War Hearing from Washington DC on April 27th.
Setup and Engineered The Hayden C.I.A. Dir. Confirmation Hearings from Washington DC on May 18th.

2.The TechPort Wiki Documentation Project
The collection and creation of technical documentation has been started in the form of a wiki (a wiki is a type of website that allows users to easily add, remove, or otherwise edit all content, very quickly and easily, sometimes without the need for registration - this ease of interaction and operation makes a wiki an effective tool for collaborative writing). There are some beginning documents in this wiki already, such as a network wide contact list, a national special programming application, production standards, and job descriptions.

In the coming months, together with the staff from the local stations, and experts beyond our sister stations, we will be adding more technical how to pages, descriptive pages, informative/review information, and will grow into a multi-media tool with images, audio, and video training tools (like helpful screenshots with narration, and video tutorials).

3.WBAI Streaming
Over the past few months, Pacifica National Operations staff have been involved in WBAI's live Internet stream offerings. For the past 2 months, all of the live streams available to the public have come directly from the offices of the National Operations staff. As WBAI completes this spring fund drive, WBAI's stream is the primary source for support coming from outside the signal area.

3.Major Challenges - Lets turn them positive!

1.Like Starting From Scratch
Necessary process management, and standardized methodologies were not documented and
shared, and in some cases not sufficiently developed. We are now initiating development and coordination of our technical human resources (see section IV). Useful documents, and processes that already exist will be discovered, used, and shared while necessary new documents will be created. The cooperation needed for us to operate as one network, will be initiated. Currently operations unit tend be isolated, hindering network functions.

2.Limited human resources network-wide
Though this is a common challenge, we also have people with huge amounts of specific knowledge and experience in the network. Our job is to identify these people, get them interested in working together, and have them dedicate themselves to specific projects. For example, lets optimize what we have by having them work in teams.

4.New Objectives

1.Pacifica Remote Studios
The Pacifica Remote Studio project (fka "Pacifica Everywhere") is an effort to create portable studio packages for each sister station. These packages will consist of hardware and software that can be used to stream, produce, upload, document, and publicize remote events for the Pacifica Network.

2.Enhanced Coordination and Communication
In an effort to keep a forward look at new and changing priorities and technologies, an ongoing series of conference calls and working groups will be formed using the Pacifica's current operations staff

Network Operations Group Meetings -
This Operations Group will consist of Operations and Production Directors, Chief Engineers and Information Technologies Managers in coordination with the Interim National Technical Director and the Pacifica Web Master. Their function is to discuss technological plans and resolve technical concerns at their local units as well as for Pacifica as a whole.

Digital Radio Technologies Task-force Meetings -
This task-force will consist of experts within our Pacifica community. The goals of this task-force will be to concentrate on the new technologies, such as Digital HD Radio (IBOC), Streaming, Podcasting and other new technologies as they emerge, and the implementation for distribution of Pacifica's audio content.

Jon Almeleh
Pete Korakis
May 2006