Just Jennifer

A recent tally brought surprising results: nearly two-thirds of the Videomaker staff either ride a bike, take a bus, ride-shares, or walks to work rather than drive a car. That’s saying a lot. Even Matt York can sometimes be seen buzzing to work on a little scooter. We’ve had some diehard staffers who don’t even own a car. [Below: Videomaker Bike Rack]

Long before it was hip to be eco-friendly, Videomaker’s hometown of Chico, California was doing the Save-the-Earth thing. We honor, preserve and sometimes battle over our old-growth trees. We’ve been a cycling town for decades, and even have a Velo cycling club, several century-mile cycle clubs, and a world-class cycling team, sponsored by our own world-class beer-haus: The Sierra Nevada Brewery.

This week was “Bike Chico“, a week-long event to encourage people to ride their bikes to work and school. Events around town included Energizer Stations with drinks and snacks for riders; and games, demos and important bike helmet safety tips for kids.

Last week was “Free Bus Ride” week, where anyone could ride any city bus for free all week. I sampled a ride, it didn’t take too long.

This is just a taste of what makes Chico such a wonderful place to live and work. It’s a college town with a small population, and has an honest-to-goodness thriving Old Town Downtown where you can actually stroll Main Street in the evening and stop off at Shubert’s Hand Made Ice-Cream shop, sitting outside on the sidewalk and watch and wave as other strollers go by.We have two marvelous Farmer’s Markets weekly, one selling veggies and goodies early in the morning, and the other more of a carnival, meet and greet in the summertime evenings. We even have outdoor movie-in-the-park night in the summertime.

Karma wasn’t on MY side this week, though, when it came to getting to work. I rode Monday and Tuesday, but decided to drive on Wednesday, due to a stupid need to run errands on my lunch hour. And wouldn’t you know it, my car broke down on the way to the office and I spent the next 2 hours waiting for a tow truck and then getting an estimate. It’s a German car, Audi A4 Quattro, All-wheel Drive. Nice sweet ride… until it doesn’t ride.

COST: Starter and Ignition, $1500, New key, $300, a chance to ride my bike for a few more weeks: Priceless.

It’s going to cost me a couple paychecks to get that baby out of the shop! Stupid gas-guzzling machine!

I guess I’ll be riding my bike more, not less… and taking the bus a time or two.

Chico California a great place to be. Just some rambling musings before I hop on my bike and head for the park. Night, all! Happy Weekend!

Did you ever play that summer camp game where someone starts a story and the next person has to continue the next chapter, followed by another storyteller, etc. until everyone has a chance to make up a chapter? Well, now you can do it with video, and maybe win a prize for your effort.

Sharp-eyed Videomaker reader, Allen Klosowski sent us a link to a cool new video contest that let’s you… or me… or Allen… or anyone, add to the story of a movie being produced.
Erik Luchauer and Kevin Antoine, the producers of Rootclip shoot the first chapter, and then it’s placed on the internet for video producer to submit their versions for the next chapter.

Luchauer adds, ” We at Rootclip produce the first chapter (a.k.a. The “root clip”) and users create chapters 2 through 6. The final chapter (chapter 6) is only eligible for submissions by the winners of chapters 2-5. I also hope to see some of your work on our site. We’re really trying to create a collaborative community and build up the excitement for a new generation of filmmakers. ”

After each consecutive chapter’s entries are in, the web audience votes on their favorite, which becomes the next official chapter, and then video producers start vying for the next chapter’s selection.

Winners of each chapter will get a $500 Visa card, and the final Chapter 6 winner gets to go to Traverse City Film Festival in Traverse City, Michigan, and meet the Rootclip creators, as well as filmmaker, Michael Moore.

It might be too late to enter this contest by the time our next issue goes to press, but check out the site for news about upcoming contests and challenges. Now THAT’s Community Sharing at it’s best!
www.knoxvillefilms.com/2008/05/rootclipcom-new-collaborative-short.html

Someone recently asked me why my blog title is Just Jennifer. This question thrilled me greatly as I was under the impression that the only entities reading my blog were ring - tone ‘bots and those other ‘bots that have that word that starts with Vi- and ends with gra… as these are the only entities that are responding to my blogs. In great number. REALLY great numbers.

But… now one reader of my ramblings has asked why Just Jennifer.

To make a long story short, when I was a TV news photog, I was the only woman on a photographer staff of 12 and all the other women in the newsroom were reporters and producers. These beautiful, sleek women dressed and acted quite the 1980’s glam divas that they were, whereas I wore sweatshirts and camo-cargo pants, trying to hide my girl-look.

The newsroom women didn’t associate with me, as I wasn’t one of them, and the photogs didn’t engage me into any camaraderie or invite me into photog membership. The photogs didn’t even address me by name, at first, just called me The Girl, as in: “Who took my camera and didn’t charge the batteries?”… “Oh, The Girl did it.” Nice guys, they were. It was kinda lonely in those days.

But I persevered, and after many months of trying to make my place in the newsroom, I felt I had been making progress, until one night. Our station was in an older scary downtown area, and no one ever wanted to walk out to their car alone when our shifts ended.

This night, everyone was sitting around, relaxing after the show, but I commented that I needed to leave, and I headed for the back door, alone. Once at my car, I realized that I had forgotten my coat, and went back inside towards the photo lounge. Walking down the hall, I heard one of the photogs saying, “oh, Sue is leaving, she needs an escort,” and the reporter in question walked out the door, with 4 of the guys in her wake.

I asked her about it the next day, and she said, “Oh, they always walk the women to our cars, didn’t you know that?” No, I didn’t. I asked the one photog that was my friend, and he said, “well, of course we never think about you like that, you’re Just Jennifer.”

So, I wasn’t One of the Guys, I was the Girl, but I wasn’t one of the women, either, I was Just Jennifer.

Just mindless musing about a lifetime in a galaxy a long long time ago.

Call it Life in a Fish Bowl… Half Box… Cubicle Cubbies or Jenny in a Box, we’re all making some changes to our office environment here at Videomaker, and it’s been pretty interesting to observe.

Videomaker has been at it’s 3rd and present location for a good number of years, and it seemed time to freshen up and rearrange the office.

Several departments work closely together, like our Editorial Dept. and the Production Dept, but the layout wasn’t efficient for one-on-one interaction, and some staff members were pretty isolated from others even within their own departments.

The Production  Dept. was on the opposite side of the building from the Editorial Dept, for instance, so we agreed to merge office space.  Production and Editorial merged with IT, creating a Super Cubicle Center we’re dubbing ProdITorial.  Sales and Marketing have also moved into a Super Center, …”Sarketing?” “Mar-sals?”… and we’re all trying to get used to each other’s differences.

Some who were in full 3-sided cubicles are now in open-air space, (like me) while others are more enclosed, (like Tech Editor Mark).

What was interesting to watch was how our daily habits have changed… “Where’s the printer” became a game similar to watching mice in a maze who have traveled around their familiar surroundings for months suddenly having to find their way around it again when someone moves a couple of the dividers.

Some of us like it more open, others prefer the enclosed space. Poor Susan and Melissa no longer have windows, and are now trying to Feng Shui their space with personal touches like fish bowls, plants, and mirrors.

The office previously had six long divided sections, each with 3 or 4 cubicles on each side of the divide. Now we have three “Super Cubicles” as I like to call them, with larger open areas in the center.

John joked that we need to make a true lounge in the center “quad” of our Super Cube to look what people assume our “Videomaker Lounge” community site must be based on, as everyone knows we have a fun office full of games like basketball tournaments, old-fashioned popcorn machines, and we used to ride around the nearby park in a old-time Surry on lunch breaks.

I have the garden table, bar stools, twinkle lights and umbrella ready, we just need the Tiki torches and luau skirts!

Here’s a photo of Life in an office environment that would be fun to work in. I sent our I.T. guys the photo with a request, but they have yet to build me a super fish tank!

My Second Post.

So I seem to have become the Guinea Pig for getting a Videomaker Lounge blog up and running.

After many trial and errors, we discovered that I’m a Bozo. Yep. That’s right. The computer thinks I’m a Bozo. That’s what I was told, anyway. It kept spitting me out of the system, suspecting that I’m doing some illegal internet activity, maybe even some s.p..a…m’ing. Notice that I didn’t even spell that correctly, just in case.

What this meant was that I couldn’t add an avatar to my member sign on. This discovery had our wonderful I.T. guys scratching their heads for a while, but they are such brilliant guys that the problem was solved. This might be why so many of our members don’t have avatars, so I’m looking into that, and will report on it… somewhere!

So we got my member sign on to stick, then I had to deal with the site admin when I made my blog page. A number of the pages don’t allow the user admin abilities, rendering them useless, so after some more trial and error, we are discovering which ones are mere dummy pages, and which ones actually work, and will fix those when we can get to them. I’m meeting up with the really cool Art Department next week to work on that. Again, as soon as I know.. you’ll know.

I think I have a shoot scheduled right now, so I gotta run!

Finally… I’ve created my blog page and joined Videomaker’s Lounge.

I’ve been needing to create my blog, and join The Lounge, for a long long time, now, but I’ve been busy with the many duties I do here at Videomaker.

We all wear multiple hats, and this week I am trying to firm up assignments for the upcoming West Coast Summit in Pasadena in April; finish proofing the May issue of the magazine that goes to to the printers next week; beg and bother writers assigned to the July and August issues to please get their stories in; finish editing the June issue so I can send it to our marvelous art department so they can do the magic they do, … and… I’m writing the May Quick Focus column on how to sign up to The Lounge. So I guess I better get myself signed up! It’s not as intuitive as I thought, but I’m not as techy as the rest of the guys here, so I’m lucky to have them as my support.

Well, I must get back to proofing, or this issue will never make it out the door!

Welcome to my new blog, Jennifer VideoChick.