OBJECTIVES:
Empowered, value-conscious youth
movement and organization
Effective and stable governance and
administrative structure
Strategic business and program
planning
Fund raising for operations and
programs
Programmatic organization, key staff and volunteer
leadership
Industry standard training design and
paradigm change impact on system
Successful program outcomes of
workforce, teaching model, youth, teachers
and community organization,
arts funding and growth
Research and data gathering and
analyzing capacity
Public Education and outreach power
Partnership development
The
OPERATIONS
& PARTNERSHIP REALITIES:
Sac Sierra DASP non profit
Corporation status filed (current shell)
Pending IRS Filing for
501(c)(3) status
Pending Governance Board
identification
Paul Minicucci Chair,
CA DASP non profit status filed at
the same time (Current shell)
All administrative operations by
Bronston under the Tower of Youth corp
Annual cash flow between
$30-$40,000
Annual material contributions
$100,000 plus (software, hardware, services)
Legal and Accounting services are
probono
Executive decision making derived from Bronston, Minicucci, Diaz and ad hoc input from volunteer members and associates:
CA
Cable Telecom Assoc. Dennis Mangers
IMAX
Doug Link
S
Corp Dennis Spear
Sacramento
Cable Access Ron Cooper/Wes Doak
Los
Rios Community College School District Chairman Bruce Pomer
Ca
State Summer School for the Arts Director Bob Jaffe
Teichert
Foundation Fred Teichert
SECONDARY
EDUCATION RELATIONS AND PROGRAMS:
The SSDASP is
represented as the organizational evolution beyond TOY
Thus, all participants understand they
are SSDASP but operate within the programmatic contexts of TOY.
A formal High School teacher membership
consists of :
Colfax
High School Wade Wolff/John Deadrick
Sheldon
High School Shawn Sulllivan
Del Oro
High School Justin Cutts
Granite
Bay High School Ken Ulrich
Center
High School Vern Bisho
Christian
Brothers High School Tomas Capogreco
Folsom
High School Sandi Hathaway
Foothill
High School Claudette Weismantel
Burbank
High School Craig Reiser
Tahoe
Truckee High School John Echols
Franklin High School Brad Clark/Joe Herz
Sierra
Foothill High School Doug Faker
Davis
Senior High School - Ted Fontaine
McClatchy
High School - Jim Morris
(Another 10
high schools are on the cusp of joining)
REGIONAL ACTIVIITES
2 Major TOY organizing and outreach
events are now in their 10th consecutive year:
Annual
Teen Digital Reel Showcase & Awards computer generated digital short
movie regional competition, professionally juried, major software and hardware
donated prizes awarded,
Celebrity hosted at the IMAX Theatre in
spring
Agreed upon framework and standards
exist for member only entry submission, derived from the teacher SSDASP
membership
Ad hoc pre-TDR training sessions (Theatron) occur held at 3 local college/universities
(Cosumnes River, CSUS, UC Davis
100 200 youth participate with 50
85 team entries annually
Annual North American All
Youth Film Day
movies longer than 3 minutes sought across US/Canada. Entires juried by youth
only who host the showcase event. No awards.
Full day showcase with industry
spokespersons and film school recruiters held on first Friday in October. 200 300 entries received. Audience 1000.
No stable parent/ citizen booster
movement has been successfully seeded though 18 months work was invested in
such an essential effort with good documentation.
STATEWIDE ACTIVITIES:
1. Continuous
legislative advocacy
2. Organization
of interim planning and decision making meetings
3. Organization
of 2 statewide, strategy and working DASP conferences 2004 and 2005 with IMAX
Youth Showcase
4. Tactical fund
raising for Conferences
5. Program
marketing to industry and political allies
Long standing collaboration with UC Davis IT Department, CA State University, Sacramento Communication Studies Dept, and Cosumnes River College Television and Entertainment Dept yield training space 2-3 times per year and limited partnerships with some high schools.
The President of Los Rios Community
College District School Board, Bruce Pomer,
has called and chaired an outreach and organizing meeting among all post
secondary - 2 and 4 year college media program leaders to initiate a first
ever collaboration and membership in SS DASP.
This has not converted into operational reality yet. This outreach is fueled by possible regional
grant opportunities from the CCCCO
Career Tech Ed $.
No individual post secondary leader
exists to consciously promote DASP defined program relationships between
industry or high schools towards an articulated curriculum.
No regional partnership exists
between post secondary and high schools at this point, and thus, no outreach to
regional industry has been possible to offer workforce standardized teaching
and preparation. A-G Standard certification
applications are individually sought by the high school teachers.
A verbal proposal to organize an
intercollegiate, annual, film festival associated with the Fall, commercial,
Annual Sacramento Movie and Music Festival has been shared but not acted upon
as an organizing tactic.
INDUSTRY RELATIONS:
A strong Resolution of support for DASP
goals and practices exists,
unimplemented, on behalf of the Sacramento Metropolitan Chamber of
Commerce and the Sacramento Area Regional Technology Association
Follow up has not been pursued lacking
a coherent education community mechanism to respond to industry standards based
training and workforce needs. The
digital industry in our region is primarily technical and system services
rather than entertainment or digital arts.
400 companies exist in SARTAs rolls.
Access to these is clear but the purpose and effective relations are
not.
Through biennial TOY media showcase
productions, significant industry familiarization and support has developed
through the search for donated software and hardware among major digital media
manufacturing corporations who contribute more and more material each year,
with ever deepening personal friendships. The political and policy agenda, and
our regional development model, are the principled basis for these
relationships and support comes from education sales leaders, not philanthropy
executives. These relations have led to major cash and equipment donations,
support for our legislation from 2003 forward, attendance at our statewide
strategy meetings in 2004 and 2005 and the Dymally Legislative Roundtable last
Nov.
These
companies include:
Adobe, Apple, Autodesk, Pixar,
Dreamworks, Frys, NewTek, Pinnacle, VideoMaker Magazine, Blockbuster,
Acoustica, Digital Juice, Total Training, Panasonic Broadcast, Disney,
FedEx/Kinkos, Sprint PCS, Video Products Distributors and, two major industry
associations, American Electronics Assoc and the Ca Cable Telecom Assoc.
It must be noted that significant
failures coexist in efforts to involve Intel, IBM, Oracle, Hewlett Packard,
Sony, Paramount, Fox, Revolution, Verizon, ATT, Comcast, Google, and eBay,
despite serious efforts to secure any relationship.
Strong relations exist among a small
handful of important foundations in our region Teichert, Rumsey, Setzer and 2
other industry giants in insurance, Interwest, and construction, Rudolph and
Sletten.
Small, local media production
professional businesses have played a key and continuous part in offering
expertise, mentoring, teaching and jurying that will lead to the consultant
panels planned in the SS DASP.
Familiarity with TOY and assistance from among CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox TV
channel on camera talent and administrators exists.
Print media support is currently very
weak, after a boom of coverage for our first 8 years, due to executive
changes. Yet our reputation is very
strong and newspaper track record enormous.
AFFINITY GROUP STATUS:
Youth organization
was always extremely fragile even when we had 3 4 dozen active individuals,
always dependent on key youth leaders who understood the larger picture and
provided brilliant activity driven leadership or media skills for our program
and website creation. There is no such
leadership identified in the region at this time nor any community based
organization to substitute in this endeavor.
Apart from organized development, youth
play a key role in the production of the 2 showcases as jurors, on stage and
production hosts and staff, audience outreach ambassadors among the schools and
general advisors on all program aspects.
Major value based learning derives from the rating decisions during the
judging. Numerous kids go on to post
secondary media college programs and subsequent media careers. No follow up studies have been done though complete
contact information rosters exist of all showcase audiences over the
decade. An artifact of this process is
in the skew of youth who are in their junior or senior years by the time they
can enter movies, leading to their short tenure in TOY.
Teacher
organization is just emerging to overcome the first 9 years of isolated and
ultra parochial involvement. The 10th
TDR finally became a serious project for
a small handful of teachers to talk to each other and craft workforce-leaning
production and classroom performance standards as the new elevated entry bar
for the student 10 TDR digital movies.
Further, the huge amount of high end, donated software, was distributed
democratically based on need and dedication to use their awards within the
context of the partnership. Each teacher
accepted a role as a specific manufacturers liaison to report on the use and
benefits of what was invested in the region.
There is no autonomous self-conscious
committee work without my prompting and planning despite the inventory of 10
unique and essential committee tasks spelled out in the Membership Agreement
each signed. However, the success of this years IMAX 10th TDR will
lead to the assumption of increasing creative leadership in the 11th
TDR. There is no teacher buy in to provide the same attention or input into the
Annual Fall Film Day, a larger and more powerful showcase event.
Major lack of information and teacher
communication exists to advance professional and education based mutual
assistance and teaching quality given the lack of willingness to make the time
investment in collective action.
Curriculum is clearly
the operational focus of the partnership but on a passive basis rather than
recognizing the opportunity to use collaboration as an organizing and
performance enhancing lever. No
intentional convergence of effort yet exists between the secondary and post
secondary program leaders. Without
broad conscious initiative from the colleges and universities who have the
capability to enhance the professional status of the high school teachers
through credit, credentialing or certification,
No data of any kind is being collected and shared, nor research in any
of the school media arts programs. No
superintendents or school principals are yet active members of the partnership.
Best
Practices
is a slogan without form in the region where no strategic consciousness of the
politics of the fields development or underdevelopment exist. Each teacher assumes they have a best
practice model absent a set of examples and standards that are embodied in the
DASP network. The progress in the region
and many remarkable pieces, fragily connected, would disintegrate without TOY
leadership.
Industry
has not been concretely approached given the lack of an organized and committed
education partnership. The possibility
of such outreach is wide open once a model emerges between the most advanced
educators at the high school and post secondary program leadership. This will take
executive buy in, seed money to get peoples attention and respect for research
and data.
The most important public private
relationships, described above, are really statewide collaborations, since the
advent of DASP, exemplified in regionally produced events, given the
simultaneity of CA DASP development focused here.
SUMMARY:
Given the decade long work of: 1. building TOY and then DASP with their
essentially new (outsider) non profit organizational identities and
relationships and, 2. the consistent
framing of the strategic goals of
fueling youth power and expression, education system modernization,
expansion of media arts,
effectiveness in recruiting major
industry resources and cooperative advocacy for a futuristic workforce,
promotion of community non profit organization growth; TOY needed a strategic context, a statutory
context, to drive its agenda. A paradoxical decline in participation in, and
strength of, the regions media arts educational capacity coexisted with the
growth of our credibility as we focused effort to a establish policy law and
legitimacy. With the dilution of time
originally focused in developing the Sac Sierra ( TOY) region, the
matriculation and departure of a generation of highly motivated youth and, the dissolution
of their parents interest, the on-the-ground work in the region became
confined to producing the enormously complex and elegant pair of youth media
showcases. No effort was made to secure
substantive grants or other support money to add paid exective or senior
program staff or support services, due to lack of time and qualified
volunteers. The Board of TOY from its
outset was unable to provide an iota of support throughout its decade
existence.
Thus, the organizational integrity of
both TOY and the SS DASP is immensely fragile with virtually no strategic
leadership depth on the bench to provide stability to the program. No coterie of engaged volunteers exists. 2-4 key adult professionals exist and could
invest substantive leadership if administrative stability and seed funding could
be secured.
The two youth showcase events have not
been sufficient to build organization and are immensely energy consuming from
strategic planning and development, though they provide an understandable
program for industry and community support and interest. More than $ 1 million in materiel has been
obtained from industry donors and investors in the last decade as TOY awards,
directly distributed to the youth and their teachers.
The strategic decision to elevate TOYs
model work to a statutory level has been remarkably successful and has
attracted a circle of enormously dedicated and effective regional leaders, all
of whom were already pioneering in this field, to come together to address the
structural, policy, resource and programmatic and challenges that fuel this
venture. Clearly the historic trends of
the technological revolution, and geo political transformations set the stage
for a profound cultural and economic paradigm shift that will be led by people
currently in the 5 15 year old generation, if they have digital media and
telecommunication skills. If they possess the mastery to express their
creativity and scientific acumen through electronic tools with progressive
social values.
PRIORITY
NEEDS:
1. PASSAGE OF AB
252 WITH FUNDING
2. CORE STAFF
FUNDING AND PROGRAM
3. ENLIGHTENED
AND DEDICATED GOVERNANCE
4. REGIONAL AND
STATEWIDE WORKING COMMITTEE STRUCTURE
5. BUSINESS AND
PROGRAM PLAN
6. DATA
COLLECTION AND RESEARCH CAPACITY
7. GRANT AND FUND
RAISING CAPACITY