Meeting Topic: Guest Speaker Dan Gurin of NPR Digital Services
Moderator Name: Jamie Tagg
Speaker Name: Krystal Peirce of Conscious Alliance (Student Chapter) and Dan Gurin of NPR Digital Services
Other business or activities at the meeting:
- Announcement about the upcoming meeting featuring Alex Case of Fermata Audio and Acoustics.
- Reminder about submitting receipts form AES for possible reimbursement from the Student Activities Office
Meeting Location: Durgin Hall, UMass - Lowell, Lowell, MA - USA
This week we had two presentations. The first was Krystal Peirce who spoke on behalf of the UML chapter of Conscious Alliance. Conscious Alliance started in Boulder Colorado in order to raise awareness and to raise donations and food for the less fortunate Native Americans (Lakota) of South Dakota. Five out of the top seven of the lowest income counties in the United States are in South Dakota.
This Saturday there will be a concert and food drive at Fox Commons (at 7PM) to gather non-perishables and raise awareness about the poverty in this region. This group takes food donations and for every 10 canned goods you bring in, you will receive poster art! Krystal also needs some audio/video people. One member expressed interest in acquiring a projector and operating it for the event, but she also needs someone to work the lights for the bands. Several members showed interest in running sound for future events. She also needs another band to perform this weekend. If you are interested in getting involved, please contact her ASAP at [email protected]. Even if she already has people to work, clubs around campus need audio people for events and it is a great way to get your name out there if you want to get some live sound experience, as well as generate service hours for the club and boost funding in future semesters. As for other events, String Cheese Incident will be playing Dec. 9 in Lowell and Conscious Alliance will be attending.
We also heard from Dan Guruin who works for National Public Radio's Digital Services. Dan started in the broadcast business at Detroit Public Radio where he did board op-ing (making sure the right thing was playing at the right time on air), live to two-track recording and broadcast for live bands in the studio, and worked as a DJ. He also worked in Portland Oregon at classical and jazz stations. Currently, Dan is working with a team of two other programmers to create, design, and implement web technology into NPR's hundreds of subsidiary stations. He is most responsible for making sure each station has what they need to keep their listeners happy. This includes streaming content, archiving, and even automating the storage and dumping of recorded program's. Dan informed us that in a few years, streaming technology will exist in cars, and any radio station that broadcasts will be available online anywhere at anytime. This is possible because the feed that is being broadcast on air is also being recorded and sent to a main server in Washington. From there, that stream is sent to servers around the globe where it may be accessed from your computer, tablet, or phone.
Despite the technical hurdles, radio broadcast is a very versatile industry in which there are many facets, some yet undiscovered, where one could make a living. These include: sales, administrative positions, radio hosting, DJing, news reading, or open source programming, just to name a few. He advises that if you are interested in this type of career, you should invest time into learning drupal (a website design language), and PHP (another industry standard language).
Thanks to Dan for making the trip up from Boston to present, as well as Krystal for informing us of volunteer activities that our club can get involved in by offering audio/video services.
Written By: Jamie Tagg and Doug Iszlai
