April 2014 Board Meeting

Your new board of directors will hold their board meetings on the 3rd Wednesday of each month starting at 6:30 PM. The location may vary from month to month. This month's meeting, this Wednesday (April 16) will be held in the: United Way of Wisconsin building 2059 Atwood Ave American Family room (room 4392). Any WYOU member is allowed to attend and observe. Please ask about access to the building if you'd like to attend by emailing info@wyou.org.

Annual Member Meeting and Board Election Results

We had a great annual meeting with a great slate of board candidates. We heard from some of the volunteers and board members about the state of WYOU in its new home at the Madison Central Library. We got to hear from the board candidates who were present at the meeting and elected five new board members with a sixth member added shortly thereafter. They are Tom Giles, Karen Huismann, Stuart Levitan, Glen Reynolds, Justin Schober, and Christopher Taylor. We were lucky to have entertainment provided by Rob Dz, Madison's celebrated spoken word poet Rob Dz. We enjoyed the ample supply of snacks provided by Barbara Wright and the good conversation with new board members, volunteers, and others.

February 18, 2014 Dear friends of WYOU, We are faced with a good problem. We have a lot of excellent people on the ballot for Board members and we can only vote for five of them, which means that some of these fine people who should be serving on WYOU's Board will not. Because of the situation at the time of WYOU's celebration party at the end of January (no new registrations and the prospect of a three person board), some of us went into overdrive and started talking with and recruiting individuals with amazing qualifications to apply to the board. We were looking for diversity in skills, community connections and, of course, commitment to free speech as well as media connections. Reading the replies of people on the ballot I think we did a great job and I'm convinced that we will have the group of leaders needed to take off from the strong base created by the partnership of WYOU and the Madison Public Library. Now I'd like to stress that although we need a very good board of directors, we also need people with appropriate skills to fill the vacant space left by the absence of staff. We need leaders to develop the different initiatives that some mention in their replies - live shows, streaming, more diversity, more community involvement and connections, developing the new partnership with the library, raising funds, making the changes needed in WYOU functioning and governance due to our new situation, making programming more relevant to the greater community and archiving, to name a few. All of these things as well as your other ideas will need strong volunteers to be achieved, and you don't need to be a board member to lead a working group in building what you feel is important for the station. So I'm hoping that even if not elected, the remainder of the group will find a way to help in creating a community television station for the future generations. And this also includes any other WYOU members who want to take part in any way to make the station creative and vital. Thank you for responding to the call! See you soon, Luciano Producer and WYOU Board of Directors member until February 25, 2014

Annual Membership Meeting

We are holding our annual membership meeting very soon, on Tuesday, February 25 at High Noon Saloon, 701 East Washington Avenue from 5:30-7:30pm. It's open to the public and we'll be holding our election for board members; however only CURRENT members of WYOU will be able to vote. We've got a great slate of candidates and we're looking forward to having as many people as possible attend to take part in the decision making.

We also have an additional great reason to get together to enable us to network and talk together about our new partnership with the Madison Central Library and hear from people how you'd like the station to move forward. Of course, we're always eager to gather more volunteers for the organization, now more than ever.

This is WYOU. It's YOUR public access community television station. Make it YOURS!

Check out the article in The Daily Page about WYOU's January Celebration at the Madison Public Library.

You are invited to WYOU's Party at the Library

Big celebration for WYOU!

Wednesday, January 29 5:30-8:30 PM

Madison Public Library (downtown)
Third floor
201 West Mifflin Street

Food by Chocolaterian, Drinks by Underground Catering

Come for the fun!
Come for food and drinks!
Meet the mayor, the new library director and other speakers!

Meet WYOU volunteers
Tell us about your cool ideas for WYOU programming!

There will be music and surprises!

 COME CELEBRATE WITH US!!!

If you’re unable to attend but would still like support us you can send a donation to: 1202 Williamson Street, Lower Level, Madison, WI 53703. THANKS and hope to see you there!

(WYOU is now partners with the new and beautiful Madison Central Library. Both partners are ecstatic about our new life together.)

See Wisconsin State Journal articles on WYOU and funding for public access television stations:

WYOU has been in the news lately. Here is an article in Library Journal about our recent transition to the Madison Central Library.

See the Cap Times article about WYOU's new partnership with Madison Public Library.

WYOU producer-produced programming is now back on the air! (We have been streaming Free Speech TV during the transition of moving cable casting equipment to the library). This move included installation of some new equipment and a huge upgrade to hard drive space. There may still be a bit of "tweaking" but essentially we are up and running our producer's programming. December's schedule is attached which is the same as for November except for the new content time slots highlighted in yellow. We have now officially moved into our new library home!!! See our new WYOU schedule for December

Sean of WYOU

For those who don't know me, My name is Sean Bode and I'm a freelance videographer.  I joined WYOU in 2003, shortly after I became president of the Wisconsin Screenwriters Forum.   Screenwriting has been described as masochistic, with the writer devoting so much time to her/his project, only to torment themselves by rewriting and endless marketing.  I wanted to go beyond this and create my own projects without the continuous waiting game.  That's when former WYOU member Aaron Catalano introduce me to the station.  WYOU offered classes for camera and editing.    Once I learned the basics, I was about to combine my knowledge with my creativity.  Some of my projects include short films, kids' documentary and taped children's stage shows.
In 2011, the station was undergoing a transformation: it's PEG funds had been cut and staff laid off.  I felt it was important to get involved and joined the board to keep WYOU on the air.  I assisted with fundraisers and brainstormed for new ideas.  I will be stepping down this year, and I hope the new board will be able to continue with its excellence.

January Blog Post

Happy New Year WYOU community! A great deal is going on at WYOU these days. Our Kickstarter fundraiser will be up and running by the beginning of March.  This online fundraiser will allow us to upgrade to HD cameras, new Mac editing stations, wireless microphones, new monitors, and a mixing board upgrade. We’ll let you know how you can help as March draws closer. All this new equipment should bring in both old and new members. Another event you might want to be a part of is WYOU’s annual membership meeting at the end of  February. We will be contacting all members after we finalize our venue.

Teach and Learn at WYOU!

Part of what we do at WYOU is not just to bring you content on your television but to empower you to create content yourself. WYOU’s friendly and knowledgeable instructor Robert will be teaching 3 Camera/Videography classes along with 3 Video Editing classes this spring. Camera/Videography classes will be held at 5:30 to 8:30 on February 21^st, April 18^th, and May 23^rd. Our Video Editing classes will be held at 5:30 to 8:30 on February 28, April 25, and May 30^th.  Go to WYOU’s website to sign up.

For WYOU summer youth video production classes go to Wisconsin Youth Company’s website at, www.middleschoolu.org to discover what’s available when this summer’s schedules of classes are posted.

Think you have a skill that WYOU members could benefit from? Let us know. We are always looking for people to teach new classes. If the board approves your class you can even earn money based on how many people sign up for your class.

Stay warm friends of WYOU, and always be recording!

-Patrick