Public Media Potluck - June 2018 - Boston

Build the next generation of Public Media together at the two day "Public Media Potluck". Share ideas, projects, and stories of success and failure with different public media product teams from around the country. Have a bigger impact by tackling issues facing public media organizations of all sizes and types of digital sophistication. This collective, coordinated effort will ensure you're solving problems that benefit more than just "our team", while also reaping the same efficiency benefits from other products and teams. The goal is to stop reinventing the wheel, at every program and station, to work together more, and to share technology.

This particular meetup will focus on the theme of content management and distribution: CMS, APIs, RSS, audio management, etc.

If you'd like to contact the team organizing the Potluck, the best way to do that is via this form.

Where and When

June 14-15, 2018

College of Communication - Boston University
Room 209
640 Commonwealth Ave
Boston, MA

Cost and tickets

It's 100% free! But we still need you to please register and get tickets.

Getting There

If you're flying in, book a flight to Boston's Logan Airport. (Landing in Portland, Hartford, or Providence is certainly possible, but not recommended.) Public transport from Logan to Kenmore Square exists but -- fair warning -- is less than ideal (shuttle to Blue Line, Blue Line to Green Line OR Silver Line to Red Line to Green Line). A cab is about $30.

Those traveling up the Acela Corridor will arrive at South Station. From there, you can take the Red Line to the Green line. If you're taking the train from the North Shore, New Hampshire or Maine, you'll arrive at North Station. There is a Green Line stop right in the station.

Schedule (subject to change!):

Thursday June 14, 2018

8:30-9:30 - Check-in, Breakfast and Welcome

9:45-10:45 - Whiteboard Your Stack

Please bring a single image diagramming your stack. Let us know how it works and how well it works. Given the conference theme, try to focus on content distirubtion: CMS, APIs, RSS, etc. If that's not your cup of tea, please join us for...

9:45-10:45 - Whiteboard your Team & Process

What's your team look like? Do you do Agile/Scrum? What are your regular meetings? What works well for your team? What are some issues?

11:00-12:00 - Audio pipeline

How does your on-demand audio get from the soundboard to the listener's ears? What are you tips/technologies you can offer? What are your pain points?

12:00-1:00 - LUNCH

1:30-3:00 - PODCASTS

Looking to jumpstart your podcast division? Hoping to broaden the reach of your podcasts? We'll bring in a few outside speakers to help answer these questions and follow with an open discussion of the topic.

3:30 - 5:00 - CMS

What's lacking in your CMS? What do you like? What kind of community is behind it? Are you thinking about switching?

5:00-5:15 - Closing Day 1

6:00-8:00 - Reception @ WBUR

Beer, wine, food - sponsored by Greater Public and WBUR

Friday June 15, 2018

8:30-9:30 - Breakfast

9:45-10:45 - ELECTIONS

This fall's elections will likely be the most closely watched mid-terms in recent memory. What is your organization doing to prepare? What APIs are you using? What libraries? What code/ideas/tips can you share?

11:00 - 12:00 - It's a Disaster

Tell us about your worst, latest and/or most interesting catastrophe. What happened and why? What have you done to prevent this from happening again? What are your pre-existing strategies to prevent disasters: monitoring, call schedule, paging, etc.?

12:00-1:00 - LUNCH

1:30-3:00 - LIGHTNING TALKS

Bring your best 5 minutes and your best slides! Tell us about a new technology, vendor, technique, language or side-project that you like -- and that you think others in public media should know about. In particular, we'd love to hear about content management and distribution topics: CMS, APIs, audio tools, etc.

3:30-5:00 - Exploring Areas for Collaboration

The rubber meets me the road. Let's agree upon areas and technologies on which we can collaborate, and start sketching out a plan forward!

5:00-5:15 - Goodbye

Lodging

Hotels not far from the venue include:

There are many other hotels and B&B's in the area as well as AirBnB, etc. The Red Sox are out of town that week, and college graduation season will be over, so you should have plenty of lodging options.

Places of Interest

Food

Kenmore/BU Area

Further Away (but worth the trip)

Food Trucks

Boston Food Truck Finder

Drink