This has been my weekend of community media.

Saturday, I attended the Texas Community Media Summit. There were several highlights of the event for me. For instance, it was nice to see Debbie Austin from The Texas Observer give a shout-out to Austin Bloggers, a site I manage.

I also enjoyed finally meeting U.T. R.T.F. Professor Laura Stein who seems to have a good earthy handle on community media issues. She lead a session on media convergence. It got me thinking about funding for projects such as open source tools. One effect of Texas SB 5 is that many cities will find their PEG (access television) budgets cash rich for capital equipment, but starved for operating funds. Maybe some of those funds can be used for servers and other infrastructure for community media projects.

I had a blast chatting with public policy superstar Charles Benton. He got me thinking about the impacts the digital television transition will have on community media, and what opportunities there may be.

Then, on Sunday, I went to see the new Michel Gondry movie Be Kind Rewind.

"Wait! Wait!" you say. "What's that got to do with community media?"

I don't want to give too much away, but if you've seen the trailer you already know it's about a couple of guys who end up creating their own movies. What I enjoyed was seeing how the process of creating their own media ultimately affects their neighborhood and the people around them.

The movie was sweet and had a lot of heart. I enjoyed it a lot.

The embedded video is Michel Gondry's own sweded version of the movie trailer. (I'll also recommend the sweded trailer by these guys, with its inspired Big Lebowski bit.)