Lisa Taber

Now can I check “Raise kid” off my to-do list?

My daughter graduated from high school last week. Oh happy, happy day.

Drinking from a DIY media FiRe hose

In theory, anyone can make and distribute high quality media now. To that end I’m working with Audiofile Engineering’s new iPhone field recording app, FiRe. I want to get This-American-Life-like sound when I do an interview next week at the National Institute of Mental Health.

Turns out, however, there’s a bit more to sound engineering than record and play. For starters I can’t get the files from my phone onto my laptop. FiRe can easily upload tracks to a cool service called SoundCloud, but the downloads are being read as text files. And capturing stereo quality sound on my phone may involve jury-rigging a pair of Apple earbuds and a headphone splitter to connect an external mic. Never mind that I don’t yet have a stereo mic or know what a headphone splitter is….

Maybe my lowly Flip camera’s internal mic will do after all. Given that I’m relying on web cams to capture some of my other interviews (conducted over Skype and recorded with Ecamm), I guess mono sound throughout won’t exactly ruin my video.

Professional quality media production for low-budget aspirants has never been within closer reach, but it’s still a stretch.

If the Internet is God, then maybe there’s a pantheon

I’m learning a lot from my sudden advocacy-immersion experience about how to leverage different (social) media platforms— from my site’s blog, to email lists, to Facebook and Twitter updates, for example. I’m also learning how to quickly refurbish for these different purposes every half-way decent piece of content I can come up with.

Also, it seems too obvious to be an insight, but I’m understanding more how important in all of this are those other, very old-fashioned means of communicating— like meetings, phone calls, letters and old media, especially print newspapers.

I have thought a lot about how to use the Internet to affect change—in behaviors, public policies, buying habits. I haven’t thought as much about all the offline interactions that go into successful advocacy or other types of marketing campaigns.

Eureka, Internet outreach alone will not change the world.

Solidarity, Vitriol & Sleeplessness — in other words: Success!

Crazy intense week of phone calls, emails and website updates to try and stop the abrupt transfer of people (including my family member) out of a good psychiatric rehabilitation program in the state hospital in Lincoln, Nebraska, into an admissions unit (with no such rehab program).

The messages people have sent through the website have totally propelled us forward. I had no idea how many others shared my deep concern that a good program should no way be abolished. There are so few in the country, let alone the state of Nebraska.

An article about our efforts to stop the closure of this program was published in Wednesday’s Lincoln Journal-Star newspaper. Reading the commentary it generated online was a serious reality check. This advocacy business is not for the feint of heart.

But it has worked! Moves from the psych rehab program into the Admissions unit have stalled, at least for my sister and the other patients I know about. Even if it is just the beginning, that’s huge.

I know our web presence has a lot to do with this success— I’m just too bushed from said success to elaborate at the moment.