 I thought maybe we could start with your story. What's been happening in St. John'sbury, Jamie Dimmick? Well, it might be easier to say what's not happening in St. John'sbury. It's been a pretty incredible March and April. Kingdom Access TV, we always have a very busy March. We do a rotary basketball tournament. And in about 10 days, we turn out, I think it's 42 basketball games. So right as we finished that, the state gave a stay at home order. I think it was the Friday, and we did the finals on Saturday. But at that point, we just kind of regrouped, trying to figure out what we were going to do. And the next week on Wednesday, I think it was the 16th or 18th of March. Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium was going to do a live COVID-19 update with the local hospital. So I reached out to them at about 11 o'clock in the morning and said, would you like us to do this live? And they said, that would be great. So then I realized what I had said, and they had taken me up on it. So we very quickly had to figure out a way to go from YouTube to KTV to cable TV. And lucky for us, I think I'm guilty of never throwing anything away. And the people that work here would testify to that. So we dug around and found the equipment that we needed and put it together very quickly for 1 o'clock. And that really opened up an amazing partnership with Fairbanks Museum. To date, we've done, I think, 63 educational programs with the museum. We've been sending them out on VMX. Had tons of downloads, I think, over 600 downloads from VMX for those shows. And that's just been a great thing, keeping us busy, helping an institution in our community, and putting valuable stuff out there. That sounds great. Thanks for sharing that. Tammy Riley, you're down in Manchester. Gina, tell us how your organization has made the pivot in the last six weeks in terms of the service provided to the community. So of course, the first two weeks were crisis mode. And we were meeting on a daily basis as a staff and really trying to determine what is it that people need. And that took a couple weeks for everybody to get settled. What's been really interesting for us is we're seeing more community participation, I think, because people are willing to try something new because they have time, their schedules are disrupted. So we produce the news project. We produce regular weekly news stories. So we are a content producer. But what's been really interesting about what's happened over the last six weeks is that the disruption has allowed people to try new things. And it's really bringing us back to our mission to empower people. And so that's really exciting. In particular, we reached out to the faith community because that was immediately a big need in the community. And so one of my producers is on the phone in Zoom daily with various faith leaders, helping them with Zoom, helping them with the iPad, sorting out internet issues. And I think that's really been huge. The other things we were doing, and I think we're sort of settled now, is reaching out to all the government entities, making sure that they could get their meetings covered and let them know that we were there and helping them in that way. And the other piece, which is always the most fun for me, is seeing the kids get involved. So we started a kids variety show where kids and parents can send in their own content and we put it together. So it took, everything takes longer than you wanted to, but we're kind of hitting our stride with all of this stuff. So that's sort of what's been going on here in addition to us producing regular news content via Zoom. It's been exciting. And it's exciting to see new people come into the fold with what we do and share their story and tell stories that aren't getting told otherwise. So that's what's making me excited. Thanks so much, Tammy. Jared, I understand that you put together a kind of musical concert away and obviously you're a musical man from your room. Yeah, yeah, this is my music room. It's still a challenge of getting the content I've been reaching out. My first attempt hasn't really, really worked out the way I've liked, but I do have some community members who are regular, who do music programs and I'm reaching out to them now to try to do something via Zoom. In the town I'm in, it's actually in a CATVs area, but there's a little tavern here that puts on a Zoom open mic, which is the kind of the same idea I've had. I've actually participated a couple of times. So I'm working on that aspect with the local musicians in Springfield, Chester. So yeah, so that's one of the biggest challenges I've found is we're thinking outside the box of how to get the content but still getting the community members to get the content created is still a bit of a challenge for us. But we're seeing that people are starting to gravitate towards Zoom, especially some of our studio shows that we had regular studio shows. I have a feeling some will probably say, you know what, I like doing this out of the living room of my home. Can we keep doing it this way? So I think that given this option, we will start to see more content via teleconferencing and stuff. So overall, I think that is one of our hardest challenges is just getting the people used to the idea, like, hey, you can still create content. You can still send it to us. And but we are seeing an uptick in that finally. And hopefully we're going to continue to see that. So but overall, we gravitated to the remote thing pretty well. I actually, literally the day before the stay at home order was put in place, I had met with my board and I had come up with like, well, if this situation happens, this is what me as the director is going to do. This is what my production coordinator is going to do. I had come up with a logistical plan saying, we will be able to work, but we're going to do it remotely. And it wasn't a day later that we were told, do not go into work. So overall, we were prepared. It just came a lot sooner than we were expecting. And there's some challenges to it, but we are making do. And Zoom has been, and teleconferencing has definitely been a big help in doing that. Thank you so much, Cora. Can you tell us a little bit how you've made the switch from a regular community media center to a remote media operation? To my operating at TV station from my basement. I wasn't going to actually say that. OK, yeah. That's what it is, folks. Yes, I mean like many of you and I got so many of our ideas from our daily, well, it started out as a daily van call. So I just really appreciate that. All that input was there because they gave me all sorts of ideas about what other stations were doing. We jumped in first on the municipal level because our towns were all at various stages of being able to go online. So we jumped in at the like, there was a hybrid phase where some people were meeting in the town hall and all spread out with our producer, spread out just zooming in. And then there was a hybrid phase where some people were online and some people in the room. And then there was the next phase where everybody got on to Zoom and our towns were on a whole like all of yours on a spectrum where some people were like, yeah, I do all this for work. I don't need any help. And we would just, we assigned a producer to sit in on the call and make sure that it got recorded and do a backup recording. You'll be using OBS or whatever it was. And then I still have a town now that's just like today is going to try and go online. So, you know, like, like you all know, we had a huge outpouring of interest in getting on BCTV as soon as we went offsite from local journalists who had like podcasts or interview shows on the radio or whatever. And they all just jumped on the bandwagon and they just started sending us shows. And so we became basically a like remote editing house and we still are. And normally this is something, you know, my motto for this period is no rules in the shutdown, which is we threw out all of our requirements, all of no releases and membership, nothing. Just send us that video. We will edit it. We will put it on. Make it happen. Like, and then we would identify sources like Tim Ashes' daily update on Facebook. And I would just put in his comment, hey, I'm from a local public access station. Can I download this, air it and put it up for other stations? And he'd be like, yes, that was it. You know, and then that just started to change. So we were basically looking for credible daily news sources and just getting a flood of people submitting shows to us. And that's still the way it is, where I'm seeing a live stream on Facebook or something and I'm saying, hey, can we air this? And they're like, yep, here's the video, you know. And so we're just doing, and it's been great because I can keep my editors employed. And I'm just saying, here you go. Here's this online content. Let's make it for cable. And that's a lot of what we're doing. We are starting to see, so municipal, all that happened. Church, you know, faith services, all that kept happening. They made the leap right away. Our weekly shows made the leap. We are starting to see requests now from arts organizations who are like, can you help us do a live stream concert? Something like that. So I can see that that's the next thing that we're gonna get into is arts organizations trying to figure out, how can I do a performance safely? And one of the ways I can do it is by not having the audience in the room. And I can see that there's a role for our organizations, you know, in that, that we're all gonna get. So I'm gonna just pause you because that's just a breathtaking amount of work to digest and everybody's editors have been doing this work. I know Angelique has a smaller center and I'm wondering what are you most proud of the change that you've made in your organization in the past six to seven weeks? Well, going remote was not that hard because we have a staff of basically there's three of us in the office. We did close pretty much right away, which was hard to imagine that just a few weeks before we'd had town meeting where everyone was crammed together in these little spaces, hard to imagine another lifetime. But we, so we switched to the remote and one of the things that was important for us was to keep sort of making sure the employees knew that their income was stable and our one full-time, well not full-time, but our field producer that she was taken care of. So that was very important during the transition, like, you're okay, things are changing, we're closing our studio, but you'll be fine. So that was very important for us. And we've really been focusing a lot as we have in the past on our towns. And a lot of our, in the past, we had sort of experimented with doing some meetings live and now everything is live. And now we're able to even offer to some committees and boards that we couldn't send people there to film in the past. Now we're like, give us your meetings. And they're like, we're not sure how to do it, but we've been holding a lot of hands and we love to do that. And they've been holding our hands, really working really closely with our three towns. So that's been nice that we felt like we've offered a little something new on both on the internet to offer these live and on our channel. Can I ask you, how have you kept the staff cohesive? I understand you have a small staff, but how are you balancing, how are you managing a remote staff? Well, we do have like a weekly talk where we chitchat with each other, but we've got a lot of, you know, just communicating in different ways whatever each person prefers. Yeah, it's turned out a little more, like whatever we had built on in the past. It's important to not over communicate just because you're far apart. You don't want to be like on someone's back all the time. So there's a little bit of holding back sometimes even though you really want to tell them about this latest thing. So that's, yeah. And I just wanted to mention one thing that we're talking about new things for doing this time. We're a non-commercial station so we don't run advertisements. But at this time, we felt it was really important all the work that our local businesses are doing. And it was a reminder of how integrated we're a non-profit, but you know, our world is the same. So we've been focusing on this new little series where people, our businesses become our businesses become film producers in a way and they use their cell phones and they film themselves like sort of behind the scenes doing what they do. And it's really distilled for us too how important their service is whether it's making chocolate, teaching Taekwondo or taking care of our animals. So that's been a really fun new thing that we're trying to produce. So it sounds like everyone has been doing different kinds of new partnerships that they might not have done as intensely before. Jamie, the Fairbanks Museum is one area. Are there other partners in the community that you are working with that perhaps you were not as intently with them before? I don't think so. What we found was that the usual amount of community events that we're going to go out and help produce in the community were going to be canceled. Those are going to be public events where there's a live audience. And so that was really strange to get a handle on the idea that, oh wow, this isn't going to happen. But like Angeliki was saying, we reached out to the Chamber of Commerce. We have two, Northeast Kingdom and St. John'sbury and asked if local businesses are providing a service for COVID-19. We'll help them if they can record themselves. We'll try to get resources to them. They can do Zoom. They can do any number of things. We'll take care of the rest. Just get it to us and we'll help put the message out there. So that was a little bit unusual. Like a lot of places, we kind of stay away from the profit world and the commercial and retail businesses. But considering the gravity of the situation, it was like, okay, let's go. Just bring it and we'll do it. And I guess the follow-up question I would have for everyone to think about is we have spent a lot of time moving online. And I'm wondering if you're seeing a bigger demand for actual television to put programs on TV versus just online. Is that for me, Lauren? Sure. Yeah. Well, I said to begin with that there's a lot of things going on. And just to remind anybody watching, in April, the Department of Corrections announced that 30 inmates were going to be moved to St. John'sbury. And the roof blew off the community. It was just absolute outrage that we were going to have 30 inmates come to a county, Caledonia County, with two cases of COVID-19. We're talking about a small rural hospital. If things get out of hand, this is going to be really difficult. No-brainer live TV for the Select Board meeting. That was Friday the 10th, I think, that they announced that. And we were live on the 13th with the St. John'sbury Select Board. And there was a lot of state house representation there, Department of Corrections folks, everybody and anybody, people from the community. So we were doing that live on YouTube. And then just a few days later, a week later, VSC announced that they were going to close or they had a proposal to close three campuses, including the former Linden State College or NVU Linden. And again, the lid blew off the community and away we went. So those things, it was just, we have to do this stuff live. We weren't really prepared in some cases to do that. But we just shoulder the grind. We'll make it happen. So Rob Chapman, you've just joined us. Welcome, or come up, Hillier. We've just been talking about the kinds of pivots that we've done in the last several weeks in order to serve the community. And being in Montpelier, you have some, a lot of experience in covering the legislature, but then all of a sudden, the legislature disappears. So what sort of adjustment did Orca make in order to bring the news of the governor's press conferences and the legislative activity to the wider community? So there were, I mean, those are two different questions. We had to deal with the legislature committees. I mean, we typically have this working paradigm where we would look at an agenda for the committees during the week, and then we would pick and choose based on the agenda items that we thought would be of interest, that might be in the news, that might be coming from the administration, and then send the camera operator there. And then all of a sudden that just blew up. And they were no longer there. We, you know, there was this slight transition when they were, we would send somebody to the house, chambers and like that, but it was getting more and more difficult to actually send camera operators. And they began to adjust to having their committee meetings remotely through a Zoom platform. And we had to begin to sort of look at the schedule and we began to follow the agenda. So we would look at what they had done by checking out what they'd done during the week through the Zoom. And then we had to figure out how we were going to capture that. So we had to obviously, like most of you, have gone through and adopted a platform where we have to take a Zoom or remote platform where that might be and then record that and then add branding to it. It took us about a week to sort of adjust to that new paradigm, but we were able to do it. And at the same time, we were setting up the network so that the staff could work remotely from their home, so which we've been doing for the past four or five weeks now, I believe. So, you know, we had a very frantic week there of just trying to adjust our workflow and our protocols and trying to figure out what to do with that. And then we got to the Governor's press conference, which was, you know, they originally had been handling it through the Governor's Facebook Live account, but they were having technical difficulties with microphones and such. So, you know, they decided that, I think the biggest complaint was that people couldn't hear the reporters that were phoning in. So they decided that they would just stop doing that. And then Megan at CCTV and I talked about how we could, you know, sort of fill that hole, help the Governor's office with some of the technical problems. And we were able to pretty scramble together some equipment and be able to get what turns out to be three times a week press conference for about COVID that the Governor's been doing at the pavilion. Get a stream going and then sort of deal with different audio problems. I mean, we, for the first few weeks, we had different audio channels and we had to figure out how can we combine those into one because people who were viewing it and we were getting a lot of people watching on YouTube who, you know, if at home they didn't have both channels coming through their speakers, they would think that they couldn't hear a particular mic because the podium mic hat had happened to be coming through the left channel. The telephone mic happened to be coming through the right channel and we had to figure out how to combine out of the camera without bringing an extra mixer into the mix. So we were finally able to do that, but I was I'm absolutely stunned at how many audio professionals there are in the comment section of the YouTube. So. Thank you. What's it been like for you to manage your team remotely? Am I allowed to say that I hate it? Of course you can. Tell us why. What are you missing? What are you missing? I just, you know, we work really in a sort of newsroom atmosphere where everybody kind of overhears everything and, you know, you know what's going on just by being in within earshot. So the first thing that I did the day we got back was start our own Slack workspace separate from Van because we had been using the Van workspace to just sort of DM you know, as a sort of a sub-channel and so we set up our own Slack workspace and started using that and that helped a little bit. We have a daily call every day at 10 a.m. which is our when we're supposed to open and we I got I ended up getting cable in my basement so that I could watch the channel because I do that all day long at the office and it's the only way I can feel like what we're doing is actually producing something you know is to kind of see how it actually looks so that that helped me to see that all this shouting into a webcam was actually resulting in something being able to be viewed by someone and, you know, I created a new organizational chart so that all of our producers all our field producers could see basically how all the handoff handing off goes between from person from staff to staff to staff to staff to staff so everybody could understand what their position in, you know, new workflow was anyway, it's been okay it's just not the way I want to work and it just feels so inefficient and, you know, it's kind of feels like the game of telephone a lot where I say something to someone they say someone else somebody else and then by the time I'm seeing what gets produced I'm like, what? You didn't nobody did what I said, you know and that's because I'm not directly talking to everyone at one time like we used to do anyway, I think a lot gets lost in the translation Tammy, are there ways that you are creating community and not just getting work done in your remote meetings with your staff? With the staff, yeah, you know we have a group that has been together for many years so we know each other very well and I think that that's been helpful two of my team members that are on the production team have terrible internet so that's been our biggest challenge in terms of connectivity with each other and production so one of my team members is driving down to our facility where we have 100 meg fiber internet and sitting in her car for staff meetings, you know and it's been interesting because the weather's getting nicer and nicer and yesterday she got to sit outside so that was great so, you know, we were doing more frequent meetings in the beginning to adjust to the workflow because we've had to completely redo years of workflow development and redo it like all of you in a week and we are using software we, you know, the last thing you want to do as a manager or leader is in a crisis to say, here, learn this new thing, right? But that's what I did and I didn't know how it was going to go but it's turned out okay so we've also migrated from using email to Slack which is a software that can have us all seeing the same messages rather than email so that's been it was hard at first I'm sure it was very annoying for the staff at first but it's worked out really well in terms of us being able to communicate and I think I always try to take time for everyone just to provide some personal you know, what's going on in your life how are things going and at the outset really like Angeliki said is letting people know that they're secure and the most important thing is for them to get their life and their families together because if we can't help ourselves first we can't help the community and so that's sort of how we started but we, you know, we miss the pizza parties that we have, you know every few months and, you know but at the end of the day everyone is really respectful of one another and we know each other well and we work well together so so we're we're moving on you know, we're making it happen as a team as best we can even with bad internet yeah Jared are you starting to think about the transition back now that the governor has signaled yes and no because we're in a challenging spot where we're still in a high school so even when, say, my staff can go back into the building and can work are we going to be allowed to let community members into the high school I mean, you know they're going to have their stringent rules of who can enter and so forth so it's going to be a challenge definitely when we start to come back you know, I've already let some of my staff members know that hey, you know in a sense if you need to go into the office for a little bit you could work in the office we're that, you know we're a small enough entity but my my programming coordinator the who does the scheduling he was already working remotely one or two days a week anyway before this whole thing came through so he's like, I'm okay I'll keep working remotely we've set it up I can do it so so, yeah it's going to be a challenge but I think we're ready to get back you know, some of us I am I've got two kids I'm watching every day so I would love to get back to the office but yeah I think it's good being in a high school is going to be I don't know what that means for us that's going to be the biggest challenge I think for for SAPA TV yeah Angelica tell us about something that has really inspired you in your community you're so connected there in Richmond and around um I was um thinking about that and I guess all this being far apart from each other it's cleared up in our minds what everyone does really well like we have the nonprofit NOFA Vermont in Richmond and they've really stepped up with their communications and doing so much work like to collect masks for farm workers or to collect money for farm workers I mean it's been very clear to us what they care about and they've communicated that really clearly to the public so that's been inspiring and that's the same for like our local grocery stores you know like we have a lot of really small ones that are going the extra mile and you realize that you know how important these very simple things are for everybody at this time so that's just been inspiring to to see people even though we don't see them all the time kind of like it's really brought to the forefront what people do well and we hope that the same has happened with the work that we do so do you think that this period of time is making a stronger case for the need for community media Angeli King yeah because one of the things that you know speaking to other public media centers it sort of took a little while to to be in my brain I was like wow we are essential too so it just it took a little time but once I knew that I was communicating it to my staff as an important kind of reminder they never were asked to go somewhere they didn't feel comfortable it's all been very voluntary like we are essential and yet we have some options which is nice in our position and just to go back to something Tammy had said earlier it's also cleared up for me how important the infrastructure we each have is at this time because I was like gosh I'm really glad we got that one gig local internet recently and boy I'm sure glad we bought a new $30,000 server broadcast server a couple years ago which allowed me to remote on I often edit at home and send all the files to work because the computer is better and the internet is better and it sort of does its thing from there so all those choices along the way to invest in our infrastructure have been really important Jamie what about you when you look ahead you mentioned two really important community issues that has happened during this time and you don't have a lot of news outlets in St. John's for eight so you seem to be essential there don't you think what does that mean going forward yeah I think that this was a big wake-up call for us you know the idea that Kingdom Access TV is an essential service we made it volunteer to come into work the first two weeks we did have two employees and we're very small we've got three full-time people and several part-time people so one of the part-timers started working from home exclusively a full-time person started working at home so it was really just Anthony and I coming in here so it was really very quiet I was in the admin office and Anthony was in the production office and as busy as we were and the outreach that we were doing I started to realize how important Kingdom Access TV is and you know all of us together Newport Community Television we're here in this vast northeast kingdom and there's so little information that's coming out of other parts of the state that deal directly with our area it can be very frustrating at times but it can also be a situation where any KTV or KUTV is the glue that holds the community together with good local solid information you know the advertising that we've been doing shortly after this started we were using tag lines like staying connected together that's been in our newspaper and our radio advertising and you know it's a great tag line but it's very much the truth the idea that we're available you know I'm working on weekends I don't know about the rest of you but I said to my wife about the second week into this every day is like town meeting live on KTV it's been just crazy but emailing people on the weekends evening reaching out to religious organizations community groups doing posts from Front Porch Forum to our Facebook page really wonderful story about the Jones Farm a local farm organic growers and they put together a list of 16 local farm stands in our area and it's like wow you can get chicken, beef, pork, vegetables, applesauce, maple syrup we really didn't worry much here in the N.E.K. about shortages thanks so much Rob you've not only been trying to serve the community need but you've also been involved in some statewide planning such as the statewide channel that we have been talking about building as Vermont Access Network and I wonder when you look to the future how viable and important do you think the work community media centers like yours your own are do so it's you know I've been thinking about this quite a lot and you know orca is unique and that we have the state house in our footprint so we really do have this whole sort of I thinking about how do we serve the state with access to what's going on in the state house and when this first came out you know started happening I got a call from the IT guy at the state house saying we're trying to figure out how can we do this if we are not actually in the state house and so you know he reached out and then they figured it out they used the Zoom platform to be able to stream to their own committee YouTube pages so now every committee in the state house I think almost all of them now have a YouTube channel that they can connect with any any constituent across the entire state so then I began to worry does that mean that we are now antiquated because we're you know it's now conceivable that after this is over they may keep those YouTube channels going with some sort of streaming camera in the in the state house so it'll be interesting for me to see you know do they continue to do this it's been exciting as far as you know in the general sense in that you know any Vermonter can now watch any sort of committee that's happening they don't actually have to be in that room which has always been a problem because the committee rooms are so small and you have a lot of people that are trying to get in and listen to this important stuff that's happening in the state house so you know you know we think about what's going to happen with the state house you know if every committee has a YouTube channel do we are we then no longer necessary do we begin to shift thinking about covering the chambers in some sort of v-span way or something like that you know particularly in thinking about you know what are we going to be using this statewide channel for in 2021 as far as the legislative you know so it's it's curious you know we can think about it and then even on a local level you know we have a number of smaller towns that just don't have the the capacity to think about you know streaming video and so my board has charged me with sort of even before this happened they they'd sort of charged me thinking about if you were going to set up some sort of way for them to be able to stream their meetings automatically without our help what would that look like and looking at what we now see with these zoom meetings there's a lot of problems that we had with sending a camera operated into a meeting that are being solved for instance you know anybody who's talking they're the primary person that comes up on the screen we can't do that so you can and so an activation is to being done by a microphone that's on a phone or on a laptop and I'm like could we use this to solve some of these problems that we don't want to invest all this infrastructure and capital money into could we take everybody who's at a meeting and they have their laptop or their phone and somehow tap into their microphone that's on that on that phone so that it's activated to a particular point that they're all zoom I don't know it's going to be really interesting to see what the future how it how it ends out core when Rob raises those questions what goes through your mind oh yeah we're doing the the same thing which is we are covering all sorts of meetings that we didn't use to cover like you know special meetings the drb of these tiny towns the you know people are just making recordings that our legislature is having these our delegations are having these weekend roundtable meetings on zoom and sending us the videos so you know I don't know what the cable viewers appetite for watching recorded zoom meetings is we kind of decided in this whole thing that are one of our big roles was bridging the gap between people who are online all the time and getting all their information online and people who are not as facile with that not as used to that and who are still consuming media by watching cable and so because you know people who are on facebook all the time are just seeing just this flood of information so what we decided our role was going to be was taking that relevant information to our community and getting that on cable in a way that it could be digested and in that way you know is there a role for us to bridge the gap between people who are willing to to go on to an online meeting to go to meeting and people who just want to know that their local government is being covered on video and archived and they can watch it if they want to watch it and there's accountability and there's transparency so it's a great question I wanted to say about the the inspiration part you know I do having watched these select board meetings a lot of them it is inspiring to see how many of them have really stepped up during this crisis I mean in my tiny town alone there's like a mutual aid organization there's a select board there's the emergency people are knocking going door to door trying to make sure every single neighbor is okay do you need groceries you know what you know are you sick what how can we help and I just think we're seeing a lot of Vermont towns really really step up in this and our channels are a reflection of that you know people get to experience that I also think that you know the the staff dedication that you're all alluding to where we all feel like we've been running a marathon since March 16th it's been really amazing how how staff has really been able to step up to learn new things learn learn slack learn how to use OBS and you know a lot of times I kind of hear sideways about how staff are just trying to help each other figure out how to do things and I find about it later and you know figuring out the home internet problem and the my computer doesn't work my laptop is crashing you know all that stuff it's pretty it's pretty amazing what everybody has been willing to to step up and take on in this whole thing thanks Core Jared I know that you've been involved in a regional discussion about how to be more perhaps more efficient and I wonder you know does this time of uncertainty also create possibilities in terms of how you might work together differently regionally um I I think so I mean you know I I think for us you know some some of the stations in this area they're part of the conversation I think this adding this COVID-19 this shelter in place gives them even more fear about what their financial funding what their funding is going to be in the future so I think that you know it's a very smart idea for us to be having the discussions that we're having to look at hey how can we work together or hey how do we consolidate the services we're offering and and so forth so I do think that it's you know and I don't know further stations throughout the the stator are looking at options like this but I do think it's a conversation that that is important and that you know things could possibly change quick and I think that having a an idea and a plan to to maybe work together and to be able to continue to provide the essential things that we're providing is important so yeah I think there's a way to do it like I said we're early in the process of our of our discussion and I'm already wondering wait you know how is this how is this really going to work how are we going to be able to provide the communities the same service if we do start consolidating these these things that we're talking about but I think there is a way to do it and I think that in the future it probably is what is what stations are going to have to do especially if we if we do see the funding drop drastically I hope we don't but I mean I hope I answered the question what you were asking but I do think it's important to be having these discussions and looking to the future of all of us working together to make sure that we have a voice and that we're providing these services thanks so much Jared Tammy you're looking forward to becoming the president of Vermont Access Network which means you get to herd all of the 25 cats that make up this amazing resource and I wonder what your thoughts are about the opportunities presented by this period for the movement of community media well I have to share with you all that probably three weeks in I think I was having a complete existential crisis about the work we were doing why we were doing it does it matter is anybody better off all of those questions and it was probably exhaustion stress coping you know and I came out of that with a renewed sense of what's important and and that we do matter and part of what got me out of that tailspin was the feedback that I heard from my community about the work we were doing I started getting thank yous hey thanks for what we're doing you know and part of it to piggyback on what Cora was saying Bennington County's population is an older population and so I had to remind many of our folks around that there are still cable viewers that are not on internet that are not on Facebook and we can't forget about them and it so so I spent a couple of weeks just reminding everybody all the stakeholders that yes you had your meeting and it's available on the internet but not everybody's on the internet and we have this beautiful platform so that's you know that's something that that I did so I think that what's going to come out of this and what's coming out of it for me is a renewed sense of our mission and purpose and our relevance to the community so I'm excited about how we're going to take the crisis and transform it to provide new services and also services in a different way and it's forced us to strip down our daily grind you know and and really think about what's important and so I'm kind of excited to see you know and I'm confident that we'll all work together and come out of it with with a bigger and better community media infrastructure and teams across the state so I'm out of my existential crisis and into you know hope and future and I'm excited I'm excited about it is anybody else have any closing comments they want to make or questions for other folks in the on the call and Gelekay yes go ahead there you go yeah so just in terms of you know future planning for the Vermont Exodus network that we're all a part of this has been a reminder to of our like we pride ourselves in our very local communities but it's been a reminder of like how important Rob's work does that they're actually sending a person to the state house even at this time to get us that clean feed of the governor's address how important that is and all the work of the committees and for the first time we've been putting things on our community bulletin board that are not in our three towns because it's been really important to look at things from a Vermont perspective so that's really something that we're gonna I think walk away from from all this fantastic any other closing thoughts or comments Jamie offer up that we would be doing what we're doing with Fairbanks Museum and others but if it wasn't for VMX it wouldn't have the statewide impact you know seeing that 10 or more AMOs are downloading those educational programs for K through 8 kids is just awesome and the idea that we can do it so easily through the Vermont media exchange is just a wonderful resource to have thanks that is and and you know just so people understand who are watching this is how programs get that someone might produce like the Tim Ash Facebook interviews that he's doing now it's an interview series the fact that you're processing that to get it up and share it with all of us so we can run it easily is a great resource and very much appreciated well I want to thank everybody it's just been a pleasure and a joy and just before we close we're going to just quick lightning round on what it is that you're doing to take care of yourselves because I think Jamie might have intimated every day it's a little bit like Groundhog Day there's just you know there's it's hard to know when it's the weekend and it's hard to know what day it is and so what are you doing to take care of yourself and maybe Rob why don't we start with you because I know that you're very good at that taking care of myself I don't know about that you have a hiddenness quality to you I love that well I think that you know part of it is just being able to spend so much time with my daughters you know we've been sheltered together with them and and having the ability you know my my oldest daughter was in her freshman year at college so she with that was cut short so she's been home and so being able to just to talk about you know how what it's like to be you know in a global sense of what does how this impact is impacts us all and brings us together and to think about those things it's just been really sort of interesting to to to watch it through the eyes of a 19 and a 16 year old so oh yeah that is that's a great blessing to be with them Cora how about you um I'm gonna have to think go to someone else all right Darren how about you how are you taking care of yourself well four-year-old and a two-year-old they're keeping me on my toes my wife works in the medical industry luckily on the more of the managerial side but so she's gone every day and so yeah but it's it's been awesome to actually be around my kids I actually got to see my little boy start walking so you know if you have a fat man daycare they probably would have got to enjoy that so and I'll tell you what I've never exercised so much in my life chasing two of those kids around the house so they're they're keeping me keeping me very happy and very let's just say tired at the same time but yeah I'm I'm doing great I'm surviving and and I'm keeping in touch with my staff and and so forth and it's just you know we're taking it one day at a time wonderful thank you Jamie how about you how are you taking care of yourself well you know part of it is the physical health considerations KUTV has policies in place to wear gloves where it's a shared computer or device and it's been very difficult to get masks but we created some social distancing rules we also completed the VOSHA certification and for anybody coming back I mentioned the people that are working from home they have to have the certificate with them and put it on their desk when they get here the other part of taking care is you know reaching out to people which I'd like to think we've always done at Kingdom Access TV personally tracking down neighbors and making sure especially elderly neighbors my mom my stepmother my mother-in-law you know making sure that these people are taken care of that they don't need something and I think a friendly voice is a wonderful thing too yeah call and talk yeah absolutely thank you Tammy how about you what are you what Netflix show are you watching yeah do you have time I wish I could watch more television I have a five-year-old so I'm kind of in in the realm of full-time parent full-time working trying to manage it all with my husband so I've been forcing myself to walk down the hill and back every day even if it's cold even if it's raining and getting that physical exercise and then also taking time for myself even if it's 10 minutes because you know we're home right the three of us and so it's been interesting and it's been a blessing but I was told yesterday by my child that that my attitude was not as fun as daddy's attitude so that's what I know you know it's it's I need to to step away and so it's been interesting and fun but really just trying to get outside as much as I can and walk up that dang hill it's it's a killer I bet it is yeah thanks court okay I got some ideas from you guys I am trying to get out a little bit outside and I have been gotten involved with the neighborhood mutual aid association and you know checking in on neighbors and stuff like that just anything I think one of the hardest things about being in a crisis is feeling like this particular crisis is feeling like you can't help anyone because we have to be distant and and that's not true and but it feels like that so making a mask and you know knocking on a door unannounced I've been doing that a lot my kids are both grown so they're taking care of themselves um and uh so um anyway I'm just trying to get outside of my tiny pod as much as I can said like a true community organizer absolutely I want to thank you all so much Rob Chapman of Orca based in Montpelier Quartro Bridge of B.C.T.V based in Brattleboro Jared Gannel based in Springfield at Sapa TV Angolique Contest who's in Richmond and they're abouts with M.M.C.T.V. and Tammy Riley in and around Manchester with Jeanette and Jamie Dimick of course holding down the fort in St. John'sbury part of the Northeast Kingdom I want to thank you all so much for all the work you do and for sharing some of your time with us today thanks a lot thanks for having us bye everybody see you all right good work thanks