 Hello and welcome to the back story on public access television and Longmont public media in Longmont My name is Tim Waters. I'm the host of the back story and I have the good fortune in this program of the opportunity to interview the three principal leaders and founders of Longmont public media, which is Longmont's new public access television service provider Scott Converse Macy May and Sergio Angel is our co-founders of Longmont public media. Scott is the chief executive officer Macy is the chief operating officer and Sergio is the chief technology officer So this has been a an interesting transition For you and for the city of Longmont and I want to jump right in to who who you are What you're doing and why this is so important to both the city government and the residents of Longmont, so One thing I've said in all of the introductions to the to the back stories is that every story in Longmont It gets reported somewhere is interesting more interesting than what you read about in the newspaper Typically is what you don't read it's the back story and the back story on this project It's fascinating and important to every member of this community. So to get started Would be good to learn a little bit about you three because I know you've done a lot of work together Not just an LPM But I'll maybe I'll first Scott defer to you. Tell us a little bit about who you are your background and And the work you three have been doing leading up the Longmont public media and then we'll do around the horn to Macy and Sergio all right Well, I've spent Several decades actually in corporate America companies like Apple Computer and Paramount Pictures and MCI and Motorola and About probably about 20 years ago. I got interested in startup companies I got started doing separate big companies and started doing startups like we did one called click castor Which was one of the first podcasting companies in the world and then a media, which is one of the first over-the-top Smart TV apps companies. So we created apps for Samsung and Sony and TVs like that and Did that for a while and then about 180 years ago, I moved back home back to the Longmont where I grew up, which is why I'm here now and Started a thing called tinker mill, which is a media or which is a maker space And got that going which now is I think the second largest Maker space in the country. It's got six or seven hundred members. It's a huge facility full of tools and knowledge and Amazing people that teach each other stuff and around this around three years ago the times call moved out of Longmont and It shut down its building and it took all of its personnel on and it kind of peed me I just thought you know we need we need local media and Sergio and I found each other through mutual friends and we started Longmont Observer and about a month. Was it a month or so? May see maybe a month and a half later Macy joined us And quickly became our editor-in-chief. It became clear. She knew what she was talking about The three of us really got the Longmont observer going and That is still going strong Matter of fact, we've had some of the largest Readership of that in its history. We had what 12,000 people on one day just a few days ago So it right now during this crisis, which is by the way, everyone why we're all separately on these different screens We're using video conferencing technology make this possible making the show possible So about a year ago, maybe a year and a half ago It became apparent that The the cable TV guys were not really keeping up with the times and I had written a presentation to the city council, which was hey you guys we could do this we could do this and Spend a lot less money get a lot more stuff and why doesn't the cable trust look at doing that and So the city council put me on the cable trust board so that's what happened And I gave the same presentation to the cable trust and they were like nah, just sit down and be quiet We're fine where we're at and at around that time city council decided, you know, maybe we should be looking at this the Cable trust guys had been running the public access TV station since about 18. I believe 84 So about 37 ish years. They've been running this this public Media entity and had never been put out to bid and never at any competition or any question of what they were doing So the city decided and Tim Lee you're I believe a part of this Marsha Martin Stick I believe six out of the seven council members voted to do an RP Do a request for proposal for a little months cable access and public access channel and we and three other entities the cable trust itself Longmont Observer The I believe the company's called Vive and then another company all all bid on it and surprisingly we won that bid and So January 1st the Longmont Observer Has kind of taken a bit of a backseat. They are separate entities Longmont public media is set up as a doing business as part of Longmont Observer But that's a temporary thing until we can separate them completely Which will probably happen the end of this year and that's sort of how it all came about we are currently still doing both But it really is operating is too separate operation I'm gonna I'm gonna come back to some aspects of what you just said having I might I might put my city council head on Just for a few minutes as we've reflect on some of that I'll do that later. Macy. Tell us about you Tells you your background and how did you get connected with these two fellas and and what draws you to this work? Like Scott said, it was about the Observer started in about March of 2017 and in June I met up with Sergio through a friend of mine who had been reading the Observer for a few months and He had noticed they were looking for editors and at that point I was trying to transition from just being a full-time mom to getting back into the workforce And what I wanted to do was edit and I had Needed some extra experience in the in the workforce just because ten years off is kind of a long time and So Scott and Sergio gave me a shot and we've been working together. I don't know. I'd say pretty well since then it's been four years now and It's just it's been a lot of fun and I've enjoyed You know just the connections that we've made I had moved to Longmont in 2014 from a pretty small town in Oklahoma where everybody kind of knows your name and You know Longmont seems pretty big for something like that and and so I wasn't connected to my community and Through the Observer through LPM. I have I've really been able to connect and call this home So that's that's my draw to that and I've learned so much as far as the media side is concerned Scott and Sergio Have been wonderful mentors and teachers for that But it's been great in expanding my editing capabilities. So that's where we got tied in together I'd say you've done a pretty good job of connecting both the city and the people in the city. Yes based on my observations Sergio I think of you as this multi-talented Entrepreneur right light in town tell us about you and not just what you're doing here But I know you're doing a number of interesting things in Longmont in service to the community business community and others sure Yeah, so I graduated from the University of Richmond in 2013 So boy, you've been out of college for seven years But right after I joined a IT consulting company and did back-end application work for Bank of America And then from there I transitioned to Designing and building iOS apps for maybe federal credit union and then moved on to Marriott and help them add more features specifically on the Android team And then in 2016 I moved back to Longmont, which is where my parents currently live to pursue some Started projects of my own And then at the end of that year 2016 was when I ended up meeting Scott converse through mutual friend and given the Media climate at the time nationally and locally We decided to launch the observer in 2017 and then in late 2018 I joined the Longmont economic development partnership doing entrepreneurial and innovation work economic development work for the city Talking with business owners and entrepreneurs figuring out what you know, what's the status of our ecosystem? What do we need what's missing? How can we improve upon it? and out of that Lead innovate Longmont, which is a star accelerator program Which has since spun off into its own entity So I've been working on that and then obviously public media as well Well, I would say anybody who any of the listeners or the viewers of this program Have read the book by cats on the new new localism You three and the things you've been involved with epitomize What is the state of play right for emerging? On the edge vibrant community so good on you for You know taking the lead in so many areas It would help I think before we get into the specifics of what you're doing For folks to learn a little bit more about public access television. What does that mean? How does it get funded? Where did it come from? Why does the city contract with anybody to provide what known quote public access television services who wants to take that I? Can dive into that a little bit. Yeah, it really started when cable television started creating monopolies in cities for their services Where cities would effectively sign a contract With a specific cable television provider and part of that deal was they would get a franchise fee generally about five percent of whatever the bill was and Several national laws were passed to ensure that The the fees themselves that the cities were collecting were used also for the public good and As a result public access television was created which was effectively saying on these cable channels You have to set aside a certain amount of resources Space Equipments channels on the cable networks themselves and you have to enable three types of programming public access which is Allowing us so anybody can create a TV show for the local community educational information Could be about anything could be schools themselves, but it can just be general educational information Governmental which was really creating transparency of government things like what you put what you do now Which is the city council has their meeting every week and that's broadcast on public access TV So now our we do 17 boards and commissions that we record and broadcast We also transcribe all those meetings so that there is a full text a transcription Using software to do the transcriptions available teach you those me so that's kind of where it all started and Over time what's happened is that funding? What really I got to be fairly large It was several million dollars a year that was available for that kind of stuff and public access was a generally a separate entity in every city in America that had a cable system which eventually became every city and What happened was that the money itself there was a loophole in the money that franchise fee You the cities weren't required to give the full amount to the public access operations So what started happening was the city started taking part of that money? Originally, it was 10% and it was you know 25 and then 50 and currently in Longmont for instance It's 75% of the money that's collected for franchise fees is kept and used in other things like public safety But whatever else the city wants to spend it on and that was fine because it was still generally enough money because the dollars had gotten probably high but about and We helped cause this we did things like media and click castor when the internet came around you started to see a drop-off happening with People paying for cable and if you don't pay for cable you don't pay the franchise fee. So those fees started to drop so What's been happening over the last 10 years and really accelerated over the last three or four is that there's a thing called Cord cutting where people just don't have cable anymore And as a result we're seeing those fees drop substantially and the money to run public access television is dropping very quickly Like this this year this year in 2020 It's around 150 ish thousand dollars last year was around a hundred and seventy thousand dollars the year before it was in 190 range before that was 220 range So it's you're seeing this definite downward spiral and as people continue to use the internet more and pay for cable TV less You're gonna see that eventually go down to zero So what we decided was that it probably made sense to try some new models That's why we talked a little bit about tinker mill earlier That's a maker space where people the community gets together shares resources and tools and knowledge and keeps the keeps Large space. It's kind of a 21st century University Going and I thought that model might work here Let's see if we can create a media maker space and that's what that's what where we got to today We still have that money coming from the city, but it's gonna be doing this or the next two three years And I figured three to four years from now there will be literally no money there So we had to find a way to replace that otherwise public access would go away and sadly that's happening across the country Many cities no longer have a public access separate public access TV station Perfect most now in Colorado. We're the last one. There is I believe actually believe ask them. Is that right Sergio? I think got Eagle Valley there's a little valley So there's there's one other public access TV Network in Colorado that's separate from the city every other city has taken that in they've taken that function into the city all The educational and the government programming and they will sometimes have you know one guy who works part-time doing public access in one of their studios like Fort Collins does that And really public access is kind of just disappeared Denver shut theirs down last year. So And they just took it in they have one part-time person running that stuff now. So so you're seeing for a Piece of local media kind of disappear. Yeah So so I will put my city council head back on the disclaimer here is that I do this as a volunteer as you all know But every once in a while, probably in every one of these at some point in time, there is a reason to put a city council head back on. I will say this Having gone through that budgeting cycle. And when we when we got to the topic of a public access television and we we saw the pattern of declining resources. It has to beg the question and it did. What are we going to do differently going forward. If we're if we have fewer resources and greater needs right or less cash flow and greater needs. What are we going to do differently with the cash flow and I have to say Part of the story here part of the back story is it's one thing to talk about doing more with less or getting more with less That is what's happening here. The city, in my opinion, both as a volunteer and as a as a council member. I look at what's happening and and I'm thoroughly convinced we're getting more for a few dollars and I don't know, you know, you're you're figuring how to leverage that and I want you to talk about How you're leveraging those resources and service to the community, but that's part of the story and I want to add Right now we're doing this. We're doing this program today virtually because of the corona virus epidemic. It's a powerful part of the story. What you're doing, but as I watch Macy as I watch Sergio apply their talents to serve in this community. It's, it's pretty extraordinary what the city is getting for its money way beyond what he was getting. And I don't mean to be disparaging that anybody provided service in the past. But to do to do same old same old or just less of same old with as the dollars decline wasn't the kind of future we wanted to move into and that's what you brought it. So talk about, you talked about the recording of the of the meetings. Talk more about what are we getting. What is the city getting For its money and how are you leveraging those resources so that you're growing services, even as the city's resources are declining. Macy, you want to pick that up. Well, in response of COVID-19 we were working under certain restrictions, the the contract we work under outlines that we give the city 20 hours a week and then we record the the boards and commissions and a few other things on top of that but with COVID-19 we saw this huge need that the city needed to reach more people and we have multiple avenues of being able to do that and reaching people at all different levels of income and socioeconomics and and all kinds of different ways. And so we had a quick meeting and we said how do we reorganize what we're doing so that we can make sure that we're available to the city for whatever their needs are so that we are also supporting our internal videographers and editors and things like that through COVID-19 and so we basically opened up the doors and said to to the city of Longmont please whatever you need let us know if that's sitting there with a daily show daily updates if that's doing public service announcements if that I mean how do you how do you want us to do that and kind of just stopped and we're like I don't know help us out and so we did have a member meeting where our membership said hey this is what I'd like to see and here's what I've heard my neighbors say they want to hear from the city and so we have a list of probably about 50 show ideas to work from and I have been working with city staff members very closely they come to me with an idea and they say okay this is kind of where we want to go with this and I I can say because I've listened to our community and I've been so connected there that I can say this is what your community wants how do we merge that and so those videos as PSAs are not just a message from the city but they're aimed so that the community and gets that message better and it's it's basically digested for that are easier I guess but then there's other other things that we're working on I know Sergio and I just talked yesterday about doing something for the business community and you know how do we bring resources there one of the other things that we've what was that thing for the business community why don't you talk about that a little bit oh okay well we just simply started talking about forming some concepts of a show around the business community leaders ledp ldda the chamber the latino chamber members of the city staff I know Sergio does a lot with that innovate Longmont and just bringing that together and saying hey Longmont this is how what's available to you here's your resources here are the creative ideas that have come up just in our community and here's how we can band together and support our economic system here in Longmont so we're still in the idea phase of that and I know Sergio's got some great ideas to help support that show one of the other things we did for the city itself was some of their of the staff there especially the recreation staff started recording exercise videos and the museum is doing like art for kids things you can do at home the they're also doing like their typical Thursday night programming by virtually and so all of this virtual stuff is really come together and we've been a platform for them to be able to broadcast that out and so we daily twice a day actually 8 and 3pm have exercise shows so people can tune in and get some little exercise while they're staying at home and staying away from others wow there's like the ways that we've been able to help has been amazing and it's been great working with all the communication staff at the city and even beyond just some of the you know the staff and like the recreation center or the senior center or some public places have great ideas too so it's been really fun just being able to figure out how do we survive COVID-19 together and and follow the protocols but still stay connected so the three words that come to mind as I listen to your nimble responsive and service right which wouldn't be a bad way to be known right as an entity a service entity Sergio talk a little bit more drill down a little bit more about the interest in the business community what should let's assume we have some since everybody's home now doing trying to find something to watch they will have some of our business leaders leaders in our business community watch this what would you like them to know about what you're prepared to do and and how to get it done sure so I would primarily say that we have the distribution and that's primarily where we've been working on is making it easier to distribute content across our community across mobile phones online television so forth and so on just making it easier for them to send us content us to distribute it and have people watch it. That's something we've been striving for and we've been actively working on with some other cool and exciting things that are coming up. So I guess that's really what I wanted to highlight there. Very good. So I know going into this leveraging resources, building a sustainable business model and doing that in a way that in some ways reflects what you learned the tinker mill and then what you've brought forward and what you've learned since the tinker mill. So talk about that talk about the leverage how you're leveraging talk about what it means to be a member. What are members. What's the what's the value of being a member of long public media in the maker space people with particular interest background or things they'd like to learn. What is LPM represent for them. Well you see a bunch of different things happening we have folks come in that are pretty much novices but want to learn how to do certain things. We have a bunch of people who are experts in certain areas like we've got several sound people that are sound engineers and know how to run recording studios we've got folks that have been doing video for many years know how to do editing. We've got folks who are professionals who are doing this now just starting out in their 20s, trying to build a business around creating videos but also wanting to give back to the community and to teach others how to do stuff. And what we have there is a 5000 square foot facility, which is the old Carnegie building and 457 4th Avenue and we have in their one to we have a one large television studio which is very, you know, quite it's really a probably the biggest black box type studio and long month could be used for all kinds of things for events for other entities to be able to use to have have their own events in and have their own shows if they wanted to do that. And then we have smaller studios we have a podcasting studios we have small green screen studios, we even have a small recording studio in the basement with voice booths. So there's a bunch of space that's usable for lots of things there. And what that does is that then allows us to put equipment in those spaces and the kind of equipment using right now is we don't really go out and buy seven or $8,000 cameras we use iPhones and we use mevo cameras which are these small multi view cameras that act like television studios effectively. And we will be using some higher end cameras as we start to develop more of a revenue model allows us to buy some of that stuff but we're doing pretty well without a lot of our already. So, so that kind of creates the place where people can come. Then what we do is we have we're open to the public anybody can come anytime they want it right now obviously they can't because everything shut down. But generally the building is open to the public during regular business hours. And that's free and access to everything is free, including things like our editing base we have super high end computers that are really good for video editing usually requires you know very expensive hardware to do that plus we have all the software. That you'd like premier and final tech pro and all the ones that the professionals use to create movies with right down to your home, cutting up your own home videos so you can do everything in between. And if you become a member like Tinkerbell, we have four levels of membership, which is the low end membership which is $25 a month which is for like students and stuff like that. So we start being media makers $50 a month numbers $75 a month for a family of up to five and we don't define what a family is that could be five guys sharing house we don't really care. And then $100 a month for corporations or companies entities that want to come in and use the space for creating their own stuff, and they can have up to five seats as well. And it's operated as a five one C three or nonprofit charity. So, and everybody there can teach each other, plus we also have classes and all the different types of equipment that we have, as well as we're going to start classes here soon on how to how to actually be good at this how to shoot video well. How do you like things you know how do you how do you make it so that a product looks really good. So being able to do that. And being a member gives you access to all of that and being able to reserve it. So if you're a member you can reserve a studio reserve equipment, you also have access to the space 24 seven. You get access to a lockbox, and we're in the process now figuring out how to do access to the building with an app on your phone, but that'll take a little while. But once you're a member you have access, you have basically have have free access to the building. So and it's worked really, really well at Tinker Mill. So we're pretty sure they'll work pretty well here. The only problem we really have right now is that we had a ramp up of members that we were hoping to create this year from a revenue perspective and COVID has really hasn't even flattened that curve. It's kind of dropped that curve. And that that is probably our biggest challenge right now is how do we replace the potential revenue drops or the well the projected revenue drops from the city contract we have with membership. Now I don't know if that's going to happen this year like we hope that's our probably our biggest fear right now. Yeah, well, you and the whole rest of the world. Recalibrate what our expectations should be and what's possible going forward. Maybe the upside of that is we we have whole new ways to think about what sustainability looks like and how we contribute. Like what we're doing right here. This is a good example of something I mean we're making a TV show all of us sitting in our respective. I'm sitting in a fake. This is not real. I could tell I could tell you're not sitting at long tucky, which I think is the background there for just software making the background look like something other than it is. And we're not very good at this yet we're still figuring out but this is a good example. For instance, we talked a little bit about this. We want to be able to do this show using using a background that has taken a picture from a different angle. It looks like we're all in the same place when we switch between stuff and it'll be a very professional production and it'll take us a while to figure that out but that's the kind of stuff. The kind of innovation that we're really trying to push forward here. All right, may see if somebody somebody walks in and says look I'm a neophyte. I have an interest. What's the how do I get started where where would you point them to start building a learning curve developing a skill set is it on content. It is on the technical aspects. How does somebody get started to become more productive if they're interested in in media like this. Well just prior to the COVID-19, you know, up at our pandemic Sergio and I had kind of created kind of a workflow for that actually so we offer tours to our facility and get everybody kind of acclimated with what is already there and what potential could be and inviting them right there on the spot to start dreaming about what that could be from their perspective. Is that creating a movie in our big studio or is that the back end of that and operating our control room or taking them down to the music recording studio and letting them dream about the music they're going to create down there. And so that I think is is the start just getting people in there just starting to dream about it and following that opportunity or that tour we give everybody an opportunity to walk away or sign up right then and there. If you want to sign up and become a member right there orientation is immediately available to them so that they can immediately get their code to the door and begin to start creating on their own time. We suggest the different classes that are available and we connect them we use slack as our internal communication. And so we connect them in slack right away and if they have any questions about maybe they're very interested in audio production. So then I immediately will connect them with the members who have said hey I'm audio people. I'll connect them so that they can start talking and asking questions and doing some one on one or we connect them with those classes that have already been established so that they can learn how to use the equipment that they want to use. Many times those people come in and they're like oh I already know how to use these things. Let me show you and so we just will sit down with you right then and there and go through something you want to talk about or you know set up a camera and start playing. But that's kind of the fun part of my job in our our everyday at least as a part I kind of enjoy more than anything is having somebody come in and say hey guess what I'm setting up a camera in here. Do you want to come play with the green screen with me. I just want to test something. We also but we also have a distribution mechanism right. Yes we just we have channel 8 channel 880. So if you create a show we have a place where we can put it out onto the entire the entire city that has Comcast and also you can watch everything on our website live anytime. And so there's a constant there's a TV station for Longmont that Macy runs. She is the effectively the executive producer of the TV and she decides what goes up and she programs that whole thing herself. So to share with. I'm sorry sir. Yeah just real quick. I just wanted to chime in. So one of the things that I think we learned and maybe not learn but we verify that we guess was true was through the observer. We focus primarily only on Longmont specific content. We didn't do anything bolder. Nothing you know outside of Longmont and we saw and verify that people crave local content. So with public media as an extension of the observer you know people crave local locally produced content and they want to consume it locally as well or anywhere really but there is no other mechanism to host nor create you know that local content. So Sergio as long as you have the floor talk. I heard reference earlier to Macy mentioned a membership meeting. Yeah what does that mean when the members get together and now how would they get together given the social distancing. Sure. Yeah. So before the pandemic we're meeting every Thursday from 7 to 8pm at the public media building 457 4th Street in Longmont. We've since transitioned to do it online on on zoom. We actually tried variety of different platforms for Google Meet to WebEx to zoom. We're trying some self hosted ones earlier as well. So it's all digital it's all online same timeframe. We put that information out on the website so anyone can join and just find out what we're about you know go from there. So when are those meetings. Yeah. When are those meetings. They are every Thursday from 7 to 8pm. Okay. I would just like to add on to those meetings. It's a great place for our members and anyone in the community to kind of come together and work on different projects. I think that's been the biggest success of those meetings is is collaboration. Yeah. Well as a as a member myself and having attended in person and now having attended at least one virtual meeting. It's for it's a chance from my path to cross the paths of folks who I would not have otherwise had a chance to meet who are unbelievably talented, highly motivated, a lot of fun so if nothing else it would be a chance for people even if you're not interested in the media to make new friends who are very much involved in the community and paying attention to what's going on. Scott you mentioned channel eight. You've had a there are you've gone through this. It's been a fast paced transition right from moving from 2019 and 2020 and almost immediately then confronted with the complications of social distancing and having to pivot right be nimble and responsive as described earlier, you've learned a lot about that distribution system on channel eight share with us some of what you've learned and and and how you intend to capitalize on that distribution system going forward. So what we, a bunch of things happened really rapidly. As you know, the city council chamber shutdown. Primarily for they were there. Re-modeling. Yeah, remodeling, but it's really more than that it's making it more accessible for any cap and a bunch of really good things actually so. But this was not something that we had actually been told about when we were bidding for the contract. So what happened was we had to figure out how to do remote public access city council meetings on a fairly large scale and we're pretty good at covering it remotely and doing this stuff, but doing it where we were, we were responsible for all of the aspects of it from audio to to AV to be able to live stream it to be able to get it up on channel eight from a remote location it wasn't set up for it. It still isn't set up for so it effectively every week we have to set up a tell you we had to set up a television studio from scratch in about 30 minutes, so that you could have your meeting for anywhere from two to four hours and then we had to shut down about 30 minutes. It was an interesting experience and it also taught us a lot about how, you know, this is definitely doable. It's doable with reasonably reasonably priced technology we didn't have to go out and buy, you know, huge TV truck and 150 $200,000 worth of equipment which is what channel nine does for instance they show up with a truck with hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment and a staff of six people to run a production. So what we figured out how to how to do and Sergio gets huge credit for this. How do we use existing technology software and low cost gear to set up a multi camera studio and and I'll let him actually talk about what we're doing there now so Sergio why don't you just jump in and talk a little bit about what we're doing and how we're able to use that. Sure, I mean, yeah, we have a variety of different setups but we have something called weaker studio where we use variety of different iPhones to create a multi cam setup. You just need the software for it, which makes you know setting up recordings or live streams pretty easy. We have different Meavos setups. What can I get additional other cameras to make these setups even easier. So it's a combination of software and hardware that is available now for cheap that makes, you know, kind of modernizing public access easier. It also allows us to do things like cover the 17 boards and commissions which may see she pretty she does a bunch of them herself, but she also coordinates volunteers to show up at these and has actually spent a fair amount of time getting people who are on these boards and commissions to run the cameras right What would you do there. Yeah, our and our hardware the cameras that we use are so easy to use and easy to train anybody on and essentially for boards and commissions, the idea is to get the the business of the meeting and not necessarily focus on the individual board members. So it's easy to set up a camera in the corner of the room and hit put or hit record and I know several several of the board members have actually participated in doing that and then all of our volunteers who have done that have received some training on that and continue to get some training as we learn some bugs in that system but it's been so simple or just, you know, college students or average show people who have no, you know, major media experience to go in and help us with some of this, this little recordings. So once we do that. We also then have a process and why don't you talk a little bit about this, where we take the video and we use software to create transcription. How does that work. Yeah, so we use order.ai and we upload it to that system and it will take all of the audio from that recording and create a transcription that can be used in a multitude of ways. One of the ways is the secretaries of those meetings have referred back to that whenever they, they missed something that that they were just, it was just going too fast for them to actually record and they, they missed an important word or something. It's also been good for the public to be able to look at those and read that so not only reaching to people who have difficulties with hearing. They now get to read what's happening with our city governments. It's just, it's been, it's been a great tool for us also just to pair it with that video and be able to reference it for ourselves and for other media organizations have used it. This is the first time that I think there's ever been full text transcripts of anything from the city council or boards and commissions I got a call from a reporter from the Times call. A long time ago saying thank you for these videos that you're doing of the city council because what I can't be there. And without those videos we couldn't be doing the reporting we're doing on the council right now so so we are, even though we do have the lawman observer we also are supporting other media organizations both profit and nonprofit in the community. I will tell you as a as a liaison to some of those boards of commission. As a member of the council, both videos and the transcripts become save a lot of time. It is not unusual to want to go back months, you know when an issue get started eight months ago and now you're, you know, going to vote on something, and to go back and try to track the discourse that's occurred is a challenge to be able to go back and look at transcripts without having to go through tapes and is a huge service. So, thank you for that you can search the transcripts. Yes, you can. So, what else what are the here's my last question, and that is, what else you want people to know what extend the invitation to get involved. The best in this conversation that is that you think critical for whether they're policymakers members or just member just members of the public. Well, I will let me say this, and I would like each of you to also say whatever you think you're but most important, www.longmontpublicmedia.org. Longmont public media.org. Please go there. And take a look at what's there. You can become a member you don't have to pay to become a member you can just become a public member there. We'll put you on a mailing list to tell you things that are going on, but join join Longmont public media, even as just a non paying public member is totally. We'd love to have you. So that's probably the most important thing get involved. And feel free to come down to the building when we open again hopefully in the next couple of months. You're going to have the last word on this. So Sergio. I would say, obviously similar Scott, you know, visit Longmont public media.org. But I think one of the beautiful things about LPM is that it's limited really by your own creativity. So many possibilities of what people can create from possible dating shows on a local level to shark tank and, you know, all kinds of different things. Technology wise, you know, technology wise, how do we, you know, maybe develop a platform that's easier for city council meetings to be broadcasts and public environment be heard. So there's just a lot of opportunity to play around experiment with new technology create content and distribute that content. So if you're, you know, interested in all that and you know we love to have you please please come. There's never been a more important time for it than right now. Macy, you have the last word. Yeah, I think on top of what Sergio is saying, you know, it's, it's limited by your creativity, but especially during our coven 19 right now I know a lot of businesses are trying to reach out to the community and stay present stay out in front with people watching them. And so we've opened up all of our services just for the yoga studio to, you know, show off a yoga class or, you know, a restaurant wants to show us how they make their signature dish and they want to record that. Or, you know, a band who wants to virtually play and share that with Longmont like we have, we've just been trying to invite people to let us help you be in front of Longmont and we use all the platforms available to us to advertise that so not only do we broadcast on channel eight and YouTube and on our own website but we also use the Longmont Observer to help promote some of that to say hey, look at these people go here and see what they have to offer because we will first I think inform us just want to be community members and and to be there for Longmont and whatever their needs are. All right. Thanks to the three of you for for participating in this more importantly thanks for the service that you're rendering to the city of Longmont and our residents and Longmont residents that is the backstory on public access television and Longmont public media.