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This week's blog post comes from GCTV Executive Director Oscar Lanza-Galindo:

Please join me in welcoming Ian Hamilton as our newest team member!  Starting next week, he will begin his part-time position as GCTV/WMCB Office Administrator.  Over the past few months, I've had an opportunity to work with Ian in his dual roles of both GCTV volunteer and Greenfield community member and found him to be capable and enthusiastic.

Ian holds a Master of Arts in Public History Film & Media Specialization, as well as a Bachelor of Arts in History with a minor in Communication, from the University of West Florida.  While at the university, Ian was Opinions Editor at the school's newspaper, The Voyager.  In addition, Ian was a student teacher during his graduate studies, and also worked on several archiving projects, which made good use of the fact that he is very detail-oriented.

Ian regularly volunteers at GCTV to film city council, school committee, and other special meetings.  Furthermore, Ian's documentary film, Pensacola Punks, previously aired on GCTV and he is currently finishing up post-production on a Frida Kahlo documentary.

With such a diverse amount of experiences ranging from customer service, to time-sensitive research, to teaching and instruction, to film-making, to news editing, I know that Ian will be a great compliment to our team, and we are very excited to have this opportunity to work together.

Well, not goodbye exactly because we hope she'll still be around creating awesome videos as an independent producer.  Unfortunately, our temporary part-time staff position has come to an end and so we have to take her off the roll of GCTV employees.  It was a big help to have an additional person here as we searched for, and then incorporated, a new executive director and Sky's artistic talents have been a wonderful asset to our organization.  In fact, just this week, her colorful list of volunteer opportunties on our Idea Wall inspired WMCB 107.9-lp FM DJ Beth Adams (in picture below) to sign up to film an event at the Greenfield Public Library.

Once we had all of the volunteers we needed, Sky turned the Idea Wall into a plug for tomorrow's teen event:

We're having a little party today, to show Sky our appreciation, and we wish her all the best in her next endeavor.

The force of our volunteers, that is!  Our staff is having some fun celebrating Star Wars Day today (see below) and this got us thinking about a force that assists us every day.  Our station runs on volunteers, from the independent producers and WMCB 107.9-lp FM DJs who create programming, to the awesome folks who help us bring you local government meetings each month.  We couldn't do what we do without all of them and we want everyone to know how much we appreciate their contributions.

If you've been thinking about getting involved but don't know where to start, here's a suggestion taken from our Idea Wall earlier this week (art by part-time staffer Sky):

We can train new people during the shoots in our studio on the 15th and the 23rd and we'd love to meet you!

Now, back to Star Wars Day stuff:

As you can see from the picture above, our Idea Wall is regularly used for communicating with visitors to our facility.  However, it can also be used for Fun Friday and this is what it looks like now:

Here's a close up of the fabulous drawing by one of our interns, Ivy:

Enjoy and, until next week, May the 4th be with you all!

This week's blog post comes from GCTV Executive Director Oscar Lanza-Galindo:

Don't let the weather fool you, Earth Day is this Sunday and that's a true sign that we're in spring.  Here at GCTV and WMCB, we are active consumers and users of electronic equipment and we are mindful of our e-waste impact.

According to the "Global E-Waste Monitor 2017", in 2016 there were about 44.7 metric tons of e-waste generated, which is the equivalent of 4,500 Eiffel Towers.  In the United States alone, we produced 6.3 metric tons of that, roughly more than 600 Eiffel Towers.  Yet, in the U.S., we only collected 1.4 metric tons of e-waste; that's just around 22% of what we generate.  The federal government leaves it up to states to regulate e-waste, and Massachusetts is 1 of 15 states without legislation covering e-waste management.

So...this isn't meant to be a downer but an opportunity for our community to be active in how we address e-waste.  Our staff is already thinking of items we want to recycle, and we want to extend that opportunity to you, for free.

If we were to hold a recycling event, would you help?  Would you bring your e-waste to have it responsibly recycled?  You can let us know by filling out this survey (it takes less than 2 minutes):  https://goo.gl/forms/PdeBm2lO0W6kw1Ku1

It's the smallest actions that often yield the most incredible impact and we believe we can make an impact on more than 1 day a year.  Won't you help?