Belinda starts the session with the working question to which she responded here, and a call for introductions!

I spent most of lunch talking with Houston Indymedia-makers and munching on an avocado sandwich, so these notes aren't especially detailed or comprehensive.

I get the feeling that most of Attorney Garcia's discussion of went over folks' heads, but he reminded us that public access stations need our help. "A way of bringing in volunteers to help the city run the PEG station in one way is a way to solve this problem," he said.

Initial notes: Belinda Acosta, TVEye Columnist for the Austin Chronicle, starts the discussion with questioning of the term "community." Groups represented include KAZI, KVRX, KOOP, We the People News in Corpus Christi, Channel Austin, Community Impact, Houston Media Source, Dallas iMedia, Southwest Alternative Media Project, Ariba, Texas Observer, KAOS.

North: Dallas gets a C+ in community media, says Giovanni Gallucci from The Agency Blog. Artists have limited options and independent filmmakers have little access (to what exactly?). There's plenty of access and variety in local press, but they're virtually all for-profit with less community focus. Giovanni likes what he says is a thriving network of community radio stations and theaters. "You run around in Austin and community media is always in your face.

I liked the video on the Chicago Community Media summit. The statistics on growing Internet usage and the growth of broadband access were striking. I hope this conference will be fully documented online, like the National Conference on Media Reform was last year... in the aftermath of their conference the video highlights received thousands of views on Youtube.

Introductory speeches are going on a bit too long and I'm not hearing a lot of substantive discussion of community media.