Staff members, board members and independent producers from Minnesota, North Dakota and Wisconsin gathered in St. Paul in February for the annual Minnesota Alliance for Community Media Conference. The conference featured workshops about putting on shows, equipment how-to's, as well as access station policies. The keynote speaker for the event was Fred Johnson, Assistant Professor of Community Media and Media Arts Policy at the Umass, Boston, and the founder of Media Working Group. Also attending the conference was Anthony Riddle, Executive Director of the national Alliance for Community Media. Riddle was the director of MTN from 1989-1995. Here are some of the things that people said at the conference. "We've got crappy fast food-style media, we've got just about every kind of commercial outrage you can imagine in the form of media. We've got no regulation of media…. We have a really serious problem with the media culture in this society, and it's a social problem, and it's causing us problems, and I think the public access movement is one of the key avenues out of this problem. We need serious strong democracy at the local level and that is what access is to me." Fred Johnson, Assistant Professor of Community Media and Media Arts Policy, University of Massachusetts "When Dirk Koning was here [two years ago] he said that if aliens were to come down and wanted to find out about our culture, they would be able to find out what our culture was about through access. We have everything. There are religious programs, there are people talking about what is going on in the community, and you're not going to find that out through mediated media, where everything is controlled and filtered so carefully." David Zierott, St. Paul Neighborhood Network Note: Dirk Koning was the director of the Community Media Center in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and a national leader in community media. He was to have been part of the conference but he passed away on February 9. The conference was dedicated to him. "The words 'public access' mean that the public has access to a television channel. We can put on a program. It is one of the last places on earth where we have a free speech forum." Bryan Olson, Independent Producer "I tell people that we are small, but we are mighty. And we are growing." Amanda Taylor, BCAT-16 in Bloomington "You have to ask why we do what we do. It's to help the community, to help out and make a difference…. That's why we keep doing it." Chadd Parritt, Saint Paul Neighborhood Network "Community TV at a grassroots level is where my roots are, and what's really important is that it represents the people's voice. So I am here to learn more about what is happening on that level." Daniel Bergin, Producer, Twin Cities Public Television and former MTN Board Member "I believe in the free market system. The free market system works very well. It serves bacon producers well and it serves bacon eaters well. It doesn't work well for the pigs, and when you are on your way to the rendering plant, you better damn well know whether you are the customer or the product. In commercial TV, we are the product. Except for the public system, and particularly, public access." John Forde, Independent Producer, Mental Engineering "It's like a big family here. It doesn't matter what neighborhood they serve, all the cable access facilities here are family." Luis Iglesias, Suburban Cable Channels "The reason why I am in the field of community media is that I think it's really important that everybody in the community has a forum where they can express their own point of view. I specifically work with youth and try to encourage them to express themselves and articulate the issues that are important to young people today that maybe are not being shown in the mainstream media." Nicola Pine, St. Paul Neighborhood Network "There is this huge consolidation of commercial media organizations that really threatens the fabric of our society, threatens our ability to make decisions, threatens our ability to have a voice in a democratic society. People who don't have good sources of information can't make good choice about where they want to go. So it has been really important for us to develop alternate media to combat this." Anthony Riddle, Executive Director, Alliance for Community Media and former Executive Director of MTN "[Public access founder] George Stoney said that those in front of the camera and those behind the camera are equals, and a good movie is about people working together as equals to tell a story." Media Mike Hazard, Independent Producer