The Convergent Media Collective

Palo Alto College, one of the Alamo Colleges, holds a dear place in the hearts of many CMC members as that is where they started their undergraduate career.  For Andrew Valdez he not only attended, but he now works there as a senior multimedia specialist in the public relations department.  Since beginning his job at Palo Alto, Andrew has taken PACFest as an opportunity to build awareness of the college, not only at the event, but through social media. PACfest is an official fiesta event held on the Thursday before Battle of the Flowers parade. During PACFest 2013, Andrew and the PAC PR team created a “Social Media  Alley” which included a twitter wall, flat screens, and step-and-repeat which allowed participants to engage in social media throughout the event. The social media alley was a huge success and earned the PAC PR team a prestigious NCMPR paragon award for best social media campaign. Then in 2014 Andrew and the PAC PR team decided to take it up a notch and build on the successes of the previous year. In addition to PACfest social media campaign, Andrew and the PAC PR team managed to get back-to-back national awards, even being chosen to present at the 2015 national NCMPR conference held in Portland.

CMC officially got involved with PACFest when Andrew asked if any members would be willing to come and get photos.  We were happy to come help out and it was a great experience for all of those involved.  The staff, the faculty and community were great. It was a true community event that we were able to help document.

So this year, we began our collaboration early on.  Andrew and the PAC PR team put together a stellar social media campaign and even held a successful Mariachi Flash Mob at South Park Mall.  CMC members Corina Zavala Lopez, Joey Lopez and his niece Victoria helped out by gather audio, photos and video of the flash mob.

For the day of Andrew invited Palo Alto graduate and CM alumni, Christian Rios, owner of the arcade Dreamonoids, to set-up a table with arcade games. The arcade component gave social media alley an extra interactive component that wasn’t available previous years.

Dreamonoids was a hit and introduced a new outlet for social gaming to the college. We also had professor joey lopez, as well as G&A Media crew Johnathan Guajardo, Joel Peña and Christian Giron from the CMC to gather additional photos and videos of the event.  Andrew and the PAC PR team stepped up the event media wise with a Drone to capture some aerial footage as well.

The CMC is proud to be a supporter of the PACFest 2015, kudos to Andrew and their PAC PR crew, their work is top notch and it is great to see such cutting edge convergent media work being done by a local community college.

The Convergent Media Collective is excited to say we were able to help augment the Where the Rivers Meet performance at the University of the Incarnate word through the creation of a processional path using LED lighting and Projections.  Our collaboration with the creators of Where the Rivers Meet began when associate professor Kevin Salfen approached founding CMC member and associate professor as well, joey, to see if the collective would be interested in working on some lighting solutions to a part of performance where there is a procession between the art building and the chapel at the University of the Incarnate Word.  joey’s solution to the collaboration was to create an LED lit path, along with some visuals projected into the trees that would add an ambience.   joey ordered a set of 10 additional par cans and was able to work with the meteorology department ‘s Dr. Gerald Mulvey to obtain additional Apple MacBook’s to help with the projections.

Though there was a chance of rain, the other evening was an overall success with Where the River Meet’s attendees getting to take in the ambiance of the space created, some even stopping to take photos and videos of the space.

It’s great to work with Universities that collaborate between not only departments, but have international scopes when creating new works, such as Where the River Meets production accomplished.

We have recently started utilizing laser cutting in our projects. One project, in particular, has just recently been accepted into Luminaria 2015, which is a city wide arts festival. In addition to Luminaria, we have also been accepted into the SA Mini Maker Faire, which is another event based on hacker, technologists and innovators! Our ball is finally rolling, and we are very excited to finally be able to showcase our work to hundreds of thousands of people.

Over the years, each member has volunteered to make-up this collective and have poured personal funds and time into several projects in the past. Just recently we helped raise over $12,000 to purchase a laser cutter for our hackerspace, 10Bit Works.

We have a unique never-before-seen project up our sleeves that the city is excited about. For Tortillas & Technology, member artist Andrew Valdez explores the relationship between technology, culture and art by combining a non-­traditional canvas with state ­of­ the ­art technology. The Collective invites the audience to an innovative one­-stop print station, where they may upload digital photos, and have them “printed” on a tortilla.

Here is a video explaining the thought process and demo: https://youtu.be/keAMLMgdxjE

 CMC Tortillas and Technology | Luminaria 2015

We plan to showcase the laser cutter doing some work in a “photo booth style one-stop-shop station” in the heart of the festival. But in order to pull this project off, we would need a Full Spectrum H-Series 5th Gen CO2 Desktop Laser, exhaust fan, air compressor, and water chiller.

With all of our great success, comes a high cost for production and materials. Unfortunately we are currently in a tight situation when it comes to funding our art installation for the festival and makerfaire. We would greatly appreciate any help by providing any publicity, awareness or donations.

Here is a GoFundMe where anyone can help donate!

https://www.gofundme.com/xh5jdcxc

In the past few years, we have helped San Antonio shine the light on laser cutting, 3D printing and other cutting edge technologies.

So stay tuned for updates!

– Make Stuff, Take Risks and Be Awesome.