Technorama Tuesdays – Documenting Your Station
Tuesday 3rd March 2020 – 6:30PM AEDT
Why is good documenting of your station important?
In this episode of Technorama Tuesdays 2020 Webinar Series, we’ll be discussing from a technical perspective the critical importance of Documenting Your Station.
As most people involved in community radio are volunteers, there can be a regular changeover of Technologist or Managers involved at a station.
Have you ever experienced coming in as the new person and wondered “Where does this cable go?” or “Why is this plugged in here?”
More importantly when something inevitably breaks or stops working you don’t know how it fits into the scheme of things?
We’ll be covering:
- Software tools
- Technical wiring diagrams
- How to store manuals
- who should do what?
- offsite recovery
- Krone records
- cable plans
- Best practice documentation
- Password repositories
About The Presenters:
Stephen Wilkinson (Hope 103.2)
Stephen has been involved in community broadcasting as a volunteer and employee in Production and Technical roles for almost 30 years.
In his early days he gained experience with his local 200W community station by upgrading STLs, transmitters and rebuilding studios.
He also has an audio engineering background in multichannel recording and mixing in studios and live to air multi-microphone productions, as well as mixing for Live sound reinforcement. Experience was also gained by assisting ABC Radio with outside broadcasts and live recordings including the Opera House and Sydney Town Hall.
He has a post graduate degree in Design Science (Audio) from Sydney University.
Stephen joined Hope Media in 2004 and shortly after became Technical Operations Manager overseeing the Production and Technical Departments. In his time at Hope Media (Hope 103.2 a metro FM station in Sydney & Inspire Digital on DAB+), he has overseen and implemented a new transmission facility, a total refit of the studio facility to digital and continuous upgrades of IT infrastructure.
In recent years Stephen was on the board of Radio Northern Beaches for over 6 years and was Deputy Chair during the last 3 years of this term.
Stephen has helped a number of community stations with technical assistance, content direction, fundraising, sponsorship and board governance and earned the ‘Most Valuable Person in Christian Media’ Award in 2014 from CMAA.
Chris Deacon (ArtSound FM)
Chris Deacon has over 40 years’ experience in the communications field. Since the early 1970s when he became a technical guru at Radio ANU, he has been a radio presenter, broadcast and recording engineer, and has amassed experience in constructing AM and FM stations, while maintaining a distinguished professional career in international telecommunications at Government and private levels.
Currently Manager Technology of Canberra’s ArtSound FM, Chris brings an extensive working knowledge of broadcast audio, IT and RF design, acoustics and business development. He designed and built the analogue studio consoles used at Artsound (design available for home constructors), and more recently did a design-from-scratch of the acoustic and construction planning for Artsound’s music recording studio. He is often sought to provide advice and guidance to established and fledgling stations and aspirant licensees.
Chris holds a number of awards, and in 2009 he was awarded the Order of Australia for service to community radio.
He was a founding member of the CBAA Technical Standing Committee, and has been part of Technorama since its inception. He has also recently joined the ranks of CBF grants assessors.
John Maizels (Technorama)
John started his radio career as a teenager, teaching himself to build consoles and studios, developing announcing skills and running radio stations at school. He entered the Broadcast Industry as a tech at 3XY in 1970, moving to 3CS as an announcer in 1972, then back to Melbourne to study at RMIT – which turned into Chief Technical Officer at 3ST, Australia’s first landline station. Since then he has worked professionally in radio and television in a variety of creative, production and engineering roles.
He co-founded and built 3MU at Monash Uni, was first on-air presenter at 3CR, and in 1976 became founding Chair of 3PBS-FM, helping to create both policy and the first on-air studios. John spent 11 years as Director of Engineering at 2NSB, introducing IT, an OB unit and full broadcast automation, and led the Friday Breakfast show for several years. He has also volunteered and contributed to many more metropolitan and submetro stations, and is frequently consulted on technical and regulatory matters.
In parallel with Community Broadcasting, John has had a long career in the IT industry. He developed TV-based interactive education systems and a broadcast facility using compressed digital video for IBM, and was a Senior Engineer at Foxtel with the team that launched the Digital platform. In 2009 he consolidated Entropy Enterprises to provide technical, operational, creative and consulting services to the media industry.
John currently works as a freelance technical director and engineer in television, teaches TV in TAFE and Higher Education, is a voice-over artist and audio editor, and moonlights as a Technical Writer.
He is the Director of International Sections for for the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), sat on the Board of the Society as Governor from 2008-2017 and was promoted to the grade of Fellow of the SMPTE in 2006. He is a life member of 3PBS-FM, and was awarded the “2003 Chairman’s Award for Outstanding Commitment” at 2NSB.
John has promoted the interests of Technologists in Community Broadcasting since the sector began. After years of agitation, in 2008 he was appointed as a founding member of the CBAA’s Technical Standing Committee, and led the charge to create the first Technorama Conference.
John lives in Sydney, holds (but rarely uses) VK2JPM, and has passions for pipe organs, good coffee, and skills recognition.
In November 2018, John was announced as the recipient of the 2018 CBAA Michael Law Award, the Hall of Fame of the Australian Community Broadcasting Sector.