Hello Everyone. Just a reminder for anyone that might want to participant in "Heroes in Marine Mammal Science Video Project", please send us a letter of interest by April 29. The details of the program are below. We already have participants from across the globe working on a variety of issues but we hope you will participate too. Please let us know if you have any questions. For those of you who already expressed interest we will be getting in contact with you shortly after April 29th. Charles and Ari. ________________________________________________________ The team organizing the 19th Biennial Conference on Marine Mammalogy is busy working hard to bring about another great conference later this year. We are planning on maintaining the tradition of hosting a video night so that those researching and working with marine mammals can showcase their work or wild experiences they have captured on video. However, we are trying to come up with ways to reinvent and reinvigorate video night. We also want to find a way that we can use video night to garner more attention for the incredible research and conservation efforts that are occurring in the field of marine mammal science. With those goals in mind we have conceived the “Heroes in Marine Mammal Science Video Project”. What is the project? We are hoping to collect short video “diaries” of marine mammal research and conservation projects that are occurring around the world. We want the stories to be told in the researchers own words and through their own eyes. We are working on getting up to 10 GoPro Hero Cams donated to this project. These small, compact, waterproof high-definition cameras can be attached to helmets, bikes, boats, poles, almost anything. Society members will use the cameras record the work they are doing and interview themselves answering a series of scripted questions that give insight into the researchers and their mission. If you already have archived footage you can still participate. We would just need you to provide the footage and conduct your own self-interview. We are hoping that this small “documentary” will be of interest for the various media events that occur around the conference and will help gain international attention for the work being done within the Society. How can you participate? If you are interested in possibly participating in the project please email us at smmconferencevideo AT gmail.com (please insert <at> in place of the AT). Provide us with the following: - Your name - The species you work with - Your research or conservation topic - Geographic Area - Whether or not you will provide new or archival footage - If new footage, when your field season will be for which you will need the camera (please be as precise as possible). We will be contacting participants shortly with greater details. Please submit your request to participate by April 29, 2011. We want to emphasize, that if you are sent a video camera you must be timely in conducting the work and passing the camera on. A single camera will be used for multiple projects so we would like the cameras to be sent to the next researcher within 2 weeks. How and when can you submit footage? We will be setting up an ftp site or other mechanism to assist video delivery. We will update participants as soon as everything is finalized. Lastly, even if you do not wish to participate in this project, we hope you will share any recommendations on how video night can be improved. Recommendations can be sent to the same email address: smmconferencevideo AT gmail.com Thank you and looking forward to seeing you all in Tampa. REMEMBER TO SUBMIT YOUR REQUEST TO PARTICIPATE BY APRIL 29, 2011. P.S. Information for submitting videos for the traditional portion of video night will be posted later this summer.