Tue, 10 Mar 2026 13:16:33 -0400WeeblyMon, 12 May 2025 04:00:00 GMThttps://www.batvinc.org/tech-corner-20/tech-corner-20-4“If the Community Room’s-a-Rockin’, Please Come a Knockin’!”
Hello to all members! Spring has sprung and in step with the annual renewal and rebirth that the season promises, BATV’s community room is being rejuvenated. As promised, BATV is in the midst of adding some dynamic new features that will enhance our community room as a live event and production space.
I’d like to highlight some of our upgrades we’ve already implemented and to also share a very special event where our new looks (and sounds) will be on display. A couple of weeks ago we had our new portable wireless lighting set up installed and we couldn’t be happier with it. Basically it consists of eight Chauvet floor lights (kickers) that will allow us to light areas in front and behind a subject (a small band, speakers, comics, karaoke singers, etc.) and the wall behind them as well. One of the fun aspects of it was actually being a part of designing some easy to use templates that we saved to our lighting board in our studio because the whole system is wireless! This also will allow us to have lighting, say, down the hallways, outside, the kitchen and in other parts of the building, not just fixed in the community room. It’s a really great system and it will transform how the community room and BATV in general will welcome in more events and productions. In addition, we also added a Follow Spot light that we can use as a simple spot light for intimate shows, speeches, lectures, etc. The incorporation of these new lighting instruments will not only enhance overall ambience but will also add a significant value to the look of our recorded productions in the community room and around the building. On top of the lighting additions, we have upgraded to a new 2000W portable PA system (Behringer Europort for the tech enthusiasts) and have already been using it for karaoke events. Along with the PA we’ve added a new fleet of wireless microphones (Sennheiser XSW’s); a Yamaha PA monitor for musicians and some really great speakers. In fact, the system was utilized for “Showtime at the Ditson”, the Ditson school talent show produced by one of our favorite high school members, Kyle McLaughlin. Shout out to Kyle for being our first guinea pig, er, our first member to use the new equipment! You can find the talent show on demand on our website, by searching the talent show on our VOD at www.batvinc.org.
When are all of these upgrades going to be on full display, you ask? Well, I am thrilled to promote the return of the fantastic Jon and Li Waterman on June 18th at 7 pm. They will be providing another free musical event, entitled “History and Legends Through Song”. As they describe it on their website: “Performing as the duo, Sultana, Jon and Li Waterman weave history and original songs to feature a rotating array of real and legendary characters and happenings throughout history. The show includes some Massachusetts history as well”. It is sponsored by the Billerica Cultural council and the Mass Cultural Council. We can’t wait for our membership to see and hear our upcoming events in our upgraded community room event space and we feel Jon and Li’s evening of music will be a fantastic kickoff to what will be many superb live events to come. Thank you for joining me in the Technical Corner. As always, you can reach me at paul@batvinc.org for any questions or comments you may have. I hope to see you at the “History and Legends Through Song” event on June 18th @ 7pm.
]]>Tue, 15 Apr 2025 04:00:00 GMThttps://www.batvinc.org/tech-corner-20/tech-corner-20-3Billerica’s hectic political season has finally come and gone. As the season began ramping up shortly after the turn of the new year and continued through to election night, BATV once again was an integral part of providing a voice for each candidate and a forum for political discourse. 
Each year, BATV offers every candidate a chance to record a candidate statement. The candidates are each offered the use of our teleprompter and are given up to fifteen minutes to provide the Billerica community their vision for the future. We then grouped all of them by category and release it as BATV Candidates Statements program. The candidates are also provided a digital copy of their statement with which they then have free use. It is always a great opportunity for the viewer to get to know a candidate as if one on one.

BATV also hosted not one, not two but three separate debates/candidate forums this year. Our Town Live, hosted by Sandra Giroux was the first of these. As a live program airing monthly, Our Town Live has been hosting candidate nights for a few years now. With a crew of high school and community volunteers along with BATV staff, Our Town Live’s “Our Town Decides” was a fun live production for yours truly to coordinate. The other two debates were the 2025 Select Board Candidates Forum which was produced by David Gagliardi and the The League of Women Voters Candidates Forum which was another live event we broadcasted from our Howe School community room in front of a large audience.
Lastly, Trek Reef hosted a Meeting Town Forum’s Live Election Night coverage. It was truly a learning experience for all of us as we had never tested the limits of our mini-studio’s TriCaster studio in a box. On the program, Trek had live election night reports coming in from multiple precincts. With the TriCaster’s revolutionary “Live Call Connect” Trek was able to have multiple zoom callers, each as their own camera input. It truly made the program special and we are happy to have finally put such a high quality to good use! 

Although BATV’s political season is over, we would welcome any and all members who would like to have zoom type contact with multiple guests and/or friends and make a great program too! That’s the beauty of BATV, where we give you the power for your imagination to soar. As always if you have any questions for me you can reach out at paul@batvinc.org. Thanks for joining me again in the Technical Corner!
]]>Sat, 15 Mar 2025 04:00:00 GMThttps://www.batvinc.org/tech-corner-20/tech-corner-20-2Hello to all members! After the lengthy reboot of the Technical Corner (2.0) last month, I thought I’d keep it a little more simple. A little more loose. And, I’m sure you’ll be happy to know, a lot shorter. This time I’d like to cut right to the chase and quickly highlight a couple of places you may or may not be familiar within our facility. 
First off, I’d like to reach out to any members out there who would like to dip their toes into podcasting. BATV’s two second floor edit suites do in fact play double duty as podcasting suites. In each of these suites (with very little training necessary) up to four people can create a podcast. Some of the diverse podcasts that have already utilized our suites include: Joyful Parenting, a faith-based podcast directed at parents; What the Bones Say, a table top roll playing game podcast; and our newest edition that is currently in post-production, Billerica Radicals, a historical Billerica podcast. As you can tell from these very different formats, the sky is the limit for your podcasting ideas and BATV is here for you to bring them to fruition. As I mentioned earlier, it’s truly simple at BATV to create a podcast. It is literally a few buttons to push and a podcast recording session can be created. The polishing after the fact is all up to your imagination. With state of the art editing tools, a large library of sound effects and music and the support of dedicated staff, the only thing really ever holding you back from creating your own podcast is you. 
But maybe sitting around and talking about something isn’t your thing? Perhaps you’re more of a hands on type or shall I say, more of a kneader? Perhaps you want to let your inner baker or chef come out and share your favorite recipes with your community? Well, we’ve got a place for that too! BATV has a kitchen designed for producing beautiful looking cooking programs. In the next few weeks we’ll be adding some additional upgrades that will allow for even better close ups of your delectable dishes. Reach out to us and we can provide ways to easily create wonderful recipes and videos together. A couple of different productions that have already been done in our kitchen are Cindy’s Sweets, a seasonal baking show and Food for Thought, a Nepali cooking program, which is currently in post-production and will be airing soon. BATV would love to share more cooking and baking recipes with Billerica and who knows- you may just become the next great tv chef!
So that’s it for this addition of Technical Corner 2.0. As always, please feel free to reach out to me at paul@batvinc.org with any and all questions, comments or critiques. Thanks for spending some time with me in the Technical Corner.
]]>Tue, 25 Feb 2025 05:00:00 GMThttps://www.batvinc.org/tech-corner-20/tech-corner-20-1  
This is your friendly neighborhood Facility and Production Coordinator, Paul, with some exciting BATV technical upgrades and productions on the horizon that I’d like to share with you all. But first, a little backstory…

Many moons ago, BATV staff would each contribute articles to a multi-page, tangible, (honest to goodness) physically mailed out newsletter that would be delivered to each member’s mailbox by a real-life mail person. I know, that sounds crazy right? Well, it was true. Some of you may even have (gasp!) read them- before tossing them in the recycling bin. During those simpler times (albeit not for the trees) or, rather, those more tactile times, I would have some fun each month sharing BATV’s upcoming technical improvements, productions, events and workshops. It was called the Technical Corner and at long last…it has risen from the proverbial pulpy goo of thousands of recycled paper pages to be re-born into the terabytin’ techno-world of a digital newsletter- delivered in an instant through the wonders of the internet and email…just in time to save us all, am I right!? Well, that was a rhetorical question that you, the digital reader, having found this article floating down the ether of the techno universe, need not answer. It’s back, regardless. So without further delay, may I present to you: Technical Corner 2 point-oh! Or 2.0 for my techie fans out there.

But what’s that? Oh, no! It seems I’ve cybernated too many ones and zeroes south of the confines of this newfangled digital dispersal of the BATV newsletter and I’ll kindly ask you, gentle reader, to forgive my high-tech naiveté and follow the link below. It should lead you across cyberspace, as I’ve been assured, to Technical Corner 2.0 with the latest in BATV news regarding technical enhancements to our Community Room for live events, our kitchen production space and another great musical event we have planned - and so without further ado, here are a few of the exciting enhancements and a special event I’m pleased to announce…

    First up: Community Room Upgrades! As you probably know, BATV is now located at the newly renovated Howe School.  After being open for a full two years plus, we’ve noticed there are indeed some areas where we could improve our beloved new home for the better.  One of the areas in need is in The Howe Community Room.  The Community Room has been utilized immensely in the time it has been open to the Billerica Community and with great success.  Most of its use has come in the form of a gathering/meeting space and to a lesser extent, as a live performance space. As a part of our mission, BATV staff and board members are consistently looking for news ways to build new pathways of media access and connectivity for our members and the overall Billerica community.  We have determined there is a need to step up the live event production ability of the Community Room to provide new and exciting ways to bring the Billerica community media and community events.  In this sense, we are trying to take the next logical step in the evolution of the Community Room and feel with a few new bells and whistles we can make it even more functional, especially where live music or other types of performances are concerned.
    With this in mind, yours truly has really been surfin’ and scrollin’ the furthest depths of the inter webs to find the right mix of form, function, budget and brains when it comes to a mix of new equipment and refurbishments in order to enhance live events in the Community Room space.  Moreover, some of these upgrades will most likely be modular and able to be used in other ares of the Howe building as well as in other parts of the Billerica community, adding additional “bang for the buck”, as they say.
    Although not completely ready to announce every specific change coming as of this writing, I can reveal what we are looking to accomplish. In order to make the Community Room more functional as a performance space we will be acquiring a new Public Address (PA) System, audio mixer and wireless performance microphones. In addition, we are looking into adding a modular stage, along with moveable lighting trusses with both wired and wireless performance lighting fixture options.  In regards to the moveable truss (or grid), we will also be looking forward to using that in the kitchen production space as well. We are looking into acquiring an overhead camera and hanging it directly over the cooking area for even better cooking productions.  I am also currently researching other options for more permanent, built in options in both spaces as well. All of this is in the hope to offer more flexibility and function in order to bring more professional live venue production events like live bands/music, open mic nights, comedy nights, poetry readings, karaoke and more. Stay tuned for more updates on these new improvements in the weeks and months to come!
    Lastly, I’d like to take a quick moment to announce that Jon Waterman will be bringing another installment of his Live Music and History series to us on the evening of June 18th.  This time Jon will be sharing his "History and Legends through Song” program with us. If you didn’t catch Jon’s last program “ Popular Music and Veterans” last May, here’s a link to see what a truly wonderful musical experience he provides for free with the help of grants from the Mass Cultural Council and the Billerica Cultural Council: https://bit.ly/PopMusicandVets
    Welp, that will do it for this first digital installment of Technical Corner 2.0.  I hope you enjoyed the read as much as I had sharing my musings and updates. As always, if you have any questions about anything I mentioned here, whether out of genuine interest, complete disdain or anything in between- feel free to “hit me up” at paul@batvinc.org and I’ll be happy to discuss it all with you, gentle reader, here in The Technical Corner.
- Paul Abrego
]]>