Since before my entrance to Binghamton University, it had always been an ambition of mine to participate in studio and film productions at a university setting. Upon my entrance to the school, I was disappointed to find out that the university no longer contained a student run television station. Years prior to my admission, the station had closed down due to its difficulty to maintain financially, its inability to maintain a suitable staff structure, and the difficulty of actual production. With my knowledge of both Computer Science and Cinema as well as my desire to blend the two fields, I saw an opportunity to design a new, modern, television station. I put together a group of students with a similar interest and started producing simple shows (such as cooking shows and game shows) on our own that would air on a campus TV station if one should exist in the future. I then designed a detailed constitution which outlined a new structure of a governing body, production guidelines, and equipment functions.

I designed a schematic with my knowledge of technology and production including a budgetary breakdown of multiple new experimental systems that would allow extremely simple and streamlined television production to take place (See the Computer Science Section under “Projects” to see the technical information). After this, I took my team which had now expanded to 25 people into the university’s president’s office to propose the creation of a new official television station for Binghamton University ran by my team. The President and Vice President were extremely impressed with our proposal and our sample work. His office granted my team $25,000, provided us with university space, and suggested that I lead the team as president sanctioned by his office to create the vision. With this information I took my team to the Student Association, Department of Computer Science, and Department of Cinema; all who authorized me to hire student interns for letter grade credit under my direct supervision. I was placed in charge or submitting the interns grades and would train the interns in leadership, Final Cut Pro, Studio Production, and all of the technology in our endeavor.

Over the next two years our team grew to over 250 members as we built together a new, modern, streamlined station. As full time students we faced the challenge of balancing our academics while creating our vision with little support or supervision other than my direction as President. We also faced stiff competition from the other campus media groups such as the radio station and newspaper, as they feared what we were creating would make their organizations irrelevant. I managed to keep my members motivated and encouraged through the difficulty of creating our vision by always making sure as many members as possible had specific tangible objectives to complete that made our journey consistently seem to progress before us in noticeable ways.

I also consistently help each member grow personally by listening to their goals and trying to put them in positions where they would have opportunities to achieve them with my guidance, but not consistent intervention. I tried to always maintain an image of an inspirational friend as opposed to a leader instead of a pure figure of authority. I reminded the team that at the end of each day, what we were working towards was not just our vision of a student television organization at our university, but also the opportunity to reach out to as many people in our community with messages of encouragement, contemplation, and good feeling. I reminded them that our end goal was to provide as many people as we could reach excitement, opportunity, school pride, and especially joy for an environment of high stress such as a university setting.

I made our number one mission to create sensation and a welcoming environment. In 2013, we officially launched via a Ribbon Cutting ceremony the new television station TheNewBTV. The ceremony had over 400 people in attendance, including multiple high level university administrators such as the President, Vice President, and multiple Deans. The station is now completely self-sufficient and is running with the current student membership.