Welcome, champions of democracy! Thanks for checking out The UpTake. Our website is in its alpha stage; please bear with us as we experiment and improve, and keep checking back for updates..

The UpTake is a media and technology services organization dedicated to advancing democracy through citizen journalism.
What we’re doing:

• Developing a corps of trained citizen video-journalists (CJs)
• Publishing the work of CJs with speed and integrity
• Creating a first-of-its-kind editorial calendar to enable our user community to drive event and other story coverage
  

How it will work: The UpTake is recruiting teams of citizen journalists, organized by region. During 2007-2008, we will concentrate on Iowa, Colorado, and Minnesota.
The backbone of The UpTake will be its interactive editorial calendar. This tool will gathersources, including our user community. Users rank items for coverage. Top-ranked items appear on regional assignment lists, where The UpTake CJs then assign themselves to events.

We look forward to hearing from you and sharing ideas. Contact us at info at theuptake.org and join us on our 2007-2008 ride!

The UpTake Team

Citizen Journalists

Michael McIntee is a former network TV news executive with 29 years of broadcasting experience. He started and ran All News Channel – a 24 hour TV news channel on DirecTV and managed and syndicated “First Business,” the number one-rated morning business program. He has also created and supervised programming for cable networks USA, VH1, and Lifetime. He is the founder of TimeScape Productions, a company that produces online videos and podcasts and manages user-generated video for magazines, associations and other organizations. Michael is an expert producer, writer, video editor and occasional fill-in host on Air America Minnesota. He has a fondness for new technology but insists he’s not a geek.

Chuck Olsen is the founder of Minnesota Stories, called one of the best videoblogs by the New York Times and winner of two Vloggies Awards. He is the producer-director of “Blogumentary,” a documentary feature film about the rise of political and personal blogs. His work has screened at the Walker Art Center, Harvard University, and on renegade laptops around the world. In politics, Chuck has helped the campaigns of Rep. Keith Ellison and Sen. John Edwards use online video successfully. Chuck is the Minneapolis correspondent for Rocketboom and works as a freelance producer, videographer, editor and educator. The rest of the time, Chuck serves as a scratching post for his cat, Mooki, who has his own videoblog but is not running for office.

Executive Board

Jason Barnett is an entrepreneur and self-employed artist, working for 12 years with product design and collectible manufacturing companies. In his volunteer life, he’s a progressive activist and online organizer. Before starting The UpTake, Jason helped develop and lead DFL Links, and online organizing and outreach organization for the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party of Minnesota, for which he was named 2006 DFL Volunteer of the Year. Through his work developing online strategies for progressive candidates, among other efforts, Jason has developed important relationships within Minnesota’s emerging New Media infrastructure. He lives in Saint Paul with his wife, daughter and son, and is a stay-at-home dad, feeling strongly that someone needs to be home to protect the cats from the two small humans. Contact info: jason.barnett at theuptake.org

Chris Dykstra has more than 20 years of progressively responsible business experience, the last 15 of which have been spent in software and web development. He’s a founding partner in Warecorp, a web and software services company with development centers in the former Soviet Union. Warecorp balances traditional web and software engagements against its mission of serving as an incubator for socially conscious technology startups and progressive activism. The first of these startups, Zanby, is a social networking and organizational platform. He lives on a lake in Minnesota, has a kayak and a canoe, 4 boys, 3 cats and an undying love of soccer. Contact info: chris.dykstra at the uptake.org