It's hard to distill 10 full days of idea-sharing, design work, technical mentorship, conceptual experimentation, social justice exploration, project prototyping, and personal bonding into a few sentences. But if you are considering applying for the Producers Institute, here is a general overview of what happens during the Institute:

DAY ONE - Producers Roundtable
Each three-person project team introduces themselves, shows a clip, and presents their interactive project concept to the group. Lead mentors take notes, and creative and technical ideas are exchanged. In the afternoon, teams are separated into two groups - everyone takes a tour of each suite and lab in the BAVC facility, gets their own work spaces, learns log-ins and protocol for our Final Cut server, gets familiar with the game station, mobile devices, how to work the plasma screen, the Wii, and the video conference interface, and everyone gets a lesson in Keynote software so they can be thinking about their presentations to funders later on in the week. Groups also meet with the lead Interaction Design mentors to begin working on wireframes and developing the participatory media tools they will be prototyping during the week.

DAY TWO - Contextualizing the Technology
Day Two of the Institute brings the participants into contact with some of the leading voices in documentary filmmaking, new media and emerging technologies. The day begins with an interactive Panel Discussion on a relevant topic (our 2009 panel, for instance, was titled The Future of Visual Storytelling: Content-Driven Technologies and the New Documentary Movement). After lunch, three presentations by artists and technologists introduce the newest tools and case studies to Producers Institute participants. Selected topics might include: Mobile Web for Good, Games for Change, The Future of Social Networking, Virtual Communities and Human Rights, Public Radio and Tools of the Next Generation.

DAY THREE - Marketing the Message/Storytelling Circle
Day Three focuses on both the business side of the multiplatform space, as well as its core - storytelling. Partcipants gather at the Roundtable to hear presentations from marketing experts about current issues in branding, distributing, and monetizing online, mobile, and interactive content. And then the midday program features a Storytelling Circle or Interactive Game where participants engage with one another to explore platform-independent narrativity. In the late afternoon teams meet with their mentors in the labs to incorporate strategic new ideas from the last few days into their project plans.

DAYS FOUR through SEVEN - Intensive Prototyping: Design, Coding, Development, Editing, Streaming
The next four days and nights at the Institute are about designing and prototyping the new media tools that will deepen the impact of the Producer-participant stories in the community. Producers are head-to-head with their mentors and other designers and developers for the next four days and nights - an entire team of people who have come to lend their expertise to these new projects. In addition, invited leaders from global nonprofits and NGOs are also invited to participate in the prototyping, imagining how they will use these new tools and stories to enable their communities to participate in real civic and social transformation.

On Day Five, BAVC hosts a public salon on a topic integral to the discussion of emerging public media platforms. In 2008, the I-Salon focused on Games for Change, and highlighted some of the most provocative new interactive "smart" games currently in development. In 2009, the topic switches to the volatile field of journalism and new media in a panel called The Hybrid Tomorrow.

DAY EIGHT - Presentation Day
On Day Eight of the Institute, BAVC convenes nearly fifty industry and community leaders, media stakeholders, broadcasters, distributors and funders to hear presentations of the projects that have been created at the Instittute. Producers each have ten minutes to walk the audience through their new applications, articulating the urgency of the story, and the potential impact of their new media project. Participants then take questions from the audience and talkabout their next steps forward.

DAY NINE - Funder and Broadcaster Convening
Day Nine of the Institute brings Producers together with a group of international funders and public broadcasters to discuss the industry future, the challenges in funding participatory media, and selected case studies that help contextualize next steps, new partnerships, and potential collaborations after the Institute. Led by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and BAVC, this half-day program is the culmination of an intense process that has signals a paradigm shift in contemporary documentary practice, and the emergence of new interactive, multiplatform models for public media and social justice work.

DAY TEN - Assessment, Sustainability, and Brunch
Day Ten of the Institute features a casual and energized brunch discussion of project resources, fiscal sponsorship, and next steps. Online assessment tools are shared so that BAVC can get feedback on the program and make it even better next year.