MainGreen.TV, a website that uses multiple forms of media to record events and profiles of students on campus, has garnered significant student attention since its April 13 launch.
"The heart of the website is student profiles," said Alicia Maule '11, founder and executive director of MainGreen.TV. Though the website also features a blog, "the richness of the site is that we profile students in two-to-three-minute beautiful videos and accompany them by interviews and photo shoots," Maule said.
MainGreen.TV "humanizes students outside of academics," she said. "We feature artists, social innovators, activists and entrepreneurs."
The website "enriches the culture of Brown" because it showcases students' talents, said Jamila Woods '11 — the website's most recently profiled student. She said she likes that each profile comes with a video, biography, interview and photos.
"People on this campus are really well-spoken and passionate about what they do, so to get them in front of the camera to talk about it is easy," said Gabe Gonzalez '12, one of the website's three videographers.
Though Maule brought this multimedia website to campus, the underlying idea behind it came from Benjamin Millstein, a junior at Northwestern University. Millstein started Massive.TV at Northwestern in the fall of 2009 because "he wanted to get people who were in the arts together to not just find out who they are, but also to connect them," Maule said. A year later, Millstein founded an affiliate called Kuumba.TV at Washington University in St. Louis.
"We want to create websites that are about digital storytelling," Millstein said. After the idea succeeded at Washington University and Northwestern, Millstein told Maule to go ahead with MainGreen.TV, Maule said.
"Alicia has by far showed us that this can really work as a process and she by far was the most efficient at setting one of these up," Millstein said. "It's amazing that she set it up in two months."
In December, Maule bought the domain for the website and has been working devotedly on the project this semester, she said. Through word of mouth, emails and the help of the Department of Modern Culture and Media, Maule established a network of people dedicated to working on MainGreen.TV.
She noted that Mark Tribe, assistant professor of modern culture and media, has been especially supportive in creating MainGreen.TV because he has allowed videographers to use MCM cameras. Tribe said he has offered his assistance with the project because it is "a great idea whose time has come," he wrote in an email to The Herald.
"A flowering of interdisciplinary creativity is in full swing in the arts at Brown, and MainGreen.TV is providing a high-profile online showcase for it," he added.
In addition to student profiles, the website's blog also showcases students' talents, accomplishments and activities. "The blog's biggest asset is that we have really great access to multimedia," said Khalila Douze '13, the blog's editor-in-chief. "We have great videographers and photographers so the content of our blog is very high quality."
Douze said the blog centers its posts around events on campus. In addition, any student can submit a piece, including creative originals or opinion articles. "We just launched, so it's still in the process of being established, but we definitely have something new up there every week," she said.
Though Maule is graduating, she said she hopes and predicts the website will flourish. "I think everyone on the team is excited about it," she said. "I want it to exist way beyond me."
She also wants to spread the idea of digital storytelling using multimedia. "I need to move on from the micro of MainGreen.TV. Potentially, I'll be working nationally on trying to get these up or bringing them to all the Ivy League schools," she said.
