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Volunteer Bedno.com is a non-profit effort maintained by volunteers! There is a constant urgent need for helpers. Please help maintain the events database, post reviews, or provide other creative and business services. If you can give one to four hours or more a week PLEASE DO!!! You'll reach thousands, get behind the scenes and early info, as well as comps, prestige, a sharp résumé item and more. REVIEWERS / WRITERS wanted to post in the forums. Help newcomers and tourists get the real 411, and it's extremely easy! PROMOTERS wanted to spread the word. Current needs relate to future projects, getting cross-linked and mentioned in media, getting VIP and promotional giveaways, increasing subscribership, building alliances and ad sales. PHOTOGRAPHERS wanted to attend events. Especially wanted are albums from places not yet on this site. ARTISTS / DESIGNERS wanted for various visual work. Current needs include cards, a fabric banner, mini-posters and stickers, clothing. CORRESPONDENTS wanted to enter events in the database. Current needs include tracking certain particular venues and performers. For example you could be responsible for entering events at the Park West, or Metro, or Cubs, Bulls or Joffrey schedules. EDITORS wanted to maintain whole subjects areas. LAWYERS / ENTREPRENEURS / IDEA PEOPLE wanted. To do business and advance to the future, help is needed with both the both day-to-day and the distant-tomorrow. This is unpaid (except maybe promoters and certain expenses), but the rewards include appearing in print, sharing your wisdom with MANY THOUSANDS, and the fun and prestige of participating in the city's best entertainment newsletter. With advance notice reviewers and photographers can usually get free admission. Contribute regularly and you can become an editor. Editors get a photo ID, single use cameras, and free entrance to most events. TO START NOW Read the current needs above, and the guidelines below then sign up using the form below to be added to the special insiders mailing list. You will then be eligible to receive special bulletins regarding internal developments and specific current needs. EVENT GUIDELINES Especially watch for events that are under-rated or not widely known (because the big stuff is probably already in the database). Other ideas include your personal favorites and NEW things you plan to do. Pick an event happening within the next few weeks, then do an check event search to make sure it isn't already entered. Please only enter events that fit the current content profile. Briefly this include the following: contemporary and leading edge dance music, punk, rock, industrial, tekno, trance, jungle, drum&bass, classics, but not much house; major music names in most genres but not much teen pop, blues or country; blading, biking, volleyball, gymnastics and similar, but probably not golf; art, comedy, action, drama and animated films, but not much horror or crime; visual and performance arts, experimental and classic theater, but few galleries and little ballet; fringe events in general such as tattoo, circus, performance and fetish conventions; intellectual, political, kid and family oriented, and vegetarian events; the unique such as film fests and building implosions; science and fiction related; and finally home games of professional sports home teams. Pick an event and try the automated calendar system's event submission form. No harm can be done. You'll be able to change or delete your entry at will later. Just READ ALL THE INSTRUCTIONS - ESPECIALLY the ones the system gives (and emails you) after you save. Be conscientious about including address, ages, times, price, directions, URLs, etc. Try to describe the music and venue styles. You can get creative in the description and details parts of a listing. Use the archive and master list for reference. Your entry will appear on one or more of the calendars, then selected events may be included in the main newsletter. EDITORS Bedno.com needs highly responsible EDITORS to cover whole subjects. The ideal editor is passionate, already attends one or more events each month in their area of interest. Alternately, an editor can choose one or more particular venues and monitor the events there. Editors are provided an administrative login to the calendar system which gives access to a powerful set of web tools and resources. If interested, start by entering an event as described above. Later, contact support to discuss. Here's the current list of categories: Art/AvantGarde Blading/Running/Biking Blues/Reggae/Country/R&B/Folk/Swing Charity Clubbing/Raves Convention/Talks/Political Festival/Art Fair Gay/Lesbian/Bi/Poly Goth/Fetish/Horror Holidays Jazz/Classical/Opera/Dance Jungle/D&B/Trance/Tek/Indus. Kids/Family/Community Literary/Gallery/Poetry Museums/Library Professional Sports Restaurant/Bar Rock/Pop/HipHop/Metal/Funk/Punk/etc. Singles/Party/Charity Theatre/Comedy/Musical TV/Movies World/LatinPHOTO GUIDELINES Bedno.com strongly encourages "guest" photo albums. Historically about one in ten photos on this site is guest submitted. This site has effectively unlimited capacity and also actively seeks guest audio samples and video clips. Cross-posting of good albums by bloggers and event producers is also encourage. (I)The following are some of the most important guidelines to good modern digital photography: (1)(a) Take LOTS of photos. You can always trash bad ones later. Avoid deleting on camera, good shots are easily lost accidentally, though big memory chips aren't cheap, lost photo are priceless. (b) Take two or three exposures of important shots. (2) Look for: (a) interesting moments, (b) venue features (bars, architecture, lighting, art, funny signage), (c) happy and decorative people, (d) groups of friends, (e) people who WANT to be photographed (couples, models, parties, performers), (f) employees, (g) and sights that tell a story. (3) Pay attention to backgrounds and lighting; contrast, hue, and character. (4) Keep strong illumination sources BEHIND you. (5) Learn and use your camera's exposure and distance settings. Reduce exposure time when necessary to reduce blur, you can always brighten some later. Do use "near" setting for closeups of objects. (6) Fully learn your camera's flash operation. (a) Flash only works within about eight feet. For deeper shots use long exposures (or fill flash), and steady your camera against something solid such as walls, beams, signs, or railings. (b) For portraits of people, always use red-eye setting. (c) Understand and use Fill-Flash. That's a special long exposure flash setting, which gathers much more of background and lighting than basic flash, which can be very bland. When using Fill Flash, hold camera steady for full cycle and tell subjects to also be still. (7) Use angles to include more info and action (Picasso/BatMan style). Exaggerated perspective is sometimes useful, but eye level is generally best. And be aware that even vertically, it's hard to get a whole person head to toe. (8) ALWAYS get a photo of the venue sign, and promoter sign if applicable, possibly combined with people. (9) Use the middle level camera resolution setting. Lower doesn't allow cropping, and higher slows down the camera. (10) DO NOT use digital zoom in-camera. Optical zoom is fine and can be used to the limit (typically 2-3x) without image degradation. "Digital Zoom" in-camera however, on close inspection significantly worsens a photo. You're much better off shooting in high-res, then zooming later on PC. (II) Post-edit and submission process: (1) Proof the photos and dump the worst. (2) Digitally alter as necessary for brightness, contrast, gamma, focus, saturation, hue, cropping, color balance, etc. If you do not have a good program to adjust images in this way you can download PaintShop Pro free from JASC. (3) If originals are large, resize down to about 640x480 resolution (or as much as 800 wide for excellent shots). Note that technically integer reductions may work best (33%, 50%, 67%), and make sure to use "Smart" or "Bicubic" or "Resampling" resize mode if available. (4) Smaller cropped photos may be left as is rather than resized up. (5) Save as JPG, 90-95% quality, NOT LOWER! PAY ATTENTION TO THIS. The single most common mistake for beginners is to save photos at low JPG quality without noticing. Below 85% causes visible "artifacts" such as solid colored blocks and blurred edges. Resulting files should be in the 90-150KB size range (though well over 200KB or even up to 1MB is OK for excellent shots). If your photos are below 60K you're probably using too low a JPG quality percent. (6) Plan the order of photos for best storyline and presentation. Arrange the photos in desired sort order by renaming each as follows: YYYYMMDD-NNN.jpg where YYYYMMDD is event date and NNN is a sequence number 000-999. (7) Create an associated captions text file (captions.txt) of lines formatted as photofilename|textcaption and optionally include additional comments such as an overall review or story at the top of this caption file. (8) Optionally select 1-4 BEST photos from the album to appear as "Highlights". Crop/alter these highlights (down to max 300x300) and save as YYYYMMDDN.jpg where N is a sequence letter a-d. (9) Email all the files to the editor.  Send as attachments to a plain text message, and send as multiple emails if necessary to keep total size of any single message under 2MB. Ideally, use WinZip to consolidate and compress files. (10) Guest submitted photo albums and individual photos on this site can be expected to get several thousand views each. For venues and promoters, this equates to a several hundred dollar promotional value. (11) Submitters may freely distribute and sell originals as desired non-exclusively, however participation here shall grant the right in-perpetuity to include on this and related sites any submitted photos and potentially to use them promotionally and commercially. (12) A copyright watermark crediting the author automatically appears on all guest photos, and a similar credit link also appears in the text caption of each photo. (13) Repeat submitters can be given access to a special tool for self-posting their own albums. First, join this Community system and create a NickName for yourself, then use the form below to request photo posting access. You'll be able to create and share your own personal photo albums, and optionally included them in this site's main public archive. Only members can post. Bedno.com gratefully acknowledges the support and assistance from numerous local friends including: Dave Sewell (3D) • Andre Solaris • Bill Leonard • Bill Paige • Black Planet • Boa • Caren Cronk Thomas • Casper • Cathy Haibach • Cecelia Pikul • Barry (Chamberweed) • Chris Gin • Chris Rice • Dave Nash • Dennis Borowski • Droopy • DustTrax • Edith Frost • Entropy • Greg Haus • Gregor Mortis • Jim Patton • Kevin Cunningham • Mark Roth • Mia Parks • Phaedra Fields • Preston Klik • Pulz-8 • RP Smack • Riverman • Ry-N • Scary Lady Sarah • Spike Manton • Trancid • Vadim Sprikut • William Darke • Yvonne Navarro • More...
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