I joined the Vocalized Ink a website forum and radio community geared at promoting poetry in its written and spoken form though blog posts and ... See more a play list driven online radio broadcast. I was associated with other web sites that promoted poetry in its written form and held phone cyphers for those to spit their performance pieces. After hanging around for a year I took myself to an offline weekend sponsored by the founders and members at Vocalized Ink. It was during this weekend that a friendship and business relationship was formed between myself and Sherrie-Ann Towns (Sherykah) and Vonetta Truitt (UbZoRbShUn) the founders of Vocalized Ink. I also met others who would later become key players in my journey in producing online radio. My first endeavor in online radio came when Sherykah asked me to assist with building the weekly playlist and assume duties on the radio side of Vocalized Ink. We worked with the closely affiliated House of Ra website and forum that allowed users to submit audio productions of their spoken word pieces. Eventually I took over the role of program director for the station. Trying to keep the content current and interesting, I developed a show “Budda’s Picks Of The Week”. Initially a pre-recorded show hosted by myself that featured select performance poetry from what had evolved into the VI Radio catalog (a merger between Vocalized Ink and House of Ra). The show evolved into a weekly “live and unscripted” venue when guest turned co-host UbZoRbShUn joined the broadcast. We logged over 110 episodes during our run on VI Radio. During my tenure as program director, new radio shows were produced and aired on the station in its playlist format. Sherykah then approached me about her idea of moving to a new broadcasting platform that was more consistent with the current trend in online radio. This meant we had to learn new technologies and methods beyond creating simple playlists. Both Sherykah and I were no strangers to technology as she was a webmaster and I a 20something year veteran in information technology. So, the challenges ahead had more to do with sharing knowledge and training our djs and personalities. We shared this responsibility and moved VI Radio into the online radio industry as a fully licensed Internet broadcast. The new technology enhanced our capabilities and our dedication to the spoken word movement made us stand-alone for many years. Instead of using the station as a profit wheel, we decided to use it as a vehicle to serve the community. Our catalog had grown beyond our comprehension. We were gaining popularity with artists solely dedicated to the art-form and a host of up and coming performance poets. After the split with the House of Ra, we found ourselves sufficiently provided for in terms of audio content. We also wanted to turn our attentions more toward radio production as in developing radio personalities and radio shows. There was an abundance of talent inside of the Vocalized Ink community. Many of those affiliated with the House of Ra and Vocalized Ink forums stayed on-board with the station. Shows such as NCSolitude’s Bedtime Stories (almost 10 years on-air) and BrownSkinPoetic’s PoeticSoul series (Now known as OnTheMic) existed long before Budda’s Picks of the Week and continue to be present in the OnThaMoveRadio.com lineup. Sherykah was integral in helping show hosts acquire the skills and tools needed to produce program segments for radio. The outcome being shows such as Big Trigger’s Spotlight On Jazz & Poetry, LadyB’s Old Skool Cafe (logo design by Sherykah), and Reason, Season, A Lifetime. Shows such as Fisiwe’s LoveArtLife Radio, RevolutionaryArtShow, Dean Speaks, Land Of Hip Hop, Aphrodesia, Taste of Romance, Indie-Artist Showcase, and DP’s FunkHouse came by way of experienced radio personalities with backgrounds as performance poets, actors, singers or a combination of all. After a 5-year run and a failed attempt to convert VI Radio and its social network into a non-profit organization, a business decision was made to dissolve the existing organization as we came to know it. The founding members were all dealing with personal life issues which left little time to manage the web site which eventually fell prey to dozens of copyright infringements. This put us at risk of being pursued by regulatory authorities. The social network was shut down and I was prepared to walk away from the online radio business. I received a call from one of the long-term producers at the station who urged me to continue and said I was a natural at running this type of operation. I took the bait and decided to launch OnThaMoveRadio in the fall of 2008. Having the background, content and access to talent, provided me with a good start. The new station would leverage the lessons learned at VI Radio and incorporate the full spectrum of music from all making no distinction between mainstream and indie-artist. Fortunately, many of the radio personalities and djs stayed with me in this endeavor. And as we close in on two years in October (2008 to Present), as OnThaMoveRadio.com, we are pleased to have our long running radio shows and personalities along with new program segments and personalities. The quality of our programming continues to top that of our online radio contemporaries. OnThaMoveRadio.com is an experience in radio broadcasting not just webcasting. We celebrate the early pioneers in producing online radio content by featuring their past shows from the VI Radio vault and the OnThaMoveRadio catalog in our homepage Music section. We also would like to extend an open invitation for these and others to join the OnThaMoveradio.com’s family of programming. Please send your inquires to mp3submit@onthamoveradio.org. Many thanks to all of our current personalities and djs. I would also like to give special thanks to Lisa Sullivan our current program director for her dedication and friendship.