About

The personal website of Stephen Volan, created March 2006.

About the proprietor

Stephen Volan has lived in Bloomington, Indiana USA since 1986.

Since 2004 he has held the sixth of six district seats on the Bloomington city council, representing approximately 13,000 constituents. In 2020 he served as president, and in 2007 as vice-president; he also served for several years as the council parliamentarian. He sat on the board of the Monroe County Solid Waste Management District for 14 years, where he served as president (2012-14), and secretary. Having been redistricted out of District Six, he is retiring from the seat to run for an at-large seat in 2023; Election Day is May 2. (See the Vote page for more.) Bloomington was one of the first cities in the world to webcast all its public meetings. Meetings of both bodies and many other local government institutions, going back to 2005 and earlier, are available for immediate viewing.

He teaches a course at Indiana University. He founded The Cinemat, an independent video-rental store, movie screening room and performance venue in 2002. It closed in 2009 and was replaced by a bar and performance venue called The Bishop, which programs music shows similar to what The Cinemat hosted. In 1995 he founded BlueMarble Information Services, the first company in Bloomington to provide Internet access to the general public. The company, now known simply as BlueMarble.net, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Smithville Telephone Company, the largest independent telecommunications company in the state.

He has been involved with volunteer-powered, listener-supported community radio station WFHB since 1992. Since its first year on the air in 1993, he has programmed a two-hour show called the “Siren Songs Music Mix: Music by People Who Sing.” It aired weekly as the first half of every Thursday’s “Afternoon Music Mix” from 1:00 to 3:00 pm Eastern Time (1800-2000 UTC) from 1993 until the pandemic. He has been back on the air every other week since October 2021.

He is originally from the corner of Indiana affectionately known as “Da Region.” He graduated with a Master of Arts in Geography in 2019, and a Bachelor of General Studies degree in 2007, both from Indiana University Bloomington. He also attended Carnegie-Mellon University and graduated from Andrean High School in Merrillville, Indiana.

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Updated February 2023

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