Sunday 19 October 2008

Wildscreen Volunteering Uncut: Day 2

Monday



Today I was scheduled in to be on the front desk for Workshops. Whilst some of these are based off-site around Bristol, most take place in the Marriot Royal Hotel conference rooms.

The first was "Breaking out of the box: A guide to multi-platforming" run by Paul Williams (BBC NHU researcher and founder of TheNatureWatch.com) with guest speakers Paul Deane (Senior Content Producer: Big Cat Live) and Jody Bourton (Radio AP: World on the move, BBC Wales).


This was a fantastic hands-on workshop directed at those new to the world of blogging, RSS feeds, youtube, flickr, twitter and all manner of online content outlets! This was perfect for many of the delegates attending this workshop but a bit basic for me so, as with many aspects of a volunteer's duties, I ended up assisting with the activities being run.
It was easy to be reassuring and helpful as, having only started blogging a few months ago myself, I know how daunting HTML and other gadget codes can be, and how easy it is to find online advice. There are even blogs about blogging!

Importantly it was noted at the beginning of the session that the BBC's use of the phrase "Multiplatforming" tends to apply to all web-related content. Paul Deane, Senior Content Producer for Big Cat Live took us through the BBC's use of online feeds, blogs and video uploads for the Big Cat Live event, focussing on the importance of a community feel for the success of such programmes. With Twitter technology the Big Cat Live team could text in their latest news as it happened...

Wow - we've just had the most amazing lion kill live on webcam1. Sorry we pulled away - it was getting quite gory. Anything could happen!
Big Cat Live Twitter feed

Jody Bourton, Assistant producer for Radio 4's World on the Move discussed the benefits of small camcorder video feeds from the field and gave us tips on directing our videos to be suitable for the web. We were given a chance to try our hand at this and told to concentrate on framing and lighting, being careful to keep shots simple for faster uploads. The results can be found at the Wild Wildscreen Website.


Monday's evening event was the Parthenon Party, with a Russian theme: Pictures coming soon!

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