Girl Geek London

Yesterday I went to a talk on tech journalism organized by the London branch of Geek Girl Dinners. I say 'went', I was allowed to go by my girlfriend as she's the girl geek and guy geeks are only allowed as guests of a girl.

This involved an after work scoot into the centre of London on the rush hour tube, which is never fun, but we were rewarded with some promotional hot pepper sauce as we left the station.

The talk turned out to be in the corner of a normal office and there were people sitting at their desk looking a bit fed up at having their space invaded. Stopping only to grab a few nibbles and a drink we made ourselves comfortable for the talks.

First of all we had a talk from Angela Saini, a freelance journalist who gave us her tips on becoming a tech journalist.

Next Connie St Louis told us about the journalism courses that she runs at City University.

Finally the most interesting talk by Ramaa Sharma. Ramaa is a trainer at the BBC and told us about a recent initiative to provide reporters with small portable, consumer video cameras. She told us the relative merits of the Flip and the Kodak Z series (she prefers the Kodak as it can take an external mic, although you can't monitor the sound levels). She went on to show us other kit (tripods and microphones), a video she uses to train journalist, and a short report made in Afganistan using just those methods. I was particularly impressed by the BBC's College of Journalism website, clearly an internal resource but not behind a firewall and very useful for anyone interested in journalism as a career.

Ramaa said that the idea behind the cameras was to give radio correspondents all over the world the ability to capture footage of breaking stories before the camera crews get shipped out from more central locations. She was keen to stress the skill set that a modern journalist must have: being able to shoot video, record sound and edit the final cut, as well as more traditional journalism skills. This image of a roving all in one reporter reminded me of the original Max Headroom drama, as the central character in that was a reporter with his own camera.

Looking at a clip on youtube now it's clear that the reporter character would have loved something as portable as a Flip.




Hmm... I also notice that the evil, bathridden computer genius has a very fashionable steam punk keyboard (47 seconds in). Weird.