Busy times down here.
Firstly, I've had a brief incursion into freelancing, covering the Digital Storytelling Conference here at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) last weekend for a film-makers' website. Fits in well in this space, so there is a list of links in the sidebar of the most prominent leaders in the movement, while a few more will reside in the body of this post.
Digital storytelling has a practice base of less than 150 known organisations in the world at present, however as it works to spread technical expertise within communities rather than aggregating it within a group of professionals, it will continue to grow.
In some respects it is low-tech multimedia, in other respects desktop scrapbooking with a voice-over. Groups represented at the conference were not all digital storytellers as it is practised in the US, at the BBC and here at ACMI - some were documentary film makers, some museum curators, one was an interactive storytelling software developer, others were indigenous film makers and community website authors, or academics involved in youth projects.
But all their work is worth a look if you are interested in the potential of computers to democratise the media. From that magical place Canada, a shot of what it might look like on the box.
And my other life as a family manager and frustrated student? Writing in fits and starts fits in beautifully with all that - down to the index cards hidden away in the handbag where son with autism can't find them and repack them in a better place, along to the opportunities for negotiation with others over computer time. I think my youngest son gets a lot more homework done when I'm on the computer ostensibly 'earning', but mainly learning.
The downsides? the money, my stodgy style (not really like my blog at all, to my recruiter's well-disguised surprise), my innate desire to research rather than report, and the deadlines - flexible in this case, but very like school I must say. I'm very grateful to the networker who got me this gig as he's opened doors in doing so. Will I pass through them? I wonder.
In the meantime, I've got a paper to write and a supervisor to meet with - so Structured Blogging, look out.
I'm v. glad I got you to do it. As I might have said, we all have high standards for ourselves, but from the outside, you did better than anyone else I could have chosen.
The question of blogstyle v paid writing is tricky. You know I face the same problem of being polite and therefore stiffer on something I don't ultimately own.
Practice is the secret, and you write here with a fluid, open style which you will migrate into the tenser world of writing for money.
Posted by: david tiley | February 12, 2006 at 02:33 PM
Very happy to approve that comment:)!
Thanks again for the opportunity and the support, David. A very interesting couple of weeks!
Posted by: genevieve | February 12, 2006 at 03:12 PM