Simple living Podcast – An interview with ‘digital nomad’ Stef Roberts

In this episode I’ll be interviewing the freelancer and digital nomad Stef Roberts. About a year ago I stumbled across his YouTube channel and have found his videos incredibly inspiring. Stef’s job could easily pay for his rent and for a ‘normal’ way of living, but he’s chosen to live a nomadic lifestyle, sleeping in woods.  After work, he sets up his hammock in the forest. You can listen to the interview here:

Stef Roberts podcast

I highly recommend checking out his vlogs, where he films his experiences and talks about exciting stuff, like how to make a fire and extracting water from Birch trees.

Stef Roberts YouTube Channel

Music Credits : The XX – intro

My experience of making a short documentary

I was keen to attempt the documentary style for the multimedia film project. Longboarding is becoming increasingly popular across Europe. Many people assume that it’s something new, but it has been around as long as skateboarding. For a long period, it became overshadowed by modern skating, but is finally becoming recognised again.

During my research I found it helpful to watch other documentaries about longboarding, and was surprised that I could find hardly any interviews with professional longboarders. This provided me with a starting point for what I wanted to include in the 5 minute video.

I’ve used a video camera for several years, but had little experience with editing. I have enjoyed learning to work with final cut pro, although it has been challenging. With the endless possibilities of editing, it takes quite a while to get the hang of things. And there are a lot of features I don’t yet know about. Getting started was fairly straightforward; however, I struggled with some basic editing, for example cutting sections from video and audio parts, and finding ways of transitioning that are effective.

For the videoing we also used a Go Pro, as it was more suitable for the filming of the skating. It allowed us to portray the feeling of longboarding in a more effective way, fully emmersing ourselves in the skating. A negative aspect however, was that some parts of the footage were quite shaky, which made it look less professional. 

When filming the documentary, I also realised that there are some factors, that can be irritating and make the process difficult. Particularly background noises in a busy area, as well as bad weather conditions. We had to film some of the footage several times, because both of these factors were rarely in our favour.

Some of the transitions in the video aren’t smooth. I didn’t know how to change from one song to the next in a subtle way, and just experimented with fade outs.

I hope that I’ve been able to reach out to people who are interested in longboarding, but also to those who don’t yet know anything about skating.

Here you can find the link to the video. Enjoy.

longboarding documentary

Personal Development Plan

Publications that I admire

One of the publications I most admire, is the german magazine Neon. It covers topical society and political issues, as well as features on relationships and sexuality, popculture, work and travelling. It is aimed at 20 to 35 year olds and has grown in popularity with the ‘hipster subculture’.

The magazine partly became so popular because the editorial team recognised the importance of using direct communication and feedback from their readers. They established themselves as a well respected magazine for transparent and objective journalism. Every article is posted on a discussion forum on Neon.de, where anyone can comment on the editorial work and share and discuss their views with others. The community aspect is fundamental and has been referred to as the ‘printed facebook’. Involving their readers, is something that the editorial team of Neon has done successfully throughout the last 10 years.

One specific feature that works extremely well, is a portrait photo survey on the first double page. Each week, people on the street answer a different question. Eg. What would you never do again? (Was würdest du nie wieder tun?) How are you similar to your parents? (Was hast du von deinen Eltern?) What ideas have you stolen? (Welche Idee hast du geklaut?)

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On the internet webpage of the magazine, users can write and publish their own articles. They commonly get shared over facebook and linked to via twitter. It has allowed the Neon online community to grow immensely. There are several columns in the magazine that are created with the content that online users have contributed, which also gets incorporated into the print edition every month.

The Neon magazine was first published in 2003, when the development of the internet started to boom. Print formats were expected to decrease. Neon managed to become successful nonetheless, through communicating with their readers, and creating a magazine that picked up the interests of the younger generation. Its popularity has steadily increased over the last decade and is still one of the most successful magazine publications in Germany today.

Which Journalism path should I take?

I would love to become a pop culture journalist, specialising in music journalism for singer – songwriters. At a concert in 2009, I met Tobias R, a journalism graduate from the German city, Darmstadt. He had set up his own company ‘Quäntchen und Glück’  with some fellow students and worked on several projects, as well as for the ‘Centralstation’, a music event organisation. I remember our conversation very clearly, and that I went home thinking I would love to do the same. His degree course sounded incredibly exciting, and combined all the things that I was interested in. It inspired me, and it was the first time that I seriously considered Journalism as a career path.

Online Journalism has always interested me the most, but I would equally love to write for a print magazine. I hope to explore both areas, learning more about multimedia content, and using social media more effectively, from a journalistic perspective. I’ve enjoyed the classic news writing in the first semester, and Im sure that the skills will be very useful. I will try to develop my music blog over the next year, and hopefully gain some experience through work placements.

 

 

 

 

Camerons EU Reform Goals Part 2

A day after Cameron’s speech and the publication of the letter to the European council, many conservative leaning news platforms are arguing that the reforms should have been more radical, particularly as they were set out differently in the Conservatives manifesto at the election earlier this year.

• The telegraph are making it very clear that they are concerned with the proposals: ‘Cameron is now the prisoner of the Tories. The fact that Government plans have changed, tells us about David Cameron and his ability to govern.’Many Tory MPs are unhappy with Cameron and his plans, and the telegraph reinforces that he is unlikely to persuade them. “If Tory MPs won’t listen to him now, how will they act when he urges them to follow him into the Remain campaign for the EU referendum?” Tories now feel that its easier to rebel, because with Jeremy Corbyn as the leader of the labour party, they believe they can safely win the next election. ‘These should be the good days, the days when his word his law, he gets his way and his party cheers him to the rafters. Yet here he is, struggling to change the law to allow Tesco to sell eggs before the end of the Archers Omnibus. ‘

• The independant follows the responses to Camerons speech that he held on Tuesday. The article focuses on the benefit restrictions, no longer beeing a red line for the government. “ I’m open to different ways of dealing with” the issue of migration.

 

Camerons EU Reform goals Part 1

Over my next few blog posts, I will follow a current news story and monitor how it develops throughout the week and focus on the differences of how they are beeing covered.

If Britain is going to stay in the EU or not, is one of the most discussed political debates at the moment. Until the EU Referendum takes place, it is likely to come up in the news on a frequent basis.

Today, Cameron held a speech and proposed his EU Reforms for Britain in a letter to Donald Tusk, the head of the european council. Unsurprisingly, it sparked a lot of debate across news platforms.

• The Mail Online published an article by the columnist Katie Hopkins , in response to Cameron’s speech and letter. She hardly talks about what Cameron actually said in his reforms, but in an angry tone, reinforces that drastic regulations must be made – blaming Cameron directly for not demanding enough changes. “get us back the things we gave away too easily: our borders, our economy, our law, our right”. It appears like a letter of persuasive writing, rather than a piece to inform the reader about the content of the letter.

“the 5 freedoms Cameron must get back from Europe if he wants us to stay”

• The BBC News Politics Section, very factually states and reviews the key points of his reforms, as well as making some suggestions about the chances that each of the agreements could be reached ,and what impact this might have on the referendum.

Camerons Goals

1. Protection for non euro countries: recognising the EU as a “multi-currency” area, giving more protection to non-euro countries like the UK
2. Competitiveness: extending the single market and cutting down on excessive regulation
3. End obligation to ‘ever closer union’: Allowing Britain to opt out of the EU’s founding ambition to forge an “ever closer union” of the people of Europe, so it will not be drawn into further political integration.
4. Benefit restrictions: Cutting the current high levels of immigration from the EU by reducing what the government claims is one of the major “pull factors” – access to in-work and out-of-work benefits.

BBC article

• The guardian, has published their own entertaining version of the letter, reinforcing that he cant be taken seriously.

1. Can everyone be a bit nicer to Britain and not exclude us from trade deals?
2. Please don’t let the European parliament make us drive on the right-hand side of the road.
3. Can you stop so many of your fellow Poles from coming to Britain and flooding our supermarkets with cheap lager?
4. Can we not be quite so close as we used to be, but remain very good friends?

Guardian reforms letter

• Buzzfeed refers to Camerons reforms as a “shopping list of demands” , focusing on how his eurosceptic Tory MPs will be dissatisfied with his proposals. A simple, but fairly detailed summary of the most important points from the letter is made. It is certainly more informing than the Mail article, but does not explore the reforms in much depth. However, it draws upon important responses, including the warnings that were made by the European commission, that Camerons migrant reforms were highly problematic.

Buzzfeed “pig in a poke”

‘Teaching Journalists to read’

For most of us, Facebook, Twitter and other social networking platforms have become the main source through which we access and consume news on a daily basis. It’s how we tend to find out about the most interesting and current stories. In order for the legacy media to stand a chance of surviving the online revolution, they have had to go through significant changes of reinventing themselves. Particularly newspapers and TV channels have recognized the importance of creating accessible online platforms and Apps, of which many have been successful. Especially now, where everyone is competing against each other, the focus must be on creating, and maintaining a relationship with the reader/ consumer. So how can Journalists succeed at this? Felix Salmon believes that using social media in the right way, is crucial.

In 2010 he published an article that emphasized the importance of reading skills and of conversational journalism, where linking is an incredibly important part. Within the last 5 years, it has become a bigger focus, but it’s still something we need to make sure we are doing and improving. ‘A journalist needs to be a critical reader that can pick up information from across the blog and twittersphere.‘ One of the greatest benefits of such a large digital network is that everyone is able to take part in discussions and have immediate access to almost anything they wish to find. Particuarly for Journalists, the opportunities in our media dominated society are very exciting, but at the same time more challenging than ever before.

http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2010/09/17/teaching-journalists-to-read/