Beyond Bootcamp: A successful premiere at UM

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By Greg Linch

The much-anticipated Beyond Bootcamp workshops at the University of Miami School of Communication brought more than 70 participants from around the world for an intense multimedia training.

After a successful decade at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Rich Beckman, multimedia “guru” and now UM Knight Chair in Visual Journalism, brought the series of six workshops to South Florida.

“The evolution from a single week-long workshop like the ones I directed at UNC-CH to six, three-day advanced skills workshops, was definitely the appropriate decision,” Beckman said. “Today’s journalists no longer need an overview or introduction to aspects of multimedia journalism. That is their daily reality,” he said. “What they need now is a place where they can work with industry leaders on their storytelling skills using and integrating multimedia tools.”

The workshops were taken in two rounds. The first, Jan. 3 – 6, covered audio narratives, teaching multimedia and multimedia production, and the second, which took place Jan. 7 – 10, focused on video narratives, multimedia programming and online infographics.

Beckman said it was important to offer “Teaching Multimedia” as a workshop specifically designed for multimedia educators. “It sold out and proved to be a great success,” he said.

The classes were taught by leading practitioners from The New York Times, The Washington Post and MSNBC, as well as by University of Miami and University of North Carolina faculty members.

Participants included top journalists and educators from around the world. They came from the L.A. Times, ESPN, the Washington Post, the Washington Times, MSNBC, Florida Today, USA Today, and the St. Petersburg Times, as well as the University of Miami, American University, Drake University, the University of Washington, the University of North Carolina, Hong Kong Baptist University and others. There were also representatives from The World Bank, Whole Foods, and international journalists from Mexico, Japan, Hong Kong, Chile and Ecuador.

From UM, 13 SoC faculty and staff members participated in the workshops, as well as five students, who worked as student assistants, and three full-time English composition lecturers, Larissa Ramos, Adina Sanchez-Garcia, and Danielle Houck, who also took advantage of the opportunity to learn multimedia skills.

Sam Terilli, assistant professor in print journalism, said it was time worth spending.

“By fumbling with the equipment, struggling with the software and listening to the critiques from the faculty, I was better able to understand the perspective of visual journalists and the challenges they face,” he said.

“It wasn’t until I spent hours shooting my own footage and then many more hours trying to edit it into something coherent that I realized that video-editing is really what we in the traditional news media call writing – the bringing of some order to bits of information for the purpose of informing and telling a story,” Terilli said. “The tools are different, and I would add more complicated, but the goals are the same.”

Jim Seida, a senior multimedia producer at MSNBC who was one of the audio narrative instructors, participated as a student in the video narrative workshop.

“Teaching the audio workshop was a total blast because I love audio, and I love teaching and I like to try to get people excited about going out and doing it,” he said, adding that the challenge was to switch gears and become a student again.

“Going from teaching to being a student was a pretty interesting experience,” Seida said. “I was physically and mentally exhausted after three days of teaching and being a student.”

Tsitsi Wahkisi, UM associate professor and U/Miami News Service managing editor, was also a student on two workshops, teaching multimedia and creating video narratives.

She said the Bootcamp was not an end in itself. “It was more of a gateway to new learning, new strategies,” she said.

“The thing that I learned the most is how much more I need to learn,” Wakhisi said. “I think I also learned that I can do this. I might not be an expert, but I can do this.”

Keynote speeches by MediaStorm CEO Brian Storm and New York Times multimedia editor Andrew DeVigal began the first and second round of workshops, respectively.

Beyond Bootcamp also featured lunch speakers who discussed multimedia journalism and the work their organizations are doing. They included J. Paige West, director of Interactive Projects at MSNBC, Keith Jenkins, supervising senior producer for multimedia at NPR, Tom Kennedy, director of multimedia at the Washington Post, and Rob Covey, senior vice president for Content and Design for Digital Media at National Geographic, and Pam Chen, senior communications coordinator at The Open Society Institute.

Professor Terilli was also a panelist in one of the luncheons.

“The speakers and panel discussion were illuminating because each gave me new insights into not only visual and multimedia work, but into journalism generally,” he said.

Almost all of the lunch and keynote speeches were streamed live on the Internet using Mogulus, a free service, and had the participation of viewers online from Thailand to Chile to the United Kingdom, who commented and asked questions on a concurrent chat.

Beyond Bootcamp is co-sponsored by UM School of Communication and the Knight Center for International Media.

“Beyond Bootcamp Workshops represent a strong initiative of the Center to spread the culture of multimedia for the benefit of journalism practitioners and educators in today’s changing environment,” said Sanjeev Chatterjee, the Center’s executive director and UM SoC vice dean. “We look forward to doing more in this regard.”

For more information about the Beyond Bootcamp Workshops, visit www.beyondbootcamp.org.

For more information about the Knight Center for International Media and future workshops, visit http://knight.miami.edu.

Melissa P Rubi Fálcon contributed to this report.

Posted on January 16, 2009

© 2008 University of Miami School of Communication