Using Technology to Cover Events – #FutureSmart Challenge
March 28, 2017
The one facet that has kept me working as credentialed media for more than two decades is my ability to adapt to changing technology. Telling stories is a skill that doesn’t require fancy machinery, but it helps if the stories you report are sharable and consumable.
Therefore, to have any measure of impact when an event happens, every journalist or storyteller has to know how to get information in front of the right eyeballs and ingested by the most people. To that end, the Internet, social sharing sites, cameras, audio recorders and a slew of other gadgets are used every day to share every story.
Digressing momentarily, we used to call it backpack journalism. It’s where a reporter would fill a backpack with gadgets necessary to capture a story (or stories) and then hit the road to chase that topic. It’s exactly what I did during the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico off New Orleans.
I spent 14 days in the city and surrounding coastal areas (as far east as Florida), chasing the story and sharing the photos, videos and audio with the world. It was an amazing task that made a difference and proved the point I started to make above.
That said, this week I’m going to be on the parquet floor at TD Garden in Boston taking photos of Hill Harper and other smart celebrities who are sharing their thoughts and experience in financial discipline with a bunch of schoolchildren. I’ll be on hand thanks to Mass Mutual – for whom I’ve worked in the past – to capture images and share social updates with the world. It’s going to be a blast for three reasons!
1 – I’ll be at TD Garden – home of the Celtics and Bruins. I might even get to meet some players, and I’ll share that experience with you.
2 – I’ll probably learn something about financial education and managing my income. As with the past events I’ve worked, I always come away with new info on how to be more responsible.
3 – I’ll get to bask in the energy of hundreds of happy kids. Because I’ve seen the energy with which Hill Harper presents, I know the kids will be amped up and happy. And there’s nothing like that energy to make everyone in the room (or arena) smile.
Follow these Twitter handles for more info during Wednesday’s event: @JeffCutler, @HillHarper, @MassMutual, @Celtics, @tdgarden, @CC_Chapman, @SteveGarfield. And be sure to search the #FutureSmart hashtag throughout the day for more info.
Leave your questions here or tweet them to me. Thanks!
