Digital identity & networks - Auckland

We ran our last student workshop on Wednesday at Media Design School in Auckland.

Marie Young from iJump spoke about her life learning experiences, since being employed as a production worker she has changed job over 20 times and is now working as a social media consultant. She drew examples from her own life as she presented helpful tips for students entering the workforce. She discussed how blogging can be an effective way to intiate dialogue on common interests. Marie finished with a class discussion around the pros and cons of putting personal information on to social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn.

Nigel Parker from Microsoft NZ introduced Silverlight technology and showed us a demo of Seadragon. One of the cool projects that use Silverlight and Deep Zoom is the Hard Rock Memorabilia collection. Nigel's exciting journey into what is now possible with new web technologies will have given this year's yMedia Challenge participants exciting ideas for their own projects. Keep up to date with new technology on Nigel's blog!

Red Nicholson from Saatchi & Saatchi and winner of the yMedia Challenge 2007, spoke about his experiences during the Challenge and his internship at Saatchi & Saatchi. Red and Nathan worked with YouthLaw in the yMedia Challenge 2007. Red talked about the incredible people he met at YouthLaw and described both the awesome times and stressful times he had during the two week Challenge. He spoke his internship at Saatchi & Saatchi which has resulted in him working there part-time while he continues studying Communications at AUT. He concluded with some key learnings: that people don't necessarily respect you for the degree you have - it's all about what you bring to the picnic table, that it's all about what you do with what you know, and that it's important to be likeable - just smile! See his presentation below!

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Thanks to everyone who made the workshop possible and thanks to the students from Auckland University of Technology, Media Design School, Unitec New Zealand and University of Auckland who attended.

The story so far...

Hi, I'm Nathan. I've decided to take over this blog because it hasn't been updated in a while!

Last year, I became involved in the yMedia challenge and had the opportunity to work with YouthLaw and come up with a digital media project to help make legal information more accessible to young people. My best friend, Red, and I worked with YouthLaw to design a bebo page with quizzes and videos that helped people better understand the law.

Well, we won it, and that spun off a whole lot of cool opportunties for us. Money for starters, like $1,000 for winning the challenge. An internship at Saatchi & Saatchi and an invitation to speak at the Digital Future Summit.

Then, I spent all of the semester working for YouthLaw on a film project that will be made available to youth workers and advocates around the country over the Internet. (http://youthlawdm.blogspot.com) And I could use it as to credit to my Communications degree at Unitec! Mean!

Now, I've become involved in yMedia again, helping to organise the 2008 challenge. I've come onboard as the "relationship manager" which basically means I go around and talk to lots of people.

My current todo list is:

* Drink coffee
* Talk to people in digital and media industries
* Find prizes and judges
* Find $10,000
* Write blog

Well I guess I'm doing ok on the last one. I'll do a bit of a recap of the last couple of weeks in my next post! Seeyou!

P.S. Please leave a comment so it looks like people are actually read this :) Sponsors love that kind of stuff!