#Podcasting at the International Journalism Festival 2016

This year for the first time I took part in the International Journalism Festival, the biggest media event in Europe. I flew all the way from South Africa to moderate the panel “Podcast, the birth of a new medium?”.

How did I end up there? In December I proposed to the Festival organisation -through their online submission system- to create and moderate the panel on a topic, podcasting, that I was eager to know more about. I was sure that there were many like me who would have liked to understand this medium better. And my idea was accepted.
Thank you Chris, Arianna and Francesca for making it possible.

The panel presented two perspectives, that of digital entrepreneurs Francesco Baschieri of Spreaker and of Borja Rojano of Tapewrite, and that of content producers Barbara Schiavulli and Alessia Cerantola of Radio Bullets.

I was happy to have the chance to meet or meet again so many interesting professionals, including  some old faces from BU, that it would not be fair to name just a few of them: you know who you are, because I sent you all private messages!

The festival gave me the opportunity to meet for the first time in real life with my colleagues at Radio Bullets, and man, it would be a lot of fun if we could meet everyday in the newsroom!

The festival was for me an intense five day learning experience, like a condensed update course in media studies. I am now going through the IJF2016 YouTube channel to watch the panels that I missed. Topic-wise, I enjoyed learning more about the challenges and the possibilities of investigative journalism, about social radio and about intercultural mediation in media, a topic that is very present in my work as journalist in a foreign land.