Last month, I attended a higher education multimedia workshop in Philadelphia that I gained a ton of amazing insight from. At the workshop, I learned from leaders in university engagement, video production, podcasting, social media, and photography. I’ve dabbled in all of these subject areas, but it was so fascinating to learn from people that have had thriving careers in these realms.
Just as interesting to learn from, however, were my fellow workshop attendees! Higher ed communications and marketing professionals attended the event from across the nation (and even beyond! I made a really cool friend from the University of the Bahamas). Conversing with these individuals gave me a sense for the first time that nearly all higher ed communications teams are tackling similar challenges to those my team at Northeastern faces. For example, nearly everyone I spoke with at the workshop griped that they are often juggling many tasks on very small teams. I found that university communications teams, almost without exception, are composed of the Jack-of-all-trades types: individuals who are tasked with writing, designing, taking photography, managing social media, managing websites, event planning, and more. As someone that handles many of these tasks in my own role, it was such a relief to know that I wasn’t alone.
My favorite part of the conference involved breaking up into groups to complete a multimedia project. Each group was assigned a different iconic Philadelphia location to create this multimedia project, and we were encouraged to experiment with some of the tips we’d been learning thus far. My team, composed of Nicole Chasan (Princeton), Monica Jimenez (Tufts University), Phillip Altstatt (Sacramento State University), Paul Jones (Georgetown University), and myself, chose to create a video in our assigned location, Washington Square Park.
In deciding the topic for our video, we didn’t need to think for very long. Fresh in our minds were the beautiful but slightly cliché “inspiring” university marketing videos that had been presented to us the day before (like Georgetown University’s #HOYAS2018 Campaign). We wanted to have some fun, so we decided to create a video that parodied this “inspirational” style-video, specifically focusing on the life of the squirrels in Washington Square Park.
Check out the final video, “Squirrel Bytes,” below.
Through the process of making this goofy video, I learned more about the best tools and tips for audio recording, about where to find great free audio samples, about how to capture beautiful footage, and much more. I also had a lot of laughs with some really fantastic and talented people from across the nation.
When we showed the video to all of the conference attendees, we received enthusiastic applause and many amused questions about our process.
I’m super proud to have been a part of the team that made this possible and to have been able to attend this workshop. Thanks, Northeastern ITS!
