Philip Bloom, Digital Creator

Meeting Philip Bloom was an honour and a pleasure yesterday.

As head cameraman of Sky news, you might be forgiven for wondering what this may have to do with science, relevant enough to add a piece of writing about it here on my pebblepad.

Heading to the Youtube space in the Google offices in London was pretty much a little dream come true.  Initially, I headed there to accompany my daughter who is at college studying creative media.  Yet with a passion for the science of nutrition,  creativity and business all rolled into one, I figured there is likely to be times when creation of a digital nature would be exciting to use.  

The dream of encouraging nations to eat better, with a clear guide of why and how it will benefit them and their lives is real.  The wonderful world wide web gives us this amazing platform to share our scientific findings.

Mr Bloom, the award winning photographer gave an amazing speech in London last night.  I was taking mental notes on his presentation skills, something super important in this years course.  When he began talking of taking the transition of shooting from DSLR camera to video camera, I did get a little lost in the nomenclature of all the different models of camera available, just as likely as the audience may have been confused on the nomenclature of a periodic table.

Nonetheless, this evening gave me a wonderful insight into what life can be like in this diverse world of digital.  Should my youtube channel get a wide enough audience to build on the 1000 subscribers I already have and head up to 10,000 then Google and Youtube extend an arm of generosity as they open up their studios for filming and their offices for writing.  Of course there is no lab in sight but I think that may be taking things one step too far with the general population.  So, now there is an inspired dream inside to continue with these studies enough to confidently make some educational laymens term videos to help spread the word of health into the nation who has ears to listen. 

Plus, there is a free barister on weekdays!

Presentation skills workshop

Attending a presentation skills workshop seemed a no brainer when the invite arrived in my inbox via the employability office. 

Many times we have been encouraged as a class to get used to the idea that we would be presenting many times over. At my last university, in year Zero, I was fortunate enough to be encouraged to speak at many of their events which were well attended by industry experts.

Most of us felt as though this was more of a practice as opposed to learning workshop, which was fine, yet I did feel I would have loved to go further into detail.  Perhaps as a mature student with experiences already I was expecting too much.  As a note to myself, I wondered how I should be learning more about my presenting skills.  Perhaps this is something I could look further into very soon. I know there will be many videos on the internet helping with the finer details of making a good presentation.

Nevertheless, this was not a waste of time as I met a couple of new students who I could now smile and wave at on campus, as well as fulfilling a requirement of attendance towards my own course credits.

Win/win.