Today I attended an excellent Boston Media Makers, #BMM meetup at Doyles in Jamaica Plain hosted by Steve Garfield. These meetups are held the first Sunday of every month at 10:00-12:00. Today it rained like crazy so only about 12-15 people came by but it was excellent. Today was a little different also because we had a presentation by Jeff Cutler the social media journalist on Backpack Journalism and creating content. Jeff showed his gear both the big bag and his shoulder bag. Going off to do a story these day is often a technology challenge for the reporter. They have to carry a camera, do audio, write in the field and upload everything to some place.
Jeff showed us his favorite bag for hauling all his camera gear and computer along with giving us a list of tips to follow. The big camera bag is from ThinkTankPhoto and will fit in any airplane overhead storage bin. It was called the Airport Essentials I think, there are several.
Tips for creating content:
- Know your audience
- Know yourself
- Know what is going on around you, follow social media, and feeds from your favorite sites
- Knowing what is going on around you will allow you to make derivative stories, I call this go wide with your stories. Don’t stay on one topic
- Know your capabilities
- Know your passions, what do you like and don’t like
- Know your market if you want to make money
- Know how you want to share your material and where it should be.
You can learn more about Jeff at JeffCutler.com
Boston Media makers is located at bostonmediamakers.wordpress.com/Steve Garfield is at SteveGarfield.com, Steve also has an excellent gear list for doing live video at this site.
