DW Akademie trainer Daniel Hirschler sends this report from a workshop in Laos.

Action learning scenario

As a trainer, I like working with what I call “action learning settings”. This basically means designing the workshop in a way that learning happens in a good mix of experiencing something and then talking about it and reflecting upon the experience.

Workshop designs are like recipes for cooking: It’s not just the amount of the ingredients that counts, it’s also their quality. And as with any recipe, things can work out perfectly, but they can also go terribly wrong. So for a trainer, going into an action learning workshop can be fraught with tension. Will things work out? What if they don’t…?

When going for an interview, you need to prepare yourself thoroughly. This is the case whether you are an experienced journalist or just at the beginning of your career.

Here are ten useful tips to make interviewing easier and help you achieve your interview goal.

1. Brainstorming / mind mapping

What do you already know about the person or the topic that your interview is going to be about? In order to get clear about this, it is best to do some brainstorming. Write down everything that comes to your mind when you think of the topic or the person. It’s a good idea to write the topic or name of the interviewee in the center of the page and arrange the ideas all around it in bundles. This is called mind mapping.

Journalists who want to add archived sound material to current affairs stories usually have one big problem: how can they find relevant material in a broadcaster’s archive?

Damaged historical audio tape before restauration

For the keepers of these archives, it’s a challenge to catalog sound material so that it’s easily accessible to journalists. And if the material is on tape or analogue disks, the archive workers also have to find ways to restore and digitize the carriers. Tapes deteriorate easily – especially in tropical climates.

These are key issues that Heidrun Speckmann and Nguyen Pham Hoa Binh (free media consultant in Vietnam) discussed with an international audience at the German Embassy in Hanoi on May 8th, 2012. Heidrun Speckmann has been working as CIM integrated expert and DW Akademie’s Media Archive Developing Consultant at Radio The Voice of Vietnam (VOV) since September 2009.

At the German Embassy, the two archive experts presented their long-term consulting projects aimed at modernizing the sound archives of Asian broadcasters. These projects are financed by Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).

Femi Adi Soempeno

Our friend and former participant Femi Adi Soempeno was among the passengers of the Russian Sukhoi jet that crashed near the Indonesian capital on Wednesday, May 9, 2012. Our thoughts and prayers go out to Femi’s family and those who loved her.

For all of us here at DW Akademie, it was a joy and a privilege to have known Femi. We loved working with her during our 2009 workshop “Online Journalism and Web 2.0″.

During this three-week training course, Femi became friends with Akademie staff and trainers and with the other participants; journalists from Cambodia, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Indonesia, China, Pakistan, Nepal and the Philippines.

Photo credit: Chris Engelsma, CC BY-SA 3.0

What’s the right microphone to use when you’re working as a journalist?

It would be fair to say in our work across Asia, DW Akademie trainers see just about every type of microphone ever manufactured in use.

Whether it’s in a studio, plugged into a digital recorder or a video camera, we’ve seen and heard everything. From the most expensive specialist mics, to budget mics to microphones that are working antiques, lovingly maintained and still producing quality sound.