THE SPARK Media Team Vision
NSC Fribourg 2014
Editorial
Dear Reader,
“Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.” Henry Ford we have known each other for more than 8 years. Going through puberty, attending high school and graduating together has certainly been bonding and an experience which cannot be taken away from us. Similarly, we entered EYP together, yet our paths have parted within EYP after our first session. Therefore, we are eager for a reunion of challenge, academic work and fun: Enforcing our different strengths, which complement each other. Acquiring new skills from mutual work. Creating a quality media outcome to ensure a memorable experience for both delegates and fellow officials. Editing together. The National Selection Conference of EYP Switzerland Fribourg 2014 sets perfect conditions for an event which is exciting as it is the first genuine contact of the first-time delegates with EYP. It will thrive through intercultural acquaintances, heated debates and passionate resolutions. And it will certainly be shaped by an inspiring officials team, which we seek to be part of. That being said, we invite you to look at our vision “The Spark” for the media team of Fribourg 2014. Yours,
Sabrina and Veronika
Our Vision
“From a spark a fire will flare up” –Alexander Odoevsky Welcome to The Spark. A spark is the source of a fire. It may only arise by a combination of carbon dioxide, water vapour, oxygen and nitrogen. These elements, being complementary and added up at the right time and right place, may develop into a fire more extensive than firstly presumed. This fire, all-pervasive and continuous is what we wish to achieve. We attempt to create a product which is challenging, entertaining, thought-provoking and memorable. Lenin’s Iskra (Russian for ‘spark’) was published in Geneva in 1903. It aimed to spread the political views of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party being lead by Russian emigrants. Fribourg’s spark, being published more than a hundred years later, aims to spread EYP spirit, cultural exchange and confrontation with our European diversity. Our contents may not resemble to Lenin’s, yet our enthusiasm does. As mentioned above, the sparks and fire may only evolve through a combination of several elements. Similarly, our media team can only develop its full strengths throughout genuine teamwork of all members. The media team should be more than the sum of its parts and therefore we demand cooperation, flexibility and helpfulness from all journalists and especially ourselves. The Spark aims to be the very beginning of something way larger than media output. It aims to create EYP enthusiasm among the first time delegates by evolving memories and capturing the moment thus including all participants to spread EYP spirit. Further, a spark is what shines in the dark when all other lights have gone out. By being this very spark we attempt to create media output which goes beyond the standard session report and which adds something genuinely unique to the entire event. The Spark aspires to be ever present and never gone out by providing supportive, energising material to awake the EYP spirit. Concluding, The Spark aims to represent EYP at its best. We wish to capture this spirit in order to turn the delegates’ first EYP experience into a real fire and we wish to materialise it so all participants may be reminded of it all situations. The Spark attempts to highlight every individual’s strengths, while simultaneously providing the possibility to enhance one’s own skills in fields which require improvement. We believe in a mutual basis of what should be done by all journalists, combined with the individual emphasis on the several tasks being visuals, written work and online presence. Every individual journalist will be allocated to a special field, depending on his or her skills and choice, whilst simultaneously being involved in all tasks to some extent. Therefore, three groups will be created. These groups will not only have similar tasks but also are encouraged to support each other by mutual proofreading and general support.
Photography
Visuals
Photos are usually what capture the memories of an EYP session the best by being easily accessible both semantically and technically. They create a personal relationship between the participants and the session and are thus a crucial part of every event. Due to this major importance, we encourage media coverage by variety of photos as we wish to capture a great diversity of aspects of the session. The selection of photos should be balanced between funny and serious pictures. As photography stands and falls by its quality we want to implement extensive photography training within the journalists training. Further, one editress will be in charge of all visual products and thus assisting the journalists whenever help is needed. The editress will be responsible for the selection and editing of all photos, and will hence ensure all published material to meet the standards we set ourselves. In case of missing quality pictures, the editress will be willing to capture further material herself.
Videos Videos will mostly be determined by the individual who is selected to edit videos and by the journalists themselves. We plan to have at least one journalist who supports the video-editor by providing footage and if possible, helping with the selection of captured material. We encourage a concept for the videos which is complementary to all other media outcomes and the session theme and events, however we wish that the video-editor has the possibility freely evolve his/ her ideas. We encourage a balanced product which covers both serious and funny content and is both entertaining and informing. By the support of one to three journalists, we wish to create space for innovation, as well as providing the members of the press team with the possibility to develop new skills. As the videos are often the pieces which the delegates value the most, they should be of high quality and it is thus crucial to support the video editor as much as possible. EYP TV has high potential both in intension as well as extension. The EYP spirit can be captured very accurately, whilst the product is further transferred to the world outside EYP which may increase the event’s extension. Therefore the videos can be a great representation of Fribourg 2014 and EYP in general.
We whole-heartedly agree that we wish to achieve quality instead of quantity. Our approach is a realistic one, we do not aim to force our journalists into tasks they do not feel comfortable with at all. Everybody should be able to focus on personal strengths whereas we support thinking outside the box and stepping out of one’s comfort zone.
Written work General concept
Writing articles is certainly the most time-consuming of all tasks. However, long articles are seldom valued for the work they contain. Therefore, we will set our word limit at either 300 words (for one page articles) or 600 words (covering a story for two pages). Each journalist ought to write a minimum of three articles, one being submitted, proofread and edited before the session and one per issue provided during the session. Due to the lacking appreciating and the overwhelming complexity of too long articles we therefore encourage articles to be rather precise and short and in balance with visuals.
Issue 1 Our first issue will be edited before the session starts. By means of early communication and pre-session work we want all journalists to write one article previously which will already be edited and published online before the session starts. Therefore, online spread sheets will be implemented to facilitate communication. We will also provide a link of the issue for all delegates and it will be available at the welcome desk. The issue will include contents about the different committee topics. If possible, we wish to include articles which focus on an expert on the topic. The journalists are therefore encouraged to deal with the topics early before the session and to approach the works of an expert (a politician, journalist, and entrepreneur) and report about his or her views. However, we are not aiming to produce an “issue 0” as such. Instead, we want to provide inspiration and new ideas for the delegates. The aim of the first issue’s articles are to present opinions and insights into a specific sub topic rather than copying the overviews provided by the chairsteam. The contents are not limited to written work but can also take visual forms. Further, we wish to include entertaining content, for instance articles about what we wish we had known about EYP being a first-time delegate. Therefore, the issue will include informing and entertaining contents and will especially focus of the delegates as first-timers.
Issue 2/3 The second and third issue will be produced during the session and will focus on the session itself with a high emphasis on the delegates. The content can and shall not be fixed yet, but depend on our journalists interests and the delegates’ interests. We attempt to shape these issues together with the delegates and by their participation. Further, these depend on the personal projects of our journalists. One specific idea we would present our team are resolution interviews with the delegates at the end of committee work. The committee journalists would interview a couple of delegates on their resolution which can be an academic input for GA. This is however an idea that needs to be discussed with the journalists themselves as well as the organisers since this issue would have to be printed the same night as the resolution booklet.
Online Presence
Apart from videos and the newspaper, online presence is crucial to every session. It provides opportunities to be an interactive platform of all participants whilst simultaneously providing a larger audience with session updates. Therefore, we want to use social media to strongly encourage this presence. Firstly, we believe an own Facebook page or use the one existing to publish regular updates to be essential for our work. These updates will include a countdown, presentation of all officials and the first issue before the session. We would find it useful if the organisers can make sure that the delegates get the link to this page before the session so that they can already be reached before the session through social media. Before sessions, especially ones involving first time delegates such pages are usually only appreciated by EYP alumni and not the delegates themselves as they do not know of their existence. During the session we plan to upload the videos, issues and pictures regularly and on time. Facebook provides the great opportunity to expand the session’s spirit to provide memories for all participants and to be accessible for a larger audience. Especially for first time delegates it is essential to discover themselves in the media output created by the press team and a Facebook page offers great opportunities for this. Secondly, we wish to give regular updates which will be visualised by using Prezi. Being an interactive and entertaining programme which is accessible through Internet and therefore reaches a greater audience, especially people outside the session, we plan to provide a newsfeed every evening of the most important and entertaining news and pictures of the day. One journalist will be responsible for this daily news update which will be published on our Facebook page as well. Further online presence depends on the journalists. In general, we encourage an interactive usage of all modern and social media. Therefore, we are open to further ideas about online presences if our journalists come up with something further.
Open Space
Despite the importance of all elements mentioned above, we believe that the media team output may go beyond taking photos and writing articles. Therefore, we wish to implement open space interaction, thus providing all journalists with the opportunity to establish close bonds between the different official groups, delegates and to have space for individual creativity. We do not want to take away other official’s tasks, yet we wish to add unique experiences to the common session points in order to improve both the delegates’ and officials’ time at the session. Open space interaction refers to the opportunity to add a unique memory to the session whenever participants meet: After committee work and teambuilding, at coffee breaks, during the evening programme. Often, interaction is limited to committees or school delegations. Especially for the media team, it is difficult to get to know many delegates whilst simultaneously writing articles and taking pictures or simply being locked in the press room. Therefore, we wish to create little projects to enhance the bonding of all participants, especially between delegates from different committees. We believe that open space interaction can be a valuable contribution to the session for we whole-heartedly want to make the best use of this time and give the delegates a genuine nudge towards confidently interacting with other Europeans. Our press room is open to visitors and input by both delegates and officials. The media team should be visible at all times and the participants should be able to identify with our products. Everybody is welcome to share their ideas and to give us feedback on our products. A possible form of open space interaction is a variety of workshops. These focus on the individual development of all participants and thus gain knowledge and experience about something unique. They will be an organised element of the evening programme and conducted by the journalists. The content of these workshops depend on the journalists themselves and their individual strengths and ideas, yet we propose projects such as photography, poetry, motivation or language workshops. Delegates are encouraged to sign up for one workshop during the checkin as they will take place simultaneously. This idea has successfully been tested by the MIFI Media Team at the Swedish National Session 2014. We are aware of organisational capacities and a dependency on the energy level of all delegates, however we encourage the implementation of and the participation in such projects. Further, open space interaction depends on our journalists and their ideas, yet we believe that this activity is a great possibility for the media team. We are furthermore open to any wishes by the organising team especially concerning afternoon/evening activities if the schedule of the session allows it.
Personal Projects
Personal Projects are a further idea to expand the tasks of the journalists and they will be created as part of open space interaction. The projects should once more aid the journalists to focus on what they are good at. For instance, if one journalist is very competent in taking pictures and enjoys doing so, he or she may create a project revolving around photos, for instance a photo booth or may take over the editor’s task to select and edit pictures. Other personal projects can be motivation letters to delegates or Prezi updates. Each project can be organised by one journalist each or, if the project is rather extensive by more two or three. There is no limit in creativity concerning these projects as long as they are valuable for the session participants. Despite the rather small intensions that we set, we aim to organise all aspects of open space interaction and personal projects previous to the session. By the use of online spread sheets and possible Skype meetings before the session we plan to establish early bonds. All journalists shall come up with ideas of workshop contents and projects. The workshops should thus be organised and established before the session.
All in all it is our main goal to proof what difference a media team can make in a session so that no participant of Fribourg 2014 could have imagined the session without it.