Subscribe
Read my book!
About this blog

This is my personal blog which I started in 2003. At first it was called Communigations, a variation on Communicative Investigations. The blog transformed itself more into a personal investigation than being a blog on communication and therefore needed a new name.As a fencer, the name of this blog reflects how I write my thoughts into coherent stories, fence them off from all the sidepaths and rapidly go back and forth, covering various topics that interest me.
Read more about me or about my work at elminewijnia.eu
-
Recent Conversation
-
Recent Writing
Fresh from Vimeo
Fresh from Flickr
Tags
backchannel behaviour bigprojectfor2009 birthday blogging coaching communication documentary ebook enschede ereader europeanparliament fablab fencing geeklounge howto infullflow inspiration interviews language learning music newyear next09 protospace reboot11 routines selfreflecting shift shift2010 shiftconf skallagrigg snow switzerland think09 thinkaboutit ton40 toolkit tools unconference video walchwil website winter wstmArchives

How to get totally energized…
…or how to work your ass off?
Answer:
State to an organizer of an event that you’re willing to record and produce movies during that 5-day event and get the job.
Last week my municipality held an Open Innovation Festival in Enschede. It was held previously in Amsterdam and one person in particular thought it was such a good idea that she wanted to organize such a festival herself, for her local colleagues. And she pulled it off!
All speakers, both from the area and the rest of NL, gave a talk or a workshop for free. The theme was Social Media and Work 2.0 and thus filming there was the perfect job for me (and no, offering a full week’s work for free was a bit too much, I got paid).
It was highly energizing to engage with people locally on themes I’ve been engaged in globally. Even though I know lots and lots about Social Media, it’s still inspiring hearing others say the things I could have said in a different way, using different examples.
It was highly exhausting at the same time, since last week I’ve been amazingly productive:
- I’ve been working for 5 days in a row from 9:00 am – 0:00 pm, with 3/4 hours of intense editing just before sleep;
- I spent 29 hours filming (appr. 8 hours on tape);
- I spent 28 hours editing;
- I produced a daily clip for five days in a row;
- I produced two summarizing clips yesterday;
- I produced two summarizing clips today;
- I have at least 4 light-edit clips still on the list to upload this week.
I loved doing it, even though there were moments during the week when I felt like doing nothing at all. Such a beginning to edit on Monday night, not sure whether I could create something nice. Or Wednesday afternoon, feeling knackered already and knowing that I would have at least another 3 late nights in a row. And what to think of everyone stating on Friday afternoon, after the closing-session and (alcoholic) drinks, glad to be done, and I still had a movie to produce.
Yet, I did it, I’m still alive and still energized
Below is the first of all the movies I created. Take a look at the rest of them in the Festival Channel (I warn you though, it’s all in Dutch
).