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 ).

It’s a theme that we both discussed for a longer time now. We feel the deep need to work on projects that have a positive impact on society at large. At the same time we realize that the two of us can’t change the world and that we need to focus on the small steps we can take on things that are important to us.

For me, it’s an ongoing quest to discover what I’m passionate about, matters to me and, more importantly, matters to others as well so they’re willing to pay me for doing the work. One of the outcomes of my own birthday workshop in 2008, is that I rediscovered my passion for video. This is the video that I created back then:

Elmine’s Birthday Unconference from Elmine Wijnia on Vimeo.

Over the past year and a half, I’ve been developing my interviewing and editing skills and I even created a documentary on a topic that fascinates me.

So far my video work is mostly about my passion and working on things that matter to me: uncovering and showing people’s stories and stitching stories into a bigger narrative.

Now it’s time to turn it upside down and see how I can align what matters to me with what matters to you.

A Shift: a documentary on FabLab in The Netherlands. from Elmine Wijnia on Vimeo.

Also available on the FabLab-channel.

Bruno added the logo at the end.

The conference was great. The documentary looked awesome on a huge screen and my presentation went very well, even without time to practice the story beforehand
I will share my presentation full-text after I had the time to edit it for publishing. For now, here are the slides. Read the notes accompanying the slides on Slideshare:

So I have the privilege to spend some time at Josien’s place, a farm an hours drive from Lisbon. Worse things could have happened

Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to celebrate the achievements of women in technology and science.

My blogpost for #ald10 is dedicated to three women that I know well.

My colleague Joitske.
Joitske has a background in the developing world. She lived in Africa for several years with her family and used all kinds of methods and technology to connect to people and get her work done. These days she makes a living by guiding others online, doing projects from her home in The Netherlands.

She uses technology to achieve her goals.

My friend Lilia.
Lilia practically published all of her PhD online, before she knew what she would write in her thesis. It took her readers seven years to see her complete work. Lilia wrote her thesis into existence and now that she’s known as dr. Lilia she does the same for the life that will be.

She uses technology to fulfill her needs.

My mother Fenneke.
Fenneke has been taken photo’s as long as I can remember. We even had a dark room in the attic. I would often stand by her side waiting for the chemicals to reveal the image on paper. A time consuming hobby and for quite some time she hardly developed pictures herself. Then digital photography became affordable and she jumped on it straight away. Ever since her first digital camera she grew her kit and developed advanced skills in photo-editing. Aged sixty-two she started to give digital photography workshops to help others gain more from their digital camera.

She uses technology to capture her imagination.

This time around visiting London I didn’t bring my big and heavy 18-200mm lens and used my cheap and light-weight 50mm lens instead. It’s a nice lens, except that I have to focus manually and it turned out to be a hard thing to do with this lens. It’s the reason not everything is rightly in focus in this photoset, but some turned out to be wonderful.

Tube in Tube out.

Let me explain what I’m talking about. Together with Ton I was invited to join the Somesso/Headshift/Dachis Social Business Summit in London last Thursday. The program looked promising: only two speakers to kick-off the day, including the always inspiring JP Rangaswami), followed by a discussion amongst the participants. Participants were selected, so it could only be a great and knowledgeable crowd

(…) to plot the future of Social Business Design. (source)

I followed part of the online discussion around Social Business as a term and was intrigued. I thought the event in London would be a good opportunity to find out more about it and see if there is any relevance for me in this ‘trending topic’.

I would have loved to give you a content summary of the day with some insights from my side about social business, but it turned out to be a very confusing day.

I had a really hard time grasping what everyone was talking about. The language used was so abstract and often meaningless that I felt clueless what we were discussing. At first I thought it was just me, since I’m hardly dealing with large corporations these days, but others who were in the same discussions with me turned out to be just as clueless.

Although people were sharing stories throughout the day, to me it felt that there was no real exchange of ideas and insights. I saw few animated discussions. You won’t believe how many people were checking their phones even during small group discussions. Signs of an uninspired and uninvolved crowd.

Despite the lovely time I had visiting the Tate modern, drinking beer with Johnnie, dining with Paolo and Monica, ‘after-partying’ with the Danish guys, shopping and finally lunching with a friend that now lives there, the balance of this trip to London tips over to the negative side. It will make me seriously reconsider spending money on flights and hotel for any such event in the future.

Johnnie, I get your point more and more.

I held the black wooden instrument in my hands, took a deep breath, blew on the reed and to everyone’s surprise I produced a sound. Not half bad for a first time. Hardly anyone manages that! It looked like a perfect match.

So I took lessons and joined the local youth orchestra. Only two other girls played oboe in my village back then, I was the youngest. We all played in the same wind orchestra.

I managed to learn the basics rather quickly. First in Emmen, since there was no teacher at the local music school. Later the three of us took lessons with a wonderful lady that came to our village and who often arranged for group lessons.

I loved playing together, but I never cared much for practicing. When the two older girls left after graduating high school, I was the only one left in the village to play oboe. It diminished my love for playing and practicing even further, but my teacher accepted it and made lessons a fun half hour by playing challenging duets together.

When I was about sixteen I was selected to become the first oboist in a regional orchestra, the Drents Jeugdorkest. Three years I played there. I even managed to keep playing there the first year I was at university. Once a month on Saturday I would travel to remote places in the province Drenthe to rehearse and give concerts with this wonderful group of people. In the end it was the only practice I got every month and I couldn’t keep up with the level of the group. I said goodbye to the orchestra after a summer tour in Rostock.

Only two times after that, during summer projects abroad when I filled a gap in my parent’s orchestra as a second oboist, I rehearsed and played. For the last, six?, years my oboe was just lying around the house, untouched.

Two weeks ago I started practicing again for a reunion concert by that youth orchestra I have such warm memories of. While practicing I noticed that the joy I once had in playing oboe, died since the last time I picked up the instrument. Last week I decided that this reunion concert would be the last one with my oboe. I’m done with it and will sell the oboe my parents gave to me. I’ll pass it on to someone who loves and needs it.

With a very loud concert I payed a worthy tribute to myself and my oboe. A pair you will never see again on stage. My sore lips are proof of my effort. After 22 years I’m done with it and I’m looking forward to challenge myself and start learning something else for the next 20 odd years.