Guardian Student Media Conference

I went to this event at the Rich Mix Centre in Bethnal Green with Rachael and David yesterday courtesy of Julian March at Sky News, who managed to get us some passes for a very heavily-subscribed event.

It was fascinating listening to the talk that Jules and Rob Kirk (also from Sky) gave on the future of Sky News, if for no other reason than to make it clear that what David Dunkley-Gyimah taught us during our online journalism module is in line with what big media companies are working towards.

We were shown a picture of what a Sky News service of the future might look like - moving away from the idea of 'linear' news broadacasting and developing an interactive, largely user-generated service. In the model, the viewer goes through a series of menus at the setup stage, selecting the device they will use to receive Sky News on (television, PDA, ipod, PSP etc) and then chooses the specific types of news items they want to be shown (current affairs, politics, sport, showbusiness etc).

The system allows the user to download news programmes to the portable device and watch at his/her leisure, with the programme compiled from existing Sky material but tailored to the user's individual preferences.

The other key development we heard about was the rise of user-generated content in news programmes. Just as members of the public sent video from their mobile phones to broadcasters on July 7, much of the content on the preview we saw was footage (of the airport security alert in the summer, for example) was made up of footage shot by the public and included people speaking live on air to the studio presenters via their phones.

We also attended a session chaired by Mark Lawson from The Guardian on interview techniques which was interesting, although difficult to follow due to the horrible acoustics in the room and the prevalence of questions that followed this format: 'I am a journalist. I recently interviewed (insert name)/attended (insert event)/reported on (insert anything)... and I would like to know your thoughts.' The future's bright.