25 June 2007
It is still three days before the National Arts Festival kicks off in Grahamstown but already town feels different. Posters alerting us to plays, live music and art galleries are posted on every wall and tree. Stores stock up, restaurant menu’s change into short lists with easy-to-prepare food, and parking spaces are filled with cars like Bob’s Biltong Truck and the Live Snake Drive Show.

But this year, instead of visiting shows, I’ll be doing something else. I’ll be dealing with convergence.

Context
You must understand the context though. From this Thursday normal day-to-day activities like grocery shopping and hanging at Madhatters coffee shop become impossible. Thousands of people will stroll through High Street, music and shows will be everywhere. Our house, conveniently turned into a place-to-stay for travellers, accommodates groups of Festival-goers from today.

Grahamstonians all react to the Festival madness in different ways. Some fill up the back of their bakkie and move to their farm until the end of Fest (like our neighbour), others flee to family in far-away cities like Cape Town and Johannesburg, and some people see business opportunities and choose to stay. From the street sellers who produce extra heaps of beaded jewellery to those who organise accommodation, transport and art projects.

I had the idea of starting a sushi stand this year. Sushi is popular, no-one is making it, it is easy and cheap to prepare, and people pay a lot of money for it: a guaranteed success. However, I received an e-mail from a Dutch colleague who is running a convergence project at the Journalism Department in Rhodes University during Festival; definitely more challenging.

Text, video, audio, and photography output produced by Rhodes student’s and Highway Africa reporters will now be kept in one content management system, linking different media platforms like Grocott’s Online, Cue Festival magazine/ TV/ Radio and blogs together.

Helping out
I’m helping out; giving advice based on my thesis research about integrating different media platforms. I’ll also help with the actual content produced by the converged multi-media newsroom.

Our Festival days will look like this (without unforeseen technical problems): an editorial meeting in the morning where we select and assign topics and try to make them accessible on multiple platforms. We then fix deadlines for production, edit and design. In the afternoon we meet with the blog production team to link the stories on various platforms together.

Sounds easy? I’m preparing for a serious challenge.

In the end this attempt at deep convergence in media production is of value to all learners and Highway Africa reporters. They hopefully gain a positive experience working with Africans from all over Africa, working with different media, and will now be able to think in cross-media terms.

So for me Festival will be different than the other years, it’s actually very exciting. I’ll try to post updates on how the Festival is progressing and if the convergence project is a success.