After years as a video producer, working for major publishers at Time Inc., (where I also happened to be a Wibbitz customer), and now, as the head of video production here at Wibbitz, I’m obviously a huge believer in the power of video storytelling. So I always love getting the chance to introduce Wibbitz to new users, to show off just how easy and intuitive it makes the video creation process – even for people who haven’t had much video experience before.
Last week, our CRO Ido and I were invited to the Wall Street Journal headquarters to co-host a video workshop for Dow Jones’ student program. This program provides an opportunity for local high school students to visit the offices of some of the biggest companies in the world, and learn about the different career options and disruptive technologies that could potentially be a part of their professional future.
“Dow Jones is so grateful to our Wibbitz partners for hosting an interactive video session for our high school student program – within minutes, the students were engaged, exploring content and building unique videos.”
– Nikki Hotvedt, VP of Communications at Dow Jones
To kick off the workshop, the Wall Street Journal’s Deputy Head of Video & Audio Jarrard Cole gave an overview of the leading publisher’s digital video strategy, then Ido gave the students a bit of a background on the state of video in journalism – why it’s important, why it’s challenging, and how automation can provide an ideal solution to make it easier and more cost efficient.
Then I took over to give the students a brief intro to my role at Wibbitz, walk them through the platform, then turn it over to them with a simple assignment: create a video covering the devastating California wildfires from the week prior. To my surprise, before I was even half way through the demo of the platform, students were already finishing and exporting their videos!
Even with the intuitive nature of the Wibbitz platform, there’s typically a small learning curve when training new (adult) users, as there is with any new technology. But the students seemed to get it immediately. Like, ‘yeah okay, I know how this works, now stop talking and let me make something!’ It was inspiring to see how fast they picked it up, and how professional their videos turned out – there were clearly some future journalists in that group.
Here’s one of our favorite videos that came out of the workshop: