We may or may not noticed it yet, but we are now coping up with the challenges of the Age of Automation. An era where each of us is expected to leverage in technology for us to answer the needs of a more interconnected world.
Regardless of the industry we are working in, it has been said that in the near future, companies will require us an IT related skill such as programming and coding. Along with that, the way we work will certainly change.
As an effort to help journalists prepare for such modification, InnoPub Media together with Smart Communications conducted a one-day training dubbed as the 3rd New Media Meetup. Spearheaded by MyCebu and InnoPub Media Co-Founder Max Limpag, a bootcamp on basic HTML/CSS coding and Markdown, as well as setting up sites and formatting articles for Facebook Instant Articles took place at the Smart Communications office.
The meetup started with an introduction by Mr. Max Limpag on how the New Media Meetup started. Mr. Limpag also shared to the attendees the focus of the event which is to promote tech content collaboration. Inspired by the news hackathon in Cebu IT Park, the New Media Meetup was created to teach writers how to code. Some of its goals are to build a foundation for future collaboration and to organize meetups to foster learnings on new media.
Mr. Limpag pointed out that in this digital age of ours’, the task of a journalist goes beyond scribbling and editing news and information; that it is imperative for today’s news writers to understand the technology on how to publish. As a case in point, journalists of today must be well-versed with the processes that involved publishing.
Eching that in the mind of all attendees, Mr. Limpag proceeded in providing an in-depth lesson about basic coding using HTML and CSS which serve as the foundations of any digital content. He also bestowed key information about how to utilize debugger softwares and chatbots.
In the afternoon, Mr. Limpag talked about how to format articles into Facebook Instant Articles. He discussed the necessity of utilizing Facebook’s new feature as well as how it can gain readership to any media platform. He further demonstrated the necessary steps on how to setup Facebook Instant Articles for a website like WordPress.
The meetup ended with a discussion where anybody was welcomed to partake ideas and any sort of questions.
The meetup generally rehearsed the role of every journalist to comprehend the powerful systems which governed the society that he/she is serving. If a journalist must strive to understand those systems, then he/she must also understand the power of coding; because ‘journalists learning how to code is just journalists learning how to publish.’
