What's this all about then?

In brief, this is a project to help promote the union to the people on which it largely depends for its future - that is students, and those working in new media.

As an ADM virgin (ahem) last year, I was fascinated and quite inspired by all the goings-on at the conference. It's a great opportunity to meet other members; in my experience those that make it to ADM are the most work addicted and committed, but I could be wrong!

Seeing the processes of ADM reinforces how powerful the union is as a body - you can see and feel the opinions and hard work of all the members feeding into this bigger system of getting things done. Like lobbying Parliament to get them to take action to stop journalists being targeted in Colombia, or whatever - things that actually affect people's lives.

I came away feeling re-invigorated about the union and with new ideas and energy for our Brighton branch, so this year we planned to send four members - double the previous year. While I was there I did manage to blog on our branch site live from the conference floor, thanks to the centre's wireless network.

And then it occurred to me that a conference blog would be a great way of encouraging more members to come to ADM, covering the atmosphere and social side of ADM as well as the harder news stuff - and possibly even inspire more people to join the union. Maybe.

Blogging is the obvious way to cover the conference:
- it's virtually instant
- it's free
- it's easy to publish, with no particular technical knowledge required (just confidence!)
- it's easy to read and use
- it's a simple way of presenting a large number of postings for browsing
- it allows text, audio and video to be posted
- it can easily combine straight news reports with short entries and a more personal, chatty kind of coverage

... and so on.

Lastly, I'd also really like to encourage as many members as possible to read and join in with this project - especially members that might be a bit sceptical about blogging and the 'whole new media thing'.

I think this project will show how effective this publishing tool is, and how the union can use it to great effect. There's also a whole new generation out there doing just this kind of thing and the union needs to understand and embrace this new, new journalism (apologies Wolfe...). But that's a whole other debate!