Archive notice: This article was originally published on October 21, 2009. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
The media industry was booming more than ever. This was impressively confirmed at that year’s SAE Alumni Convention. With more than 2,500 visitors and over 70 exhibitors, the SAE Alumni Association’s networking event recorded record attendance. According to SAE, this demonstrated how much the two-day event had developed from an industry gathering into a trend barometer for media education and the great importance of SAE Institute as the world’s largest training institution in audio, video, web and games.
Alongside numerous seminars and workshops on current media-production technologies, a new degree programme, “Mobile Journalism,” was also presented at the event. It combines the teaching of journalistic and multimedia skills and demonstrates SAE Institute’s innovative strength as a leading training institution across a wide variety of media genres.
Good Prospects in the Media Industry
The venue for that year’s SAE Alumni Convention was the campus at Germany’s largest SAE location in Berlin. The enormous number of visitors and the many industry partners in attendance showed how much movement there was in the media industry and how strong the demand was for practice-oriented training concepts. The positive mood at the event also reflected the state of the industry at the time, in which companies were desperately seeking young professionals and continued to see strong development potential for new courses and career prospects for media-industry graduates.
The event also made clear that networking plays a central role in job seeking. The SAE Alumni Convention is an integral part of SAE Institute’s efforts to build and maintain an extensive network in the media industry. This aspect is especially important to SAE graduates: as career starters, they often benefit from job opportunities obtained through a network formed during their studies.
Götz Hannemann, Marketing Director at SAE Institute Germany: “We have been organising the SAE Alumni Convention for five years. We observe rising participant numbers from year to year. This not only confirms our concept, but also provides information about how positively the industry is developing. Career prospects for people who have completed SAE training remain excellent.”
The Journalist of the Future
As another highlight of the SAE Alumni Convention, Tom Misner, CEO and founder of SAE Institute, announced the introduction of a new SAE programme for the following year. The “Mobile Journalism Diploma” takes account of growing multimedia requirements in the journalistic profession. Over previous years, digitalisation and the growing importance of the Internet in the information society had greatly changed the traditional role of the journalist.
More than ever, journalists are expected to serve a wide variety of media channels. This ranges from creating traditional print content to producing audio files or video clips for the Internet. Alongside journalistic training in the conventional sense, the “Mobile Journalism Diploma” curriculum primarily includes the teaching of technical expertise in multimedia, film and audio.
Götz Hannemann added: “Without doubt, the announcement of the new SAE ‘Mobile Journalism Diploma’ programme was a particular highlight of this year’s SAE Alumni Convention. Journalists today are required to take on a wide variety of tasks in an editorial office. This applies particularly to online journalism, where a wide range of media channels can be used to convey information. With our decades of expertise in multimedia education, we have an ideal foundation for teaching technical knowledge and thus training the journalist of the future.”
The “Mobile Journalism Diploma” will be offered from September 2010 at all seven German SAE locations.
SAE Alumni Association Supports Young Talent and Alumni
A particular concern of the SAE Alumni Association is to support its students beyond their period of study. The alumni association has therefore presented the SAE Alumni Award since 2005, honouring outstanding productions by successful media professionals. In addition, the SAE Junior Award will be presented for the first time that year, recognising the best final projects by SAE students.
Participation in the awards offers an excellent opportunity to attract attention outside SAE Institute because the specialist jury includes industry representatives. The winners of the 2009 SAE Alumni Awards were announced at that year’s Alumni Convention.
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