Its almost two weeks since I attended the international Mobile Journalism conference (aka Mojocon) in Dublin (it’s taken me that long to recover). Following on from last week’s showcase of mobile photography about the Mojocon photo walk I wanted to cover a bit more of my thoughts on the event to do it justice.
What is Mojocon?
Mojocon is short for the Mobile Journalism Conference. It is the brainchild of Glen Mulcahy, the head of innovations at RTE, Ireland’s state broadcaster. The event brings together journalists and film makers from all over the world to talk about and discuss the latest trends and topics in relation to mobile journalism, mobile film making and mobile photography.
This year’s event was the second Mojocon and I was honoured to have been one of the speakers at last years’ conference. It was a truly inspiring event where I met a lot of wonderfully interesting people, many of whom have since become good friends. For this reason I was keen to come back to Mojocon 2.
The Magnificent Aviva Stadium, Dublin
This year, Mojocon was held at the Aviva Stadium, a magnificent football and rugby venue in the heart of Dublin. The venue was very impressive and played host to a main room, a break off Havelock suite which hosted several smaller sessions, a fantastic exhibitor’s hall which offered something for everyone from VR, to drones, app developers, accessories such as Olloclip lenses, mics and Manfotto tripods.
Even though the event is more geared towards journalists and reporters the event held something of interest for everyone. This year was no exception.
iPhoneographyCentral’s Nicki Fitz-Gerald trying out the Samsung VR headset
The Friday sessions kicked off with an introduction by founder Glen Mulcahy who promptly tripped up whilst running onto the stage, a by-product of the energy and enthusiasm he exudes. Showing his true professionalism, he laughed it off and then regaled us with a story of singer Meatloaf who did exactly the same thing… by with a lot more showbiz style. I dare say Glen will not live it down for a while.
The first session started off by talking about mobile film-making and reporting, how people are using the latest advancements in mobile technology and asked the question, is Mojo breaking into the mainstream? The session illustrated just how smartphone technology is changing the way we work and the benefits that mobile technology has in difficult and chaotic situations.
From this initial session, activity broke off into other areas where talks about topics such as live streaming, social media, app tool-kits and workflows, drone cinematography and mobile photography took place. For those mobile photographers amongst us it was the mobile photography session that was of particular interest.
Meeting the Mobile Photographers Session
Last year’s event saw a line up which included myself, Brendan O Se, Nicki Fitz-Gerald, Dan Berman, Michael Kistler, Dan Rubin and Jack Hollingsworth, each talking about our own area of expertise in mobile photography. This year saw Dan Rubin, one of Instagram’s first beta testers, invited back to host the mobile photography session.
The photography session last year raised a few questions and topics for discussion which, due to time constraints, we never really had time to explore properly. For this reason, Dan’s approach this year was to have less speakers and adopt more of a group discussion type format in order to give more time to explore these issues.
Dan Rubin hosting the Meet the Mobile Photographers session
Speakers included RTE journalist Seán Mac an tSíthigh, Mark Kawano – the co-founder and CEO of a photo and video sharing app called Stonehouse, and two top Instagrammers, Gareth Pon and Paloma Parrot.
The session started off with Seán showcasing a selection of his photography taken along Ireland’s rugged coastline. He explained the stories behind the images and how they were inspired by Irish folklore, and how he went about capturing these locations and the characters that live there.
