I can now officially recommend the Online Storytelling With Audio & Images seminar at Poynter.

Creating an audio slideshow is easy. Creating a great audio slideshow is hard. This seminar can help show you how to make the latter.

The seminar had many audio slideshow neophytes but also people who had some experience with audio slideshows. Everyone learned something about multimedia, but those who came in with experience made the strongest final projects, because they were able to take an existing skill and take it to the next level.

This was the first time they have offered the seminar, so I think we can safely say it will evolve over time. Even in its current state, however, I think many journalists will benefit from this seminar.

I may have personally benefited the most from this seminar by learning more about audio from NPR’s Howard Berkes. Audio is often the No. 1 component lacking in audio slideshows, and having someone from NPR there all week to work with us was a great bonus. The quality of the audio often doesn’t match the images.

Soundslides is not a tough program to learn (probably one of the easiest you’ll find), but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to make good slideshows. Even if you are already creating audio slideshows, you’ll probably benefit from this seminar, especially if you haven’t had any or little formal training in the following:

1. Audio – Using an audio recorder or audio editing program isn’t rocket science. Natural sounding audio is often a challenge, however, and so is being able to weave a strong narrative with just sound. Many people who want to make audio slideshows might benefit from first trying to create an audio story. I’ve had some audio training before, and I still learned a lot from Berkes.
2. How to make a tight narrative with multimedia – The guys at Poynter hammered home the need to select not compress. We all fall in love with our work, but most people will not stick around for a long, meandering slideshow. Having several professionals there to give you advice on what they would cut and why is a big help. I know that advice isn’t possible in my newsroom because no one else makes multimedia.
3. The power of images – If you’re like me, you’re not a full-time photojournalist. And, like me, you might know how to handle a DSLR and take some good photos from time to time, but you don’t know the ins and outs of what makes a strong image. And frankly, you could use some help on understanding the power of images. Joe Weiss, creator of Soundslides, spent a lot of time just discussing the importance of using strong images in a slideshow and what makes a strong image. He spent several years at MSNBC making audio slideshows, and he has plenty of examples to show.

Existing photographers would seem to benefit the most from this seminar because it’s much heavier on audio help than photo help. If I could make one change to the seminar it would be to spend more time on how to physically take a good photo. That’s something I know the non-photojournalists struggled with and felt they could have learned more about.

That being said, I would say that several of the top slideshows were made by non-photojournalists at the seminar. The one thing many photojournalists struggle at is weaving a tight narrative because they have never really had to do that before. The seminar would benefit in the future from helping those photojournalists learn how to weave a tighter narrative.

I can safely recommend the seminar. You’ll learn a lot in a week. Even if your work will not pay for you, I’d strongly consider it.

This is the kind of stuff more j-schools need to teach.