I just arrived home from this weekend’s National Press Photographers Association Women in Photojournalism conference in Austin, Texas. Needless to say it was a fantastic experience and the theme from this summer’s NPPA Summit was carried through to this conference - multimedia is the future but excellent storytelling is still key.

I was very impressed and moved with Pauline Lubens, staff photojournalist for the San Jose Mercury News, and her multimedia documentary about a soldier wounded in Iraq, “Frank’s Fight” (which won first place in the Best Multimedia Package in the small website division for the NPPA). I told Pauline she needs to take this story further and put together a documentary. I’ll talk about this later and what I think we should be considering when producing this type of package.

The panel discussion with editors from five large market papers was very enlightening, especially concerning multimedia and newsroom training. I’ll write a separate article on that event.

There were multiple discussions on technique, technology, and ethics concerning multimedia with television photographers sharing their thoughts on the direction they are taking as well as sharing what newspaper photographers shooting video and gathering sound should consider. A very interesting discussion on ethics took place and I’ll talk about that in a future column.

As I decompress and process what I saw and heard this weekend, I’ll write about the sessions I attended. I start teaching the fall semester this week and need to prepare for classes, but I promise more in-depth reports throughout the week.