Are you wired to a world of opportunity?
The Internet may be last year’s favourite dinner party topic, and newspapers may be relishing its recent slump in fortune, but, away from the headlines, new media is still a viable and exciting business to move into. Prospective adventurers, however, need to be more cautious - and more aware of the skills that they have to offer.
But who or what are they offering them to? If you’re going to get into new media, you need to have a clear idea of what it actually is. Definitions are not easy, but think of it as emerging digital media products with which, to varying degrees, users can interact. It is these two features, digital and interactive, which are the defining qualities of new media.
New media is not solely about e-commerce, dot.coms or even the Web. These things are all important, but so are a range of other practices and platforms, including customer support and viral marketing, interactive TV and information kiosks. So you want to get in. Where do you start?
Rise to the challenge
Don’t feel intimidated about the range of technologies involved. New media is about new ways of communicating, rather than doing clever things with computers, and there are plenty of skills and talents not to mention general experience that you may have picked up from other jobs that can be relevant.
Hardly anyone in the industry actually started out in new media and very few people have more than four years’ specific experience in the business. Most new media designers and editors started out as print-based graphic designers and writers. Almost anyone with a background in marketing is likely to find adapting to new media an interesting rather than a daunting challenge.
Next page: forget the past – look to the future
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