I was reminded this week for the importance of keeping your connections, or at least, keeping them as an option, particularly in this industry; where for the most part, it is not what you know but who you know.

Much of this week has been focused on preparing for our TV pitch on Broadcast media. After deciding on the idea of the current refugee ‘by boat, no visa’ issue, my group wanted to show what a former ‘boat person’ had to say about the issue, as well as learning about their experience when they arrived in Australia. Mid way through our group meeting, I was suddenly reminded of someone, a well recognised former refugee in Melbourne (at least with our generation) because his book was on the VCE English curriculum. Najaf Mazari, who co wrote ‘The Rugmaker of Mazar-e-Sharif.’ He came to mind because I suddenly remembered that when I was in year 11, he did a talk to my class as we had read his book that year. At the end of the talk he said he was very active on Facebook and if we added him he would definitely accept. I don’t think he does school talks anymore, and I just kind of forgot he was on my friends list. But what a great connection to have, over 2 years later, when I am looking for someone to interview, and he fits the criteria perfectly.

Of course we also found another person who was happy to be interviewed, because in the real world you cant just rely on people you have on Facebook to get news segments, so we needed to practice that. But it was so easy to contact him, and he said he was happy to help.

Much like this ‘networked media’ blog stuff has made everyone in this course connected in some way, Facebook is a great tool for situations such as this, because so many people are connected by it. I contacted Najaf because he was fortunately already on my friends list, but we also found our other interviewee via Facebook. We contacted the admin of a page for refugee activists, and he put out an ad for us. Afterwards we received lots of support and enthusiastic volunteers. Networks are just so awesome.