5 days to go : Interviewing practice

To further hone my interviewing skills I had decided on interviewing a few CSIR employees who would either be presenters or delegates at the conference next week. This was easier said than done: a few of the people asked refused to be interviewed, and then one of my delegate interviewees had to attend to a sudden medical emergency on the day of our scheduled interview!

I am quite pleased with the interview done with Natalie Bowers, the youngest presenter at the conference next week. Her paper/presentation deals with the Virtual Research Environment and we were both happy with our third take: I was planning on following Natalie's road to the conference, also on attending her dry run presentation at the CSIR, but will be unable to attend due to conference attendance. I was also interested in interviewing her after the conference presentation; hoping this will still realize as it would be interesting showing a young presenter's conference preparation, actual conference presentation as well as immediate on-the-spot interview after her talk.

The camera was not handheld during the interview, but balanced on a stack of books. A definite improvement in the stability of the picture when compared to the video interview on training day can be noticed. The shakes at the end of the interview will be eliminated by using a tripod, as is planned for the longer conference interviews.