It seems slightly perverse to be excited about my job when so many in my industry are being made redundant but the winds of change have be blowing the through the office.
The subject matter we write about has been turned on it's head in recent months. Our editor announced he was retiring at the end of last year and hung up his notepad and keyboard a week ago. And then over the last few weeks the social media projects that have been long talked about and prepared have started coming to fruition.
A few of us started work-twitters a couple of weeks ago, our formerly subscription-only website has just given birth to a free-to-access blog and today the first podcast went live, again outside the firewall.
Exciting times. Exciting because I feel like I've been sitting on sidelines watching while a lot of other publications grasped the web 2.0 nettle. Exciting because we are being encouraged to experiment, use different means of getting information across and are finding ways of sharing information that would rarely had an outlet in print.
Next week I head down to Cannes for the week-long annual property industry trade fare where previously I had lots of meetings and came back with lots of ideas and contacts.
This time I have lots of meetings and expect to come back with lots of ideas and contacts but I'm also going to be able to share the experience more fully with our readers. I will be tweeting the entire time, post pics of people I see, the parties, launches and events. I'll also be blogging and vodcasting and podcasting. In fact I've coined my own term for what I'll be doing: twigcasting.
I won't just have a notebook and my blackberry, I'll have my new blackberry camera phone, a flip camera and a posh digital dictaphone thingy.
It's going to be a baptism of fire. I've never recorded or filmed anyone before while asking them questions. I've never really taken pictures for our readers to see. I only got given the equipment today. But I'm excited to be given the opportunity and in an environment that will no doubt be the most fruitful I could wish for.