Heading back from a Land Down Under

I'd never set foot outside Australia before I arrived to work for Liverpool John Moores University's Media Crew at the World Firefighters Games in the summer of 2008. Little did I realise I that my second trip
overseas would come just eight months later... back to the same city, to help with the launch of this website. And all because of a pizza...

We used to eat at the Pizza Express next to
the Echo Arena during the long working hours
of the World Firefighters Games and I was
always transfixed by the massive Liverpool
skyline photo that they have on the wall. I was
so hooked on it that I set about taking my own
photo of Liverpool's skyline for those times
back home in Adelaide when I couldn't nip
into PI and gawk at the wall. These days, I
need only look at this website, as my picture
now sits at the top of every page. I was only too
happy to lend my picture and time as graphics
editor to set up the site, which offers a lot of
potential for students' World of Work
experience at university.

Back in Australia in October 2008, I proved that
(thanks to the awesome power of the internet)
I could collaborate on a video project with my
friends and colleagues back at JMU. The
videos we edited over the World Wide Web for
the World Firefighters Games convinced myself
and John Mathews, the producer of our Media Crew during the Games, that we could carry on working together very effectively, despite me being 10,000 miles away and nine and a half hours into the future on the other side of the world in Australia. I agreed to be the video content editor for the site, and despite the time difference, we've managed to do most of our work together in the virtual workplace environment of the web... but I couldn't resist a quick trip back to Liverpool to help out prior to the website launch.

Now home in Adelaide, I'm back on deck as Supervising Editor of a local TV programme, as well as teaching my own students here at the University of South Australia. But you can bet that all the development with graphics and online content we do here will help jmu-journalism.org.uk improve over time into the "real deal". And that is where the Groovy Train (or Plane, for some of us) is definitely headed.

JMU Journalism: Liverpool Life

Student news from Liverpool Screen School

Can you improve on this for us? The original graphic creative brief to Dwayne for the website banner

Version 2 by Dwayne... it's getting there

Nice one... Version 3 gets the verdict