Don Bosco Tech organized a workshop on ‘Communications in Skill Development’ on September 20-21, 2019 at Don Bosco Skill Mission (DBSM), Bangalore. The Communication Correspondents from 15 states were invited to attend the communication workshop. The objective of the workshop is to focus on equipping vital areas of communication such as written, social media and visual media.
Fr. Joseph Elavanal (Director, DBSM), gave the opening speech and welcomed the participants. It followed the session by Mr. Devi Prasad Mahapatra (Head – Communications), who made a presentation on Basics of Event Writing, Style Sheet and Editing, which covered areas like Punctuation, Commonly Confused words, Basic Grammar, etc. After the presentation, the participants were given a few worksheets on these areas and their performance was evaluated and necessary feedback on how to improve these skills was given. He also briefed about the Branding Guidelines of Don Bosco Tech and the role of correspondents to adherence to the guidelines so that the centers can look alike and can be a differentiating factor among other players. Besides that one of the major activities on the social sector is to gather inputs and photographs to develop case stories to showcase the impact of interventions. He shared the guidelines to develop the case story and how case study developer (CSD) can make an effort to capture the inputs of pre-training, during training and post-training.
Fr. George Mathew, SDB (Director, Don Bosco Tech) briefed the participants about the genesis and tradition of Salesians of Don Bosco. He appealed the participants about value addition to the approach, deliverables and highlighting among the stakeholders. He made them understand with an example saying, “If something happened, as a communication team beyond reporting by covering 5Ws and 1 H and the more important is ‘so what’, which is an important aspect to get an insight about the event.” ‘Use every opportunity to create this added value and as a communication representative the task is how are you communicating it, how are you marketing it within and outside,’ he said while exhorting them.
Mr. Rakesh Roshan (Asst Manager, Communications) facilitated the next session on visual media i.e. Basics of Photography and videography. Participants were given basic ideas on how to mount the camera on a tripod, a quick and close look at the types of lenses used for DSLR cameras. It highlighted the importance of improving the basic three key settings of the camera such as ISO, Aperture and Shutter Speed. Through presentation, the participants were kept keen to learn various angles and shots of photography and videography too. We did discuss various types of photography focusing on Portrait Photography and Event Photography. They all had a quick glance at some of the photographs and we did discuss the pros and cons of it. At the end of the session, the participants were divided into groups of 4 and sent out to capture some photographs keeping in mind the knowledge they had gathered.
Mrs. Nisha Kerketta (Intern, Communications) Facilitated about Digital Directory and Social Media where she shared about updating the data on Digital Directory and how to access it. Social Media was also discussed by Nisha where she spoke about the use of social media to communicate and create awareness for a cause. She also shared about the presence of Don Bosco Tech Society on different social media platforms. During her session, she discussed the proper use of social media and the power of tags and hashtags. She showed the different ways of posting content on Facebook and Instagram and how to access facebook pages. She also shared some tricks on been effective on social media and how to get followers. A social media planner was also shared by her where one can keep the content ready to be posted on Social media platforms. Similarly, she shared a lot about social media tricks and pointers which will help communication correspondents to be effective on Social Media platforms.
In the valedictory program held in the end, all participants gave their feedback explaining how the program helped them improve their communication skills and made them more confident in developing a case study, event writing, and photography in a better way. In the valedictory address, Fr. George congratulated both the participants and the resource persons for organizing the program successfully and requested the participants to constantly improve upon their skills and competencies for their personal and professional growth.