I have three interns working for me this semester. One of them graduates in May with a degree in multimedia – a field that didn’t even exist when I attended college.

Today, if you don’t have multimedia skills or know how to manage those with such skills, it’s going to be difficult to find a job or advance.

In my day-to-day work, we take photos from the field and create mini scrolling slide shows. They look like a short video. It’s easy to do using Windows Movie Maker.  Creating online publications is easy, too, thanks to software, such as Publisher. We post videos that we created using a Flip Cam to our YouTube channel.

My point is that so many things that once required a large capital outlay and investment in time, can be accomplished cost effectively and with only a short investment in time.

So how you do you get started if you don’t know anything about this field? SPJ published “Digital Media Handbook, Part 1” online (of course!).

You can download it for free as a PDF.

What will you create?