As promised, here is the testimony of my bank holiday training experience.

I met up with the rest of the MashedFestivals events team late on Friday night, after a drama-free journey to Kelmarsh in Northamptonshire. Meeting at 10am at the Shambala site office on the Saturday morning, it was quickly apparent that I wasn't going to have to drag a bunch of disengaged kids around the festival site, because, for a start there were only six of them. Two wanting to learn about audio, two for stills photography and two for video. This was perfect for both us and them as we could devote more time to each volunteer and give them a better mentoring experience. To gauge initial skill levels I gave my two young charges, Hannah and Kyle, each a flip camera and sent them off around the festival site for an hour to see what they'd come back with. With a focus on immediacy and simplicity of uploading (ie no editing, good steady single takes), they dispersed into the festival to capture the essence of Shambala. As it only holds 8,000 or so people, this was not as intimidating as it sounds. Their 'brief' initally, was to capture a couple of interviews, asking open questions such as 'what does this festival mean to you?', and also to capture the more, er, esoteric members of the Shambala community in full swing.

I was pleased to say that their first stab was actually to quite a high standard and needed relatively little by the way of guidance. A few tips on how to hold the flip camera (incredibly high-powered little devices with only two real drawbacks; their batteries last about 8 seconds and you need very steady hands in the absence of a tripod), and they were off again to get a second batch of clips. My day was then spent mostly uploading and logging footage that the enthusiastic pair came back with, and by the end of the first day we had a formidable library of clips to select from. The irony being that we had no wireless connection so the immediacy of the concept was a little lost, however Caroline, one of the project leaders, like the trooper that she was made the journey back to Birmingham each night to upload clips, audio and stills from her personal wireless connection. See the results here.

My experience of training and mentoring was an overwhelmingly positive one and I think the hands-off approach that I opted for was empowering for teenagers of that age, hopefully giving them a greater sense of freedom and ownership. I'd be more than happy to do it again.

Changing tack slightly, next week I will be in London at the IITT exhibition on Tuesday and Wednesday, and the ALT conference on the Thursday. Come and say hello if you're there.