RFE/RL’s Armenian Service hosted a Google Hangout yesterday, featuring Armenian Service Director Hrair Tamrazian, analyst Richard Giragosian, and RFE/RL journalists Siranuysh Gevorgyan and Ruzanna Stepanyan and myself.
We were getting questions via Twitter hashtag #armvote13 and Facebook.The discussion was… well, ok, mostly thanks to my great internet friends: Katy Pearce, Ani Wandarian, Liana Aghajanian and others.
However, you can just see, that with a rather shallow pre-election campaign in our hands, we didn’t have much to talk about. Kudos to Richard Giragosian for saving the day with his comments and unbelievable energy.
The Hangout was interesting for me technologically: the broadcast channel was set up and handled by RFE/RL’s team in Prague, but my challange here was to see what is the best quality I can provide from Yerevan’s end. I’d say – pretty good!
The format itself was very interesting too: for the first time Radio Azatutyun was doing a live talk-show like event in English specifically targeted at an English speaking audience abroad. Even the timing (12:00 PM EST) was selected to be convenient for viewers in the US.
I had my chance to speak too – about social networks, etc. Was rather unprepared, so you can safely skip the video above from minutes 24:50 to 28:50, or risk being bored to death.
PS: I wish there were more Hangouts like this. I have even created the Live Video section on this blog to start a regular talk-show of this kind, but neither have the people who’d want to take part, nor the time and resources to make it happen. Sad. It might actually be interesting…
Artur Papyan
Journalist, blogger, digital security and media consultant