I’m writing this after dinner on the flight home from Windhoek, Namibia, so please – excuse the typos!

Our trip here has been a good one. Creative Loop is the group of colleges I’m involved with, and until now we’ve been involved in narrowing the gap between education and broadcast. Across our six colleges and beyond, we represent the stuff that produces the next generation of broadcast talent. Now we have to move that on.

I was joined by prominent folks from NUJ Scotland (Mike Higgins), UWS (Dave Manderson) and our redoubtable Scottish/ Zimbabwean manager (Helliate Rushwaya) for the busiest week of my working life. Maybe.

We’ve met newspapers, magazines, NGOs and broadcasters with one question in mind: tell us what we can do to help…

There are clear moves ahead helping Namibians craft audio and video for the web. Also, we’ve learned so many lessons in the UK about how to use social media badly, we now have tons to offer in the convergent media world to help a world where the handheld web beasts the traditional (UK) web. Of course there are training needs.

But here’s the thing.

Namibian media has embraced the future in a way we didn’t imagine just five years ago. The guys here run publications that look a little dated. They have a national broadcaster that’s somewhat stilted. But they have huge plans to move things forward quickly. TV digital switchover in just three years, multiple indigenous language services, encouraging local consumers in a country three times the size of Germany to make submissions and on and on.

We have a lot to offer and a lot to learn.

Sometimes opportunities like this are described as life changing. This one actually is.