This year's Tropentag features a brand new innovation: Student reporters who will document the conference in real time online. Twelve international students were chosen to write a blog, do interviews, shoot videos, take pictures. By doing so we hope to increase the outreach of the Tropentag, to make the event accessible for those who cannot join the conference and to familiarize the larger public and e-community with issues of agricultural and rural development.

We, the twelve student reporters, arrived at the ETH Zurich on Monday, September 13, and were briefed in a workshop by a team from the School of Communication Sciences of University of Lugano, Switzerland. Yesterday, we focused mainly on various Web 2.0 applications and organizational matters, today the briefing continues and we deal with technical issues of using this blog, Twitter and handling Flickr for pictures taken at the conference.

The conference will start at 13:00 GMT, so stay tuned!