Apprenticeships

The Conversations Network strives to maintain high standards for the content of our programs, our audio and the quality of our descriptions and graphics. We have developed tools and processes that allow us to achieve these standards for a high volume of programs produced by a worldwide part-time staff who interact entirely online. In order to streamline the learning process for new members of our team while maintaining quality, we have adopted an apprenticeship program for all new post-production engineers (PEs) and website editors (WEs). Our screening and apprenticeship procedures are described below.

Website Editors (WEs)

If you would like to write descriptions for our web sites, please visit our Website Editor Application page. Journeyman WEs are paid US$15 for each episode description plus another US$10 for the production of each synchronized slideshow.

Post-Production Engineers (PEs)

If you would like to do audio post-production audio editing, please visit our Audio Engineer Qualification page. Journeyman PEs are paid US$25 for each episode produced.

Apprenticeship Program

Once you have completed one of the above screening processes, your work will be reviewed by our senior staff. If it is acceptable, you will be invited to join the apprenticeship program, which works as follows:

1. When a journeyman PE or WE is available, s/he will contact you by email and help you get started.
2. You will complete one or two programs under the supervision of a journeyman.
3. If the journeyman signs off on the quality of your work, you will become a provisional PE or WE, and be allowed to produce programs without journeyman supervision.
4. If, after attempting two programs, neither of the journeymen approves, you will not be invited to work on future programs.
5. Once you have achieved provisional status and are working on shows without journeyman supervision, you will receive the payments we distribute for program production. While working under the supervision of a journeyman, it is the journeyman who will receive both payment and credit for the work on the programs you produce.
6. After you have produced two programs as a provisional PE or WE, your status will be reviewed by our Senior Audio Engineer or Senior Website Editor, and if found to be satisfactory, you will be promoted to journeyman status.
7. As a journeyman, you will be expected to work with apprentices in the same manner in order to help bring new people into the team.

This apprenticeship program is just the latest experiment in post-production collaboration, which began in April 2005. Since then, the program has gone through many changes, and we expect it to continue to change as we learn more from our experience in increasing the scale of our network.

Payments

Payments to the team are issued via PayPal. We send them out early each month for programs published in the previous month.