Book Annie

Inter­view, media & lec­ture basics — a check list for mak­ing everything work smoothly

Annie gets a lot of requests for inter­views, media appear­ances on TV or radio and (key­note) speeches. These requests come from big media organ­isa­tions, small inde­pend­ent out­fits, free-lan­cers, stu­dents and act­iv­ists. Whenev­er pos­sible Annie will try to ful­fil all of these because she val­ues all of these con­tacts. Time is lim­ited how­ever and this page explains some basics for mak­ing things go smoothly and hav­ing a clear mutu­al under­stand­ing of expectations.

Below is a to-do list for any pro­spect­ive inter­view­er, media pro­fes­sion­al or con­fer­ence organiser.

Be pre­pared

  • If you want to book Annie for a talk, have a look at the speak­ing CV to get a feel for interests and expert­ise. Spend some time reading/viewing mater­i­al on this site to get an over­view of recent activities.
  • Because of her fre­quent travel, email is the pre­ferred meth­od for com­mu­nic­a­tions. Encryp­ted email is pre­ferred over send­ing insec­ure plain text.
  • Please use media@anniemachon.ch so these emails don’t get lost in the daily deluge of oth­er mails. If you want to ensure pri­vacy of email com­mu­nic­a­tions there is a PGP-key for this mail address:
    http://​anniemachon​.ch/​k​e​y​s​/media@anniemachon.ch.asc. Tips on basic inform­a­tion secur­ity.

PGP Fin­ger­print: DCEC BD27 DFE0 19E2 9513 B75D E7DD ADDA E8FB 5216

  • Use phone calls only when there is a time-sens­it­ive issue (such as live TV/radio reac­tion to cur­rent events).

Be spe­cif­ic

  • When con­tact­ing please spe­cify the nature of the request; if it requires travel, how time-sens­it­ive is it and what the pre­cise dead­line is (if any).
  • If it will be an inter­view by phone or inter­net chat then spe­cify an exact time (bear­ing in mind she shifts between time zones on a reg­u­lar basis) for it to take place and stick to that time.
  • Spe­cify upfront wheth­er a TV/Radio inter­view by phone or inter­net will be live or a pre-record.
  • Should these spe­cific­a­tions change due to unfore­seen cir­cum­stances then please com­mu­nic­ate these changes immediately.

Travel and hotels

  • Because of all the secur­ity theatre at air­ports, travel by fast train is strongly pre­ferred if this is pos­sible (West­ern & Cent­ral Europe includ­ing the south of the UK)
  • Any hotels need to provide good inter­net con­nectiv­ity, and a wired con­nec­tion inside the room is strongly pre­ferred over WiFi for secur­ity reasons.
  • Oh, and white pianos in dress­ing rooms take up floor­space and blue smarties are fat­ten­ing so no need to bother!

Costs and fees

  • If you are a cor­por­ate entity, big/professional media organ­isa­tion or well-fun­ded con­fer­ence you will be expec­ted to pay for all travel and hotel costs (if applic­able) plus a reas­on­able fee for Annie’s time (to be dis­cussed and agreed upon upfront).
  • If you are a not able to pay for Annie’s time for whatever reas­on (being a small inde­pend­ent media organ­isa­tion, a volun­teer-based con­fer­ence or just a stu­dent work­ing on a paper) please be spe­cif­ic about that as well. Annie makes time to help out fel­low act­iv­ists, inde­pend­ent journ­al­ists and stu­dents whenev­er possible.

Look­ing for­ward to work­ing with you!