Femi Adi Soempeno

Our friend and former participant Femi Adi Soempeno was among the passengers of the Russian Sukhoi jet that crashed near the Indonesian capital on Wednesday, May 9, 2012. Our thoughts and prayers go out to Femi’s family and those who loved her.

For all of us here at DW Akademie, it was a joy and a privilege to have known Femi. We loved working with her during our 2009 workshop “Online Journalism and Web 2.0”.

During this three-week training course, Femi became friends with Akademie staff and trainers and with the other participants; journalists from Cambodia, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Indonesia, China, Pakistan, Nepal and the Philippines.

The final project of this workshop was a multi-media website called “Made in Germany”. It included texts, slide shows, audios and videos covering things the Asian course participants had encountered and researched while in Germany.

Screenshot of "Made in Germany" website

Being a great photographer, Femi contributed a slide show to this final project. She had taken pictures of all the strange and funny signs she’d seen in Germany.

Femi also proved her outstanding journalistic potential by writing an article for “Made in Germany” about Germany’s most influential news magazine Der Spiegel.

This article was the outcome of a visit to the offices of  Spiegel Online International in Berlin. Femi and the other workshop participants heard a presentation from a Spiegel journalist, who also had time for an in-depth discussion about online news media in Germany.

The title of Femi’s article was Der Spiegel Running Fast in the Media Industry.

If you knew Femi and would like to share your memories of her, please feel free to give us some feedback or write a comment.