Hi! I’m Ben Werdmuller, one of Central Station’s reporters for this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival.

It’s a rich programme. From crowd-pleasing blockbusters-to-be like Toy Story 3 through the experimental Black Box film strand, the Film Festival has touchpoints that cover the breadth of cinema. My aim is to not just tell you what’s going on, but give you a sense of the background atmosphere that makes the event tick. I’ll be writing, but I’ll also be recording, photographing and discussing online in as many different ways as I can.

On paper, I’m an Internet guy. I started building online communities in 1995, co-founding the open source social networking platform Elgg and the anarchic student community Rum & Monkey along the way. Sites and applications I’ve built have been featured in such diverse forums as the Financial Times, the Guardian, USA Today, Stars and Stripes and Court TV. You can read my thoughts on the Internet and technology over at benwerd.com.

I’ve also been writing and reviewing for that time, most often for the local Oxford newspaper Daily Information. I’m delighted to be bringing both worlds together during the Film Festival for Central Station.

I’ll be hanging out here in the Central Station community. If you have any tips, feedback or ideas, or want to say hello, you can also find me on Twitter as @benwerd. I’ll be tweeting links to media as it’s uploaded throughout the Festival, and then putting it all together on my blog here on the site. It’s going to be an adventure – thanks for joining me!