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Global Voices Announces Managing Editor

Rachel Rawlins has been named as the managing editor of Global Voices.

Here's how Rebecca MacKinnon described the position:

Based in the UK, Rachel will be the only full-time employee of our very virtual organization (we have no office and conduct our editorial meetings via IRC chat). Rachel will be responsible for coordinating day-to-day content flow on the Global Voices blog, run regular online editorial meetings, manage the work of our rapidly expanding international team of Regional Editors and volunteer contributors, and coordinate daily with editors from our news media collaborators and partners. She will also help steer the future of Global Voices into non-text media, other languages, and help to innovate and implement new technologies and tools. Most importantly, she will be making sure that we remain true to our mission: bringing global attention to citizens’ voices around the world.

I'm so impressed with her background and am very excited to be part of the "volunteer contributors." I visited her (formerly anonymous) blog and love her photographs too.

Rachel Rawlins' first job was for Amnesty International researching human rights in east and southern Africa. She then joined the BBC as a radio reporter and spent most of her journalistic career at the BBC World Service's Africa service. This included three years based in Zimbabwe where she once upset her friends by broadcasting from a coffin, but survived. She's worked for the BBC News Online website, World Service Training and as the World Service's Arts Reporter. She has also taught journalism in places as diverse as Liberia and Thailand, and reported for television and a wide range of newspapers and magazines. She lives in London with her partner and two sons and, in an attempt to redress the imbalance of the sexes, her dog Maizy. She loves rice, poetry, gadgets, taking photographs, trashy detective fiction and Apple Macs. She blogs at http://www.frizzylogic.org/.

Report & Photos from White House Candlelight Vigil for Freedom of Expression in Cambodia

"We are here to speak on behalf of the people of Cambodia who are being intimidated by the Cambodian government to suffer voiceless in their own land," stated Venerable Monk Rithipol, a Cambodian Buddhist Monk from Massachusetts.

According to a report and photos posted on the KI Media blog, over 75 Cambodian Americans from the east coast and Minnesota and their friends and supporters gathered last night in front of the White House in Washington, D.C. for a Buddhist candlelight vigil for human rights and democracy in Cambodia. While the main focus was on the plight of illegally detained human rights and democracy advocate, Kem Sokha, the ultimate goal was to highlight the absence of freedom and democracy in Cambodia.

Photos from Warren Anderson, UCIC Advisor and posted into my flickr account with permission

Technorati Tags: cambodia, globalvoices, freedomofexpression, khmer

Meet ZJ: Blogging to improve Cambodia's environment

Meet Zarah Jane Almeida who works as  a producer for Mlup Baitong's Environmental Advocacy Radio Program.   She has been blogging about her work and life at Sreisaat Adventures in Cambodia  since January, 2004.  Born in Roxas City, known as the seafood capital of the Philippines,  she graduated from the University of the Philippines with a degree in mass communications.   She moved to Cambodia in April, 2000. 

I had the pleasure of doing an interview with her on Global Voices.   Check it out and check out her blog and flickr pics.

Khmer Unicode Paves the Way for the Yellow Pages in Cambodian Language

According to a press release from the Interquess Enterprises, the publisher of the Yellow Pages, will debut for the first time in the Khmer Language in 2006.   The Khmer Yellow Pages will be available in different formats, including a printed book, an online directory and a desktop application for Windows, like its english sister publication "Cambodia Yellow Pages".

Making this possible is the Khmer Unicode, a project of the Khmer Software Initiative.  Notes the general manager Omry Revach in the press release, ""This is a natural development as a country should not be without a Yellow Pages telephone directory in the local language."

Technorati Tags: cambodia, khmeros, nptech, net2

December 26th Remembrance Week Begins

Via Dina Mehta come an announcement about Remembrance Week

The WorldWideHelp Group would like you to join us in Remembrance Week. It's designed to remember the one-year anniversary of the Tsunami as well as the other major disasters that stroke our world during the year.   They want to use the energy and power of the online community that came to together to help people impacted by these disasters and remind us that people are still suffering.

Here's what they suggest you do:

Use your blogs, your home pages, your wikis, your newsletters. Link to your favourite charities and NGOs, write a paragraph about them and the work they are doing, and ask your readers to make a donation. (If you'd like to find some more charities and NGOs, please take a look at this page on our TsunamiHelp wiki, this one on our KatrinaHelp wiki, or this one on our QuakeHelp wiki.)

Please link back to this page to help pass the word. You can use the image above.

Please use this Technorati Tag: Disaster Remembrance Week.
Here's the code:
<a href="http://www.technorati.com/tag/disaster%20remembrance%20week" rel="tag">Disaster Remembrance Week</a>

In this post, we have a few more banners and buttons, with intructions on the code you must post to use them.

Technorati Tag: Disaster Remembrance Week.

Reflections from Global Voices Summit in London

I'm just back from the Global Voices Summit in London.  One of the most exciting things for me was to finally meet Tharum (a Cambodian blogger) and pictured above face-to-face.  Tharum and I have been in communication via our blogs, IM, and email for over a year now.   In addition our participation at the conference, we got to discuss blogging while sharing a day of sightseeing in London. 

This was Tharum's first trip to the West and it was interesting to observe his initial culture shock.  I think it was more intense than a Westerner's culture shock visiting Cambodia for the first time.  I vlogged it here:
Download cultureshock.wmv

I'm still pretty fried, but wanted to capture some of my reflections about the GV London Summit experience.

First, there was a lot of energy in the room, similar to the blogher, because a lot of people had been reading each other's blogs or posts on GV, but had never met face-to-face.   Also, the people in the room were coming from all corners of the world, many of them bloggers, and all passionate about their topics.  It all translated into electricfying conversation -- both formally during the Summit and informally during social interaction.  (I vlogged some of the friday night informal dinner - global dining partners - Download globaldinningpartners.wmv

The Summit was a full-day session with all 80 or so people in the same room.  One might think that it would be difficult to sustain a truly interactive experience, but the way Ethan and Rebecca facilitated - it was an intense day-long conversation - particularly the framing at the beginning of the day.  Each session began with brief framing and then the mike was carrying to some designated speakers who spoke to the topic from their seat - briefly making remarks.  Then it was opened up for additonal comments and questions.    It was very similar to the way the blogher opening plenary was facilitated.  Meanwhile,  people in the room where listening, blogging, or on the IRC as well as remote participants. 

Yes, one day was way too short and definitely small group interaction would also have been good, but there is next year! (Next year in Nigeria?)

Jane Perrone, representing The Guardian, does a great job summarizing some of the conversation. 

It was also a success in terms of an  "intermediated conference" between the people who were in real-time, physical space and the virtual participants who were on the IRC or video conference connection.  I hope that SJ Klein, Angelo, and others who made this happen generate some reflections on what they did and why it worked it so well -- but here's a few techniques that I thought helped make it work well.

• IRC had two channels, one for transcription and one for the "backchannel" chat
• The transcriber (SJ Klein of Wikimania fame)  was typing a real-time transcription in the room, while Angelo, a blogger in Turkey was live blogging remotely. 
• Angelo grabbed flickr photos that were uploaded in real-time to add to the blog
• The backchannel had a designated "IRC Advocate" who towards the end of a session summarized the comments and posed some of the questions that came up during the backchannel. 

 
In terms of the topic, here's all the post-conference posts:

The Del.icio.us tag: http://del.icio.us/tag/globalvoices
Technorati tag: http://technorati.com/tag/globalvoices
Technorati search: http://technorati.com/search/%22Global+Voices%22
Flickr tag: http://flickr.com/photos/tags/globalvoices/

Rebecca MacKinnon has just posted a synthesis of the GV Global Voices Summit: Emergence of a Conversation Community.  Ethan Zukerman shares his thoughts of the highpoints and why he is retroactively pleased.

There are various channels for post-conference follow up discussion, including the listserv, IRC channel, and wiki.   And this call to action from Rebecca "Above all, the important point here is that Global Voices will become what you make of it. GV’s future is not really up to me, or Ethan, or our Regional Editors, or Reuters, or any of our other sponsors or funders. We are really just trying to facilitate, support, enable, and draw attention to the conversations people want to have. The more initiative you take in shaping and contributing to GV, the more it will become what you want it to be."

I'm really interested in the discussion and thread on training and outreach for new bloggers and gonna jump right into the wiki now ..

 

Technorati Tags: globalvoices

GV Summit: How to Build a Local Blogosphere

Live notes from the brainstorming session on how to build a stronger local blogosphere is in the wiki.   What ideas do you have?   

Snippets from Bloggers vs Journalists Discussion

 

Dean Wright from Rueters participated remoted.

Dina Mehta

 

described the Tsunami blogging. Blogs can create empathy. Real voices.

Her learnings: Collective behavior and activism – how can a movement happen in no time at all using blogs, wikis, and VOIP. Insectide. Just do it.   

 

“There is synergy between journalists and bloggers, but they are not doing the same thing. The journalists, once they realize that the blogosphere is a source, they will leap on it. The fact that bloggers know that they are being heard means that they will step up and do a better job. “

Lisa Goldman

“I blog to listen to the other side. Native language is Hebrew blog about personal lives - cake they bake, what time they took the dog for a walk.. Bloggers in English are involved in the explaining of the political situation. Have strong opinions. Problem when you read my roundups on GV, they sound confused or people take something to support their opinion. I take a lot of heat about my blog and it keeps me up at night. Gave some examples of the spectrum of harsh personal comments.  Her more sane friends say, ‘Come on, it is just a blog. When it keeps her up at night.’ Long way to go before we start listening.”

Jeff Ooi (Dan Gilmor behind him)

"Journalists take from the political masters, bloggers can tell the real truths. Bloggers were viewed as unrestrained do gooders but perception has that bloggers are now the by-word for freedom of expression.” We are not here to replace journalists, but to provide sources.  Dean Wright (Reuters) “Symbiotic relationship between bloggers and journalists. It is difficult to report all sides of a story when you are parachuting into a country. We can benefit from the blogosphere because we can get all sides.” 

In respone to a question on "How do know which bloggers to trust - who credible."  Transparency is key.

Technorati Tags: gv2005, globalvoices

Opening Session

I'm here at the Global Voices London Summit and here's my notes. 

However, Angelo Embuldeniya is doing an awesome job of liveblogging remotely, yes remotely.   He is in Turkey, reading the transcript that SJ Klein is typing in real time on the IRC and listening to the live audio stream.   He's grabbing photos from the flickr stream.   (Got that?)
 

Rebecca MacKinnon shared the history of the Global Voices project - how and why it got started and GV Manifesto.  She shared how the content and editorial structure has developed and grown over the past year, some recent honors, and the managing editor position.  A great one-liner to define Global Voices "A single place on the web where we could read a diversity of opinions."      Ethan gave the statistics of visitation and impact.
 

One tidbits from Ethan's presentation that I wasn't aware of:  Many short pieces don’t get comments, but longer pieces get comments. Some longer pieces get 100 hundreds of comments. For example, the post after the London bombing got in a huge debate. This means that people are engaging. Approximately 1800 sites that link to Global Voices.

The editorial and organizational model is distributed. Back in April/May, Rebecca and Ethan were doing all the work. Sept/Oct regional editors. Now more in the hands of contributors. It is getting bigger and bigger.   Important to get to know each face-to-face.

These numbers are important because GV has become a profound influence. A lot visitors are journalists who are researching stories. They want to know what’s going and trying to find out if we have voices in location they are working in.  We are resource for journalists – we are amplifying, we are their sources.

This little project that we started a year ago was like "Hey we should have a blog." Today, we have a huge amount influence.  Now that everyone is looking at us, now is not the time to screw up.  People are looking to us get information consistently – if we are not there, people will get frustrated. At we start stepping up, people expect us to do better.

We start stepping up and we start to become more like the media, not an alternative media. This has brought debates over what we’re covering. We are transparent and diverse, not fair and balance.  We want a spread of voices – individual people with individual opinions and we need to travel ourselves and look at what we’re linking. If we are always comfortable, we’re not linking to the right people.

Three challenges:

#1: Don’t screw up!

#2: Be diverse and transparent (great points made in the second session relating to transparency)

#3 What do we want to do next? That’s what today (subsequent discussion) is all about. Who do we want to be?

Because we’re a distributed organization, it is our decision to make!  Global Voices needs to be a platform for us to do projects.

Next, the regional editors shared their thoughts.   Here are some key themes from comments from regional editors.

More use of tagging

Translation issue - English only? Best strategy for translation

A lot of what’s going in our blogosphere is to correct perceptions of what is going on in the world

Getting people to meet from a region, helps with crossing issues

Who do we exist for? Our readers or to facilitate bloggers finding one another?

Site designer spoke about need to be better aggregator.   "I'm here to listen to what people have to say to help shape design/structure of site."

Global Voice Manifesto - will the next version appear?   

I'm still fried from the jetlag and the wifi is a little slow, but Dina Mehta is sitting next to me and she's getting through and doing awesome live blog.  Here's her post.

Technorati Tags: gv2005, globalvoices

Meeting Tharum Face-to-Face

It seems like yesterday, but I'm so jetlagged I'm not sure. I left Boston and flew to London. Tharum left Phnom Penh and flew to London via Bangkok and Paris. I met him for the time this morning in Heathrow. I was wearing a kromah and holding a sign that said "Tharum."