What You Can Do To Help Kenyan Journalists Bridge the Digital Divide
Jan. 15th, 2008 | 02:44 am
Latest (and last??? I hope??) version of a piece on imc-kenya's recent history, response to the election, and need for volunteers and donations. The intended audience is blog and magazine/newspaper readers, and as such it takes some liberty with length and is couched as a personal narrative. I think it's bound for some political blogs or something, not sure. Forward around if you like. If you need a byline that's a little more legit than steph99, ping me. Also, a photo from my friend Douglas, who is available as a freelance photojournalist, HINT HINT. See the rest of his photo essay on displaced people in Nairobi.
The best excuse I ever had to avoid the dishes came at a big house in a genteel suburb of Nairobi, Kenya.
I was there during the World Social Forum with about 40 independent journalists and tech geeks from all over the world to expand Independent Media Center (Indymedia/IMC) and community radio capacity with the Prometheus Radio Project. I left Philadelphia in a worried tizzy, refreshing my inbox every minute, leaving my chat client logged in everywhere, and my phone set extra loud so I wouldn't miss a word from friends who were already there. I knew they were busy, but I was a little miffed at their sparse communication. I needed news!
( more )
The IMC-Kenya web support crew is motivated and enthusiastic, but small and overworked. We are a few busy, lucky, excited people who don't have the capacity to support the Kenya team the way they should be supported – the way we ought to support them if we want to continue seeing the kind of reporting they've produced. We need to post articles, work on design, research ways to use cell phones to get news to the web, and otherwise support the journalists in Kenya until they build their local capacity and take those tasks back. We need editorial, web design, hosting, and SMS gateway support.
The team in Nairobi has outlined very tangible needs. With the economy practically halted, people are looking for work. If your publication wants stories and images from the ground in Kenya, you can hire someone on this team to deliver top-notch reporting and photography. They desperately need funding for cell phone airtime, which can mean the difference between life and death. Text messages in Kenya cost about 7 cents apiece – so literally every cent you donate counts. IMC-Kenya has put together a budget of about $4,000, an attainable sum which they plan to stretch to the limit for things like Internet access and a modest lending library of cameras and recorders to be shared throughout the country. Your donation can also go to help displaced adults and children who left everything they had to get to a safe place. For the past year or more, Urbana-Champaign-IMC has been handling donations to Kenya, and have kindly agreed to continue.
You can be right in the middle of excellent indie reporting and cutting edge technology. To see if there's a fit for you on the tech team or to inquire about freelance writing and photojournalism, please email the IMC-Kenya mailing list at imc-kenya@lists.indymedia.org, and they'll get you sorted. To donate to IMC-Kenya, visit ucimc.org/info/donate, and make a note in the comment field. In the meantime, check out the reporting at
Kenya.indymedia.org.
Will you toss in a bit of your spare time or funds for a sustainable team that's working to expose corruption and encourage peace at home, and help us over here in Internet-land understand the situation and what we can do to make it better? We can't wait to add your talent and passion to this project!
The best excuse I ever had to avoid the dishes came at a big house in a genteel suburb of Nairobi, Kenya.
I was there during the World Social Forum with about 40 independent journalists and tech geeks from all over the world to expand Independent Media Center (Indymedia/IMC) and community radio capacity with the Prometheus Radio Project. I left Philadelphia in a worried tizzy, refreshing my inbox every minute, leaving my chat client logged in everywhere, and my phone set extra loud so I wouldn't miss a word from friends who were already there. I knew they were busy, but I was a little miffed at their sparse communication. I needed news!
( more )
The IMC-Kenya web support crew is motivated and enthusiastic, but small and overworked. We are a few busy, lucky, excited people who don't have the capacity to support the Kenya team the way they should be supported – the way we ought to support them if we want to continue seeing the kind of reporting they've produced. We need to post articles, work on design, research ways to use cell phones to get news to the web, and otherwise support the journalists in Kenya until they build their local capacity and take those tasks back. We need editorial, web design, hosting, and SMS gateway support.
The team in Nairobi has outlined very tangible needs. With the economy practically halted, people are looking for work. If your publication wants stories and images from the ground in Kenya, you can hire someone on this team to deliver top-notch reporting and photography. They desperately need funding for cell phone airtime, which can mean the difference between life and death. Text messages in Kenya cost about 7 cents apiece – so literally every cent you donate counts. IMC-Kenya has put together a budget of about $4,000, an attainable sum which they plan to stretch to the limit for things like Internet access and a modest lending library of cameras and recorders to be shared throughout the country. Your donation can also go to help displaced adults and children who left everything they had to get to a safe place. For the past year or more, Urbana-Champaign-IMC has been handling donations to Kenya, and have kindly agreed to continue.
You can be right in the middle of excellent indie reporting and cutting edge technology. To see if there's a fit for you on the tech team or to inquire about freelance writing and photojournalism, please email the IMC-Kenya mailing list at imc-kenya@lists.indymedia.org, and they'll get you sorted. To donate to IMC-Kenya, visit ucimc.org/info/donate, and make a note in the comment field. In the meantime, check out the reporting at
Kenya.indymedia.org.
Will you toss in a bit of your spare time or funds for a sustainable team that's working to expose corruption and encourage peace at home, and help us over here in Internet-land understand the situation and what we can do to make it better? We can't wait to add your talent and passion to this project!
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Love letters to Molly: "It's about dancing with physics in traffic soup"
Jul. 31st, 2007 | 01:28 am
What is it that's moving me this way? My new bicycle is an object, a consumer product, a means of transportation. There are lots of things about anthropomorphising in such a way that are really fucked up, but I'm pulled to it very strongly, so I'm letting myself get down and silly with it just to see what's there. I parsed a little bit of it earlier tonight with another bike lover:
( 'i would have to think about adding a sail to my imaginary bike' )
( 'i would have to think about adding a sail to my imaginary bike' )
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12 Ounces
Dec. 22nd, 2006 | 03:38 pm
So I'm in the pharmacy picking up a few things. Ok, not a few things. Exactly one thing, a new bottle of contact solution for a person who sleeps at my house sometimes. There are probably 1 or 2 more uses left in the small bottle in my bathroom and it's the kind of thing that's sort of a bummer to run out of.
I bought a spare toothbrush the other day. I don't mind sharing mine, but it's nice for guests to have their own, you know? I'd already said that I intended to get a spare, and my guest said he had an extra that he kept forgetting to bring over. So a toothbrush is well within the parameters of our guest-host arrangement. But contact solution, that's risky.
( the rest )
I bought a spare toothbrush the other day. I don't mind sharing mine, but it's nice for guests to have their own, you know? I'd already said that I intended to get a spare, and my guest said he had an extra that he kept forgetting to bring over. So a toothbrush is well within the parameters of our guest-host arrangement. But contact solution, that's risky.
( the rest )
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Edit me! (hacky nerdstuff - hacks)
Oct. 10th, 2006 | 10:08 pm
Hi,
A friend of mine asked me to write up 2 things for a book she is editing, to be called The Handbook of Alternative Media. She asked me to write some explanations of memes, and the differences between hacks, cracks, and pranks, for people who do not spend all day dorking around on teh intarnets. Just finished some drafts that I think are mostly there, and I request that all interested parties take a gander and give feedback. Feel free to crosspost to good editors and geeks you know. The audience will be part academic, part regular people looking to make media themselves. Thanks!!!
Hacks, Cracks, and Pranks: Fear and Goofing on the Internet, in the Basement, and at WTO Meetings
Hey, guess what? Not all hackers are evil, pimply, lurking teenagers with a poor sense of fashion and a great sense of disaffection. They are also not criminals by default, not necessarily computer geniuses, and some of them might even be people you'd have over for dinner. Conversely, some of them are one or more of those things, but consistently, they are easy targets for sweaty mainstream media, jonesing for the next sexy lead.
( the rest )
A friend of mine asked me to write up 2 things for a book she is editing, to be called The Handbook of Alternative Media. She asked me to write some explanations of memes, and the differences between hacks, cracks, and pranks, for people who do not spend all day dorking around on teh intarnets. Just finished some drafts that I think are mostly there, and I request that all interested parties take a gander and give feedback. Feel free to crosspost to good editors and geeks you know. The audience will be part academic, part regular people looking to make media themselves. Thanks!!!
Hacks, Cracks, and Pranks: Fear and Goofing on the Internet, in the Basement, and at WTO Meetings
Hey, guess what? Not all hackers are evil, pimply, lurking teenagers with a poor sense of fashion and a great sense of disaffection. They are also not criminals by default, not necessarily computer geniuses, and some of them might even be people you'd have over for dinner. Conversely, some of them are one or more of those things, but consistently, they are easy targets for sweaty mainstream media, jonesing for the next sexy lead.
( the rest )
Link | Leave a comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend
Edit me! (hacky nerdstuff - memes)
Oct. 10th, 2006 | 10:03 pm
Hi,
A friend of mine asked me to write up 2 things for a book she is editing, to be called The Handbook of Alternative Media. She asked me to write some explanations of memes, and the differences between hacks, cracks, and pranks, for people who do not spend all day dorking around on teh intarnets. Just finished some drafts that I think are mostly there, and I request that all interested parties take a gander and give feedback. Feel free to crosspost to good editors and geeks you know. The audience will be part academic, part regular people looking to make media themselves. Thanks!!!
Ted Stevens: Senator, Fisherman, Meme-Maker
Summer 2006 was all about tubes, thanks to Ted Stevens, R-AK, and Chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. Teh Intarwebs asploded with lol's (Internet slang for, "The Internet exploded with laughter"), when Stevens, whose committee chairmanship gives him some clout over Internet regulation, stuttered through an incoherent explanation of how the Internet works. He was arguing against a bill that would enforce the concept of "net neutrality", which would make it illegal for telecom companies and internet service providers to allow content providers to pay extra for faster delivery. It was a popular bill among people who see the Internet as an inherently decentralized, organic communication network, and feel that degradation of net neutrality is tantatmount to the sanctioning of a pay-to-play Internet that would effectively ghettoize independent content. In a hilariously botched attempt to explain bandwidth limitations, he famously stated about the Internet: "It's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes."
( the rest )
A friend of mine asked me to write up 2 things for a book she is editing, to be called The Handbook of Alternative Media. She asked me to write some explanations of memes, and the differences between hacks, cracks, and pranks, for people who do not spend all day dorking around on teh intarnets. Just finished some drafts that I think are mostly there, and I request that all interested parties take a gander and give feedback. Feel free to crosspost to good editors and geeks you know. The audience will be part academic, part regular people looking to make media themselves. Thanks!!!
Ted Stevens: Senator, Fisherman, Meme-Maker
Summer 2006 was all about tubes, thanks to Ted Stevens, R-AK, and Chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. Teh Intarwebs asploded with lol's (Internet slang for, "The Internet exploded with laughter"), when Stevens, whose committee chairmanship gives him some clout over Internet regulation, stuttered through an incoherent explanation of how the Internet works. He was arguing against a bill that would enforce the concept of "net neutrality", which would make it illegal for telecom companies and internet service providers to allow content providers to pay extra for faster delivery. It was a popular bill among people who see the Internet as an inherently decentralized, organic communication network, and feel that degradation of net neutrality is tantatmount to the sanctioning of a pay-to-play Internet that would effectively ghettoize independent content. In a hilariously botched attempt to explain bandwidth limitations, he famously stated about the Internet: "It's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes."
( the rest )