If you want to re-visit what was said, click here.

See you soon.

This is the final live chat we’ll be having in this format (depending on future decisions), and it’s an opportunity for you to feedback on the following:

• The final reach out project streams as put together by your colleagues
• The workshop event
• The contributions of all the facilitators and,
• Where you see the future of reach out

It’s important you try and make it, but more importantly, it’s your final opportunity to really influence the decision makers.

See you here. Monday 30 January, 13:00 GMT. For time zones, go here.

As the event was drawing to a close, Pukul and I decided to shoot a quick video clip where we briefly discussed his views on the weeks activities.

Unfortunately the film crew had left, so we had to make do with my stills camera. Apologies for the slightly scratchy sound.

If you can’t see the video below, click here.

Pukul says there’ll be another live web chat here on Tuesday 30 January at 1300GMT. Hope to see you all then!

Pukul is briefing the groups on what they need to consider when writing proposal documents. He tells the group to take into account:

• Market Research, incorporating Political, Economic, Social, and Technology factors. Also Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats
• Objective. Keeping it Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time Bound
• Target audience, incorporating segmentations
• Tactics / implementation
• Monitoring and evaluation

The groups are now preparing draft proposals, detailing roles and responsibilities for working on the projects together. We won’t be making the draft proposals public on the blog, as these are ‘practice’ documents not ready for the ‘public’ yet.

Participants are very concerned that UK involvement with the project will shortly be coming to an end. Responsibility for Reachout will be shifting to Tunisia. In order to reassure participants, Peter has flown to the UK to address everyone directly. I managed to grab him quickly, and asked him two questions:

• What change has he seen in people since the project started?
• What will British Council Tunisia be committing to do in the future?

Click to download or press play below:

There are a few things he doesn’t say in the recording, but rest assured, there are positive plans in the pipeline!

Yesterday the group had a video conference with a panel of United Nations personnel to test the validity of their project concepts.

Panellists included:

• Chris Strebel, UNESCO
• Richard Maciver, United Nations Chief Executives Board - UNCEB
• Lara Srivastava, International Telecommunication Union (ITU)
• Pierre Conille, The Global Fund
• Jane Wallace, World Health Organization (WHO)
• Santiago Imbers, UNAIDS and previously SAFAIDS in Zimbabwe
• David Galipeau, UNAIDS

Feedback from UN on group projects and approaches includes:

• Keep your message clear and ’sticky’
• Ensure your objectives are clear
• Ensure the criteria for photography are clear. What are the themes?
• Make sure you know what the project benefits are to partners and stakeholders
• What is the USP? (Unique Selling Point)
• How does the sponsor organisation benefit from funding your projects?
• Be clear about how you measure project impact. Find the tangible elements and trade on them
• Know what budget you need.
• Let fundholders know about your contacts and networks

A few participants felt the UN personnel were ‘harsh’ in their assessment of the projects. Others felt it was simply a more ‘realistic’ approach, reflecting exactly the kind of ‘grilling’ any project applicant would get in a real life situation. 

Incidentally, here’s David Galipeau talking at the LIFT conferencee in February 2006 on ‘How organisations are using new technologies to spread their message’.

Click to enlarge. Unfortunately we don’t have a high resolution version. Credit to Ghassan for taking the picture.

All the websites referenced by OneWorld today have been bookmarked at:

http://del.icio.us/reachoutweb2 (password = reachout)

Ken Kitson is happy to answer technical questions using the following contact details:

• Email: ken.kitson@REMOVETHISoneworld.net
• Skype: kenkitson
• Yahoo Chat: kennykitson

OneWorldTV is an open documentary platform showcasing videos on human rights, sustainable development and environmental issues.

I asked Gareth why OneWorldTV came into existence and where they hope the platform will go in the future.

Click to download his statement or press play below:

Gareth appears to be a serious evangelist for Podcasting and has recommended that participants look at the mechanism for delivering rich media content. OneWorldTV have moved themselves into Video Podcasting, and release a monthly feed / download to those interested. He’s encouraging participants to use content acquisition devices that they already have - Mobile Phones! A picture paints a thousand words!

Rather than purely restricting their content to their own platform, they have taken to using other, more known platforms, such as YouTube. By doing so, they expect to attract larger audiences. He also recommends MySpace, where they have found it easy to build networks of interest quickly!

Other organisations worth looking at (all of these are linked):

• Witness (Human Rights)
• Green TV (Environmental)
• IndyMedia (Anti - Globalisation / Anti - Corporate)
• Divo Project (Ghana based ‘cultural understanding’ project)
• others include ourmedia, current tv, engage media, undercurrents

He’s moving into ‘DotSub’, which uses wiki technology to provide video subtitling tools, opening up access to a world - wide audience. The purpose of DotSub is to allow volunteers to subtitle films. Being a bit clever, it allows people to subtitle into many different languages! For a demo of how it works, click here.

The group are now experimenting with it for themselves.

I think it’s a very neat way of enabling communities of people to share video material. My only question relates to quality control. Would this be a problem?

Peter takes the participants through the process of ‘building’ objects within the virtual world.

Below are a couple of participant examples:

Not bad going for a few minutes work!

Below is an example of real ‘virtuoso’ building within the Second Life environment. It’s called ‘The making of Suzanne Vega’s Second Life Guitar’. If you can’t see the video below, click here.