The Reach Out project has evolved beyond this space and now migrated on to Facebook.

Come and join us there, and help us build new networks for open dialogue between UK, North Africa and Middle East youth.

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!

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?

What is Web 1.0 & 2.0?

Web 1.0:

• Separate, corporate, monolithic web sites

Web 2.0:

• Citizen Voice - Blogs
• Community Intelligence - Comments, reviews, rating, tagging, wiki
• Network as Platform - Applications may use many sites: YouTube, Google, Digg
• Richer, free, adaptable tools - Open source, try-it-out, plug-together software, richer visually

In short, make use of the tools out there! Nowadays, it’s not necessary to build applications and sites from ‘the ground up’. For example, a free blog might upload / embed free video on free video on YouTube.

Another  characteristic of Web 2.0 is licensing. Check out the variety of new content licensing arrangements on the Creative Commons web site.

OneWorld see a major strength of Web 2.0 as shifting information flows. In effect, reversing traditional flows, now facilitating:

People -> Media -> Government communication structures far more easily.

Consider blogs. Often chronological series of postings, but can be adapted for many users, fully fledged web sites, and many, many features. Applications include Reporting on Events, Personal Testimonies, Inter-Team Communications.

Consider wiki’s as a means to collobaratively work together on projects. Very often, this can be as simple as a group of people working on a single document at different times. The world’s biggest wiki is actually an encyclopaedia, ‘Wikipedia’. 

The participants are looking at how they might use blogs and other tools for the music festival project:

• Using the web for people to select the bands who will play
• Announcements
• Use of MySpace or Facebook for festival communication
• Text messaging direct from bands themselves
• Rich audio visual elements
• Printable invitiations
• Live coverage of the festival on a blog
• Online surveys to guide festival content
• A wiki for facilitating project organisation

Participants are now experimenting with the OneClimate platform to familiarise themselves with what Web 2.0 means in practical terms. In this short video, Peter is demonstrating a piece of ‘mashup’ functionality.

Ken is describing RSS feeds, Feed readers, and Podcasts. He goes onto talk about Global Voices, a web site dedicated to aggregating blog posts from around the world.

In order to make searching of content easier, Ken is describing ‘tagging’. This is where content is given meaning by users themselves, rather than the creators themselves. Emphasis can be given to the most popular content on a site using ‘Tag Clouds’.

Good free software and applications includes Blogger, PBWiki, Flickr, GMAIL, MySpace, YouTube.

Once a site is going, Ken advises keeping track of how a site is used. Google Analytics is a good example of a free method to track how a site is being used.

And, now it’s lunch!

Oneworld takes the view that the next ten years will be critical for issues surrounding climate change. So fundamental is the issue, that it will affect everyone, including those living in the Northern hemispheres.

The OneClimate.net project aims to get people talking about these big issues using a series of Web 2.0 tools, including:

• Blogs - personal stories. Collaborative editing
• Social networking - profiles and groups
• Calendars, Maps, Carbon Calculators, Pledges

In addition to these, OneWorld have created ‘OneClimate island’ in virtual world, Second Life.

It’s early days for OneClimate yet. The project is continuously evolving. It started six months ago, with the first web presence arriving four months ago.

I asked Peter Armstrong to give some context about why the OneClimate project came into being.

Click to download or press play below:

Peter is playing a short documentary on the ‘Mobile for Good’ OneWorld project:

If you can’t see this in your browser, click here.

Mobile for Good (M4G) is a social franchise project designed to use mobile phone technology to help alleviate poverty and improve the lives of people in the developing world. It delivers vital health, employment and community content via SMS on mobile phones in order to inform and empower disadvantaged individuals and help bridge the ‘digital divide’ – the widening technology gulf which exists between rich and poor countries.

The project started in 2005, and is began financially breaking even in the first quarter of 2006.

The goal of the OPK is ‘to enable underprivileged communities to create, share and receive knowledge which will improve their life chances’.

Content for the network is:

• Created at grass roots
• Created locally

Technology was made available in local centres to allow people to create content themselves. A key element included tele-centres, which were used a method for disparate communities to enter their own content without the use of a computer (or I.T literacy for that matter).

Access points could be everywhere and anywhere. These could include temporary settlements and extreme rural areas in Kenya, for example.

Click on the network map to the right to enlarge and to better understand how the various channels interface with one another.

I managed to grab Peter Armstrong who gave a practical example of where the Open Knowledge Network helped someone in Africa.

Click to download or press play below:

Satellite was used to deliver shared content to machines in the various centres. This would be re-distributed through a range of channels. The OKN made announcements through traditional means such as paper on noticeboards, loudspeaker announcements, and word of mouth networks

Content for the network could uploaded using a variety of mediums:

• Telephone / Email
• VHF radio

Despite trying to make the projects potentially sustainable by local communities, this didn’t work. The communities were simply too poor.

They operated the project in 12 languages. Translation into the various languages was very hard. Also, some stories didn’t cross the language barrier. Expense meant that information often stayed in language groups.

The project has now been handed over to a committee of partners in Mozambique, Senegal.

This sparked questions from the group about their own projects. People are now talking about:

• What are the complexities in reaching rural, offline people?
• Language issues. How to handle translation? Volunteer networks could be the answer.
• Will the cross cultural projects ultimately become self generating / self moderating?
• Are there policy / regulatory issues affecting offline mediums? (Marouen from Tunisia said that all radio is heavily regulated in his country).

Peter Armstrong introduces the organisation.

Originally the organisation started in a garage. Initially Peter and his wife!

Oneworld’s stakeholders are primarily for those based in the Southern hemisphere. Initially content was Northern people making media about Southern people. Through advances in technology and price decreases, those in Southern countries now make most the media themselves.

Whilst they have expanded their network enormously since 1995, Peter explains, ‘There’s still a gap, particularly in the middle east. We’re keen to hear from those who’d like to fill that gap’.

OneWorld acts like a series of autonomous network of countries, all acting under the umbrella brand. Most of the content is produced by NGO partners, which includes some 3,000 organisations.

Unlike a lot of the web, which Peter states is ‘about entertainment’, OneWorld aims to deliver measurable impact. Types of action include:

• Use of OW as a reference
• Signed an online petition
• Attended an event
• OneWorld site ’sent to a friend’

Gareth Bennest begins introducing OneWorldtv. He goes onto explain OneWorld Radio, which is there to share content amongst broadcasters. Community radio stations can use the platform to upload / download content for re-broadcast in other regions / countries.

Joining us from OneWorld.net today are:

• Peter Armstrong, Innovations Director
• Dr Ken Kitson, Innovations Co-ordinator
• Gareth Bennest, Oneworld TV’s Project Manager

They are going to be looking at various web tools which could have relevance for participants with their own projects.

Ken Kitson opens by giving some background about Oneworld. They use ICT tools to:

• Work for a fairer and more sustainable world
• Help citizens from around the world to have a voice

Throughout the day, participants are to have Web 2.0 tools explained, with a look at Second Life (virtual world), and the use of audio and video on the web.

Before getting into their own content, Ken is asking everyone to introduce themselves and their projects.