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?
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):
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?
Julie Jarman (UK Country Director) and Farah Kurji (Youth Team), from Oxfam UK are running todays workshop.
Julie starts by introducing the work of the Oxfam UK poverty programme, who work towards alleviating poverty in the UK. Click on the slide to the right, to better understand what Oxfam UK do.
I asked Julie what Oxfam were planning to do with the group today.
Click to download a short statement from Julie or press play below:
Julie Jarman, Oxfam UK:
Farah starts explaining the work of the Oxfam Youth unit. In simple terms, their mission is as follows:
To enable and empower young people to be active global citizens
Their ‘wants’ are two fold:
Young people to have the values, knowledge, understanding and skills to respond effectively to global issues & influence the environment in which Oxfam campaigns.
Young people to take effective action as part of the global movement to overcome world poverty.
The complete set of slides used by Farah and Julie are available here.
Over lunch, Pukul took a look at the ideas coming out of the morning. He’s distilled the ideas broadly into three areas. First is a music festival. Second is a cross culture community web site. Third is a non language based exhibition (photographs, art etc).
The group is being split into three, according to which area each indivdual is most interested.
Before the groups begin, he is explaining the notion of ‘product life cycle’. To the right is a diagram taken from Wikipedia explaining what this means graphically.
Click on the image to see a larger version.
Whilst the groups are working, I’ve asked Pukul his views on the ideas emerging. This is what he had to say. Click to download or press play below:
Welcome to the second of the reach out blog interviews.
This interview is with Adam Dalton, UK Operations Change Manager at the British Council.
To hear his thoughts on ‘how to apply innovation and creative thinking to product development’, and questions posed by participants Ghassan (Morocco) and Nader (Lebanon), and check it out below.
Welcome to the fist of the reach out blog interviews.
This interview is with Peter Armstrong, Innovations Director at Oneworld.net, and how they’re working with Second Life and Web 2.0 - namely www.oneclimate.net to address global climate change issues.
To hear his thoughts on ‘mashing up technology and software’ in a civil society context, and questions posed by participants Ghassan (Morocco) and Nader (Lebanon), check it out below.
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:
