Participants at the 2010 Citizen Media Rendez-Vous are lucky that Shubhranshu Choudhary is spending 3 months in San Francisco this summer because it allowed us to invite him to be a panelist. He is from the Indian region of Chhattisgarh where tribal languages flourish. Poverty is high despite the abundance of minerals in the region and so is illiteracy.
Shubhranshu Choudhary trains tribal woman in India. (CGNet Swara)
Shubhranshu will come to Montréal to share his perspective based on his experience establishing a citizen journalism initiative that allows remote communities (7 million people) to use CGNet Swara, a cell phone platform inform each other in their own tribal dialects.
Shubhranshu said in an AlertNet interview, “People just have to call up and they can hear news in four different languages - Gondi, Kurruk, Chhattisgarhi and Hindi. It’s helped to bridge the information gap for tribals who are on the other side of the digital divide.” The project, started in February 2010 now receives about 50 calls a day, some to record audio messages and news, while others to listen to the reports left by others from their remote region. All messages are verified by Shubhranshu and the project’s volunteers by others on the ground before translating the messages and reinserting them into the system.
Shubhranshu is bringing a communication revolution to Chhattisgarh where more than 50% of the communities do not have electricity. He is coming to Montréal’s Citizen Media Rendez-Vous on August 23. Are you?
CitizenShift, Parole citoyenne, the Institut du nouveau monde (INM), Media@McGill, Alternatives and Communautique invite bloggers, engaged filmmakers, photographers, citizen journalists, media experts, independent media practitioners and others to the 2nd Citizen Media Rendez-Vous on Monday, August 23, 2010 at the Palais des congrès de Montréal. This international event begins at 8:30 am and runs until 6:00 pm, with networking sessions, 2 panel discussions, a Cinema Politica Rendez-Vous screening room and a multimedia exhibit of posters from 40 years of social movements in Québec related to media. The event is open to the public and will provide a venue for discussing topics such as content creation using diverse technology platforms and applying collaborative models for citizen media.
Participatory media projects that include multiple platforms, genres and issues are adding diversity to conversations at a speed and across distances that are changing the way people communicate with one another. A goal of the Citizen Media Rendez-Vous is to encourage a collaborative exchange to learn about, and advance the practices of, citizen media that cultivate inclusive participation and social justice.
Panelists, moderators and participants will discuss the central question: How is citizen media being used by civil society, independent journalists, media practitioners and others to better inform the public, and to what effect? To review this question from multiple angles the 2010 Citizen Media Rendez-Vous is divided into two central panel discussions. The morning panelists will consider how accessing and appropriating citizen media can better inform and mobilize the public. Panelists include: Norman Cohn, co-founder IsumaTV; Tim McSorley, editor Media Co-operative; Georgia Popplewell, Managing Director Global Voices; Craig Silverman, Managing Editor MediaShift & Digital Journalism Director OpenFile. Discussions will be encouraged between panelists and the audience by moderator, Patricia Bergeron.
The afternoon discussion will focus on the citizen use of new media for the defense of human rights. Panelists include: Jaroslav Valuch, Haiti Project Manager Ushahidi; Priscila Néri, Program Coordinator, Witness; Shubhranshu Choudhary, CGNet Swara. Discussions will be encouraged between panelists and the audience by moderator, Frédéric Dubois.
The event is bilingual and simultaneous translation will be available in English and French. For more details about this not-to-be-missed event visit the Citizen Media Rendez-Vous website. Online registration is free but mandatory.
This independent one-day conference is being held in parallel to CIVICUS’ 9th World Assembly from Aug. 20-23. The World Assembly is a place for information exchange and debate to best identify practices that will attain a wider global social justice. Benefit from a 3 for 1 registration offer for Canadian civil society organizations until July 30.
If you missed the first installment of the Citizen Media Rendezvous, you can now catch a glimpse of what went on, thanks to filmmakers Rémy Huberdeau, Jason Gondziola and Claudia Gama, in the following three videos featuring interviews with some of the event’s participants. Each film tackles different theme presented at the conference. Comment, embed, and pass them on!
A lot of people have been asking if we can make the presentations from Citizen Media Rendezvous available. Véronique Marino, from INIS, has posted her’s over at SlideShare (you can see some of her other presentations there as well). I’ve embeded it below; we’ll work on getting others soon too.
It took a while in coming, but here is the archived stream of Citizen Media Rendezvous 09! The image quality isn’t always pretty to look at, but the audio quality came through great. You’ll notice the first two minutes are missing, and the clips aren’t cut based on presenter… I’m working through some technical hiccups, but we should have a complete version, split into clips by speaker, by early next week. And we’ll also have some other short videos - including interviews with panelists and participants - up over the next couple of weeks.
Enjoy!
Block I, featuring David Beers, Veronique Marino, Laurent Mauriac and Geraldine Cahill, Part 1:
What is the greatest challenge you face (as a media organisation, or as an individual) in creating & sharing media online?
To help fuel your thoughts, here’s a clip from Jay Rosen, professor of journalism at New York University and one of the leading writers on citizen journalism today:
If you’re looking for more, you can always visit the sites of the folks speaking at the event, or here’s a quick list of some of the sites I follow; hopefully you’ll like them too…
Next Wednesday, August 26, at the Citizen Media Rendezvous we’ll have the chance to discuss the online media practices and strategies that have brought about both changes and upheaval in the mainstream media, triggered by the advent of the World Wide Web.
The discussion will focus on how ordinary people are now able to take on all kinds of roles on the web (news broadcasters, creators of communication tools, community activists) and seem to be occupying an increasingly large place in the mediasphere. A number of mainstream media have picked up on this significant trend, but there remain opportunities to discover. Hence the central question of our first conference: Where is citizen media headed?
On the schedule for next Wednesday is a huge brainstorming session on online media practices. To ensure a spirited debate, we’d like to ask you another question:
What is the greatest challenge you face (as a media organisation, or as an individual) in creating & sharing media online?
Post your thoughts below; the moderators will incorporate one answer from each of the following categories—form (Web technologies), content and community—into the moderated debate on Wednesday evening from 5:00 to 6:00 pm.
We’ve confirmed the line-up for the Rendezvous, and it’s looking great! Our hope was to get folks who aren’t just from a wide-range of organisations, but also have a wide range of interests that complement each other.
We’re pretty please with the result, including Laurent Mauriac from Rue 89, which has been making waves in France, David Beers from BC’s The Tyee (which jsut came out with a new, more multi-media focussed redesign), and Montreal locals Paulina Abarca-Cantin andStéphanie Lagueux of Studio XX.
Things are coming together for what is shaping up to be a great event at the end of August. The Rendezvous website is now up at http://citizen-media.ca. There’s information there about the day’s program, speakers and themes, as well as registration information.
Citizen media has become a catch word that covers everything from CNN’s iReport to DIY blogging. At the end of August, CITIZENShift, Parole Citoyenne, and several of our partner organisations, will be hosting Citizen Media Rendezvous 2009 in Montreal.
We’ll be blogging at this address over the next month and a half with details about the event and the highs and lows of organising this kind of conference. We’ll be posting a lot more information soon (and launching the event’s site in the coming days) so stay tuned!
David Widgington was the event coordinator for the Citizen Media Rendez-vous 2010 (http://citizen-media.ca). He is a mobile journalist (MoJo) who is well-versed in community radio, video and print and web-based media practices. He has a particular interest these days with diaspora communities returning to Southern Sudan since the end of the war. He is script-writing a documentary project on the subject. (http://southsudaninfo.net).
