PROJECT TITLE:  Historias locales, públicos globales: blogs, audio y video en línea (Local stories, global audiences: blogs, audio and video online.

YOUR NAME:   Juliana Rincón and Jorge Montoya

TITLE:  Workshop coordinators and facilitators

YOUR ORGANIZATION: Hipermedial and Medallo Bloguero

WEB SITE:  http://hipermedial.com/ , http://blogs.medallo.info/

ADDRESS:  Medellín, Colombia

Why are you seeking Rising Voices funding? How will your project benefit the community you are targeting? (100 words)

 

 We will use computer labs located in the public libraries built in the poorest and most conflicted communities in the outskirts of Medellín, to work with a group of community members who will become proficient in self publication through blogs. We wish for them to participate fully in the new media, giving them access to tools and knowledge so they can also use photography, video and podcasts to tell their personal or community stories, to have their voices heard in the online global conversation to give the insider view of the social changes that have taken place in their neighborhoods.

 

 

What kinds of news, stories, information and other content will your project provide? Describe your vision for the content. (250 words)

 

 

There will be a website documenting the projects progress and development, all the participant´s blogs will be linked on the blogroll and it will feature the most recent posts from the project´s participants in Spanish.  A  bilingual newsletter will be published online with a couple of paper copies to keep in the libraries starting on the third month of the project with content created by the community bloggers. By the end of the project we expect to have at least 4 examples each of a videocast, podcast and photo posts produced by the project participants and featured on the website, and find funding to publish a bilingual book with blog posts, pictures and community feedback on the project.  

 

 

We will have monthly themes on our website as writing prompts for bloggers, so that both participants in this project and other bloggers can add their opinions and perspectives to the same conversation. However, the remaining content will be as varied as the participants: from a heartfelt post on the death anniversary for a father murdered by the guerrilla to a jaw dropping recipe for a street “sancocho” able to feed at least 100 hungry neighbors. From poetry and original short stories to a play by play description of a neighborhood soccer match illustrated with cell phone pictures to memories of run-ins with urban militias, from pictures of geographically mapped graffiti in the neighborhood to audio podcasts with advice on maintaining a household on a tight budget.

 

 

Who will generate the content? Who is the target audience? How, and how often, will it be distributed? What language(s) will it be available in? (300 words)

 

 

The content will be generated by 10 community members from 2 different libraries in Medellín.  They will be chosen after a selection process to participate in this 12 month  “local stories, global audiences” workshop. Participants who are not selected will be encouraged to follow the workshop content online and to continue posting, those who keep their blog updated will have their blogs on the blogroll and may have the possibility to join the project at a later date.  After the one year workshop period, the community bloggers will be ready to take over the monthly workshops with new groups of recruits at these and other libraries as well as become mentors for new bloggers.

 

 

We expect the audience of the project to be primarily national but with a strong international reach. The content will be mainly distributed in Spanish through each participant´s blog and the project´s website. For the international audience including English speakers there will be a monthly online bilingual English-Spanish newsletter with featured articles, podcasts or video reviews produced by the workshop students. A printable version of the newsletter will be available so participants can share it with family or other community members and practice their language skills. We will feature project updates on the Medallo Bloguero website which is a growing community of Medellín bloggers, as well as on our own blogs to give more visibility to the project. At the end of the year, the participants will select what they believe are the best posts or articles from their communities and recollections on the workshop process, this along with the newsletters will become content for a bilingual book which will be made available nationally through the library system and internationally through systems such as lulu.com.  

 

 

What kinds of participation and interaction do you expect from the readers/listeners/viewers of your content? How will you encourage participation? (75 words)

 

 

 We expect the usual interaction found in blogs: comments, trackbacks and repeated visits. Content on the site will be kept updated and refreshed, and there will be a project blog to keep readers posted on our progress.  Topics of the month and memes will encourage participation from within and without the project. Workshop bloggers will reply comments, emails and reciprocate visits if possible to keep the conversation moving, they will read, link and comment other blogs as well.

 

 

What is your knowledge of your target community? Why are you the best individual/organization to lead this project? Do you have prior experience in citizen media outreach? (100 words)

 

 

Our knowledge of the target community is both based in our personal experiences in outreach: in citizen media, photography and blog networking in our city,  and in the work of organizations who support our project such as the Escuela de Animación Juvenil who work with youth for empowerment, Corporación Región who have worked with youth in communities during their 15 yearly Youth Communication Seminars and who we´ll work with this coming July by giving a blog workshop geared towards citizenship awareness and diversity. We have support from these previously mentioned organizations as well as from the Public Library System´s outreach program and the government´s macroproject Medellín Digital through Makaia International consulting. 

 

 

Describe what technologies and tools your project will use to produce the content What kinds of technical skills and expertise do you bring to the project? What are your technical needs? (100 words)

 

 

Through the computers located in the public libraries and cell phone cameras, digital cameras, video and audio recorders as well as open source software and simple tools, participants will produce their own content for the web. We´re familiar with media production equipment as well as with the creation, edition and uploading of multimedia products on the web. We have 6 years combined experience with photography, online radio, knowledge of HTML, PHP, CSS y MySQL and English-Spanish translation, web copywriting/editing and SEO. We´ve also created and are managing MedalloBloguero, the Medellín blogger community and Blogotemático, a Colombian blogosphere podcast.

 

 

How will you measure and evaluate your project’s impact – on your main participants? other contributors? on the larger community? How many participants do you expect to be involved in your project? How will you seek and sustain their involvement? (200 words)

 

 

Project´s impact will be measured as a progressive comparison of monthly results. Each month becomes a self evaluation as we make a balance of how many blog posts participants made, how many comments have been made both from within the project and by outsiders, and by keeping track of who is linking to the blogs, and what is being said about the project.  

 

 

We hope to have 10 productive bloggers throughout the project in each library, and for a couple of other community members outside the workshop to blog independently using our online aids, for a total of 24 bloggers. By the end of the workshop we will have produced 4 examples each of a video, podcast and photo posts. We will keep participants motivated by public recognition through the monthly newsletters, by having the most popular posts highlighted on the website and by the final production of a book on community blogging with their best work, project feedback and what they perceive is the impact of blogging in communities. After the first year, the project bloggers will take over the workshops in their community library and other areas to replicate content and more blogs will be added to the project site.

 

 

What challenges do you expect to face, and how do you plan to overcome them? (200 words)

 

 

The technological gap is a main factor we´ll need to deal with, getting participants who are not familiar with computer and media equipment usage to learn and become proficient in the necessary tools for online publishing. We´ll try to use as much software and programs in Spanish as possible, and will write job aids with step by step procedures for those in English. Another issue will be to keep participants interested month by month. We´ll try a bit of positive reinforcement: a low-cost digital camera will be given out to the most dedicated blogger at 6 months, and then once again at the end of the year.  

 

Since we are outsiders in the community we need to make our way in the community. The initial 30 person workshop will work as a way to present the project and explain the importance of blogs and how to open one, we will include refreshments for participants and open discussion where we will collect their feedback on their expectations for the blogging workshop and project. Then at the 6 month and one year marks, we´ll have an inter-community open house-potluck to show results so far and to award the digital cameras.

 

 

 How do you plan to sustain your project's content after the Rising Voices funding has ended? Detail specific plans. How do you plan to raise revenue to continue your efforts in the future? (300 words)

 

 

This project is expected to run for one year as it is show here, then it will be replicated in other areas. There are several local organizations supporting this project, both individual and government run, such as Corporación Región, the public library system and Medellín Digital.   Once this project is up and running, with their aid we would continue giving workshops in other libraries around Medellín. Eventually, the participants from the workshops would become themselves facilitators for other workshops and would become mentors for new generations of bloggers. Ideally, our participation in moderating the project website and keeping conversation flowing would decrease with time, as community bloggers gain ownership of the project and make it their own, proposing new activities and projects and taking over the site.

 

 

In the future, the government financed workshops would run parallel to paid workshops given to private schools and universities, and through these paid courses we would be raising money for future equipment purchases and to pay for translators.  Other means to raise money for the project would be through blog advertising for community businesses and local industries, as well as state projects relevant to our purpose. Also taken into account is the project´s final product: a book on community bloggers written by the bloggers: any money made by book sales would go right back into blog outreach program to expand blogging.

 

 

Local Stories, Global Audiences is a small part of a larger business plan we call Hipermedial, a development platform for hypermedia content based on principles of economic solidarity and cooperation. Exceptional bloggers from the workshop would become part of the human resource at the organization, able to work as corporate bloggers. In exchange for training, a small percentage of their work for the company would go to maintain future blog outreach workshops. 

 

 

What resources and support can Rising Voices provide to your project to ensure its success? (200 words)

 

 

For us, Rising Voices´ support goes beyond the necessary funding for operating costs at this first stage of Local Stories, Global Audiences.  With other outreach programs around the world receiving funding, we believe that a network of new bloggers can be created and united through Rising Voices.  One of the nicest and most motivational aspects of blogging is having readers who don´t know you, read and comment your posts. Building an audience and getting visitors usually takes time, however, through Rising Voices we could find out that in a rural Bolivian village there´s a blogging workshop taking place, or that the New York Latino community is blogging, then these blogs would be showcased on our site and shown to our students, and they would be able to read their stories, comment and in return get visitors from faraway places they´ve only read about, bonding as they share perspectives on universal topics.

 

 

We hope Rising Voices becomes an educational resource where we can share our workshop experiences with other project leaders, where any resources or materials created for the workshops or projects would be made available, and where we can share this outreach experience among ourselves and with the world.

 

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