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In commemoration of World AIDS Day Rising Voices will be hosting a live chat. This chat aims to build on the foundations laid by the first chat we had back in April which asked the following question: “How can citizen media be used to supplement and improve the mainstream media’s coverage of the AIDS epidemic?”
Date: Wednesday, December 3rd
Venue: http://www.worknets.org/chat/
Time: 15.00 Nairobi time:
07.00 (New York, EST) - 10.00 (Buenos Aires) - 12.00 (London, GMT) - 14.00 (Cape Town, Beirut) - 15.00 (Nairobi, Moscow) - 17.30 (New Delhi) - 18.00 (Beijing, Manila) - 21.00 (Tokyo) - 23.00 (Sydney)
Login instructions: Login using your name and then select the room you want to join by clicking enter. Once in the room, select a font colour on the left side of the screen, then join the chat.
Chat Facilitators: Serina and Daudi
This weeks chat will start out focusing on two Rising Voices grantee projects, REPACTED in Nakuru, Kenya and AIDS Rights Congo based in Brazzaville. We will learn how both organizations have implemented blogging and video outreach programs to spread awareness about their initiatives in AIDS prevention and advocating for the rights of HIV-positive individuals.
Other discussion topics include: What are the factors to weigh when HIV-positive bloggers go public about their status? How can blogging support networks form online? What about online forums? What are other new media tools, such as mapping mashups, that can be used effectively?
If there are other topics that you would like to discuss during the chat, please respond with your ideas. I hope that as many of you as possible can make it.
David Sasaki of Rising Voices writes:
As a primer to the conversation I encourage you all to take a look at a recent post written by Juliana Rincón on Global Voices about AIDS awareness through video. Especially fascinating is a video podcast produced by QAFBeijing, which interviews South African grand justice Edwin Cameron, the country’s only government official who has gone public about his HIV status.
I will be sending out a reminder email on Tuesday with a link to a video of a fascinating conversation among the members of the Breaking the Silence in Kwa Mashu project about the fear of discussing HIV status in their community.
Check out Global Voices’ World AIDS Day 2008 coverage.
Blogging Positively - see you there Wed 3rd December.
What is Kelele?
Kelele is an annual African bloggers’ conference held in a different African city each year and run by an organising committee in that city. Kelele will be held for the first time in August 2009 in Nairobi, Kenya.
Why Kelele?
Kelele is the Kiswahili word for noise. We are organising a gathering of African bloggers in the tradition of historical African societies where everyone has a voice. Where society has room for debate and discussion. With too many voices marginalised or simply ignored in Africa society today for a variety of reasons we believe that technology in general and grassroots media tools such as blogs in particular represent the most powerful way in which to give Africans back their voice. We are gathering in Nairobi in August 2009 to make a powerful, positive, inspirational noise that will be heard across the continent and beyond. KELELE!
The theme of Kelele ’09 Nairobi is Beat Your Drum – we want to connect the traditional Africa method of getting your message across vast distances – the talking drums – to the 21st century and the tools we use today to get our message across, blogs and the Internet. We anticipate that this conference will continue to be called Kelele wherever it is held. For example Kelele Nairobi ’09, Kelele Accra ’10, Kelele Cairo ’11 and so on.
When will Kelele ’09 Nairobi take place?
August 2009. We have tentatively booked the 13th – 16th August 2009.
Here is a summary of the proposed programme:
Day 1 August 13: Arrival in Nairobi and official opening
Day 2 August 14: Conference Day
Day 3 August 15: Skills/Training Day and Outreach Day. Official closing
Day 4 August 16: Sight seeing / departure
Sister events
The African Bloggers Awards, which aims to recognise the top blogger from each African country. The winner from each country will be invited and sponsored to attend Kelele ’09 Nairobi.
Budget
Every successful event needs the backing of some great sponsors! We’d like to invite all organizations with an interest in blogging, Africa and citizen media to become a sponsor of the inaugural African Bloggers Conference: Kelele!
There are a variety of ways that you can become involved as a sponsor for Kelele - your contribution doesn’t only need to be financial in nature. If you’d like to find out more about the sponsorship opportunities, please email daudi.were AT gmail.com
For more information please contact
Daudi Were – daudi.were AT gmail.com
Erik Hersman - erik AT zungu.com
Ndesanjo Macha - ndesanjo AT gmail.com
To celebrate the end of another week and to herald the beginning of the weekend, a bunch of Kenyan bloggers/blog readers/blog enthusiast/secret bloggers/potential bloggers/relatives of bloggers will be meeting at Alpenhofs, next to Prestige Plaza on Ngong Road at 6pm TODAY Friday 3rd October. Nothing formal, no agenda, just catching up to find out what people have been up to, making new connections any excuse to spread some good blog karma. It looks like some very interesting people are going to be coming and so should you. Really. You have no excuse no to come. Spread the word.
Date: Today, Friday April 18th 2008
Time: 1400 GMT, 1700 Nairobi, 1600 Sweden, San Francisco 0700, New York 1000, New Delhi 1930
Venue: http://irc2.globalvoicesonline.org/chat/irc.cgi
This afternoon, I am talking part in and helping host a Rising Voices chat on the HIV/AIDS and Citizen Media, to which you are all invited. The main chat host is Serina (Kipepeo Nyeusi). Rising Voices is the outreach arm of Global Voices. Rising Voices aims to extend the benefits and reach of citizen media by connecting online media activists around the world and supporting their best ideas.
Recently Kenya has made big strides in the fight against HIV/AIDS for example in 2006 the estimated adult HIV prevalence rate was 5.!% down from a peak of 9% in 1997/1998. The number of annual deaths from HIV/AIDS in Kenya has dropped from a peak of 120,000 in 2003 to 85,000 in 2006. ART programmes have averted about 57,000 deaths since 2001.
However the still much to do and 85,000 people is a lot of people.
(Figures from National HIV Prevalence in Kenya written by The National Aids Control Council and STD Control Programme. Nairobi, Kenya June 2007.)
What can we as bloggers/readers of blogs/generators and users of citizen media do to help in the fight against HIV/AIDS? As they saying goes, we may not all be infected but we are all affected. Please note the examples I give are from Kenya as that is the country I know best, but this chat is open to everybody and I see from the Rising Voices email list that some of our brothers and sisters in Latin America will be joining us which is brilliant. This chat is open to all!
Please join us today at: 14.00 GMT for our online chat.
Date: Today, Friday April 18th 2008
Time: 1400 GMT, 1700 Nairobi, 1600 Sweden, San Francisco 0700, New York 1000, New Delhi 1930
Venue: http://irc2.globalvoicesonline.org/chat/irc.cgi
HIV/AIDS & Citizen Media: Proposed Agenda:
- Organization Involvement – What we hear, what we see, how we perceive it
- Importance of Citizen Media
- How can we ensure we focus on stories that main stream media avoids?
- How do we ensure that we focus on the human element of the story?
- Should our main role be telling the story or empowering those affected to use the tools we are using to tell their stories direct?
- What can we learn from others experiences on different parts of the planet?
- Technicalities / Technical challenges
- How do we select whom to approach to case studies for the project?
- How do we approach those we select?
- How do we deal with possible initial suspicion?
- How do we deal with language barriers?
- What computing tools are available?
- How can we best utilise these tools?
- Do these tools have any cost implications?
- Legal Issues
- What steps will we take to ensure we have consent from third parties documented?
- Will material be covered by copyright?
- If so who will own the copyright?
See you there!
White African and Afromusing have informative posts on how you can vote for the Ushahidi project on the Netsquared mash up challenge. If you had voted before, please go and vote again. This project really is ground breaking. Let me tell you a little bit why.
Report Acts Of Violence In Kenya
At the end of January I attended a media forum organised by Internews Network. The forum was for the media to examine the way local and international media covered the post election violence. A self-assessment session. It was a fascinating way to spend a morning. The room was filled with hacks. Newspaper journalists, TV reporters, radio presenters, from the broad spectrum of media houses in Kenya. The big national broadcasters, the vernacular radio stations, the religious radio stations, and yes even the bloggers. I was invited to attend and to speak as a blogger and I gave a presentation on the way the blogosphere had covered the election and the post election violence.
In a session towards the end of the forum the discussion moved on to what we all could have done better in terms of our coverage. One statement that stood out for me was a comment that a lot of the reporting of the violence by Kenyan reporters/bloggers read like it was done by strangers. Kenyan reporters/bloggers were writing about things in their own country like strangers. For example, we all talked about Rift Valley militias like they are some kind of abstract phenomenon. Who are these militias? Who is funding them? Where do they live? What were the doing the day before the election? What do they call themselves? What are the names of the members? As Kenyans journalists they felt that these are the things they should have covered from the beginning.
The same applies to the victims. We always complain about how Africans are reduced to statistics. Remember when Al Qaeda bombed the US Embassy in Nairobi and western media reports named the foreigners who died and left out the Kenyans, or when flight KQ507 went down and we heard international media reports which named a list of nationalities and ended with “the rest were Africans”? Well here we are in the middle of the greatest crisis our country has ever faced and we couldn’t even name our own victims.
A few reporters spoke out against this criticism. One reporter said that as a Kikuyu woman she would have to be mad to approach the family of a victim of “stray” police bullet to ask his name as the public felt the police were working to protect the Kikuyu, and would have to be completely bananas to try and interview members of any Rift Valley militia who were busy running around rounding up Kikuyus. Valid points perhaps but they were quickly knocked down. After all, the moderator remarked, as professional reporters you must have more than one way to find information. Just because you can not approach the family directly is no excuse not to be able to identify the victim of violence or to do a story on the identities behind the militias.
A couple of people raised another concern, that it was completely unrealistic for us to think that it is possible to name all or even most of those victims of violence. They felt that it was nice in theory but in reality it was unworkable. An Indian journalist who has been based in Kenya for the last few years as a foreigner correspondent told us about the example of Calcutta.
After riots in Calcutta left over 3000 people dead one of the newspapers, I think it was the Calcutta Daily Telegraph, launched a project to name each of those victims and it succeeded. 3000 people and they wrote all their stories. If they can, we can too.
It is unacceptable that people, our people, remain numbers. It is unacceptable that as Kenyans we can feel comfortable in the continuing anonymity of the ultimate victims of the post election violence. And let us be honest, we are cowards if we continue in this way.
It takes guts to look death in the face, to find out whom this person was, where they worked, where they went to school, to hold their children, to speak to their partners. To find out what their dreams were. It takes guts but it is necessary.
Take the example of James Odhiambo:
- James is 24 years old.
- James is the sole breadwinner for his family.
- James works at a petrol station as an attendant.
- One of his colleagues at the petrol station is called Brian Oluoch.
- James was killed in Lurambi at the junction on the way to Shikoti, Kakamega in Western province, Kenya.
- According to eyewitnesses he was shot by the GSU.
- The police were unable to pick James’ body, as they did not have enough fuel for their vehicle.
- James Odhiambo was buried on Sunday 13th January 2008.
- James was buried in Homa Bay, Nyanza province.
- Brian and other friends from the area travelled to Homa Bay to comfort the family.
- If you would like to help the family directly you can contact Brian on +254.724.912.015
The national media declined to run James’ story so how do I know about it? I know because Mr.Michael Arunga, who works for World Vision in Darfur, was on holiday in the area at the time and took pictures, which he allowed Afromusing to post on her flickr account. Afromusing then wrote a blog post with all the information above she put on her personal blog and on Ushahidi.
Report Acts Of Violence In Kenya
In one blog post of 399 words James went from being just another number. James went from being just another dead body in the “over 1000 causalities” of the post election violence in Kenya to being James. Afromusing’s post is disturbing and saddening. It is also powerful and necessary. Afromusing’s blogpost and Michael’s pictures humanised the death of a young man, personalised it, and made it real and relevant.
This is why the Ushahidi project is so relevant and so necessary. We as Kenyans are guilty of having short-term memories. Yesterday’s villains are today’s heroes. We sweep bad news and difficult decisions under the carpet; we do not confront the issues in our society and get shocked when the country erupts as it did two months ago. Ushahidi gives everybody, anybody, the opportunity to get his or her experience recorded. Through SMS, through email, through the internet, through meeting an NGO worker who will write down what happened and share it with us. Ushahidi is a project that has to be owned by those who use it; they have to believe in it. They have to trust it; they have to feel a part of it. Ushahidi is not the end but the beginning. We have the information, we share it, and people will run with it. Hopefully we will get the stories behind the numbers. Just as with James we can inject a little humanity back into the lives of these people who were killed because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The project is recording not just incidents of deaths, but of all the violence. The project is not recording just the negative stories but highlighting the doves who are working for peace in our communities as well. And the project needs all your help to survive. Ushahidi needs your help, needs your votes. Please vote for this project on the Netsquared challenge. You can find full details on how to do this here. After you vote, please get involved by submitting your experiences and those of the people around you to the database. Instructions on how to register to vote are here and here.
Thank you.
Report Acts Of Violence In Kenya
A few years ago I posted a comment on a friend’s blog (which sadly no longer exists) in which I remarked that the Kenyan Blogs Webring reminds me of a typical African extended family. Fluctuating from supportive to destructive, from connected to disjointed, from sane and united to crazy and dysfunctional. Those family members who always believe that there is someone in the family out to get them and thus they constantly whisper conspiracy theories while looking over their shoulders? Well KBW has them too. Luckily we have a lot of sane, sensible and funny family members too.
Every once in while I get reminded that some people have way too much time on their hands! In the past 12-18 months I have been slowly switching webhosting companies as I search for more reliable, personal and courteous service. The webhosting company I left was called BlueHost
and the webhosting company I now use is called A Small Orange.
(Some of you sharp ones will have figured out by now where this post is going!)
Bluehost’s primary colour is, naturally, blue. A Small Orange’s primary colour is, naturally, orange. Kibaki’s Party of National Unity primary colour is blue and Odinga’s Orange Democratic Movement primary colour is orange. If this was not proof enough that I am Odinga’s number one fanboy, the mere fact that I choose a Webhosting company with the word orange in its name and now display a button with an orange is proof enough for some that mentalacrobatics.com is embedded within Odinga’s camp. Hehe.
People, sometimes a webhost is a webhost and not a declaration of political affiliation! Honest!
Sometimes it feels sweet to be right. Other times it sucks to be right.
In June last year I was heavily criticised for writing a blog post with the title “Suicide Bomber Hits Nairobi” when downtown Nairobi was rocked by an explosion. I had sourced that information from a Reuters report which quoted a policeman saying that the explosion looked like the work of a suicide bomber.
The criticism I received focused on my use of the words “suicide bomber” and centred on the argument that it was irresponsible for me to report the explosion as a bombing until the police had released a statement. I wrote a post titled, “In Defence of Bloggers” in which I argued that in Kenya currently it is COMPLETELY RIDICULOUS to sit around and wait for a statement from the police or indeed from the government. Where was the official police statement on the Mount Elgon clashes and where was the official police statement on the Mungiki beheadings I wondered at the time? I argued that the Official Government Spokesman and Official Police Spokesman are not reliable sources of information. This was obvious to me then, it is obvious to all now.
Kenyan TV has shown clips of young men being gunned down by police and the police spokesman states that he believes the clips have been manipulated to look like something out of “Rambo”. The country is burning and the official Government spokesman went on TV to say that there are a “few skirmishes here and there.”
I am attending a media conference on Wednesday where I will speak on behalf on bloggers and believe me I will repeat that bloggers are the ultimate source of primary information in Kenya today.
And despite my argument being proved right by time (after all those who led the criticism against me then are now leading the insults against the official spokesmen) I wish that we had a mature political system where at least the police would realise that they work not for a single political party or regime. But that they work for the country.
Sometimes it sucks to be right.
kenyaelection07A big thank you to all Kenyans both here at home and abroad who are blogging this election. Whether it is the live blogging of results or sharing your thoughts and fears it is good to hear so many voices. Thank you also to all of you who have left comments and sent emails over the election coverage on this blog or on something you may have read on KenyaUnlimited. Comments and interaction are an integral part of the blogging process; your efforts are also appreciated.
What we are doing is revolutionary in terms of local news coverage and in generating local web content; imagine the impact we will have on coverage of the 2012 election. There are a couple of reasons why this blogging effort is important:
- We are showing that citizen media is alive and well in Kenya.
- We are showing that Kenyans regard the Kenyan citizen media is a valid source of information.
- We are showing that citizen media can react and publish faster than the main stream media in Kenya.
- We are showing that you do not have to be “on the inside” within the ECK nerve centre at KICC or within a major media house to report on what is going on with the election with authority.
- We are showing that the internet is a valid tool for spreading and sharing information.
- We are showing that the Kenyan street is aware and articulate.
- We are creating local and original web content.
And perhaps most importantly (for our brothers and sister in the main stream media)
- We are showing that citizen media and the main stream media can not only co-exist but even compliment each other.
Now a call to arms literary rather than literally, if you have a blog write your thoughts about this election. Whether you are in Kenya or not, whether you are Kenyan or not. We need more voices from the wanainchi writing about their country. If you have left a comment or sent an email and do not have a blog, please start one. If you can send an email believe me you have enough technical skill to write and post a blog post. Register at WordPress.com for free and you’ll be on your way. Then register on the Kenyan Blogs Webring (KBW), which is also free, and you will have a wide readership from your first post.
This is very important for those of you who have asked me to remove certain KBW members from the webring or remove their posts from the KenyaUnlimited Aggregator as you do not agree with what they are saying. Many of you already have own blogs yet I notice that your own blogs are silent on the issues you raise with me. If someone writes something you disagree with by all means let your voice be heard as you present your counter view, and the best place to do this is on your own blog (which if you are a KBW member will appear on the same aggregator where the post you objected to appeared).
Finally, I have been getting many requests asking if you can reproduce the content on this blog in your newspapers, aggregators etc. Everything on my blog is published under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence.
This means you are free to:
- Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work
- Remix — to adapt the work
Under the following conditions:
- Attribution. You must attribute the work to me. A link to the original blog post with a line saying written by Mentalacrobatics or written by Daudi Were should be fine.
I think that is fair. You can read a short version of the license here or if you are very particular about these kinds of things you can read a full version here.
If you are running WordPress and find yourself locked out of your own blog with an error message that reads like this:
Error 403
We’re sorry, but we could not fulfill your request for /blog_directory/wp-login.php on this server.
Your Internet Protocol address is listed on a blacklist of addresses involved in malicious or illegal activity. See the listing below for more details on specific blacklists and removal procedures.
Your technical support key is: unique-key-number-here
You can use this key to fix this problem yourself.
If you are unable to fix the problem yourself, please contact your-email-address and be sure to provide the technical support key shown above.
Do the following:
- Please check to see if you have the Bad-Behaviour plug-in installed.
- If you do update to version 2.0.11 immediately.
More information on this post.
If you are trying to leave a comment on a WordPress blog and get the above error message please direct the blog owner to the link above. Apologies to anyone who was locked out of Mentalacrobatics.
(Hehe for a minute there I thought I had been hacked/cracked/banned!)
I have joined the Global Voices Advocacy team as one of the sub-Saharan reporters in their network of bloggers and online activists throughout the developing world that is dedicated to protecting freedom of expression and free access to information online.
I have also joined Global Voices as one of the sub-Saharan reporters. My focus on Global Voices will be to highlight blogs, bloggers and blogposts which cover any human rights issues in Sub-Saharan Africa.
In effect I am a foot solider under the joint command of two of the most engaging bloggers out there, Sami, Head of Advocacy at Global Voices, and Ndesanjo, the Sub-Saharan editor at Global Voices!
Global Voices Advocacy …
… seeks to build a global anti-censorship network of bloggers and online activists throughout the developing world that is dedicated to protecting freedom of expression and free access to information online. The aim of this network is to raise the awareness of online freedom of speech issues and to share tools and tactics with activists and bloggers facing similar situations in different parts of the globe. The network is meant not only to provide support to its members, but also to produce educational guides about anonymous blogging, anti-censorship campaigns, and online organizing. By collaborating with software developers, activists, and bloggers, the network hopes to design new and more appropriate tools to protect our rights on the Internet.
Global Voices aims to
- Call attention to the most interesting conversations and perspectives emerging from citizens’ media around the world by linking to text, photos, podcasts, video and other forms of grassroots citizens’ media being produced by people around the world.
- Facilitate the emergence of new citizens’ voices through training, online tutorials, and publicizing the ways in which open-source and free tools can be used safely by people around the world to express themselves.
- Advocate for freedom of expression around the world and to protect the rights of citizen journalists to report on events and opinions without fear of censorship or persecution.
If you come across or know of any blogger, blog, blogpost I should be aware of please let me know, I will be very grateful.
If you are interested in writing a regular round-up of Kenyan blogs for Global Voices, following in the footsteps of brilliant pioneers such as Mshairi and Afromusing, please get in touch with Ndesanjo.
Colonialists would often turn up at an African community and ask, “Who does that land belong to?” pointing to the vast fields around the village. Many times the reply from the villagers would be, “It does not belong to anyone.” The colonialists would then promptly set about fencing and craving up the land amongst themselves, which would enrage the Africans, which, in turn, would confuse the colonialists as, after all, they had been told that this land did not belong to anyone.
These exchanges highlight the differences in the cultures involved and the different understandings of what initially looks like a very simple situation. When the Africans tell the colonialists that this land does not belong to anybody, the colonialists would take that to mean that the land is unoccupied. “It does not belong to anyone” is taken to mean it is ownerless. That was a misunderstanding of what they had been told. For when the African said, “This land does not belong to anyone”, what they mean is this land does not belong to any single person or family. This land is the property of the community under the stewardship of those who currently occupy it. The Elesi of Odogbolu, a Nigerian chief, told the West African land commission in 1912, that he “conceived that land belongs to a vast family of which many are dead, few are living and countless yet unborn”. In other words, “this land does not belong to anyone” meant this land belongs to everyone. It is occupied by us, but we do not own it, we are merely the current stewards holding it for future generations.
In my talk during the Digital Citizen Indaba I touched upon the issue of the African blogosphere and ownership asking, “Who owns the African blogosphere”? I used the above example of our ancestors’ attitude to land as the basis of my understanding. In my opinion the internet is a space through which discussion takes place and blogs are the tool through which we utilise that space for discussion. In other words this space we have carved on the internet is our land and bloggers are the occupiers of that land. Like our ancestors I believe that this land does not belong to any of us, it belongs to all of us.
Why is this important? First of all this space belonging to all of us means that there is room for all of us and for all our opinions in that space and we all have an equal right to it. For example those who feel unrepresented in the main stream media can use this space to get their message across. Those who feel left out of the national conversation can use this space to get their message across. Ndesanjo in his keynote address emphasised this highlighting that several Africans who happen to be gay had used this space to express themselves through blogs, several Africans who happen to be white or of Asian origin had used this space to express themselves through their blogs.
Another example, last year during the time of the first DCI there was a passionate, and at times, heated debate about whether a blogging conference organised largely by South Africans, who happened to be white, and held at a university named after Rhodes, had the right to call itself African. I felt then as I do now that, yes, they had the right to call it a conference of African bloggers. I feel no one has the right to stop other bloggers from organising themselves in a way they feel fit. Once you start putting restrictions on how bloggers organise themselves then you are on the slippery slope that ends up with putting restrictions on what bloggers can write about. For if you think that these guys do not have the right to organise a conference for African bloggers do they have the right to write about African bloggers or as African bloggers?
I should clarify the difference between those who objected to the content of the conference and those who object to the very notion of the conference. The DCI crew never claimed to be organising a perfect conference and gave us the opportunity to give our feedback on what they did right and what they could do better. This year you can see they took the suggestions on board. A big issue last year was the DCI venue did not have wireless internet access, this year we had wireless internet access. Last year we raised the issue of representation amongst the speakers in terms of geographical location and content. This year we have spent a lot of time examining the role of language which was led by Tanzanian bloggers with their central role in the Kiswahili blogosphere. We also looked at cyber activism is Ethiopia and Zimbabwe as well v-blogging, photo-blogging and open source. Space to give feedback and raise issues about the content of a conference should always be available. Feedback I have no problem with. What I object to is those who feel that the conference itself had no right to exist in any form.
That is not to say that all bloggers must agree with all other bloggers all the time or even most of the time. In fact we do not have to agree at all! I hope that having disagreements and differences of opinion does not mean we can not sit down together at the end of the debate and appreciate each other. But if that is not the case, the good thing about this space we are carving on the internet is that it is basically limitless. If you do not like the way people are doing things you can start your own thing. Just do not try to stop people from doing what they are doing by placing artificial restrictions based on your opinion of what is and isn’t for they have as much right to this space as you do.
digital citizen indaba
highway africaThe second Digital Citizen Indaba is in full swing at Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa. The conference was opened by Professor Banda who welcomed us to the DCI. Then Global Voices sub Saharan editor, Swahili blogosphere pioneer, Tanzanian blogosphere pioneer, and KBW member Ndesanjo Macha got things moving with his Keynote Address.
I spoke with on the Democratization of the Digital Citizen in the morning session on Fractured Identities. I shared the floor with my Tanzanian brother Ansbert Ngurumo. Our panel was chaired by Professor Guy Berger.
Check out the DCI wiki which is updated regularly throughout the day for a summary of all the talks, the DCI flickr stream for evidence that bloggers are the best looking people around!
My Scandinavian connection, Serina, tagged me and precedent dictates I respond! Besides she is a Rising Voices buddy so how could I not eh? There can not be much left unknown about me that is of interest to the wider world so let me hit you with 8 random things loosely related to Kenyan blogs. Now this started out as a simple list and has instead grown into a long post. Let this serve as a lesson for those who dare tag me! Hehe.
But first I have to post The rules:
- We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
- Players start with 8 random facts/habits about themselves.
- People who are tagged need to write their own blog and their 8 things and post these.
- At the end of your blog post, you need to choose 8 people to get tagged and list their names (scared yet…..you better be!)
Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they are tagged, and to read your blog.
And my list of 8 things:
1.) KenyaUnlimited is rocking a brand new spanking aggregator. Have a look and let me know what you think, how fast it loads where you are, and any problems you may encounter. I am especially interested on those who’s posts should up on the old aggregator but do not show up on this one.
2.) Related to number 1 above, KenyaUnlimited has a new aggregator help page. If you have any questions about the aggregator and aggregator policy, please read the help page. We have answered the most frequent questions we receive about the aggregator on this page. If you still have any questions drop the Admin Team an email.
3.) Facebook rocks! There is a group for Kenyan Bloggers on facebook. Other notable Facebook groups include the Afrigadget group and the Free Oiwan Lam group amongst others.
4.) The Digital Citizen Indaba blogging conference is on again at the Highway Africa Conference this year. Registration is open and it is free. You can also apply for a scholarship to attend. (Warning: this conference may actually require you to think and participate.)
Coming soon to a town near you an African Bloggers’ Conference and a Kenyan Bloggers’ Conference. Watch this space and get involved! Ask not what bloggers can do for you but what you … etc etc
6.) I feel like registering a group called the “Do More Collective” (DMC). Increasingly I hear Africans telling other Africans, to get up and, “do something”. I admit even I have been guilty of that. I feel that is wrong and here is why.
In the online world in general and the blogosphere in particular, just as in the real world, there are people who get up and decide to contribute and get on with it without a fuss. Because of their nature they end up taking more and more on and usually excel. This is not new, if I think back to my school days, my sports captains were usually amongst the brightest students, and were usually also prefects and probably sang in the choir and headed the school community projects as well. The Americans have a term to describe these characters: All Stars.
I find that instead of asking people to, “Do something”, to be fair I should recognise that they are already doing a lot and instead should be asking them to, “Do more.” Take the example of my brother Ndesanjo. This guy is the force behind the Kiswahili blogosphere starting it AND putting it on the map in a big way, he is also is pushing the Kiswahili Wikipedia, is Sub-Saharan editor of Global Voices, was one of the wise heads that formulated the Tanzanian Bloggers Association, is passionate about citizen media and developing tools to allow people to share their stories and still finds time to run his own collection of blogs (and I haven’t even mentioned his “real” 9-5 job).
It is ridiculous to walk up to someone like that and to tell him to “do something” what you really should be saying is, “we need your help to do more!” I am sure this is true of many of us online and I have many more examples I can throw at you.
We need to recognise that even though someone way not be working on our pet project or on what we may personally feel is THE most important thing around, they are probably already contributing in a big way to the empowerment of The Continent and Her People. Forget asking people to, “Do something” instead ask them to “Do more”.
7.) Since I moved back to Kenya a year ago the number of people reading my blog has gone up, but the number of comments has gone down. That in itself is not news. What is interesting is that some people who used to write comments before now send me SMS instead. They SMS within minutes of a post going up on the blog. I would say around 80% of the comments on my blog posts come via SMS. The Skunkworks team at the University of Nairobi Tech Day reported that a programmer was developing software to blog (and I guess comment) through SMS. Now that’s what I need! I tried the Email2SMS service by Safaricom but that died after a few days.
8.) The number one question I get asked by new bloggers is: How do I get more comments?
The easy answer:
- Write original, good, content
- Visit other bloggers and leave original and intelligent comments
- Link to other blog posts in your posts
- Use tags to get picked up by blog engines such as Technorati.
- Be patient, it takes time to build up an audience
The less obvious answer:
Do your thing. Write your posts. Make your blog a reflection of you. Forget chasing comments. They are not a true indication of how popular, how widely read or how influential your blog really is. For example, if the first five comments on your blog are
- I got here first
- Damn I got here second
- Boy oh boy number 1 and number 2 are fast, how did they get here first
- hehe fast rhymes with first - written by number 3 above
- I swear I was first but blogger ate my comment
And no one has commented on what you actually wrote or what issues you raised in the post, how do those comments add value to the price of oranges really? OK sure some people love getting those comments and it can be said they add to the sense of community, sure. But really, you should be chasing after those. However, this after all is my opinion.
At the other end of the scale check out Ethan’s excellent guides/blog posts/transcripts of the TED Global conference. Every blogger, journalist, columnist, researcher who writes about TED Global consult Ethan’s posts. They are an authoritative, well written, accessible online resource. Because so many bloggers link back to his blog, these posts are essentially the blogger equivalent of a peer reviewed professional article in a professional journal. Yet the posts do not carry a ridiculous amount of comments. The posts do carry a lot of influence though.
Forget chasing comments. Do your thing. Free your mind!
In the early morning hours of the 5th of July 2004 the Kenyan Blogs Webring was born. Today we are three years old. Happy birthday KBW! It seems like only yesterday that I was sitting down to write the post celebrating our second birthday. Time flies when you are having fun!
Thank you to all KBW members for making this one of the most vibrant online communities on the internet. As always it has been an amazing experience.
The Year of Emergence
Emerge: become known or apparent;
The emergence of Kenyans built for blogging
When I think back over the last 12 months what I notice is that this year has been a year of emergence for KBW and her members. If you will forgive the farmer in me for a moment, in our first two years we were finding our feet, exploring this blogging thing, figuring out if we wanted to do it or not, we were germinating.
The most frequent support question we would be asked in the Admin Team during the first two years was, “Why should I start a blog?” or “What is a blog?” or variations on that theme.
In the last year we mainly get asked, “I have a blog, how do I join the webring?” or “How do I get your aggregator to syndicate my content?” or variations on that theme. They “why” and “what” questions are decreasing, the “how” questions are increasing.
That is a good sign and KBW members have played a big role in convincing Kenyans to blog. These days when someone asks me why they should blog I simply point them to the KenyaUnlimited aggregator. I can almost guarantee you that they will read something that they either agree with whole heartedly or disagree with completely, that fuels an urge in them to get to a keyboard and start typing to contribute to the debate.
In this way we have emerged from within ourselves. Where else will you find a community composed of Maasai Market traders, IT geeks, undergraduates, pastors, self styled “sex therapists”, financial journalists, university professors, professional sports players, political commentators, rural farmers, many times many of these all rolled into one person?!!
Emergence within KBW - Internal
This is where we crunch the numbers.
- In our first year we signed up: 69 members – for a total of 69 members
- In our second year we signed up: 171 – for a total of 240 members
- In our third year we signed up: 293 members – for a total of 464 members
293 new members. Remember this is not a web forum where we have one central site where each member writes a sentence here or a sentence here. These are bloggers, generating new and unique content (in the most part) every single time they write. 293 new people giving us their unique insight on the issues they feel are important, in the way they want. You are effectively talking, in web 1.0 terms, of 293 new webmasters and web content editors joined together in a single community. Now those are numbers to be proud of. This has been achieved without a single penny spent on advertising; the only emails we send out as KBW are to bloggers who are already members.
However what is increasingly clear is that the majority of these new members had heard about KBW either through word of mouth, through reading a KBW member or simply by bumping into us online. Many start a blog so they can join KBW rather than joining KBW because they already had a blog.
If this rate of growth continues soon we will be signing up more than 400 bloggers a year, that is over a blog a day!
On the technical side, we have moved from an ordinary shared hosting account, to a more advance shared hosting account, to our own VPS, and soon to our own full fledged dedicate server.
KBW in the world - External emergence
This past year has also been marked by KBW and KBW bloggers being recognised outside our own community and emerging as leaders in some of the most interesting projects that use web 2.0 Here are some examples of this:
- KenyaUnlimited was Kenyan’s ambassador on Blog Day 2006.
- KenyaUnlimited was nominated as a Finalist in the 2006 Black Weblog Awards.
- At the Digital Indaba held at Rhodes University, South Africa KBW was frequently mentioned as an example of bloggers organising themselves into a online community.
- At the Global Voices Summit 2006 in Delhi, India, KBW was again highlighted as an example of how to organise a blogging community.
- At TED Global again the importance of the KBW to the African blogosphere was frequently mentioned and clear to see and on and on.
- Three dedicated women, KBW Admin members Mshairi and Kui led by KBW member Sokari are the forces behind the African Womens’ Bloggers website and webring.
- KBW members, lead by the indefatigable White African, together with JKE and Afromusing are pushing AfriGadget to amazing new heights.
- The most radical, innovating forces in ICT in Kenya a.k.a the geekosphere a.k.a Skunkworks-KE are active members of KBW.
- The Kenyan main stream media, while still feeling threatened by blogs (why??!!), are beginning to understand that ignoring us is a mistake, ironically the main stream media outside Kenya can not seem to get enough of Kenyan bloggers.
- ICT magazines within Kenya have started carrying regular blogging columns for example KBW member Al Kags’ regular column in ICT Village magazine.
I could go on for hours about this, The Year of Emergence.
Remembrance
As we shared good times, as mentioned above, in these past 12 months we have also shared some sad times, in August we learnt that Kachumbari author of Kenyan Villager had passed on. As the tribute to Kachumbari on KenyaUnlimited reads, “Gone for now but forever a member of the KBW family, Kachumbari’s presence shall be missed.”
The Kenyan blogging community through the Pamoja blog on KenyaUnlimited led the online tributes for the victims of Flight KQ507.
KBW in the community
Sylkwan has used her blog to mobilise resources for St. Francis Children’s home in Karen/Langata, Nairobi and JKE has done the same for The Nest children’s home in Limuru. In the past 12 months I have been lucky enough to visit both homes in the company of other KBW members and it is fantastic to see what positive change a few individuals can make when they decide to take a stand. The staff at St. Francis and The Nest are an example to us all.
Challenges
As many of you know KBW and KenyaUnlimited are run by a team of three volunteers. This year, in many ways, we have been victims of KBW’s success. As more and more bloggers sign up and join the webring we spend the vast majority of our KBW time dealing with support questions and various sign up queries. It is not unusual for KBW Admin Team members to spend 2 hours a day everyday of the week dealing with various support queries. Then take into consideration that the three of us have full time jobs, are located in three different countries and in three different timezones! While the primary task of the Admin Team is to provide this support and we enjoy it (in the most part) we have noticed that other KBW projects, especially those which are manpower heavy have suffered.
For example, last year it took a team of 6 of us to run the Kaybees. Towards the end of the process four of us basically gave two full days to counting and verifying the nominations and counting and verifying the final votes, sometimes roping in boyfriends and girlfriends to help with spreadsheets! LOL. The main, in fact the only, reason we have not held the Kaybees this year yet is because we understand immediately that we would be spread too thin with the team as it stands. This has also extended to other KBW projects such as Kenyan Bloggers’ Day.
In the past we have expanded the Admin Team by sending out invitations to one or two bloggers. This time we have decided to do something different and instead send out an invitation to all of you! We shall soon be advertising Admin Team positions on KenyaUnlimited. If you are a member of KBW and want to contribute back to the blogging community, want to get involved in some interesting and innovating projects, like helping people and are dedicated we would be grateful to hear from you. Watch this space and the Admin Team blog as we shall soon be putting up a profile of what we are looking for and what you can expect as a member of the Admin Team.
Finally
KBW members – thank you!
Non KBW Kenyan bloggers – join us!
KBW supporters - members or not, especially those from far and wide who are always ready to lend a hand, share advice and are constantly encouraging us, thank you. An extra big shout out to the Global Voices crew, from php and cron jobs code, to translations, to moral support we owe you big!
Thanks
PS/ You would think that having had a year to prepare I would have started writing this post in good time instead of 2pm Nairobi time on the bleeding day eh! Any typos, missing links (no not that one), broken links please let me know!
G20 Voices
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Pamoja Tuangamize Ukimwi
Kenyan Blogs Webring
Kaybees - Thanks for voting!
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