Citizen Media Summit, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Ifra, the international technical organization for newspapers, is sponsoring a three-day summit/workshop on citizen media 2-4 July at the Park Royal Hotel in Kuala Lumpur, the capital city of Malaysia. The official description follows:
The newspaper is under attack by the new media. All over the world, citizen journalism sites are popping up like mushrooms. And as the internet matures, you can be sure there will be more blogs, more aggregators, more Googles and more tools will give the reader a huge range of options to choose from.
How can your company cope with the biggest challenge it has ever faced? Come join us to learn from the panel of experts from Korea, USA and UK for 3 days workshop.
Tuition is 1300 Euros for Ifra members, 1400 for nonmembers. I'm scheduled to be on the "faculty" along with Kevin Anderson of the Guardian, Jean Min of OhMyNews, and Robb Montgomery of VisualEditors.com. There's still room left to join the workshop. Download the brochure.
I anticipate discussing community and social capital, the Bluffton print-online model, and opportunities around aggregation and organization of existing citizen media. I'll be using Drupal as a tool, highlighting its capabilities in the area of facilitating self-publishing, ranking/ratings, social networking, and aggregation.
(Note: Ifra is covering my travel expenses for this project, but I'm not being paid.)
Thank you for the info
I as the advocate of Open Source CMS and Drupal in Malaysia, would like to know if people like us can observe and give some ideas (can we come and meet with you specifically :)
FYI even though we charged fee for building sites with Drupal, it is only small and equivalent to a cost of one HTML page by established web design companies
And I dont even charge for non-profit and disabled peoples' organizational websites
And we are relentless in promoting Drupal replacing Joomla the so-called the best CMS in the world, because Joomla has so many disadvantages, compared to Drupal's out of the box features and strength
We should get together
I actually don't know the answer, Azhar, as I'm not organizing the workshop (that's being done by Ifra Asia) but at least we should get together for dinner or something. I'll be in KL for about a week, although I am thinking of a brief side trip to Thailand, Cambodia or maybe even Vietnam while I'm there.
Organizing
I am thinking the following might be interested
South East Asia SEACEM - a sub of Malaysiakini online newspaper
however if they dont, then I would not bother much, since they do Mambo/Joomla installation and ignore my offer to help migrate to Drupal
What I care is the organizations that dont have websites, or stuck with HTML, or with Microsoft controlled ASP based, or other jsp/cfm/php online publication management, that impede progress and/or infested with spammers (think PHP-BB)
Example is http://mab.org.my - nice website, but is it useful? For the blind and visually impaired. The staff ignored our offer to revamp or improve the site. I dont want their money, I want them to serve the people since they have all the grants and funds.
What I would like to learn from your good self is how to create an online newspaper / magazine that doesnt look like Drupal default node look (i am thinking The New York Observer, The Onion - are the front pages hardcoded or template based)
Then I am striking on our own Web 2.0 enabled online newspaper for citizens journalism
I am working on http://asiaprolink.com
It will pleasure to be host to you (and your spouse or friends) even if for a brief meeting outside of the main program :) I just hosted 3 British guys
Sunday
Azhar, I'm on my way to the Parkroyal on Jalan Sultan Ismail, near Lot 10, where I arrive after midnight Saturday. Maybe we could have a beer Sunday afternoon and I can talk about how we implemented some of our projects. If you're free, leave a message with the hotel.
Afternoon means 12-6
Mr Elvington
Is it afternoon between 12-6 or later. Looking forward to this meeting
Azhar
0199667092
I missed this !
But would like to know how was the seminar, the response. Anything you can share?
Did you to finally met each other?
-najib -
Been awhile ...
No, I didn't manage to connect with Azhar. The workshop was an intense three days with about a dozen students and three instructors (I was joined by Kevin Anderson of the Guardian and Robb Montgomery of VisualEditors.com.) The students came from Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and India.
One of the workshop students posted photos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jazziemeanie/
Some of my KL photos are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/yelvington/sets/72157600775466928/
We discussed Drupal a little bit in the context of technologies that can be used to enable citizen/participative media.
Apparently reviews were positive. I've been invited to speak at the Ifra PublishAsia conference next April in Macau.
I'm sorry you guys didn't meet up.
Hi Steve,
It would have been wonderful to meet and learn from you. Since you were using Drupal as a tool, I wonder if your audience had any experience with Drupal? Are they planning to use or migrate to Drupal? I am not aware of any magazine/newspaper in Malaysia are currently using Drupal. I would love to talk to them should they need assistance. Drupal is a perfect publishing platform!
Please be noted that Successideaweb.com will be promoting Drupal in The Malaysian Government Open Source Software Conference - MyGOSSCON 2007 6-7 December 2007 which will be held at Putrajaya International Convention Center (PICC). This event is organized by MAMPU. I will be giving a presentation "Web Content Management System with Drupal". This is only my small contribution to promote Drupal in Malaysia ... as well as our company.
-najibx -
Drupal web developer in Malaysia
Not too deep
We didn't go very deep on the technical conversation. The participants were primarily from the news-editorial-content side and the purpose of covering technology was primarily to dispel fears about expense and difficulty.
As of last week, Ifra was planning to repeat the Citizen Media workshop in conjunction with the PublishAsia conference next April in Macau. However, this week I learned that the workshop is being postponed, based on an initial survey of potential conference participants. It may be offered later in the year, likely in some other Pac Rim location.
I'm still on the schedule as a speaker for the Macau conference but I won't be teaching a three-day course. Somehow I think I came out ahead. :-)