We have started this blog to have a conversation about Local Content. I will write about what I am doing in the work for IKM Emergent. We invite any of you we are talking to to write about your work, comment on the posts, contribute ideas and content.
We are using this blog platform, Maneno, because it has been built as a platform that works well over low-bandwidth. It has an Africa based server and is designed to reduce the amount of data that has to be transferred when you read, write or comment. Several people have written about it. It might be interesting to judge whether these two links load slower or faster than this post itself!
One of Maneno's best features is that as a user you can choose how much data you receive. They have introduced a connection speed selector. You can choose your speed when you join or modify it through your profile page. Read about it on their blog page in this post
If you want to write or comment, you will have to join Maneno - 5 minutes - and then tell me and I will add you to the list of authors
I look forward to the conversation
Pete
ALIN has been working for over ten years in Information & Knowledge Sharing with grassroots communities. James Nguo, ALIN's Director, was interviewed by Peter Ballantyne at the IAALD conference in July 2008. In this clip James explains how ALIN works with youth, connecting ICTs and local communities.
ALIN was one of the founding members of the Open Knowledge Network (OKN). In this clip he explains how ALIN was engaged in the Open Knowledge Network (OKN) and the continuing legacy.
We're reviewing what has been happening in with Local Content since we last worked in the area for the Open Knowledge Network, with IICD and with telecentre.org. I am working with Peter Ballantyne and the research is for www.ikmemergent.net. We'd like to hear from people and organisations who are working in this field. We are interested connecting with the original partners of those projects, but also with other people working on Local Content.
When we talk about Local Content we mean "
the expression of the locally owned and adapted knowledge of a community - where the community is defined by its location, culture, language, or area of interest", the definition used in Peter Ballantyne's 2002 paper. We know that content is expressed in all forms - voice, song, text, art objects, pictures and videos and many more. Increasingly this content is being captured online, and newer Web 2.0 tools are also having an impact.
We are focusing mainly on East Africa at this stage, partly because this is a small piece of research and we want to look at issues in some detail and partly because we know about some work that is happening in that region.
Please get in touch if you'd like to talk about what is happening. I am travelling to Kenya, and possibly Uganda, either in mid July or August this year, and would like to meet and talk to people who would like to be connected to the research and develop ideas for how the subject could be developed.
If you want to get in touch please add a comment to this post, or email to pete DOT cranston AT btinternet DOT com
Pete Cranston
