Archive for March, 2006
We Media Themes in Lead Story of New Government e-Journal on Media
US Department of State’s International Information Programs has just launched an electronic journal on media, Media Emerging
Dale Peskin and Andrew Nachison, co-director and director of The Media Center, contributed the lead story, “Emerging Media Reshape Global Society.”
Take a look – it covers many of the themes we’ll see at the We Media Global Forum.
Previous Comments
And now I must lie down for a rest… Great read Dale, Andrew.
It’s as if Thomas Kuhn’s opus The Structure of Scientific Revolutions has leapt from the petri dish into, and bursted, this media bubble which had relatively tiny numbers of producers compared with consumers.
Historians will often comment that the present has at some point showed its hand in the past.
But how ambitious is it to posit the belief that this era represents a fundamental paradigm shift?
And the scary or fantastic thing, depending on your POV, is how swiftly the onset of the digital reformation is taking shape.
Does this mean that the State Department will start using blogs to promote their ideas? (unless they don’t already). Many seem to think that they already exist in the form of pro-US Iraqi bloggers.
We Media 2005 Inspired Student Media
I wanted to share this note we just received from John Schott, chairman of cinema and media studies at Carleton College. John attended We Media 2005 at The Associated Press as a We Media Fellowship recipient:
I was spurred on, in part, to offer a We Media course at Carleton College after attending your excellent conference last fall. I thought you might be interested to see some of the fruits of the effort.
Students–most of whom were no media makers–read widely on The Personal Media Revolution, using our class notebook of links.
Highlights of their work includes a group podcast on personal media.
Although not as accomplished as many others, I particularly liked the podcast by Khanh Nguyen. He’s a freshman from a smallish town in Vietnam, in the country only five months …before finding himself in a We Media class where he published his voice and image to the world. You’ll find his touching post down a few clicks on the page.
And a group videocast on their own digital lives.
Plus other individual projects.
Thanks again!
Small sigh of satisfaction – this is why the team here at the Media Center gets up in the morning… 
Wider Gaps in a Smaller World
Here’s something that’s been puzzling me for a couple of weeks now, and maybe the morph gang can help me figure it out.
A few weeks ago, I released the announcement about the We Media Fellowships, which help underfunded nonprofit, academic and independent media to participate in the We Media Global Forum in May at the BBC and Reuters. We are pretty stretched around here, and the last thing we want is to wade through piles of information to select the fellowship recipients, so the application requirements were very simple and straightforward. Basically, we asked applicants to email me a short statement about why s/he wants to attend. There were some additional requirements, such as where in the email to put one’s name, title and organizational affiliation, putting “We Media Fellowship Application” in the subject line, and keeping the statement under 500 words. We also made it very clear that recipients would be responsible for obtaining their own visas and other travel documents – we just don’t have the resources to help with stuff like that, and anyway, the conference is not even in the US!
I posted the fellowship information on the blog, mentioned it in one of The Media Center’s occasional e-newsletters, and sent it across a few discussion lists. Before long, applications were pouring in from the far corners of the world, from as far away as Australia, Vietnam, Chile and Togo.
Now, I said in the announcement that any application that did not conform to our requirements EXACTLY would not be considered. I meant it at the time, but I don’t mean it anymore. Why? Because if I stick to the rules, close to 50 percent of the applicants would be disqualified, including students at prestigious universities, representatives of very worthy and even famous nonprofits, and struggling but cutting-edge media innovators – you know, the kind of very smart, accomplished people whose presence would really enrich the London gathering. So, when I start going through the applications in the next day or two to make the first cut, I will read the statements that run closer to 1,000 words than 500, forgive the misworded email subject boxes, even look through those applications that came past the deadline – like, waaay past the deadline! (BTW, I am really, absolutely NOT accepting any more applications, and anyone who tries to give me one will be turnd away, because the line has to be drawn somewhere!) I understand that people are busy and can’t pay as close attention as we’d like, but …
What do I make of the person who’s assuming a fellowship is already his just because he submitted an application, who followed up with emails expressing “shock” that I haven’t yet forwarded the necessary documents to confirm? Or the fellow who said, “Yes, thank you, I’ll take a fellowship. Now would you please send me letters of support and help me obtain a visa?” Or the person who used the morph blog to ask how to apply (don’t bother looking for it, I took it down), then went ahead and pasted his application in the comments section of the announcement post, right underneath the application instructions?!
We received quite a few applications like these, where the applicants don’t seem to have read the application directions at all. Many of these people are from pretty impoverished, isolated places, and I’m in awe of the fact that they accessed the Internet and found their way to The Media Center. I’m amazed that the Internet can clear away all the degrees of separation between me and people in some of the farthest reaches of the world whom I’ll never get to meet in real life. But while technology really has made the world a smaller place, Internet contact, such as my experience with these fellowship applicants, can also bring into focus some pretty huge gaps, cultural and otherwise, between people.
I understand that some of these applicants may not understand English very well, but “fellowship” was the hardest word in my announcement, and if they could understand that, why couldn’t they understand at least some of the instructions and follow them? I know that some of the applicants may not be very educated and may never have had any opportunity to experience much of the wider world, but why would they assume from a simple fellowship announcement that The Media Center – or anyone in fact – would just reach halfway around the globe and hand them the means to leave their country to attend a two-day conference in one of the most expensive cities in the world?
Even though my graduate studies focused on developing economies and I have visited quite a few over the years, I just don’t get it. My colleague, Andrew Bozek, suggested that some of the applicants live in places where instructions and rules are rarely ever carried out, so they are just culturally wired to ignore them. A part of me is fighting the suspicion that some of the applicants are related to Mr. Joseph Jones Smith – you know, the son of the assassinated prime minister of that oil-rich African nation who needs me to temporarily hold millions of dollars in my bank account for him.
I just don’t know and it bothers me: Because I cannot be forthright and open with such applicants and explain to each and every one what’s uniquely wrong with his or her application. Because some of the applications are so off the wall that I have to ignore them, and it’s against my nature to purposely ignore people who’ve taken the trouble to write a note and send it to me (though I do sometimes forget to get back to people when I’m very busy). Because some of the applicants actually should have the chance to attend an international meeting but can’t come to The Media Center’s because we just don’t have the resources to work it out for them and I feel bad about that.
So, everyone, please share your thoughts and insights about this. It really does bug me.
TAG: wemedia
Previous Comments
I wouldn’t be surprised at all if some of the misguided applicants are victims of an Internet game of “operator.” Since they’re just sending you an email instead of filling out an online form, they might not be responding directly to your original post. Perhaps they are responding to another blog post pointing to it, or several degrees of separation away to a post that says “hey, there’s this lady giving away free trips to London.” It’s sort of like when we got all those comments that said “Joel I love you!” on my post about the blog written by Joel Madden from Good Charlotte. Somewhere out there is a fan site with a link that says “comment here to send a message to Joel.”
And, some people just get kinda goofy when stuff is being given away. Something about a contest or giveaway alters some people’s thought processes in frightening ways, often giving them a false sense of entitlement. Work in a radio promotions department for a couple of weeks and you’ll see what I mean!!!!
I don’t understand the problem? You made it clear that if someone didn’t follow the rules in submitting their application that they shouldn’t be considered. That shouldn’t change simply because (you think) the person has qualifications that seem to suggest they deserve the Fellowship. There are several criteria for obtaining the Fellowship. The applicant has to want it, they have to deserve, and they have to apply. There are lots of people who would want and deserve the Fellowship who may not have received your announcement — but we aren’t going to hold American Idol style casting calls or go on an exhaustive search through college newspaper offices on campuses around the world in search of ‘the next great editor.’
I too find it frustrating the the folks who seem the smartest, and with the best qualifications, would be so careless. But it is the obligation of the applicant to follow the instructions as posted. No exceptions. You can email/call all the applicants who did not submit their information correctly and give them a second chance to re-submit. But it would be unfair to select someone for the Fellowship who did not apply properly over someone who did.
(And yes, i was deliberately trying to sound like The Ethicist from the New York Times – grin)
Gloria’s obligation here is first to her organization and second to the people who will be attending the We Media Global Forum. And the goal is to ceate the richest possible experience at that event. If she wants to consider the applications that don’t adhere to the rules….and she is doing this in order to benefit the ultimate goal of a great event…I say more power to her!
I agree that sometimes rules have to be followed to the letter, but I hate to hold small mistakes against very busy and accomplished people when they’re expending so much time and energy on other things, probably bigger things, which got them where they are in the first place and which got my attention. Only a robot can do everything perfectly every time, and only a mechanized process penalizes every time something happens outside the programmed options. Remembeer, to err is human… The fellowship instructions were designed to keep things as simple as possible, but if we can manage to review all the applications, as long as we review all of them, I think it’s still fair. If we were Columbia Univeristy and received unmanageable numbers, and we had a huge number of desirable conference participants (though this time we DID get a lot of great applicants) then we would rely on the rules to help cut down the numbers. But you know what? I daresay universities are actually pretty forgiving of small mistakes on college applications from very smart-but-only-eighteen year-old kids.
I think Gloria Plan is in a serious trouble in sortig out right applicants. Despite limited resources and so many problems she is currently facing to sort our deserving applicants to participate in the Forum, I suggest her to give priority to the applications from the global South.
Kiran Chapagain
The Kathmandu Post
Nepal
Gloria, a structured versus unstructured means of collection would be very helpful and would solve the problem. Your experience is consistent with ours. It would also help you to categorize, classify, and characterize the applications much faster. With infinite choices of method, even given directions a high percentage of the population will not follow the direction, whether in the US or offshore.
Kim, yes, a structured means of collection would absolutely solve all the issues I talked about. And if we ever get to the point where our events are so famous that fellowship applications run in the thousands rather than the humble hundreds, that will be the way to go. But one disadvantage I see in using a collection mechanism is that applicants would be filling in forms rather than sending an email to someone; the sense that the information is actually going to real people rather than an impersonal organizational entity would be gone. For now, it’s still possible for The Media Center to put a “human face” on our communications, in this case, mine.
We Media Potential Reach: 100 Mil. Around the World
As I write this, I’m sitting at my computer with my jaws scraping the floor. Why? Because the BBC and Reuters have decided to broadcast the We Media Global Forum across their global channels, and the potential viewer numbers I’m hearing are 200 – even 300 – million people around the world. Okay, I can’t bend my mind around that, so I’m just going to tell you that the potential audience reach is more than 100 million people.
100 million… That’s a lot of people – quite an audience for Andrew and Dale to evangelize about the Digital Age’s implications and opportunities, and for our partners to express their commitment to a better-informed society. So, uh, the We Media program had better be pretty good…
We’re working our hardest to make sure it is. Get program details and register for the Global Forum here.
Let me give you a brief update:
To remind you, The We Media Global Forum will take place May 3-4, 2006, in London, hosted by the BBC and Reuters. It will bring together about 250 trailblazers of the connected society – the thinkers, innovators, investors, executives and activists seeking to tap the potential of digital networks connecting people everywhere – for the purpose of uncovering, exploring and generating new ideas, products, services, policies or relationships that uncover and harness the power of mass collaboration.
Day 1 will unfold in a soundstage at the BBC Television Center; Day 2 will be conducted at the Canary Wharf global headquarters of Reuters.
Confirmed participants include:
o Richard Dreyfuss, Actor and Activist
o Tom Glocer, CEO, Reuters
o Mark Thompson, Director General, BBC
o Scott Heiferman, Founder and CEO, Meetup.com
o Carolyn McCall, CEO, Guardian Newspapers
o Shoba Purushothaman, CEO, The NewsMarket
o Paul Jacobs, CEO, Qualcomm (via satellite)
And …
o Rafat Ali, CEO and Editor, Paid Content
o Angela Beesley, Board Member, Wikimedia Foundation
o Jeff Belk, SVP Marketing, Qualcomm
o George Brock, Saturday Editor, The Times of London
o David Brain, European President & CEO, Edelman
o Suw Charman, Executive Director, Open Rights Group
o Jean-Marc Coicaud, United Nations University, New York
o Dan Gillmor, Author, We The Media
o Sue Howard, Executive Director, Australian Broadcasting Corp.
o Wadah Khanfar, Managing Director, Al Jazeera
o Rhami Khouri, Editor, Lebanon Daily Star
o Dr. Michael Kraig, Stanley Foundation
o Rebecca MacKinnon, Co-Founder, Global Voices
o Richard Sambrook, Director of Global News, BBC
o Dave Sifry, CEO, Technorati
o Karen Stephenson, President, Netform
o Bill Weiss, CEO, The Promar Group
o Emma Williams, Director, Digital Content Coalition
Fellowships Available for We Media Global Forum
The Media Center is now accepting applications for We Media Fellowships for independent, nonprofit or academic participants from any country to attend the We Media Global Forum. The fellowships cover the full registration fee ($795) for the conference, including conference meals and materials. Stipends for travel and/or lodging may be available.
To apply for a fellowship, send an e-mail to gpan@mediacenter.org, with:
1. “We Media Fellowship Application” in the subject line.
2. The applicant’s name, title and organizational affiliation at the top.
3. A statement of no more than 500 words explaining why the applicant wishes to attend.
Applications that do not conform to the above requirements will NOT be considered.
Applicants are solely responsible for acquiring the proper travel documents to enter the United Kingdom. The Media Center does not provide support or assistance for travel visas and other immigration issues.
The deadline for fellowship applications is 12 noon, Friday, March 10, 2006.
Previous Comments
When I will get information about my selction through fellowship mode?
I am really impress about the oppertunity the civil society can obtain from such forum in building their capacity in helping to sharpe ICTs policy in underdevelop countries.
Very interesting. Glad to see DOS jumping on the bandwagon (a bit late though.)