Citizen Journalism Unconference/CJ tools are ready, are we?

Wikimania 2007 Taipei :: a Globe in Accord

We have talked about many things related to tools (software and hardware) and people (learning, censorship, efforts):

  • Accessibility and convenience of tools: from mobile phones (easy to get hardware, even in some developing countries) to "media hubs" like Google video or YouTube (that also let you save time and efforts for spreading "your" news), there is a shared opinion between the participants in this space that the problem is more about finding the proper tool than invent other ones.
  • Pan talks about the example of Japanese culture in terms of adapting to technology' changes, reflected in the case of CJ in OhmyNews, and we discuss how this could be a trend in countries like Spain or Taiwan.
  • Sophocles explains how the educational aspects of giving access to technologies in schools should be considered, and that leads us to talk about the digital divide also in terms of digital natives and immigrants (and how differently they could consume and produce information susceptible of being considered "news").
  • Regarding a Sophocles question, Tain talks about the type of tools that make information more easy to spread, like podcasting that let you (a) upload, (b) archive and (c) spread news with all the potentialities.
  • Censorship: we talk also about recent examples of censorship in China and Spain.
  • With Pan we make a little poll about what would the participants do if they had right then a movie they could upload to a site in order to make it available as "news" materials. The half of us will choose a government maintained site (that some associate with power), the other half a NGO or similar (associated with knowledge) and none of us a commercial or private news site (associated with money).
  • & some other things I can't recall now that the pannel is gone! :( Help me please remember if you were there...