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Archive for March, 2007
Taken from Global Voices Online:
Global Voices is seeking a full-time Outreach Director. The outreach director will coordinate Global Voices’s efforts in promoting blogging, podcasting, videocasting, photoblogging and other forms of citizen media throughout the world. This will include responsibility for managing a grants program that will support innovative outreach efforts with microgrants, compilation of curriculum for blogging outreach and coordination of speaking and teaching engagements for Global Voices bloggers around the world.
This sounds like an ideal position for someone that is interested in new media and development and believes that he/she can make a real difference in diversifying the blogosphere…
And isn’t it great that positions of this nature are finally coming along?
(Don’t worry Ray. I’m not going anywhere)
For those of you that didn’t hear about the furor that some unruly upstart evoked last week – which is unlikely since the SA blogosphere is so small in the first place ;-) – take a look at the comments on stii’s blog.
While I don’t necessarily want to repeat anything I said regarding the SA Blog Awards, the fact remains that there is a serious problem currently brewing in the SA blog and social media scene. While one expects an intelligentsia to naturally develop within a particular industry or professional community, I can only say that in this case it is starting to work counter-productively and possibly to its own detriment.
I truly believe that there are more South African bloggers and netizens than we are given credit for, but if you had to ask me where they all “hang-out” I wouldn’t be able to give you an simple answer! Well maybe I would, but MySpace and YouTube don’t add any value to the local community.
Instead what has developed is an extremely small and – I would argue – very closed community, which continues to butter itself up in the hope that this will lead to fame and fortune. Sure, some will no doubt say that these people are visionaries and trendsetters and without them we would have nothing, but it also runs the danger of creating a Mafioso which! [ed - edited due to space constraints]
In case you thought I was the only one, links to recent posts by similar detractors:
Vincent – SA blogger gangbang turns into a snuff movie
Wozafriday – Controversy around the Blog Awards
Nic – Does the SA Blogging “elite” dominate Muti?
Any others?
Most of you would have heard about the recent shooting of David Bullard, the Sunday Times Columnist and funny guy from the SABC television show Car Torque. I was particularly freaked out – even though he survived – because I had just had a very constructive chat with him the previous day about getting a weekly podcast going.
Anyway, Gregor went to Millpark Hospital so speak to David in the I.C.U and put together this excellent video piece:
I was really moved by David’s honesty and positive attitude under the circumstances, since I was fuming after the incident and going through the ritualistic process of trying to convince myself that “I’m leaving this blooming country once and for all…”
So, this question is, what if anything came out of this ordeal? Well, besides the prospects of how I’m going to spend my next paycheck on putting laser beams and moats with crocodiles around my new home, I’ve come up with a new concept for his podcast (when it finally gets produced): “David Bullard: Bulletproof…“
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