[Wikinews-l] Wikinews Rwanda newshut

Tue Jun 21 19:45:04 UTC 2005

Hello Clare!

> Thank you so much to everyone who helped and supported the Rwanda week, I'm
> back in London now after an amazing time over there. Live reporting was much
> harder than I expected so the whole thing would not have been possible if it
> hadn't been for all the efforts others put into writing Rwanda stories and I
> know it was hugely appreciated by people there, who are much more used to
> being ignored by the international community.

Now if only we could establish a permanent presence there .. One thing 
that might work is using cell phones to record reports, which are at 
least somewhat widespread in Africa. There's a project underway to make 
Wikipedia content available to Africans via cell phones (using 
text-to-speech and free callbacks), perhaps a similar approach could be 
used for Wikinews, both for recording and reading (listening to) news. 
Anyone interested in working on this - drop me a mail, and I'll put you 
in touch with the right people.

> I'm planning to write a report on what can be learnt from the experience in
> terms of access to technology, other problems, the usefulness of Wikinews in
> getting alternative voices heard and potential future ideas so will do that
> soon, hope it will be useful. Erik, if you could let me know when you're
> working on State of the Wiki I can try and get it to you before then?

Will be written and published in early July probably. I'm planning to do 
a little user survey again, and I'll contact you when I do that.

> Also, someone from the Boston Globe called me out there to talk about the
> conference & Wikinews (hopefully he also spoke to someone with rather more
> experience...) I think he was comparing WN with Ohmynews (?) so we'll see
> what he comes up with.

OhMyNews is probably the largest citizen journalism project (unless you 
count Indymedia as citizen journalism). I'm invited to a conference in 
Seoul this week to speak about Wikinews at the OhMyNews forum. I'll try 
to give you all an idea what these people are working on when I get back.

> I've been completely convinced of the value of WN over the past week and
> look forward to continued involvement!

Wonderful. It's great to have you on board.

Best,

Erik