neweurasia Barcamp Almaty 2009

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Transcript of neweurasia Barcamp Almaty 2009

Page 1: neweurasia Barcamp Almaty 2009
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Who are we?

• Founded in 2005 by US and EU students to report from and on Central Asia;

• Original principle: one country, one blog; main site as the « hub »;

• Teamed up with Transitions Online in 2006, employed « bridge bloggers » - paid bloggers who head the country sections;

• Hivos and OSI as the initial funders.

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Successes

• Steady news flow, increasing visitor numbers, launch of Russian and Kazakh/Kyrgyz/Uzbek/Tajik language versions;

• Blocked in Uzbekistan since summer 2006;• Altogether 50 training sessions, seminars and

conferences held in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, reaching 600+ people;

• Best Blog contest, specific country highlights, mainstream media attention.

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• Training sessions

• Traffic

Unique pageviews May 2007 – July 2008

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• International audience

• Kazakhstan blogs dominant

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• Current technological limits– Multi-install Wordpress hard to maintain;– Few (useful) «Web 2.0» features;– No clear navigation between languages;– How can we highlight the various forms of content we

have?

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Current conceptual problems• Are we a blog? A news-site? A webzine?• Who do we publish for? Central Asia or Europe/US?• What’s our editorial mission?• How can we make sure there is real dialogue between the

readerships?• How can we retain our position as the «region’s premier

blogging network»? • Do we want to «spin off» successful local language blogs into

separate and independent projects?

• Finally, where will we be in one year’s time?

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• Reinventing neweurasia.net– New one-installation Wordpress blog hub uniting

all different country sections;– More «newsy» look, clear hierarchy of stories;– New theme-based navigation;– Better and cleaner photo, video and podcast

integration;

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Reinventing our place online

• New site design heralds change towards more «quality blogging» - originally researched stories along with exclusive photo and video content;

• Hiring of two editors (English, Russian) to guide bloggers;• Better integration with established media by developing

stories out of blog posts, offering monetary and development rewards to bloggers;

• Citizen media as a fast, (more) democratic, cost-effective, yet quality «alternative» to mainstream media;

• More translations mean more flow of information between the different audiences.

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• Showcasing the potential of «quality» citizen media by compiling and editing a book of 60-odd best posts

• Further monitoring of the local blogospheres and cooperation with Global Voices

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Challenges along the way• Funding realities (Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan), short

cycles;• Sustainability – no money no content (neweurasia started as

a volunteer project)?• Relaunch harder than thought (5,000 stories, 10,000+

comments, pictures, etc. – big and technically challenging database migration);

• Generational change at helm of neweurasia: Rejuvenation, new ideas – change is hard!

• Reaching out to Central Asian bloggers;• Is there room to grow?