Conference blogging and torture
I’ve started work on my project here in Thailand, a redo of OVCsupport.net. As the pull will be orchestrated through a group blog, one of HDN’s employees, Godsway (Twitter), is set to be the content administrator.
Years ago, I did some work in Ghana for Geekcorps, helping out the radio station JoyFM. Geekcorps was co-founded by Ethan Zuckerman, who made his fortune when selling Tripod, of which he was one of the big brains.
Now, he’s mostly a socially engaged blogger, with a strong interest for how modern technologies can benefit political processes in, particularly, developing nations. Recently, he’s been involved in creating Media Cloud, a platform to help researchers find quantitative answers to questions involving the extent of which and how new media contribute to the spread of news and information.
Earlier, together with Bruno Giussani, he wrote a short practical guide with Tips for conference bloggers.
Now, this would have been extremely practical for the Key Correspondents which HDN has been facilitating over the last few years.
My favorite remark from the guide:
Ideally, you should liveblog, which means that you write the post, and add the links, as the speaker is talking, and publish the post not later than 10 minutes after the speech or panel is over.
Ten minutes!
Godsway won’t be doing much conference blogging, but the emphasis on timeliness should be well taken. As it should for KCs in general.
Torture
I’m an avid follower of Craig Murray his blog. The former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, his first book brought to light the UK’s and US’ involvement in the oppressive and dictatorial regime in Uzbekistan.
Now, years later, he is preparing for his appearance before the Parliamentary Joint Human Rights Committee, where he’s supposed to give evidence of the UK government having known of and being complicit in the execution of torture.
Surprisingly, though by now well documented, this knowledge has only marginally entered the main stream.
This little blurb aims to give Murray a bit more coverage and, hopefully, contributes to his overall visibility.
You can find more information on his appearance before the committee, this Tuesday, at his website.