Once again, EvN Media is one of the coordinators of this annual event. The team is currently busy compiling the programme. We have made a first selection of speakers and projects that we will showcase but if you have any suggestions you are welcome to let us know. Our contact details are on the DCI website. Read our Concept Document for more information.

In 2009 EvN extended its practical skills on multiple media platforms, including mobile. Keeping up-to-date with new media technologies and social media is necessary to grow EvN into a company that keeps on the foreground of offering new media solutions to media companies and media projects. The year also presented many new insights with projects related to press freedom and digital activism.

2010

EvN in 2010 will keep on offering the friendly, quick and professional service you are used to. With the World Cup on the calendar it will be a more dynamic year and it is anticipated that EvN will this year work with new clients from all over the world.

EvN Media Solutions in 2010 will continue to offer the following services:

• multimedia productions of hard and soft news  from Southern Africa and The Netherlands
• editing of (South African) English and Dutch articles
• newsroom management during multimedia projects
• newsroom assistance
• academic research into new/ social/ mobile media
• lectures, workshop and master classes about new media/ social media/ journalism skills/ Southern Africa
• media consultancy & Southern Africa travel consultancy
• translating of text from (South African) English to Dutch
• …and much much more…

Please get in touch via our Contact page, we would love to hear from you!

All the best in 2010,

EvN – Media Solutions

DCI 4.0 PRESS RELEASE

The fourth Digital Citizen’s Indaba (DCI) takes place on 5 – 6 September at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa, just before the University’s annual Highway Africa conference. DCI is an annual event that brings together bloggers, online and mobile journalists, citizen reporters, new media practitioners, online industry experts and civil society representatives. The purpose of DCI is to encourage citizen participation in debate about the state of digital media, information sharing and skills transfer using experts in the field. It encourages the use of new media take-up by non-journalists.

THEME
The theme of this year’s DCI is ‘Digital civil society and journalism in Africa’. There has been an explosion of new media at civil society level. Issues around land rights and access to housing and water are finding their way into the digital public sphere. Violence monitoring by civil society has become easier, as mapping technology can be used to warn people about outbreaks of violence. Maps are being used to inform citizens about where to access medicines, and they may warn against shortages in access to essential treatment such as antiretrovirals. As a result of growing civil society usage of new media, mainstream media have a broader array of information to
draw on, and are able to take up issues that would not have otherwise have found their way into the public domain.

LINE-UP
The DCI line-up includes keynote speaker Dubissi Tande, a prolific blogger on African affairs, who will be speaking on the state of social justice digital media in Africa. Elia Varela Serra (Maneno.org) together with Bolivian Voices editor Eduardo Ávila Maneno will enlighten us on the ever pertinent topic of promoting indigenous languages in digital media. Another panel with Nthateng Mhlambiso (Behind the Mask) and Maureen Agena (Women of Uganda Network) focuses on gender, civil society and digital media.

Civil society’s use of mapping tools will be explored by Bobby Soriano (Tactical Tech), Brett Davidson (Stop Stockouts) and Ndesjano Macha (Global Voices). The ways in which technology can be used to promote activism around land, environment and health will be discussed with Stephan Hofstatter (freelance journalist), Peter Benjamin (Cell-Life), Ednah Karamagi (BROSDI) and Bobby Marie (Monitoring Action).

WORKSHOPS
DCI 4.0 this year offers six workshops to ensure that all delegates will, besides knowledge, take practical skills back home to assist communities with digital activism and social justice on a local level. The workshop titles are “Multimedia Tools for Journalism” (Peter Verweij, Hogeschool Utrecht), “Digital Voices to Reconstruct Communities” (Marlon Parker, CPUT), “Successful Podcasting” (Jayne Morgan, Podcart.co.za), “Mapping Tools for Civil Society Use” (Ndesanjo Macha, Global Voices), “Using Mobile Media for Social Change” (Peter Benjamin, Cell-Life) and “Bringing Down the Barriers with Interactive Audio Programming and Mobile Phones” (Brenda Burrell, Kubatana.net).

CONTACT US
Visit the DCI website (www.dcindaba.com) for live updates and more information.
You can also find us on Twitter: www.twitter.com/dcindaba or use #DCI09 to search for DCI Tweets. Contact the DCI team via the website or email to dcindaba@gmail.com.

This article was published just after I co-coordinated the Digital Citizen Indaba in Grahamstown, South Africa in September 2007.  It was a follow-up story, in 2006 I wrote about the South African blogosphere and commented about its invisibility.

Another update!

The third Digital Citizen Indaba in September 2008 was another great opportunity for African bloggers and new media workers to get together. We focused on creating and sustaining the African digital voice. Click here for the DCI 3.0 wrap up. You can find the presentations of all speakers on the same site.

Unfortunately Habtamu Dugo (Ethiopian blogger, lecturer, journalist, friend and old classmate) had to run from the oppressive regime in Ethiopia. I dearly wish him strength for the upcoming year.

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The article translated:

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The African blogosphere: it is time for an update

By Elvira van Noort

22 September 2007, Grahamstown, South Africa

It’s not easy to host and organise a blogging conference in Africa. Is there such a thing as a blogosphere in Africa and shouldn’t we concentrate on eradicating malaria or focus on protecting endangered mountain gorillas in Congo? Only during the second edition of the Digital Citizen Indaba it became clear what impact blogs have on the continent.

The Digital Citizen Indaba (DCI) took place in Grahamstown, South Africa on the 8th and 9th of September. The crème-de-la-crème of the African blogosphere, numerous Internet professionals, and media workers converged to discuss topics running from Web 2.0 to blogs in rural areas and from cyberactivism to monetising your blog.

But did the African blogosphere really change since last years’ DCI?

Arthur Goldstuck from the South African Internet research company World Wide Worx argues that it did. By the end of August he counted 25 037 South African blogs. To explain this phenomenon Goldstuck refers to the launch of five webtools that simplify the lives of bloggers and readers of blogs. The first one is Afrigator, the first-ever African blog aggregator on the continent. The launch of Amatomu and My Digital Life, both South African blog trackers, and the start of the new daily The Times newspaper that uses multi-media and social network tools are the other tools. There was also a rise in the number of South Africans on Facebook: from 80 000 at the end of June to 244 000 on the 5th of September.

A more practical example of the impact of blogs in South Africa was given by Guy Berger, Head of the School of Journalism at Rhodes University in Grahamstown. During his presentation at DCI he referred to a blogger who published a list of prominent South Africans on his weblog and stated that he had sex with them when he worked as a sexworker.

The story turned out to be a lie but within a week newspapers, online news websites and the blogosphere were writing about it. What we couldn’t think of a year ago now happened: a South African blogger faced criminal charges and a member of parliament shouted that the South African blogosphere needs to be regulated. This takes South Africa down a long dark path of the old endless discussion: how to regulate information on the Internet? And what are bloggers allowed or not allowed to publish?

Changes across the continent

Besides the obvious changes in the South African blogosphere the rest of the continent is also moving. There are still many challenges but most delegates and speakers at this years’ DCI are positive.

Remmy Nweke, senior ICT journalist in Nigeria, argues that “prices of owning a personal computer and other Internet tools continue to reduce and more and more journalists grasp the opportunity of blogging to increase local content on the continent”. Nweke gives his own blog as an example.

The situation is different in Ethiopia. Habtamu Dugo, a lecturer from Ethiopia, explains that there is still a filtering regime in place. “Because of the filtering system Ethiopians don’t have access to numerous popular blogs and news websites”. Dugo blogs anonymously because of the press freedom restrictions he encounters.

Blogging in kiSwahili

KiSwahili, an African language spoken in fifteen countries, has found itself a place in the African blogosphere. It was not a point of discussion at last years’ DCI but this year Ansbert Ngumuro from Free Media explain clarifies its importance: “it makes blogs accessible to around 100 million people who all speak kiSwahili, most of them do not master English or French”. Examples of kiSwahili blogs are Ngumuro’s and Ndesanjo Macha’s from Global Voices Online.

A list of the speakers and their presentations is available on the DCI website.