Category Archives: Proposal Discussions

GV – Filming our posts

10 Replies

My proposal is referred to how to increase our presence and use of video.

The intention is to create  Global Voices own videos through agreements with small independent video producers (individuals and organizations) in Spanish speaking countries. So these producers would be in charge of creating audiovisual material per request (Us specifying the subject and other requirements for the video).

The process of creating and publishing own video material through the alliance of Global Voces and video producers allows to include citizens’ voices from unrepresented communities or sectors on (and off) the internet and record their opinions about a specific matter, differently from the text.

The videos would be produced fortnightly (each time in a different country) as a base for GV articles. Articles that will be especially written by our authors from those countries.

Thus, our content will be dynamized and will feed our YouTube channel in order to enrich its image and attract new audiences.

Furthermore, to attract people interested in video production, a citizen video contest will be held during the project.

The project covers GV’s lack of own audiovisual material that would facilitate using  the whole potential video has in informing and spreading content through platforms such as Youtube.

The idea of the project can be replicated on other sites of Global Voices, and so the whole community can be involved and also contribuye with the sustainability and its continuance in time, sharing the produced videos and proposing alliances with other smaill video producters.

If this proposal is chosen, at the end of its period I will publish a Guide with its procedures and experiences as a way to help duplicate it in others GV sites, and to stablish a long term plan.

GV Music

13 Replies

How about doing to Music what we have done to Social Media. I am thinking of a GV Music where authors/editors can publish reviews for underground bands from their countries,  not only reviews, but we can also integrate SoundCloud (or YouTube) in there and publish those music. I am focusing on underground music here, coz on one hand they need publicity, compared to mainstream music they are what blog are compared to MSM. Also, most probably those artists will be releasing their music under copyleftist licenses. We can also do interviews with musicians,  compilation for new releases, etc.

Well, it’s just a crazy idea, but why not explore new fields we aren’t into and see how things will develop?

 

Proofreaders…

10 Replies

Another old idea that I think is very important: We need a group of people to assist the editors of different regions in proofreading our posts. I think this will improve the quality of the site.

Once more, I don’t know how much it would cost. I guess it will be the equivalent of a part time job given to a group of expert readers. Could be students in the final years of languages, or people with experience in editing.

What do you think?

A place for voices describing the world’s cultures

6 Replies

This is an idea I’ve proposed already. Some of you might remember a bit of this: I proposed to devote a part of the site to the posts that we have tagged, so far, as «Culture». As a goal, I had the mental image of a site a bit like Advocacy, which is separate but not independent, gathering the posts we have written (and will write) on these subjects. I thought it might not be a bad idea to re-propose this, given the opportunity that this innovation grant has opened for discussion.

The first time we discussed this (It was during the Budapest Summit) we ended up agreeing that we should encourage more posts describing conversations about «culture». Nevertheless, I think we could do a bit more than that. There are lots and lots of conversations, debates and also conflicts with cultural differences and misunderstandings as a base, and that we’re missing because they fall into the big sac of the issues that are important, but not really that much.

The main reason is the conception we tend to have (especially from the newsroom point of view) of culture, and I think the tag we have would be the first proof of this. We put these articles under «arts and culture» which are not related close enough to make a single tag out of it. We think that culture has to do with classics, arts and literature. And to some extend, they do make part of that. But it’s also about how people live, think and behave in different given situations. A great point was made during the Summit in Santiago (If I remember well, it was Tsavvko’s point) : it is important to observe what do we think culture really is.

Continue reading →

Social News Gathering

2 Replies

This idea’s aim is twofold: improve our news gathering and better engage readers.

Global Voices would provide a platform (open to everyone who has a verifiable email) that allows the following:

  • Readers to suggest story ideas
  • Authors to pitch story ideas (their own, or inspired by readers’ suggestions)
  • Editors to select story ideas to be developed for Global Voices
  • Readers to add to the ideas in production (sending links to blog posts, social media mentions, and updates, if they are on the ground, as well as their own creative commons licensed videos, photos, audio, content – by submitting it, it would be CC could be part of the terms and conditions)
  • Readers to vote which stories they want to read (or we should prioritise).

Other features (many of these would be automated):

Continue reading →

micro-proposal: A wiki for online activism and social media around the world

3 Replies

Premise: I really want this idea to come true, but sadly I don’t have enough time to make it happen. If anyone is interested in this idea and pick it up as a real proposal, thank you very much.

Basic idea: A wiki runs like Wikipedia, but exclusively for online activism and social media sphere around the world.

More detail: Like Wikitravel for travel. Not everyone can easily understand a country’s latest online buzz if one have no background knowledge of the country. Most of the time we add limited information in the first paragraph in GV articles, but I think it is not enough.

Continue reading →

Proposal: GV media publishing

9 Replies

Since its inception in December 2004, GV published a huge amount of material on a variety of topics, countries and languages. To date, just the GV English sites alone total over 75,000 posts long and many more have been published on each of the localized sites. Those archives are an important historical and cultural treasure and deserve broader dissemination, thus advancing GV’s mission of fostering “voices that are not ordinarily heard in international mainstream media.”

We should take advantage of the themes we’ve already covered, re-packaging and re-proposing our archived multimedia content, after a proper search of relevant posts/materials across countries, topics, languages. We could create electronic books, dossier and topic publications in a variety of formats (pdf, html, epub, mobipocket, etc.), containing a collection of the best posts/material, preceded by an ad-hoc introduction or short essay(s) to provide the proper context. In time we can build a unique catalog focused on citizen and social media material to be distributed/used on many occasions and in many venues. For example, we could create right away a “Global Voices 2011” or an “Arab Spring Voices” ebook including best posts on these topics already published on GV, enriching and adapting them accordingly.

Continue reading →

Innovation Grant Guidelines

4 Replies

Dear GV Community –

Do you have an idea for a project or tool that would help enhance Global Voices’ work or mission? Do you need support in making that idea become a reality?

The four-year grant we received from Omidyar Network in 2010 includes funding to support innovative ideas coming from our community members that could advance the mission of Global Voices. We are launching our first round of internal innovation awards to support this innovation, and invite members of the GV community to propose projects. We expect to award three or four grants in this first round. Each award will be for a maximum of US$5,000. We expect to hold at least one more round of innovation awards in 2012.

Continue reading →