A Call to Action
NOTE: The Wiki for The WeMedia Call to Action is now available. Click here to learn more.Listen to the session: Call to Action | The We Media Global Initiative
Moderated by William C. Weiss (Media Center) and Andrew Nachison (Media Center), with Jeff Belk (QUALCOMM), Jean-Marie Colombani (Le Monde), Graeme Ferguson (Vodafone), Scott Heiferman (Meetup), Dr. Paul Jacobs (QUALCOMM, pre-taped), Katherine von Jan (Infinia)Download MP3s: Part 1 | Part 2
In addition to providing a forum for people who normally don’t have a chance to interact, and as many tools as we can to enable those interactions, The Media Center is also focused on cultivating real, actionable goals to derive from its events and forums. The following is a draft from a Wiki established to help assist in that effort:
The Situation
The media plays a key role in discovering, explaining and distributing information essential to informed self-government and to fostering engaged, knowledgeable citizenship. The internet, wireless networks, and widely available mobile technologies now allow ordinary citizens not only to consume media but to create, share, aggregate, remix and redistribute it – to BE media. Ordinary people, as well as institutions that were once thought of something other than media, are now direct participants in the media, increasing their power to communicate with each other and to hold governments to account.
The Ambition
To harness the power of information technologies and human ingenuity for the common good, we propose a worldwide We Media Global Initiative to invest in bottom-up media. The initiative will connect and inspire individuals and organizations to take action – to materially do something – to give voice to marginalised groups, to encourage government accountability in all countries and to help people not only access but productively apply and derive knowledge from the extraordinary volumes of information distributed throughout the connected society. It is also designed to create and incubate business and donor networks to sustain the initiative into the future.
The Model
The initiative is built around formal and informal collaboration between committed individuals and institutions at a local, national and global level. To utilise the benefits of digital media, the initiative will focus on promoting its activities through the web, but will also use face-to-face training and knowledge sharing events to complement the internet efforts. The initiative will benefit from knowledge and networks of professional and non-professional media producers, as well as technical and financial experts, companies, policy makers, non-governmental organizations and other supporters.
The Initiative will seek to tap into the shared knowledge, collective intelligence and capabilities of a wide range of professionals and industries, including: journalism, advertising, public relations, marketing, entertainment, finance, telecommunications, research, retail, healthcare, technology, philanthropy, NGOs, social activism, policy and academia.
All will benefit from exposure to one another through the Initiative.
The model for investment will include:
Make A Pledge
1. TIMEBANK
2. FUNDING
- Fund a training course
- Fund an online service
- Fund an event
- Fund WMN administration, investment, research and development and projects
3. TECHNICAL KIT
- Digital cameras
- PCs
- Mobile devises
- Etc.
4. AIRTIME/DISTRIBUTION
- Commit airtime and other means to distribute WMN content
We Media Global Forum participants will be committing their time and energy to specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and tangible goals in support of this call to action. We invite you to use the comments section of this entry to join us in tthis effort.
TAG: wemedia
Previous Comments
Katy has posted a starter list of what she wants to see the MSM recognize as they think about the Call to Action.
Point #2. FUNDING
who’s doing the transparency here.. is there any at all? or rather how’s the transparency of the funing being approached?
thank you.
In the Technical Kit there should be recommendations on what software to use, especially on what freeware & open source software.
From Influencing, Informing, thru Living are all nice; more helpful would be:
We Support — with free, high quality advice on free, high quality softwared.
Free Voice to Text SW would be nice, too. So more conversations could be saved and referenced later with text search.
I am a Nigerian journalist and journalism teacher who has been trying to understand what online journalism is all about. I’ve been receiving mail regularly from WE MEDIA and it is helping me to understand mult
imedia and online journalism,blogging and such other concepts.But I’m still not savvy about it all. Is there a kind of short term training you can organize or recommed for me, because I’m eager to tell my students about the new developments in journalism.Thank you.
Mudathir,
No training program could possibly be better than keeping an open mind and just diving into the online world: start your own blog and/or play with the social networking tools available for free or very little cost, join discussion lists or start your own, identify some of your favorite Web sites that address the issues you’re most interested in. Here’s an example of what one multimedia professor did with his class:
For an overview, read The Media Center’s seminal We Media report.
the best opportunies at WE Media
It is heartening to see a community develop around the needs of those of us who, while for the most part dwell at the ‘bottom of the pyramid, are thinking, acting bi-pedal humanoids. I am reminded of a few line of the great protest song, ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ by Arlo which has remained one on my own mantras -
‘And friends, somewhere in Washington enshrined in some little folder, is a
study in black and white of my fingerprints. And the only reason I’m
singing you this song now is cause you may know somebody in a similar
situation, or you may be in a similar situation, and if your in a
situation like that there’s only one thing you can do and that’s walk into
the shrink wherever you are ,just walk in say “Shrink, You can get
anything you want, at Alice’s restaurant.”. And walk out. You know, if
one person, just one person does it they may think he’s really sick and
they won’t take him. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony,
they may think they’re both faggots and they won’t take either of them.
And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in
singin a bar of Alice’s Restaurant and walking out. They may think it’s an
organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day,I said
fifty people a day walking in singin a bar of Alice’s Restaurant and
walking out. And friends they may thinks it’s a movement.’
[Ref:- http://www.arlo.net/lyrics/alices.shtml [©1966,1967 (Renewed) by Appleseed Music Inc. All Rights Reserved.]]
It is therefor my hope that what we have here is a movement
Regards
Martin G. Smith
