PBwiki on the move

‘Making a wiki is as easy as making a peanut butter sandwich’, is the slogan of the company PBwiki. This week founder David Weekly visited an ICCO meeting as a keynote speaker. The Peanut Butter metaphor will not last much longer because in a few months time this name will be changed. Better integration in the desktop, use of spreadsheets and calender will be included in the new version; formerly known as PBwiki.

The meeting started with a handful development organisations – ICCO, IICD and Euforic – giving a short presentation of the way they use PBwiki in their daily work. Some organisations even integrated PBwiki in their intranet to make individual and collaborative planning, reporting, communicating, documenting and supporting easier. This was a gathering of enthusiastic wiki users. Of course the co workers who are less happy in using on line tools did not attend the meeting.

When does it work? You need:

- to focus on the need —-and deliver

- a simple structure

- manage access levels

- initiators, collaborators and audience

- timely support

We work smarter together; is David Weekly’s philosophy. He chatted about the start of PBwiki – he wrote it in a few hours – about the current situation and future business plans. He shared some wiki tips and emphasized the importance of privacy: all data uploaded is encrypted and saved on servers at three locations. Some of his clients – amongst others the Royal Bank of Scotland, FedEx and the Financial Times – are dealing with highly confidential stuff. You own your data, according to David.

Wiki’s will not do the work for you. One of the speakers talked of the parallel with gardening; a wiki does need attention and maintenance. Only then it will pay of, look nice and make people happy. Just like a garden does.

Watch the videoclip of the PB Wiki meeting

Content versus tech

The end of the year means conference time. Last week I attended two. The first about Internet Governance (IGF) and the other about media development (GFMD). What struck me most was that Hivos was the only organization attending both congresses.  The world of infrastructure, technology on one hand and the world of content on the other hand still seem to be very separate worlds. The Internet exists at least twenty years and still a deep river runs between the two.

Internet is pre-eminently a medium that combines both; the best content of the world is worthless without a solid and stable communication and distribution technology behind it. To fully profit from the possibilities the Internet offers, content people have to work closely together with the technies, not only on micro level – in editorial teams – but also on governance level.

Athens was burning

My first two days in Athens felt surreal. Here we are, staying in a posh hotel, attending a congress on media (Global Forum for Media Development) with 450 media people. Meanwhile a few blocks away thousands of Greeks were demonstrating and fighting with the police.

Few people wanted to involve, one of them was Sameer, hub manager at Witness.org. He went out to have a look at the riots in the old city and shoot some video. Afterwards he showed me the material and his Flip camera; magnificent in its simplicity, quality and price.

I went for a walk to the centre on my third day in Athens (Wednesday 10 Dec). First I went to the Parliament building.  At 12.30 hr. the demonstration was forced to spread. For this the police mainly used tear gas.  Nasty stuff.  The demonstrators looked like average citizens (students but also older people, white collars ect). They could well  belong to the ‘Generation 700′; well educated people in their twenties and thirties with a monthly income of about 700 euro’s. That might be enough ten years ago but this is definitely not the case any more.

The scene I still remember clearly – without taking a picture – was the young boy crying on the pavement, leaning against a window.  Some people were helping him, to get the tear gas out of his face by blowing cigarette smoke in his eyes. The ten year old happened to be on the wrong place when the police starting firing the tear gas.

I continued walking to the Athens Polytech that was taken over by students and other youngsters. It is located about 500 metres from the Parliament.  The Polytech has a history regarding uprising. Wednesday the situation at the University looked grim; many black clothes and gas masks, some hollow looking junkies at the entrance  and big speakers blasting out loud punk rock music. The surrounding streets were a complete mess; everything that was inflammable – cars, trees and houses – was burned.

What always surprises me in this kind of situations;  the way ordinary life continues.  Also in Athens men continued doing their shopping, women kept selling cookies even when the police turned up behind their back, lots of people went for a walk in the old city centre during their lunch break. And of course, the taxi driver did not want to drive me back to the hotel (2 km) for less than 20 euro. No way buddy.

The Greek do not trust their government; corruption is said to be wide spread and the investments in the Greek society are insufficient; in health, in welfare and especially on education.  Of course, the concept of democracy is never finished and needs constant maintenance. Because times, yes they are changing. But it is ironic to see the country that invented democracy in such a troubled state.

Independent Greek paper Kathimerini; English edition

The Economist; Rioters without Frontiers

BBC on Greece; including peaceful protests

IDFA after talk

My favourites for the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) are this year:

Burma VJ; winner of the Joris Ivens Award and the ‘Movies That Matter’ Human Rights Award and also my number one.

Afghan Star; how about the tv programme Idols in Afghanistan? A film  about national roadshow in search of Afghanistan next big star.

When Carmen meets Borat; Carmen is 17 years old and lives in Glod; a small gypsy village somewhere in the Romanian mountains. She works daily in the shop and pub of her father. But Carmen dreams of a future somewhere else; somewhere she can find her ideal husband and lead a fantastic and rich life. She watches Spanish soap operas on TV and learns Spanish. When a man named Borat and his film crew appear; the villagers cooperate on what they believe will be a documentary.

Rough Aunties; “Fearless, feisty and resolute, the ‘Rough Aunties’ are a remarkable group of women unwavering in their stand to protect and care for the abused, neglected and forgotten children of Durban, South Africa.”

The Queen and I;  ‘Whereas during the Iranian Revolution in the late seventies the leftist documentary-maker Nahid Persson helped depose the shah the Iranian king. In reaction to these reprimands, Nahid decides to make a film about the last Iranian queen Farah, who lives abroad, like herself. This leads to a fascinating encounter of two women with clashing political visions, who develop an improbable friendship in the two years of their association’

Waltz with Bashir

Last night we viewed this animation documentary in Rialto, a cosy and pleasant cinema in our neighbourhood. I can be short: Waltz with Bashir is impressive. The combination of documentary and animation is a very effective way to visualize personal experiences, in this case in war situations. The film is situated in Libanon. Although it shows more about Israel and its country’s politics in the 80’s.

Walz with Bahir tells the story through the eyes of young soldiers.  A former army friend tells Ari Folman about his recurrent nightmare in which he again is a soldier in the Israeli army.  They were both 19 years when they witnessed a mass killing in the Libanese refugee camps Sabra and Shatila in Beirut.  In a combination of comics and videogames the films shows the madness and confusion of the war. When you are in the opportunity; go and see this film. Other people will have to do with the beautiful website: Waltz with Bashir.