Between 15th and 17th of October 2008, Barcelona will host a seminar entitled "Sociedad Red: Cambios sociales, organizaciones y ciudadanos" (Net Society: Social changes, organizations and citizens), and the program is quite impressive. It includes highly reputed foreign speakers -such as Carol Darr, Tom Steinberg or David Weinberger- but  also well-known Spanish academics as Juan Freire or Enrique Dans. I could mention all of the lecturers, as all of them deserve it, but my special bet is on Ethan Zuckerman.

For those who do not know him, Zuckerman is a researcher at Berkman Center for Internet and  Society, a nostalgic of Africa and a brilliant analyst of technology effects on society and politics. As I do not like the word guru, I prefer to describe him here as "a champion of technologies for Worldchanging": this professor/activist is always searching for ways to boost international development with the help of the Net. One of his main goals consists on building a real worldwide conversation online,  without political borders, social cliches or economic discriminations. And with that purpose in mind he is not afraid of writing critical, consistent posts which honestly remind that we still have to work hard for a perfect cyberspace.

With the present boom of data visualization tools, it might be appropiated to remember that Zuckerman presented the project "Global Attention Profiles" (GAP) already in 2003. It consists on a set of maps documenting the attention traditional media pay to the different countries of the World. GAP are automatically updated every day and allow a constant comparison between analogic publications' and new digital outlets' preferences. From 2003 to 2008, some problems seem to remain constant: for example, media tend to report more thoroughly on rich nations than on poor ones. And new digital contents only partially correct the trend.

Zuckerman uses to post about visualization techniques. Recently, he described fresh innovations in the field of political blogosphere architecture and perception (see below Anthony Hamelle's "influence graph" of the U.S. conservative red vs. liberal blue blogosphere). Hopefully we will have a bit of that in the ambitious seminar of Barcelona, which has been organised by the Center Ernest Lluch (the arm of the prestigious Menéndez Pelayo International University in Catalonia).

Via | Genís Roca

Pocas cosas pueden sonar tan bien como el siguiente encuentro: este verano, Global Voices se acerca a Europa y celebra un congreso en Budapest. Estarán todos los que han impulsado este increíble proyecto, que exprime al máximo las posibilidades del periodismo ciudadano comprometido con los derechos humanos. Cada vez se escriben más cosas sobre él desde España, especialmente a raíz de la visita a Vilanova de Georgia Popplewell.

Lo mejor, como explica Rebecca, es que no se trata de una cita exclusiva sino abierta a todos: blogueros, no blogueros, periodistas, activistas...

¿Estarás allí? Cuéntanoslo.

 Vía |Global Voices

Spain has a set of international journalists highly qualified for assignments abroad. If there were any doubts, most recent wars highlighted their professionalism and courage. Some of them (many, always too many) even lost their lives in avoidable conflicts.

However, there are not many congresses devoted to international journalism in Spanish schools of Communication. With some honourable exceptions. The University of Malaga is one of them (or it was, with a summer symposium on foreign correspondents hold in Estepona). And now, Segovia will host a congress entitled "El periodismo en lo global" (free translation: "Journalism in the global sphere").

Last year, Cirilo Rodriguez Journalist Award went to Rosa María Calaf, a popular foreign correspondent with an extensive career in Asia. She will receive the prize during the sessions. Among other institutions, three universities endorse the event: IE-Universidad, Universidad de Valladolid and UNED. The entrance is free. 

Aurelio Martin, a well-known Segovian journalist, will coordinate the conferences. Follow this link, cause the schedule speaks for itself...

I always believed in the power of cinema to teach things. Sometimes, dissections of the most difficult concept or explanations about the most complicated conflict reach the mind of the students much better by discussing a related film.

Next summer, the University of Leon will organize a course to learn Spanish by cinema. Besides watching some appealing movies, students will learn specific Spanish terms used in the film & video making industry and will produce their own short film. It might be a good initiative to reduce traditional stereotypes, to promote national cinema and to expand new Spanish words abroad, besides the most related to us: "siesta" and "fiesta" ().

Moreover, attendees will enjoy Ponferrada, a very nice village in the Northwest of the country, along the Way of St James (Camino de Santiago). A course to discover "the other Spain".

En vez de quejarnos de que no nos toca nada, una cosa que hacemos muy a menudo y especialmente en Navidad, deberíamos gastar nuestra energía participando en todas las convocatorias que nos interesen.

Esta tiene buena pinta: es el I Concurso Internacional para vídeos ciudadanos que ha organizado Alternative Channel. Hay que enviar un corto sobre un tema que nos apasione de entre 90 segundos y 6 minutos (un reportaje, una entrevista...). Y después, a esperar: el premio es de 8.000 euros.  

Gracias, David.