2007 Kairos Awards

Interview with Solana Larsen and David Sasaki confirmed

e mërkurë, 13 qershor 2007

Solana Larsen (right), co-managing editor of Global Voices, the blog currently rated as the top semifinalist in the 2007 Kairos Awards, has agreed to engage in an online text chat with us on Tuesday, June 19, from 1:30-1:45 p.m. ET. Solana is a Danish-Puerto Rican journalist and activist, who lives in New York. In addition to serving as the the (new) co-managing editor of Global Voices, she also is an editor with openDemocracy.net. Her personal blog is solanasaurus.com and she blogs in Danish about technology at blogbyblog.dk.

Joining Solana for the chat will be David Sasaki, Global Voices' outreach director (left). David has been a blogger since 2003, and has lived, worked, and traveled throughout most of Latin America. He blogs in both Spanish and English with two other friends at El Oso, El Moreno, and El Abogado. Read more about Global Voices' outreach projects here at David's home page at Global Voices.

Special thanks to Georgia Popplewell, co-managing editor of Global Voices, for helping to arrange this exciting opportunity.

Kairos Award interview with Solana Larsen
6/19/07, 1:40 PM

KAIROS AWARD (KA): Thanks so much for joining us, and congratulations on your blog's qualification for the final round of the Kairos Award evaluation process.
SOLANA LARSEN (SL): Thanks for having me.

KA: The students are here in class, being held in the University of Pittsburgh's Cathedral of Learning, the western world's tallest academic building! We are all tracking the conversation on a projector, and look forward to the conversation. Before we proceed, we wanted to ask if you feel comfortable having us post the text of this exchange on our weblog. Is this okay?
SL: Of course.

KA: Are you ready to proceed with the first question?
SL: Shoot (Hi everyone)

KA: What inspired creation of the blog?
SL: Well, Ethan and Rebecca who started Global Voices, realised a few years ago that for all the popularity of blogs, most bloggers in the West weren't reaching out to the rest of the world, in spite of the promise of the world wide web connecting everyone... etc. So they decided to create Global Voices in order to make stories from around the world more accessible to other bloggers and western media.

KA: Has the purpose of your blog changed over time?
SL: It's about breaking language barriers and bring people together. It always has been - you know we're all connected... and really not all that different from one another, but you don't really know it before you hear the daily musings... of say, and Iraqi teenager talking about her school day or a Japanese blogger talking about his pension anxiety or a Sudanese aid worker explaining what it's like to be living in a war zone.

KA: What is one goal that you hope your blog accomplishes in the next five years?
SL: Our community is growing, right now about 80 volunteer bloggers contribute stories from around the world. It's good for people to be reading and understanding each other more, I think the goal over time is to break through to more mainstream media.... get more coverage for issues from places in the world that tend to be ignored. We've started delivering RSS feeds to the Reuters Africa website, and that's the kind of thing we want to do more of becoming supplementary to the news race, providing more texture and depth.

KA: Who are your target audiences?
SL: If you look at our stats, the readers are all over the world, the comments too. Right now there is discussion on the site between filippinos on education, and on ethiopians on politics. We want people everywhere to take an interest in world politics and learn from each others failures and successes.

KA: How often do you delete comments?
SL: Deleting comments, almost never. We moderate all new commentors and occassionally there is some offensive stuff, but rarely - mostly we end up deleting spam, spam, spam.

KA: Has your blog had a real-world impact in shaping politics?
SL: I think so - we're just now beginning to hand out microgrants to people around the world who have ideas for citizen media projects. The deadline was last week - we're giving out $5000 grants to 4 projects this month and more projects soon.

KA: Yes, last class period we were looking at David's programs
SL: We've helped dozens of bloggers become stronger and more confident and we are directing traffic to hundreds of blogs who otherwise would be ignored by most of the world. David has received more than 100 applications and we have about 40,000 visitors a day from around the world, and it adds up to a significant amount of traffic over months/years, touching lots of people.

KA: Thanks so much for your time, Solana. You have been very informative, and you type EXTREMELY fast! In closing, is there anything else you would like to add?
SL: I would like to congratulate you in your work to look at all this stuff - it's really important to be watching and learning - if you discover anything interesting we look forward to hearing from you!! Keep in touch, all of you, and thanks.

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