In this first encounter we mainly had a conversation about expectations and possibilities regarding the citizen media training process. We also left with them a video camera and a stills camera so they could register their impressions of the Easter Week, the reinterpretation of it, the new practices and their implications. For the next meeting, we will begin the training part of the workshop, working upon the audiovisual material they will have prepared for us.

Diverseres has been working for the past two years in topics geared to other young people like them in their community. Their work has been around raising awareness among the youth in their community regarding sexuality, drug addiction and ecology. Now, with the use of online tools they are expectant of being able to publish  online accounts of their activities, promote their efforts through the internet and extend the results to other youth groups in  their town.

During our first meeting we were immersed in friendly and enriching conversation which made us think of the great stories that might come from such a vital group. In the meantime, we are satisfied by the enthusiasm which we felt during the first meeting and excited to become a part of the lives of Juan David, Dalia, Carolina, Catalina, Miguel, Dilan, Jhonny, Germán and all the other kids who will be working along with HiperBarrio.

OnMarch 7th and 8th the Digital Culture  Festival in Medellín took place, Medelink 2008 [ES] . We were there representing our project. The main objective we drew for our presence there was to bring more people into our project of sharing knowledge with as many people as possible.

Two whole days standing behind a table, where some participants from previous workshops talked about their experiences and motivated others to join our network. AS a result, we know have a database where we have collected  a good number of people willing to be either facilitators or give workshops, and others who are interested in taking the workshops themselves and help the hiperbarrio family grow.

We also met with people belonging to local innitiatives who expressed the desire to join this project which bit by bit has stopped belonging to us and know belongs to everyone. We already have scheduled appointments with these organizations to see how we can work with their needs and what will be the steps to follow.

After this event, we are left with a positive balance regarding expectations and achievements. We need to look towards the future which will surely also bring great satisfaction to those of us who believe that we are doing useful, worthy and worthwhile work.

To each and everyone who has expressed their support, to those who volunteered, to those who are waiting to be a part of this process, to the Medelink organizers and the HiperBarrio team who were those two days telling their stories in person: Thanks!

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More about the event:

• Medelink va por buen camino [ES] [Víctor Solano]
• Top 10 Medelink 2008[ES] [La Rana Berden]
• Reflexiones post Medelink ¡Cultura libre y viva! [ES] [Carolina Botero]
• Después de Medelink [ES] [Medea]
• Medelink 2008 [ES] [Patton]
• Musicatosis en Medelink [ES] [Mancho]
• Tras la primavera de las blogs [medelink] [ES] [Cristóbal Cobo]

This community presentation also opened other doors: la Redecom, the alternative media network has approached us and they´re interested in working with us to jumpstart the network and give the members proper citizen media training and a better online presence.

Learning how to use flickr during the BPP workshop.

This week, David Sasaki, Director of Outreach for Global Voices, and the person behind Rising Voices, has been giving a couple of workshops in the Pilot Public Library. The first one, yesterday, had to do with opening a flickr account and uploading pictures, as well as joining groups, and David created one specifically for the workshop, adding notes, placing pictures on a map and commenting on other pictures. Today´s workshop will be a continuation of yesterday´s, where participants will learn how to edit pictures with picnik.Next week, we have two important meetings: on one with we will also meet with Medellín Digital, a government effort to improve computer literacy and to check out if we can participate in their annual fair in February, the other one is with Medelink, who organizes a yearly digital culture festival during March, and in which we hope to participate.

Hiperbarrio is growing, and it´s great to see how far we´ve come.