Archives for March 2010

The winner of the SuperPower film competition "My World" has been announced. Here the Executive Producer of the competition, SImon Pitts explains why it was held now and what made the winner stand out.

"Great! I needed a camera" said the winning film-maker Frederico Teixeira de Sampayo. He was on his mobile phone in Madrid, Spain. He said his (very) old camera has broken and so this came in time.

Frederico's film "Wash Rinse and Spin" is beautifully simple. You watch as a finger switches on a washing machine and dirty laundry starts to rinse. Then you notice Frederico's reflection in the shiny door of the machine. He sits and watches the hypnotic rhythm. The rest of the story is told in on-screen text as Frederico ponders what one can do to get a job in recession. It's visually neat, smart and relevant.

We launched MyWorld in January at the Sundance Film Festival. The idea was to ask all our TV and radio audiences to make a mini documentary about their world - to share a story they think the world should see. It caught on. As an enthusiastic blogger on the BBC's Global Minds audience panel put it: "I really like it.... You're creating a mosaic of humanity". Somehow that description nails it beautifully. Through all these stories that we received and the ones that are shortlisted by our curators, we get access to places we could never see and stories we would never know about.

It's interesting how often the same themes come up in people's films. With over 500 films from everywhere, people clearly share similar concerns. Or at least the ones with cameras do. We had films detailing local environmental issues - about a diseased fish in Canada, about environmental damage in the beautiful Galapagos. There were plenty of stories about children's suffering in poorer economies, about dreams of freedom in Iran and plenty of stories of recession from the USA.

We're currently in the edit suite putting some of the best films together to be shown on BBC World News this weekend. And we'll get them up online at the MyWorld web pages next week.

Even a year ago a worldwide competition such as this would not have been possible.

Advances in camera technology on mobile phones, and improvements in editing software mean that access to storytelling is pretty much open to all.

MyWorld has turned this small corner of the BBC into an editor and curator of your ideas and stories. I'm sure that there will be more.

Simon Pitts, Executive Producer, MyWorld

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As part of the BBC Superpower season bbcrussian.com set up a blog called Open Access. Disabled people from Samara, a town on the river Volga, agreed to write a dairy describing their experience on the internet. Anna Vissens of bbcrussian has compiled some of their entries.

Igor Glushenkov

There is lots of information on the internet - some of it is useful, interesting and truthful, some of it - pretty horrific. Take for instance an article published by a popular Russian newspaper which proposes to eliminate children born with a disability right in the maternity ward.

I have lived with cerebral palsy for 50 years and have heard so much nonsense that I have stopped paying attention.

But then the other day I got a call from a friend, also living with cerebral palsy. She tearfully told me that an article had been published proposing to kill disabled people.

She was unimpressed by my arguments about democracy, the freedom to write anything and the freedom not to read what has been written by others.

Then I started getting calls from other disabled friends. They were asking me: what are we to do now? Are we next?

Alexander Tibatin

People say that they only play foreign exchange markets online to boost their family budget

But they are not quite telling the truth.

Playing games is a way people to unwind, to hope to realize the unrealized potential, to return to the careless childhood.

Online my gladiator avatar has won.

I turn off the monitor and I return from Ancient Greece to the present. The Winter Olympics have just finished in Canada. The Russians have done poorly.

Maybe they should make a new computer game. Where our figure skater Yevgeny Plushchenko is number one, where we triumph over the Canadians in hockey and where our guys win gold in the biathlon.

But all these victories are only possible in the virtual, not the real world.

Valentina Plotnikova

I don't have enough time to explore everything I would like to. I do not understand people who say that they are bored.

I struggled to send my first e-mail to the BBC. The text I typed disappeared and I had to type it again. Everything I do in the Internet I do slowly and I lack confidence too.

I received a reply from the BBC - I was very happy to have this proof that the internet is working indeed.

When I tried to save my text I hit a wrong button by accident... Sergei helps me when I am stuck. He is very patient. I would like to know computers like he does.

Sergei Graponin. (Sergei was paralyzed in a shooting accident while serving army 33 years ago. He trains other bloggers to use the internet talking with them on the phone.)

On of the people I am training called me the other day. Her friends loaned her their old computer and she is now learning to touch-type.

And then a problem arose: she had removed the learn-to-touch-type CD from the CD drive too early and the programme "froze" on her screen.

We used the Ctrl-Alt-Delete command to resolve the problem and at the same time encountered a new one - not enough disc space.

I suggested that we remove some redundant programme. We chose to get rid of the latest programme that had been in use - her little nephew had been playing "Puzzles".

I spent the rest of the evening worrying about that nephew of hers. I had infringed on that little person's rights to privacy. At night this little boy appeared to me in a dream and threatened, without removing the chewing gum from his mouth: "I'll get back at you, you puzzle destroyer!" I could not reply anything to him. I felt numb. My nervous system must have shut down. It must have been some kind of virus.

Tomorrow I will warn my trainee not to use the internet until she has installed anti-virus software.

Natasha Pronina

I have written lots of letters in my life and now I can say that these were written the old-fashioned way - using paper, a pen, an envelope and stamps.

There is a something charming about those letters - written by hand, put into an envelope and having travelled the long journey from one person to another. And now here comes the new way to write letters - electronic mail, its main advantage being the speed of delivery.

Recently I had another amazing internet moment. I recalled a song which I heard 27 years ago on a tape recorder. That song had really touched me, but I only remembered a couple of words from it. I typed them into the search engine and here was the song.

Another amazing thing about the internet is that it has given me an opportunity to get in touch with long lost friends.

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Krupa Thakrar-Padhy is the producer of SuperPower Nation which goes on air on March 18 2010. Here she explains what it's about.

What's the world talking about? Tune in, log on or pop over on March 18th and we hope you'll find out.

This Thursday, Hackney's Shoreditch Town Hall becomes the world under one roof as it hosts SuperPower Nation.

The six hour event is part of the BBC's SuperPower Season. It's all about ordinary people from all walks of life, from all corners of the world engaging with one another about absolutely anything. Call it an experiment, pushing the boundaries or even over-ambitious but there's no excuse for having nothing to talk about.

This is the day when the BBC passes its editorial agenda to its audience. With no overarching question we'll let conversations unfold naturally between people of different language groups as we aim to get a snapshot of the global conversation as it happens in real time.

Consider the scene - A Urdu speaking Romeo romancing a French speaking Juliet, an Indian sitar player jamming with the bongo drums, a video wall full of talking faces from around the world, a flow of blogs from Brazil to New Delhi, a Mandarin speaker chatting about Iranian politics to a Hausa speaker all while munching on a plate of Indian samosas.

The SuperPower Nation team have been working heads down to make this day happen. We've got over 20 of the BBC's language services involved from the Somali to the Macedonian service. BBC World, Arabic and Persian TV will be coming together to broadcast on the day and both Africa Have Your Say and World Have Your Say will be coming live from the Town Hall for an ambitious day of BBC broadcasting across all platforms.

There's plenty of opportunity to get involved even if you don't happen to live in the East end of London.

You can tweet about the hot topic wherever you are using the hash tag SuperPower Nation, email us your thoughts or links to your blog to [email protected], join in our new multilanguage chat room (check out the site for more info on the day) or even pop up on webcam via video-conferencing.

Distance should be no boundary to conversation - nor should language.

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Chris Vallance is one of the reporters for the BBC SuperPower season during which he will look at how the internet is changing the way we interact with those in authority. Here he looks at the worlds of diplomacy and disarmament; are they embracing the web and are becoming opening up to the publict.

I am ihere to meet John Duncan, the British Ambassador for Multilateral Arms Control & Disarmament, who is an avid twitterer (https://twitter.com/jduncanMacd).

This is quite a big step in the locked-down world of arms control.

To even get into the Ambassadorial offices I had to surrender my phone, and hence any chance of tweeting anything, secret or otherwise.

I wasn't being unfairly targeted. The ambassador' is very kind and patient assistant told me she wasn't allowed to use her mobile in the building either.

I was in Geneva to attend a meeting of human rights activists.

One of the speakers was Google's Robert Boorstin. He's less of a fan of the way people use twitter than Ambassador Duncan. "No offense to the people who run Twitter or who use it but I don't want to know what you had for breakfast".

Twitter is a little like the dark, gooey, salty, brewing by-product called Marmite, which is a great British institution. You either love it or loath it - I love it, my Canadian spouse thinks it looks like hoof oil.

And the internet is rather like this. Read the papers and the web is either going to save the world or end it.

Technology has always provoked reactions like this. Tom Standage's book The Victorian Internet about the history of the telegraph shows how revolutions in communications technology have often been accompanied by exaggerated hopes and fears

Of course, advances in communication do have profound changes, it's just as futurologists point out, we are apt to overestimate change in the short run and underestimate it the long run

You don't need to be a futurologist, or a highly paid consultant, or even have finished middle school to know that the web is a technology with huge potential.

Another observation of Robert Boorstin's was to be very sceptical about anyone who claims to be able to predict the future of the web. This is a wise observation.

In the course of working on this SuperPower season I've met people who have been, to use an ugly word, empowered by the web.

Sometimes this seems to be a good thing.

At other times, as in the case of those with extreme views, we recoil and ask ourselves if something should be done about it. More often it's a grey area.

In the end, the web reflects the human beings who use it. But we shouldn't complain, it's that which makes it such a wonderful, surprising and sometimes disturbing place.

Chris Vallance is writing and broadcasting a series of five features on Digital Democracy which will be broadcast next week on World Service Radio and www.bbc.cm/news

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Hello, I'm Shaunagh Connaire and for the last three months I've been working on the Digital Giants series as part of the SuperPower Season. Digital Giants is a series of monologues in which the digital world's top thinkers share their visions of the future with the BBC from 8 to 19 March, online, on tv and on radio.

7 internet sages, 6 days and 5 cities - and that was just the first leg of my Digital Giants journey! When I say journey it was more like a 'geek stakeout', as we trekked across the U.S to speak with the finest of digital masterminds. First up in Chicago was Sam Pitroda, adviser to the PM of India.

For me Sam Pitroda epitomised 'the big thinker' and not surprisingly he was one of the gurus behind India's telecom revolution.

After spending an hour in his home in the suburbs, I came away feeling enlightened. For him the future for voting was on the cell phone and the archaic classroom as we know it, had seen its day!

Next stop New York, where I caught up with Joe Rospars, Director of Obama's online presidential campaign and Philip Emeagwali, a supercomputer scientist from Nigeria.

Rospars intrigued me. This man in his twenties had somehow managed to not only rub shoulders with one of the most influential men on earth but also boast that he was in some ways responsible for putting Obama where he is today. But a modest Joe was resolute that this bottom up approach to online campaigning could be applied to elections anywhere in the world.

An hour later in the same hotel conference room, Philip Emeagwali delivered the African perspective. The man literally had me on the edge of my seat as his every word commanded my full attention. I soon learned Nigeria was to become the third most populous country in the world and what implications this would have for the internet.

Another seven hours in the air and I found myself in Seattle. It was CEO of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer's turn in the hot seat! Now I'd be lying if I said that I hadn't sneaked a glimpse of the YouTube videos online of Mr. Ballmer screaming at the top of his lungs....and after that I really didn't know what to expect! But alas I quickly digested my worst fears as a jolly and spirited man sat down beside me to chat. Twenty minutes later I had learned about the intricacies of cloud computing and the prospect of one platform for all devices (TV, radio and web merged as one).

Next stop the Googleplex at Mountain View! Here Eric Schmidt (CEO of Google) delivered his views on augmented reality and Google's plan to create a 100x100 matrix in every language for online video and sms.

Back in San Francisco I caught up with Jimmy Wales (founder of Wikipedia) and he delved into the paradigm of geotagging and creating a more geographical aware encyclopaedia.

Not surprisingly I did probe the notion of net neutrality and the old adage of winners recording history. However it was apparent that Wales had already thought of this and he hopes to create a Wikipedia in every language and dialect throughout the world!

Later that day I spoke to Ge Wang (cofounder of Smule) at Stanford University. And with three cameras focusing on him, his passion and zeal for the app scene and what it brings to music could not go unobserved. Anyone who plays a Beatles tune by blowing into their iphone will always get a thumbs up for me...

Victor Koo (CEO and founder of Youku) delivered the Chinese verdict. Interestingly he considers the idea of censorship and the monitoring of content in China to be exaggerated by the West. An enigmatic argument to say the least but one which makes you question whether this is the generally held opinion of most CEOs in China.....

And that was the U.S.

Inspired, informed and jetlagged I made my way back to London.

Back at the BBC I caught up with our only lady Digital Giant, Martha Lane Fox (cofounder of Lastminute.com). Martha delved deep into the notion of hierarchies online and why UK internet businesses never really had a lasting impact. One word. Google.

Evgeny Morozov, (Yahoo! Fellow member of Georgetown University) laughed at the notion of democracy online and portrayed a more ominous and dark version of the web concluding that transparency and anonymity online are all too opaque.

Music streaming and this whole concept of the Freemiun model had to be explored so I also made it my business to chat to Daniel Ek (of Spotify). According to him, virtual scouting and streaming music in tailored packages is the future. I am still not wholey convinced about this business model and its sustainability but I suppose time will tell.

And that was that. My Digital Giants journey complete.

Shaunagh Connaire is a producer for HardTalk at BBC World News and produced the Digital Giants series for SuperPower. You can see some of them now by logging onto
https://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/sci_tech/digital_giants

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Jamilah Tangaza is Head of BBC Hausa which connects the Hausa-speaking community across the globe, from villages in Northern Nigeria to diaspora audiences in Europe.

Here she tells of a new initiative to connect rural Nigeria to the web and life of a young connected urbanite in London.

I know that mobile phones rule my children's world but frankly they rule my world too. It also appears they are starting to rule some African rural communities as well.

Mobile phones are becoming increasingly popular in Nigeria. However, usage is largely limited to voice calls and SMS, and for some areas, becoming connected to the internet can be a major challenge.

When mobile technology really began to be taken seriously some two decades ago, no-one knew what the scale of the impact would be, in terms of communication, accessibility, convenience, or the nuisance they can sometimes become.

Back in January as part of the SuperPower season, BBC Hausa provided villagers of Gitata in Nasarawa, Northern Nigeria, with two internet-enabled mobile phones.

I'm looking forward to the BBC Hausa's "Gagabadau" at 06.30 GMT on March 15, as Ibrahim Isa revisits the village to see how the devices might have changed the lives of the villagers.

Gitata continues our Labarinku A Tafinku (Your World in Your Palms) story, which started last summer.

By giving village communities in Nigeria mobile phones, we are empowering them. I also see it as some sort of partnership between journalists and 'citizens', and I am hopeful it will benefit all involved.

Exploring the other end of the 'connectivity scale', we also wanted to look at the effect of the internet on young urbanites and to find out what it means to them to keep 'connected'.

A second-generation Hausa girl living in London, Khadija Ahmed, enjoys surfing the net and social networking and spends several hours a day on the internet via her iPod, which she uses to chat, visit Facebook, exchange pictures and listen to music.

Yet Khadija still finds time to study - she is an A-student who hopes to read Law at Oxford University.

The popularity of online social networking, particularly sites such as Facebook, is also rapidly increasing in Northern Nigeria, and many young people use BBC Hausa's Facebook page as their meeting point where they exchange views on topics ranging from sports to politics to social issues.

I am going to be talking to Khadija in Zamani Riga at 06.30 on Tuesday 16 March, and Ahmed Wakil will be asking youngsters in Abuja about the ways in which mobile phones and online social networking are changing social dynamics and habits. That will be on Kungiyar Zumunta at 06.30 on Wednesday 17 March.

BBC Hausa is also going to be looking at the 'non-mobile' generation - the 'unconnected', with Nazir Mika'ilu reporting on whether the older generation is missing out on what many believe is a tool of empowerment. That will be on Jiya Ba Yau Ba at 06.30 GMT on Friday 19 March.

In English you can hear from Gitata village on The World Today (radio) on March 8 and on TV on March 20.

I am hopeful lots of benefits will be reaped both on our part and on the part of the communities too. After all we share a common objective: the will to change life for the better!

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