Archive for March, 2009

1 an de blogging, qu’en penses-tu Lomelle?

Friday, March 27th, 2009

Lomelle, jeune journaliste formée à Majunga et actuellement dans la poursuite de ses études sur la capitale, est le leader de la commuauté Foko. Ses articles d’une rare qualité ont été pertinemment repris par des médias et la blogosphère pour leur pertinence et activisme. Son implication pour soutenir chaque blogger de Foko et les motiver à rejoindre les réseaux sociaux (tels facebook, flickr, twitter) complètent l’éventail de talents que cette slammeuse a en profusion. Merci merci Lomelle,

La raison qui m’a poussée à bloguer: je dois avouer qu’au début ce n’était ni par amour ni par passion mais par curiosité. Mais je dois avouer qu’avec le temps je commençais à adorer cela aujourd’hui je suis totalement accroc. En plus bloger est pour moi une échelle très important pour devenir la bonne journaliste que j’ambitionne devenir.

Ma plus belle expérience de blogging, je dirai la fois ou j’avais été cité sur rue89 et celle ou mon blog était passé sur France24. Mais franchement tous les activités de bloging auquel j’avais participé sont aussi inoubliables et constructives les une que les autres Barcamp Ebit le rencontre avec tout les bloguers.

The t-shirt makes all the difference par vous

Ebit 2008 : Michel d’Antsirabe et Lomelle, anime l’espace Quartier libre

j’écris énormément sur la jeunesse parce que je sais personnellement que las jeunes d’aujourd’hui souffrent énormément. Si elle manque d’attention je me réserve de répondre a une telle question mais je sais qu’elle manque d’objectivité de but et de modèle certes de rempart pour s’agripper.

Quand aux femmes sans hésiter je répondrai oui les femmes manquent de considérations.

Le conseil que je donnerai aux nouveaux blogeurs c’est de tenir le coup car le monde de bloging est un territoire à conquérir et il faut faire des efforts et surtout apprenez à aimer ce que vous faites.

Bien sur que je continuerai à blogguer et je maudit déjà le jour où j’arrêterai lol

[Tananarive] The New Experiences We’ve Got From The Interviews We Had

Thursday, March 26th, 2009

Interviews are not always easy, especially when you are on the phone speaking with a native speaker at thousands km away from where you are at 9:30pm or when you are in a hotel surrounded by wild crowds and gunshots. In fact, some international media got in touch with us – thanks to Foko and Lova, to know more about what’s going on here and to have interviews if possible.
Unfortunately, I can’t tell everything about all of them. What I’ll share here is the couple of times we met with Christina Corbett from BBC/IRIN.

Foko Interview with BBC

We met her first on Mar.5 for she planned on making report about the Malagasy blogosphere’s role during the ongoing unrest. We decided to meet next to Colbert Hotel Antaninarenina with 6 of the FBC bloggers, only 3 were able to make it though. A little while after we started a panicked crowd moved up towards where we were. All the shops around Antaninarenina immediately closed their doors. The 5 of us set up our mind, we had to find a safer place. We ended locked up in Colbert Hotel. It was the first time I went in and it was during an unusual circumstances. The interview went well even if Christina could record some gunshots mixed with our voices.
The second one (Mar.26) was far better. It was in a cyber café, still in Antaninarenina. Yes, we like this corner of the city. For this time she will do it for the BBC radio. So we (pakysse, andry and I) took turn to answer her questions in both Malagasy and English while enjoying our soda (we like it too). We found out it’s pretty close to movie shooting. “Cut, could we please turn down the sound of the TV because it passes Indian songs. We are supposed to be in Madagascar.” she said while laughing. Yes, details are much more important for an audio interview. We were done a hour and a half later. Christina said she would fly to London the next day but would email us the audio record. Looking forward to having it.

To sum up, these interviews are now among the many experiences we’ve had as part of the FBC and we are sure better ones are yet to come.

[note: some published interviews are available here , congrats Foko!]

 

 

That’s from Tamatave

Thursday, March 26th, 2009

Two weeks now, Costa Europa cruise said: ” Bye Bye” to the Tamatave’s pier. Despite the political situation, we really had fun during of our times together. Thanks to all of them: the tourists, the company, and indeed the Aventour Madagascar ( Mrs Amie) who was always risking to organised the tourists outing in the middle of very hot time.

Let’s say fortunately, because three days now, TAC’s employees are manifesting for their right. They are organising a strike in front of their gate now at the time when I’m writing this article. There, the atmosphere is getting hot now. TAC is the one of the privated part into the Tamatave’s port.

In general, here is calm but the outcomes of the crisis are still running after our back. That’s the problem.

To end this, please don’t forget to watch these news videos: http://blip.tv/file/1902754 and http://blip.tv/file/1902661

Malagasy forests in danger : SOS Masoala !

Saturday, March 21st, 2009

Gasycool a strong advocate of Atsinana region’s biodiversity cause is spreading the news that the UNESCO World Site Heritage 2007 is in great danger. These are the direct aftermaths of the 3 months political struggles the country is still experiences when the absence of authority lead bad intended people to exploit without authorization. This time we are facing urgent danger, Madagascar may loose what is left of its primary forest….

After Marojejy invasion, we are informed that there are about 3000 people moving to Masohala, let`s see what they are talking about:

- the national park of Marojejy was closed for tourism.
- 3000 people move to Masoala to extract the invaluable essence.
- Abdillah, former strong man of Vohémar (from which the containers leave wood towards China or Tamatave, strange coincidence) encouraged the population to cut all the forest because it belongs to them.
- Called into question of the SRI in Andapa by old authorities under pretext that it is with Ravalomanana that this happened to be developed.
- the Chinese, once finished with the trunks, would be interested in the stump of the bois de rose! (rose wood)
Are we going to make it worse?

In Ivoloina park, part of Atsinana forest

What’s up in Tamatave and Fianarantsoa?

Monday, March 16th, 2009

Antananarivo is currently the stage of dramatic events involving the Malagasy army and the politics, Foko bloggers are constansly under alert on Twitter and genereously analyzing the situation (with their personal perspective) on their own blog.

But the provinces bloggers also actively reported on manifestations which in Tamatave (seemed to) turn into riots as well this last few days. Jaona who is in charge of implementing the Foko Blog Club in Fianarantsoa repared his camera after he nearly lost it to rioters in January . This incident shows the same dangers Citizen Journalists are facing when getting facts from the ground. Patrick also lost his cellphone when caught in the middle of manifestations in Tanambao streets in Tamatave. This is why we welcome so cheerfully the Ushahidi project which will help them bring their news safely and being sure that someone will read their content.

From Jelona’s blog :

Patrick’s intense texting to Twitter:

Stay tuned to the Twitter and ALL the Foko blogs as Jaona is scheduling a workshop soon in Fianarantsoa and Patrick has vowed to teach the Tamatave bloggers to Twitter and of course to follow the latest developments of the current crisis.

Updates on the Foko/Ushahidi & twitter crisis report initiative

Friday, March 13th, 2009

Amidst increasing concerns over the political instability in Madagascar and the safety of local news reporters, citizen media has made an important  contribution to the understanding and documentation of on-site based reports.  As the crisis has spread out all over a nation whose  surface area is the equivalent to France, Belgium and the Netherlands combined, reporters cannot be present everywhere so eye-witness accounts from citizens have become increasingly valuable.

Ushahidi has launched an open source platform for the crisis in Madagascar. The Ushahidi tool will allow Madagascar based individuals to send information on incidents via SMS messages to the geospatial friendly Ushahidi platform. As you may have seen in the current political crisis, especially during the unrest of January 26, when no news from the traditional media were available, information came in through new social media tools. Ushahidi will help gather all the information, confirmed and unconfirmed, and help visualize it on a map.  The number for sending SMS to Ushahidi in Madagascar is 00447800000197.

The initial soft release of the platform (web based reports only) was due to concern over our ability to properly receive  mobile reports. The concern is now corrected and a steady amount of mobile reports have been submitted for the past week from all over the country.  The latest unrest over the past 5 days were heavily reported by citizen bloggers via either sms reports or twitter updates: on average,  one  update every 3 hours were received.

The twitter aggregation can still be optimized as we are still not collecting all the potential reports available and the cost of sending tweets via mobile is too high.

We are also still very concerned about the safety of citizen media users in this increasingly tense political environment and considering the options to enhance the safety of contributors to citizen media.