(foko) blog club

Last Saturday, Foko crew was in action again teaching blog and new media to IST students. The IST (fr) is a renowned private institute located in Ampasampito (not far away from downtown) that proposes several fields of studies to its students.

Stéphane was contacted by the one of the first responsables of the event and she asked him if Foko could hold a workshop in their cybercafé prior to their official graduation ceremony. In an ordinary day, students should pay to have Internet access but for this time it was for free. Then, we, as zealous volunteers, arrived there at 7:30am (I was a bit late in fact) ready with brochures and handouts about blogs, twitter and … Foko of course .

The first group arrived an hour and a half later after we spent our time brainstorming how we were going to manage it and sticking Foko posters in some strategic (lol) spots of the block. I stood next to the main door to invite people to get in because they were a bit shy at the begining “Is it here … the workshop on blogs?”. And because of this shyness we had to send Pati and Ariniaina to make them aware that it is warmer and more interesting inside

The workshop went well in a good ambiance and the connection speed didn’t spoil it too much. We noticed that few of them were more curious than the others and that led Andry to jump on the basic uses of Twitter (yes, they wanted more and more) after being through with Wordpress.

What surprised me during the workshop was these ladies, I guess they are teachers, whom Ariniaina and Affick took good care of. And according to what I overheard, they had a lot of questions. The room was not wide enough for the students and somehow made (some of) them go away before the end of the workshop. But the good thing is they asked for another workshop.

I’m waiting for the list of the new IST bloggers to put it here but meanwhile you can have a look at the photos taken during the workshop.

[Update] Here is the list of the IST bloggers

http://fichristel.wordpress.com
http://njaranga.wordpress.com
http://quiidam.wordpress.com
http://ramelolive.wordpress.com
http://sorohitra.wordpress.com

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.

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!]

Despite the difficulties in finding available internet connection downtown, the FBC in Antananarivo is still very active and try to inform the world through either their blogs or lately their tweets. If they are not on the ground, like Mrs Pakysse and Mr Ariel, they try to look for useful information on the Internet or listen to the radio. The discovery of the micro-blogging helped a lot the bloggers since it’s really easy and it doesn’t take much time.
The real challenge that we face here is the “ability to communicate” between us. In fact, it’s really hard to get together, either online or offline, the unrest has made it so. Even if some of us have more opportunities to connect everyday mobile phones remain among the rare ways to get in touch with each other, it’s expensive though.
Anyway, we are still motivated to report news from Madagascar especially during hard time like this. And we always do it with pleasure.