Broadband Jungle Blog

Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone, in America

CNN / NBC / Yahoo! correspondent Kevin Sites recently completed his mission of spending an entire year in the Hot Zone of traveling through 22 armed conflicts in 19 countries in true 2.0 fashion: The journalist filed his compassionate reports of mostly unspeakable events from around the globe by blogging and writing an online diary, keeping a photo journal on Flickr and uploading video segments straight to the site.

What seemed like a trip to hell actually brought tremendous insight as he recounts in the post “Our Journey so Far:”

“That is one of the two most important lessons that I believe were revealed to me on this journey. First, that the world is indeed filled with conflict, pain and suffering, and that amazing people overcome it everyday.”

With a tremendous gift to gain trust wherever he went, Sites often pointed his camera directly at the lives of civilians affected by war. He’ll repost these stories in the order he experienced them over the next few weeks.

“This will give you a chance to see the full scope of our year's work in a condensed time period, while also allowing us to rest and retool for the launch of the next phase of the Hot Zone, which will primarily focus on putting a face on the untold stories in America.”

Way to go!

Dropping Knowledge into our own Tower of Babel

Berlin is once again proving its well-worn reputation for being one of Europe’s most exciting and forward thinking cities. Saturday, September 9, a 2.0 community event of the third kind is taking place in the heart of the city: Assembling 112 of earth’s great luminaries, Table of Free Voices revisits the Tower of Babel at the cutting edge of the Internet, new media and an old fashioned town hall meeting.

Writes John Borland in Wired News:
It won't be pretty. Seated at a round table the size of a helicopter landing pad, they'll be speaking over each other, all at once, into video cameras instead of to each other. Every word will be transcribed, translated and archived online as the seeds of a sprawling discussion site operated by a Berlin-based group called Dropping Knowledge.

The site has been soliciting questions under their ‘ask yourself: can one question make a difference’ motto and visitors rated the top 500 ‘as those most likely to initiate open dialog on a social topic of most relevance to them.‘ Co-moderators actor Willem Dafoe and Nigerian activist Hafsat Abiola ask the final 100, including questions about economy, war, peace and climate change.

Mostly financed with a 3 Million Euro grant from German insurance company Allianz, participants include film directors Wim Wenders and Terry Gilliam, futurologist Bill Joy as well as activists, scientists and progressive thinkers from around the planet. Intentionally reflecting the incessant media blast all around us, each participant has their own web camera pointing at them to record questions and answers. Ultimately all 672 hours of video generated will be available on the Dropping Knowledge archive.

broadband activism

Creating space for niche programming is THE big opportunity for the broadband revolution – here are some activists who’ve caught on early and are already using the technology to reach a global audience.

Witness
Founded in 1992 by musician and activist Peter Gabriel and the Reebock Human Rights Foundation after Gabriel saw the impact home video cameras had on the Rodney King trial in Los Angeles.

The partnership has since grown into an international human rights organization that provides video training and support to local groups in their human rights advocacy campaigns. Beyond providing video cameras and editing equipment, Witness facilitates exposure for the films and videos produced on a global scale.

The results are equally moving and terrifying. Videos enhanced with detailed summaries of the case can be seen on their website. A video hub that will make accessing and posting these documents easier is in the works.

TreeHugger
Started by Canadian-born ‘Designpreneur’ Graham Hill in 2004, the web magazine has quickly established itself as the main destination for environmentally sensitive yet chic products and concepts. With the declared mission to help push the issue into the mainstream, TreeHugger successfully bridges the gap between sustainability and modern aesthetics.

Visitors also tend to rely on TreeHugger’s buying guide which obviously helps with advertisers. TreeHuggerTV is a fairly new addition, consisting of a weekly green news update and short features on subjects as varied as sustainable skateboards and green trends at the Brooklyn Design Show.

dh love life
Actress Daryl Hannah is behind this site and she’s been posting very entertaining AND clever weekly video blogs to green and vegetarian issues, shot and produced by – Daryl Hannah. Apparently she’s the real deal, after all she stopped driving petroleum-fueled vehicles years ago and instead switched to a bio-diesel-powered 1983 El Camino she found on the Internet.

Taking full advantage of her celebrity status, here she is campaigning for change and showing us how yummy bio-diesel really tastes. Her site is also being revamped for bigger things to come later this summer.