[Rm 101 : Hoder, talking about how to reproduce a quick-gro blogging community in a new language and country] The first thing is... some sort of recognition which is needed it may sound like an obvious thing, but it's needed otherwise the idea of that sort of thing, that concept, wouldn't catch on in that society it needs to be done by someone who is ewell known in that audience at the time I was a journalist writing about techonlogy and one of the first people who were writing about internet, from the very beginning, six/seven years ago and I've always tried to introduce his great potential, the great potential of this technoology, to the iranian people so I started with this audience base that I had and as soon as I started my weblog, I sent the link to a popular iranian portal so I could attract a couple of hundred readers from the first weeks... and then it grew later in a month or so to 300 400 visitors a day so this is the most important thing after that when I started y own weblog I got so many emails, and I was really surprise... I didn't expectpeople to be so open aout this concept you could never guess, even bloggers speaking my language but sometimes I don't, I can't [predict what is it that they're interested or that they're gonn ado so they asked me how they could start their own weblog in oersian and this is a very important point I believe that if the blogoshere you want to create in a society has to be in the local language you cannot start the blogosphere or the local movement or whatever in a chinese... or in iraq, in english and you'll see the same thing in many many other countries, especially in the middle east so I wrote a veyr simple step to step line in persian... after about a month, we had 100 weblogs I'd been expecting to have this after one year but then it happened after one month... so I started providing other technical help to this community supporting this newly made bloggers is very important some of them are veyr good, but they have a low number of visitor if you do not promote them or introduce them, they will die within a fe days although they are very good, it is hard to keep your moreale so self-confident and keep writing, writing, writing when you only have 5 or 10 reader providing tech help is very inmportant as well expecially... css and htose sort of things, rss to introduce them pings, trackbacks and all those sort of things ... after a while you have to get local celebrities to blog one famous writer, or a famous perswon, an ctor in any field based on that, you'll get many many articles in newspaper and magazines, [11|11:20] and then it's like a breadth of introduction to this phenomenon keeping up with technical innovation is very important as well so the... pionneer bloggers, as we could say they have to be very careful aout these innovations and introduce them as well. the most important thing... is to make software that's fully localized so people who do not know english (because applications.. even the menus are generally in english) so if you can make an app with fully localized content, that would really really help Q: (ethan z) I want to fire off the first question to you a huge number of these persian blogs are being hosted in iran... you and I have talked a bit about this. tell us about why this isn't necessarily a good thing hoder: about the authoritarian regime in iran, if te local sservice provider is in the county, they have to abide by the local rules... they have to censor weblogs otherwise the governmet would put very much pressure on them so it's one of the dangers recently I've sratted to think that this local service should *not8 be based in the country that has this situation so if google.com had gotten blogger to increase their globalization it would be really really helpful to many people in iran, china, and other places with similar regimes ethan: so we can put this on our todo list of things to do later today ... hoder: so if you know the google guys :) ethan: other questions from ohder? this amazing experiment in iran, lots of stuff has happened q: what else is it you did that made this really take off? (weinberger) hoder: I think if we proceed in all these steps like in iraq, or turkey, or saudi arabia, we wouldn't see such a thing. there miht be some cultural effect for that I haven't seen any studies on that. I've develped some sort of hypothesis on this I guess the values have changed among young iranian society totally portraye by the medium of ewblogs there are so many of them interested in doing this young people and young boys, who want to talk, when they date they ask 'do you have a blog or not' it's a veyr very in thing aI guess it shows that how self-expressive or tolerant the new generation has become q: I'm gonna share my experience with blogging among india and pakistani... particularly about politis one of my psbs have been inthe past there years the people who write dialog now almost never bother to have their own weblogs they all lvoe writing, not the hip generation these are older people, very deep attachments maybe born in pakistan, now living in india the community and individual blogs have developed to become more of an indiv expression with comments being the community I relally believe ther are people out there in some cultures who are more comfortable with a shared social space time and time again, I try to create an individual sction on my weblog these are people who are 50, 55 who barely use the computer, but who are *really* passionate about talking (and don't like those parts of my site) ethan: this may be a paradigm that is particularly useful in some countries but not in other countris in america, where we're as individ as can be, it might make sense for everyone to have their own brand q: hoder, you sai certain cultural aspectw are crucial which are those? hoder: 20 years ago in iran, you wouldn't see this in terms of tehcnology, it wouldn't have taken of this way our parents aren't has individ as we are and the younger poeple in iraq and I thnk it explains it very well to the extend that they want to talk about themselves in the beginning I wa calling my weblog... another name it was called self-centeredness or something like that because I wanted to present all those nasty things that people woudl comment aobu tme but the afterI saw that there are so many other peple who had the sae self-centeredness i chaned y basig name... oit sort of says how I'm viewing this as someone who has a journalistic background q: (chris) presidential elections in march. can you tell us what political impats do you foresee blogs will have? are you planning anything? (last question:by jerzy) in the upcoming election, this network of bloggers migh have an effect in the uplcoming election especially the reformist party, or the iranian participation party to encourage them to start a weblog or sth by their top officials that could attract people bc you could see a veyr strong apathy among the iranian new generation and some sort of disillusionment tat they're not interested in politics as we were at the time b/c the new younger people I'm almost 30, so I'm talking a bout 20-yr old iranians, they're not intersted in politics but I'm askin partiees to start this a dn maybe we could get a very good answre as hoard dean got and I'm always talking about howard tdan I was tryig to introducte this idea to get people to ht least try it we might get a good result like that q: darius I was going to ask about how political these blogs are but yo've sort of answered... the new sense of apathy among younger blogs. how sensitive are these blogs? and how many are anonymous? hoder: many have always been anon recently b/c f the crackdown and arrests, some people arrested for connection with some reformist website that wasvery hated by the judiciary ... they're almost using any way to silent or make them silent arresting the blcoking their websites using smart tricks to make them unavail to communicte ith people shut down newspapers, several times whatever they start they've shut down although these aren't political usually like the elections in the us os osome sort of war, or military attack or violenet atemtpts to change the regoime it's very important to them so they've been talking abnd writing about it in their weblog althoug they're not political generally, they sometimes become political b/c of the events of the day ethan: I want to switch over to ory she's a very active part of the political blogosphere (in kenya) so let me turn it over to my harvard colleague ory: in response to iran the kenyan blogging community is very, very small I'm not sure I should be sitting here (at the table with these guys) :) I'mve been looking into how to get mor people to blog, why do they blog if I start having conversations with normal people, can I answer, can I give them a pitch, this is why you should do it, this is why it's cool and part of the reason I think is that lbogging is a very personal ... rading, other people talking to me, a very personal project kenyans, we frown on things that seem individualistic, or self-centered forms of expression most forms of expression now are talk radio, hanging out in a bar, or whatever many people send a comment, or send me email saying you should start a blog but they're not comfortable, thye don't think they have enough to say message board or chat rooms are easier, but getting them to express themselves as individuals is more difficult. one of the most popular blogs is a group blog. it's not ...giving your individual opinion, but it's more expressing yourself within a community (on-screen: virtual insanity kenya) we don't have the prblem (with repression0 that we used to so people can really express themselves, it's very open but there's not that spark, per se I don't kow what it would take to get more people on line where I'm most optimistic is the young people 18-30 who have not really had a chance to participate politically.. kenyan society tends to value the opinion of oldre people as the younger population explodes we feel we don't have channels to express ourselves... in the spaces currently available and blogs offer that. current blogs: each one is so different but there's still an element of kenyaness that comes across kif you think about briging culture, this in't just bridging international... but within kenya itself whic is really important the sese of a nationa... 'kenya' persona is very important we've had a lot o tribalism before it's still a problem when you can find, connect with someone not b/c they're yourtribe or your class, but just b/c they're kenyan expressing something in a way you wouldn't have though of before, I think that's important. just talking to eachother, is that a good thing or a bad thing? more and more we're starting to settle here... but we would like to stay engaged. because I blog I'm always loking for things to report, both good and bad about what's going on in kenya ('here' being the US) on the other hand, it's a good way for people *in* kenya to get online most of us here get our news onine but [he]'s talking about tihngs that are not online like the parliament has passed one piece of legislation, one bill in the last year so things like that, what's important and what's missing (from other online sources) is what I'd like to see more often [ed: sorry, using parens when I should use brackets sometimes] a lot of my readers are kenyan women speaking in what would usually be a man's sphere of operation I'm opinionated, I say what's on my mind is something they look up to I'm not your typical kenyan you know I think the more you can see that there are kenyans out there who are doing things, engaged in the whole thing... that gets more people online (ory's blog: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/ory/) ethan: I'm stealing the first question, again one of the first things you touched on that actually relects a lot of my experience as well is that the expats are coming online a lot faster than the rest. a lot of it is people not being online, but a lot of it's exposure. how do we cross that gap? there do need to be a few alpha bloggers local personalities doing op-eds in the local papers... I've been tyring to do this there are a couple columnists that is key. people are really familiar with them sth else that Dennis who runs [...] is working on is using text messaging (see tools session later today) everyone has pretty muc a mobile phone maybe tools is an aspect of that I think just... it still has to come down to why should I do it? people don't have time, perhaps. (on top of other channels) ethan: so because kenyans actually have lives they don't have time for blogging? I think that's a good argument... ory: there are young people online, in chatrooms, commenting newspapers (sites) have comment sections now the Mail and Guardian has post-its on like blogs, does this as well in the UK (Guardian) whenever I post about blogging or kenya most of the people I've interviewed... getting a good cheerleader (to express support) is important Jon peizer: you said something that reminds me of my wife your'e not a typical woman, not a typical blogger... I want to ask sth about this : english is used as a language to commuicate with the west so I'm thinking (and I want to know if this is true) so if english is used in two ways 1) as alingua franca 2) b/c the lang is bereft, or used often indirectly, b/c you can say things you wouldn't necessarily say in your own so I'm reminded, wathching a televinsion show with my wife about hiroshima 40 years later, the translator says to the women who sweep the monument, what do you think about the people who did this? and my wife is laughing b/c they're speaking to the translator in japanese b/c he's not translating what they're saying they're saying oh, those guys probably committed suicide [so what do you think about blogs in english as compared with local languages, in this respect?] ory: when I read the blogs that are in swahili, they are different... much more elaborate ,almost poetic so the things... narratives tend to be a lot more interesting there are certain things it would be easier just to say in english, but I wold like to see more people blogging in swahili it helps preserve the language, grow the language, keep in touch I realize how much crappier y swahili has become since I left kenya when I read their blogs when I blog, when I address soemthing that has gone on in kenya in english, I'll use [sheng] words that only other kenyans would understand so it's not [black or white] hoder: I have this theroy that if something isn't in english, it doesn't exist at all it's almost true and its very sad many many news that's happened all around the world but there's no enlsh report about do not exist at all at the same tie, there must be this leve of local production, content and then english content an be on top of it as a sort of backlog and then you're done with the lower level ethan: isaac do you want to jump in on this? [onscreen: CNblog.org] [showing printout with translation graphic] most translation is from china into english not v-v chinese blogosphere size... in year 2002, only 1000 bloggers today, 600k bloggers I think maybe in 5 years, the chinese blogosphere will be the biggest in the world. biggest natural resource: the nation in our original research (founded 2 years ago to analyze chinee blogging culture) maybe only 2% of the content was about politics. most is about internet and technology the current situation there is also some censorship in 2003, blogspot was blocked by the government also typewriter.com in 2004 then blogs.com also blogger.com is partially blocked (today) in china so you can log on, however there are many failures/breaks in this site so you are very frustrated sometimes you can write, but can't see your page (last comment by hoder) just want to use a [triangle] slide [sheet of paper] to illustrate this : many people can only think in their mind, they can't express it to the public then professional writers emerge, and the readers, which can communicate with eisting tools, like email, mobie phones... then blog tools emerge and the blogosphere shows up the readers population is smaller than the masses, then the blogger pop is smaller still than the traditional journalist population (but in contrast, trad journalism can reach more people than bloggers) blogging tools and hosting services: already 4-10 bigger hosting sites in china they've managed to deal with the government they do self-policing to prevent ordering to be closed. howver, many of them can now express in english, thouh it is not our first language, so we can only express in chinese I have 4 blogs in english, now soemtimes they are updated in the chinese blogosphere but I don't have enough time to always update in english I think there aren't enough people [who could move from chinese to english] right now [to push content back to the english blogosphere] q from #harvardbits : wondering how many of these bloggers are in china, how many are overseas a: the majority are in china. actually, I pay most of my attention to the chinese blogosphere the blogging tools plays an important role to help people express their voice 'though the blogging tool has little voice, I blog it and othe rpeople say 'whats this? just a post on your lifestyle?' however, we can now see blogosphere in such a wayy you cannot see the individual blogs... you should see the lnadsape of the whole blogospere the hwoleimpact of this phenomenon... so if there are some I think important memes do you know 'meme'? if there are important memes, it will be spread all over the blogosphere in 1 or 2 days the coverage is the most importa thing, not just a single post many people will post on the initial idea of the post. (the blog isaac mentioned: http://www.isaacmao.com/meta/) RMack: of course to provide these services to the bloggers there's a lot of self-censorship that has to go on people have to be asked to take certain posts down, or else it will cause the whole service to be closed down so what I'm wondering is, bc of all the self-scensorship that goes on and the blocks of what chinese [readers] can access from the outside world, how does this affect what people write about and what memes happen, or might happen as opposed to if people did not have to worry about getting in trouble isaac: we could not predict what would happen in china, people did not have blogging tools two years ago, then they emerged. many people just wanted to use this to express in different ways sometimes it was used to toch the redline set by the govmt propaganda officials but if people touch the redline, the officials may not have enough time to get one individual's voice to be alerted tey cannot google all day long to find such redline voices so the mems can be there, stored in the webpage, and then people will check some other eaders will check the meme, then generate their own ideas mayb etheir ideas will also touch the redline, or maybe they wil hae a more original or more comfortale word to epxress the same thinganother way so the memes can be connected to form a fabric of voice that an get abig picture of this idea... [ed: sweet thought] for the hosting services, they have a very long list of keywords to filter for instance Jiang Zemin can't be expressed the name will be filtered out as XXX when you publish however people will use different tricky ways [to get around such filters] q: one way we've solved the problem of the chinese lnag barrier in sharing information about east asian culture is o find lots of bilingual translators in the united states to translate content. moving on the the censorship question, how about keeping foreign users from accessing chinese content? isaac: there is "the great firewall" of china china has invested a lot in this system. I think it's about... 1 million RMB [?] into this system however, if your website is not about political content, your website can be accessed and will not be put into the blacklist. for your own website (translating into english) you can try to harness the grassroots power maybe interested chinese bloggers can help you build up a mirror site in china, internally translated into chinese michael: I'm a lang user and linguist and blogger... I've been investigating some of these lang issues in the log term, machine translation are oing to make blogs or any internet content accessible in any language probably 5-10 years away [Ed: optimistic!] but english is the lingua franca, so obvoiusly we have a need to access it... one thing I"ve been trying to highlight is having american bloggers pair up with bilingual bloggers, whose content is related to their own stuff and have each person hae a sidebar with translated content of the other blog and that would be one way in the immediate future to try to work around this ethan: procedurally, one of the things we're working on later today, immediatlely after lunch we'll be talking about tools as we get into the last session, we're going to try to work out hwo to turn this into a movement charlie nesson: it's been bugging me for some time that i've fet maturing fast in the last two days the base thought is that for a net center like Berkman it's limiting to think of what we do as just internet in fact internet is one comunication medium but if' it it's possible to link the internet with old media, traditional media, that in fact t==it's very widely accessible and very cheap that you might magnify the poewr so serveral things that have been cropping up as the last two days have gone on: have brought an idea into focus, and I'd like to put it out for everybody to add to the thought hoder talks about finding a prominent blogger to somehow bring foucs and give exposure ot th elbogging experience and the importance ofencouraing new blogger when they come ion in some way and the importance of gettin gout the tools and the metholdology, explaining how it works you isaac talk about the business aspect, explaining how it depends on a community of people, potential opportunity, businessmen start thinking about that. so what I was tlaking about yesterday to start with, with hoder he says one of the reasons blogging has been explosive in iran is that it's available, where other media is constrained, except for sat tv that comes into iran from soe relatively lowrade producers in los angeles not porgramming of any consequence but the fact is, there's a mass medium that is available to come into iran now I was provoked a bit along this line also bu OhMyMnews, talking about OhMyTV so the idea emerges of trying to use old media as a wya of magnifying, clarifying, focusing, spurring on the generation of the blogosphere so the thought comes up : suppose that suppose we were somehow to sponsor an hour a week on satellite TV pointed to Iran, in which someone likeHoder, who really doesn't need to find another famous person, you're a famous person in yourself, and in fact media makes famous people suppose you proposed a program that took as its focus the blogosphere... blogging is the hook; is the community it's the thing you would be talking about, the community youd be asking for contributions from by way of material that you feature. that's basically the thought -- could we take this to a new evel ethan talks about 'is this a movement' would it be psostible to take this to a movement, a new space by hooking onto a new medium, uing the creativity of the blogosphere, in a way that would create a gfeedback loop... that's basically the thought. hoder: yea, one of the tihngs I've bee nthinking about these past days: we should not limit ourselves to blogs. one of the ealy promises o the internet, didnt happen for tech/business reasons sjuddenly we have discovered it, and it doesn't mea nwe have to do all our things through blogging; it's just such an easy tool for ordinary people ot use that all our attention [is focused on] this medium radio... I share the same [love] of radio we could easily, in iran for example, launch a radio the goal is freedom of speech, to reahc people, to talk about political issues, in any way that we can. so why don't we start some talkshows based on the content of these weblogs that we have? then we use the content of weblogs and the form of radio... ethan: we're starting to get tangible suggestios, and that's where we're hoping to come out at the end of the day so I hope someone's taking notes on this isaac: I'm goig to start new blogging next week, in china interviewing 30 typical bloggers, recording audio putting it on my weblog. (our chinese blog, cnblog.org, a non-profit org already) then I aant to continue to extend to some english bloggers like dan gillmor, joiito I myself want to be the bridge toc onnet the two jay rosen: first, to respond to charlie, briefly chris lydon is trying to create a radio show, based on blogging that would be first world but taking in some of the neergy you're talkin about but he's here [sitting next to me :)] so he can tell you about it, he's a GREAT self promoter ... but a little history: if you look at the history of the political rpess in the world one of the factors has been a dyniacmic that 's essentially internal to the state. and that is when there's a dipsture within the government, within the rruling class when there's a dispute the lost, the losting side has a tendency to go pulbic those wh olost a batter in parliament and couldn't win decided to go outsie of parlament and appeal to "out of doors" people who weren't represetnted in parliament to try to win in a second way. in the 18th c this is how the political press first became importan.t losers in disputes would /leak/ it happens today every day in washington. so if blogs... became the place where losers in a dispute inside the govmt could go outside the govmt and appeal to a larger public then people in the political class would actually have an incentive to keep blogs open b/c you never know when you're going to be the loser and need to go outside the governing class IU'm sureit's happened with blogs around the world, but it's a dynamic that does not go away and it doesn't matter if you have an elite society or a closed society or a free society there s a need for the loser in an interparty dispute to get your point across. if blogs ould be this way, they could get a foothold in this system -- q: back to a question ory rased very important it's the question why... also related to the subject of language it's veyr importantto ask, if you're thinking of undrtadking blogs, as for instance I a, what can blogs do to furher the mission of my particular project and in what way? that's for instance why i'm here, and it's interesting to listen to the conversation, ut for eaxample as hoder mentioned there may be other media, other ways to achieve what you want to do. it also comes back to languag if you want to get the message of your ngo, our org out to the international world, of course you'd do it in english. on the other hand, if you want ot get local ngo's to get their voices heard on issues in latvia, you would do it in latvian. there is a question of what you want to achieve. in that respct I don't quite agree wit hoder that if it is not in english it doesn't exist also, one last comment, if we're talking about blogs being bridges (b/t communities or people of different opinions) if you really want to understand, or if you as americans want to know what people are talking about in chinese there is always the option of learning the language. q: visavis what would help the blogosphere grow, frankly it might be some antagonism, some punchups what do you think about that? ory: as kenyans... especially those in the diaspora there's a need to maintain our kenyaness, wherever we are. I do a lot of criticism of the current government. that's antagonistic, even though we're all kenyan like a letter to the editor or marching on the streets you get feedback from people who wouldn't noramlly write an editorial or go on the national news, you don't always have to have an agenda; you can be doing it about your poetry the kenyanblogosphere has managed to maintain its diversity in all sorts of things ethan: chris lydon, you are the bulwark between us and lunch. chris: I won't stand in anyone's way. I wanted to thank charlie for what I"ve always called the nesson feedback loop in a radio signalgoin outward, which has a peculiar kind of penetration, and the web as the feedback loop which has infinite carrying capacity it's a perfet system... marriage of these two systems (I think radio more than television) it has the power of the human voice.. and a kind of talk-show.. as [hoder] was speaking about threading the pearls, so to speak, of the blogs making a kind of connection and community out of them. we're very close to getting it done... I'd love to tell more people what the goal is, I'd love to enlist your help. ethan: one option during lunchtime is to go sit down with dave winer about podcasting it's happening very very quickly after lunch, we've got a show and tell... you're welcome to take two minutes at the keyboard and show off a tool you're in love with :) this could be translation, aggregation, any sorts of tools that would be useful for tihs audience. that in turn will lead us to where we migh be going with this as a movement.