GV Sumit 08 Impressions

I went to my friend today, in an attempt to help out in building additional floor to her house in construction, or rather give moral support and bring refreshments to people working. They did a great job.



On my way to Budapest (25.06.) I saw this donkey, in small Zobnatica zoo . For further reference, I will call him, Gvsummit08 donkey.



Onto now. I am listening to Joichi Ito's (person on the right) crazy Last FM music, trying to write something meaningful, after a long time. Well GV Summit 2008 was a splash (in a positive way). I have met tons of friends. I mean, literary all of the participants of the Summit were very cool multi-nation, multi-lingua world citizens.



I remember us sitting near Danube. Since most of them were Asian, they were joking about their differences. It was dragging about Koreans using extra-hard chop sticks (contrary to all other Asians)and placing them on wall as art work. In this case, when drinking and laughing near the beautiful European river, the differences united them.



Amongst so many people I met Siniša Boljanović for the first time. He was contributing for a year or so to the project as an author. I introdduced him to GV. He spotted interview with Rebecca MacKinnon that I arranged for Serbian Link magazine. After that he sent me an e-mail. The fruitful cooperation kicked off. I was suprised when he told me he was blind. His determination to write in a language he does not know so well astonished me.

I was chating with Siniša and his friend Verica about his will to make a change. Siniša was thinking about an idea to help all the people with disabilities enjoy Global Voices.

During the Summit Parteem Rai mentioned on amazing idea. He said it would be an improvement to have avivable audio of all texts published on Global Voices. That led to Siniša recognizing his mission. I added some notes concerning the GV Radio project to GV Summit Internal Wiki:

It is highly significant to provide human readings, beacause otherwise GV would not be first human blog aggregator. I am strongly against any software that reads text automatically. The GV would be listened to as a radio by anyone (not only disabled persons) because lots of individuals prefere listening to the content, not reading. Having GV radio would boost our popularity and visiting rates. Those who learn English would also use this feature. We should provide both download and streaming audio. I suppose the best way to achieve audio content handled by humans is to hire one person to do all the readings. That way, our brand new podcast feature will stay organized. Persons who reads, edits and uploads the content should have voice capabilities of a radio announcer.

After coming back to Belgrade I made a press announcement about the Summit. This was sent out to the media from Journalists Association of Serbia.

I also blogged about human rights issues concerning Bogoljub Karić. In the text, except media censorship issues (or rather negative campaign and absence of investigative journalism in Serbia) towards Mr. karić, I wrote about people I met in Budapest where we discussed the situation. I sent this text to " Večernje Novosti" daily newspaper as a reader comment, and I doubt they will publish it.



I made a break on my road trip back to Serbia (01.07). We stopped in northern town of Kikinda. I was supprised to see the coat of arms of the town - head of a slayed Turk on a sword. I have got an explanation that this symbol was given to the town by queen of Austro-Hungarian kingdom during the wars to defend Christianity from the Ottoman Empire.