Blogging for the Rest of the World Outside Silicon Valley

English is not your native language, your computer skills are fresh enough that when you're confronted with a form field named "XML RPC URL" you're pretty stumped, and renting a computer for an hour of Internet access costs the equivalent 1/3 of your daily wage*. You have a secondhand cellphone, but, no, you don't own a computer.

This is the situation for many parts of Thailand I've visited (which is by far certainly not the poorest country from a global perspective).

Heck, does blogging even make sense at all?

"Each one teach one", said Ryanne at a workshop for SAJA this summer (check out the tutorial on creating a free video blog.)

Without Hugh's original guidance and Dave jumping in, Thomas wouldn't be internationally famous. Thomas has a leg up as he speaks the lingua franca of the Web. (Although I have met an inordinate amount of fellow travellers with interest in Chinese, such as MBA students learning Mandarin in Shangai). Besides English, more importantly, Thomas had friends that willingly showed him the blogosphere's tools and tricks of the trade.

But what about Monty the tailor I mentioned the other day?

Perhaps 'Circuit Bloggers' can be of help. A Circuit Rider

...is a concept borrowed from the early development of the United States when judges and ministers traveled a rural "circuit" or region administering their services to small communities and rural populations. From this model, rural citizens had access to the services in their home communities rather than traveling great distances to the nearest judge or minister.

Today's circuit riders travel to the field to teach - anything ranging from teaching technology to non-profits to community-based water system infrastructure maintenance.

The Ecotourism Training Center is the brainchild of Reid Ridgway although he credits the Circuit Riders Productions program that turned his own life around for the inspirational model.

In my "circuit blogger" capacity today I taught the students at the Ecotourism Training Center, a vocational training program for young adults affected by the tsunami located in Khao Lak, Thailand, how to set up a public class blog. The class does have a computer lab full of donated Mac minis - or I won't have even bothered.

The ETC's blog second post is written by Tid, pictured above. Champ, who I interviewed here, is still editing his post on elephant trekking with the Discovery Channel. And Deo, a certified divemaster, is thinking ahead (hear Deo's interview) to his dive instructor duties upon graduation. (The brief interviews total a bit over a minute.)

With or without a blog, the students still need to communicate with their sponsors, friends and family, potential employees and others to let them know how they are doing and how they are progressing.

And they want to share with others their love of diving, wildlife, marine life and their home and its natural beauty.

They're also generally learning how to promote their future diving and the tourism business which depends on international customers. Blogging helps them practice English and computer skills while doing something fun.

Podcasting is even more important as practicing conversational speaking is higher priority than written English, so cheap and easy suggestions appreciated.

Why not stop by and say hello to the students? I found that getting feedback was the best incentive to continue blogging myself.

In addition, two days ago I gave a brief overview to a group of four volunteers currently at the Tsunami Volunteer Center who would like to go volunteer in Pakistan earthquake relief. They are all native English speakers - that is if you count Australian ;-) - but once they are on the road in winter disaster conditions, they'll have some of the same constraints as our students.

Here's the criteria I used to make recommendations outlined below:

• Low-cost. OK, free really. Low cost in U.S. and Europe is not exactly low-cost anywhere else.
  • Wordpress.com for free hosted blogging software.
  • Qumana for the free offline editing. (Ecto isn't free, but it's easy and it's your best option for Mac users.)
  • Ourmedia.org is free for podcasts and video, but the interface is too complex for many. (I like Audioblog's simplicity, but in many parts of the world, $4.95/month is more than a day's wage. The minimum wage in Thailand is 180 baht per day, or about $4.50 US. So I still don't have any reco's for multimedia blogging.)
  • Flickr, although free, is too slow on overloaded DSL networks. Any photo suggestions that don't require one image at a time upload - which also negates Ourmedia.org - appreciated. It be wonderful to be able to send the whole digital camera memory stick online in one shot in less than a lifetime. (Before you tell me that cameras are pricey, I'm using an inexpensive secondhand camera.)
  • For fundraising, I recommend my friend's Karmus.com site where for a promotional time period no Paypal fees are accessed for causes. For the Pakistan earthquake relief group, they have spent anywhere between four to six months volunteering in Khao Lak and are tapped out of resources to buy tents and emergency supplies from their own pockets, so the blog is to let family, friends, and aligned interests know of their intentions (i.e. contribute) as well as blogging their impressions once in Pakistan. The ETC could also ask for donations and sell their documentary movie CD as well on Karmus.

• Easy. Some folks don't have a engineering degree, nor even a college degree at all.
  • This is the toughie. I kept it simple by only showing ETC staff members the more 'complicated' functionality . With the students, we focused on the purpose of blogging, looked at a few blogs referencing "Khao Lak", considered the differences between media they were familiar with: email, written newsletters, and other media such as the Bangkok Post, or Phuket Magazine. And then jumped right into selecting a topic to blog about, how to create a title, post body, insert images, save and publish.
  • All Windows users, I recommended Qumana (free) to the Pakistan relief group. People like to know their money isn't supporting relief, not software companies. The group could use the offline editing tool from home before and after their two-month aid journey. Then while on the ground, the UN has a computer they can borrow once or so a week - and they'll just use the clunkier online Wordpress.com interface. (I didn't find Wordpress.com online interface intuitive enough; but all the clients such as Qumana and Ecto support Wordpress well.)
• Offline, Low-bandwidth Solutions
  • The ETC students have access to inexpensive Mac minis, but most folks don't have their own machines. I have a secondhand (thanks Jules!) ultralight Alphasmart (new starts at $249) that I can plug in via keyboard interface to cut down on my rented Internet cafe time. I debated on whether to bring my own laptop but due to heft/weight, possible theft, curiousity (I was curious how the "other half" without their own laptop lives), and because I wanted to prove that you don't need much to blog, I decided against it.
  • In the ETC student's case (Macs), we downloaded Ecto (they graciously are waiving the $17.95 fee in exchange for putting their badge on the blog) as a client to do our editing offline. Some kind of offline editing - even if it's a pen and paper where you jot your notes or outline out to save on "thinking" while your rented computer/Internet time ticks.

What are your suggestions for simple, low cost, low bandwidth multimedia blogging?

p.s. I feel inspired enough that when I get home I'll offer short easy tutorials on low-cost blogging a few times a month on this blog in simple English (for English as second-language readers). This entry was written for "circuit bloggers" and those helping others to learn how to blog, and not reflect the "easy tutorial" I just mentioned.

* For instance, Internet cafe costs are: In Khao Lak, 60 baht/hour; in Phuket, 40 baht/hour; on Phi Phi, 120 baht/hour, on Koh Jum, forget it you'll need your own sat dish. Minimum wage is 180 baht per day, or about $4.50 US. One dollar is about 40 baht right now.

Bonus: I found this aid group blog on their work in one of the poorest countries of the world over at Hugh's blog. (I only have time to check a few blogs about every two weeks. I wish now that I had a team of five myself!)

• Low-cost. OK, free really. Low cost in U.S. and Europe is not exactly low-cost anywhere else.
  • Wordpress.com for free hosted blogging software.
  • Qumana for the free offline editing. (Ecto isn't free, but it's easy and it's your best option for Mac users.)
  • Ourmedia.org is free for podcasts and video, but the interface is too complex for many. (I like Audioblog's simplicity, but in many parts of the world, $4.95/month is more than a day's wage. The minimum wage in Thailand is 180 baht per day, or about $4.50 US. So I still don't have any reco's for multimedia blogging.)
  • Flickr, although free, is too damn slow on overloaded DSL networks. Any photo suggestions that don't require one image at a time upload - which also negates Ourmedia.org - appreciated. It be wonderful to be able to send the whole digital camera memory stick somewhere in one shot. (Yep, I even using a older secondhand camera too.)
  • For fundraising, I recommended my friend's Karmus.com site where for a promotional time period no Paypal fees are accessed. For the Pakistan earthquake relief group, they have spent anywhere between four to six months volunteering in Khao Lak and are tapped out of resources to buy tents and emergency supplies from their own pockets, so the blog is to let family, friends, and aligned interests know of their intentions (i.e. contribute) as well as blogging their impressions once in Pakistan. The ETC could also ask for donations and sell their documentary CD as well on Karmus.
• Easy. Some folks don't have a engineering degree, nor even a college degree at all.
  • This is the toughie. I kept it simple by only showing ETC staff members the more 'complicated' functionality . With the students, we focused on the purpose of blogging, looked at a few blogs referencing "Khao Lak", considered the differences between media they were familiar with: email, written newsletters, and other media such as the Bangkok Post, or Phuket Magazine. And then jumped right into selecting a topic to blog about, how to create a title, post body, insert images, save and publish.
  • All Windows users, I recommended Qumana (free) to the Pakistan relief group. People like to know their money isn't supporting relief, not software companies. The group could use the offline editing tool from home before and after their two-month aid journey. Then while on the ground, the UN has a computer they can borrow once or so a week - and they'll just use the clunkier online Wordpress.com interface. (I don't find Wordpress.com easy enough; but all the clients such as Qumana and Ecto support it well.)
• Low-bandwidth and Offline
  • The ETC students have access to inexpensive Mac minis, whereas most folks don't have their own machines. I have a secondhand (thanks Jules!) ultralight Alphasmart (new starts at $249) that I can plug in via keyboard interface to cut down on my rented Internet cafe time. I debated on whether to bring my own laptop but due to heft/weight, possible theft, curiousity (I was curious how the "other half" without their own laptop lives), and because I wanted to prove you don't need much to blog, I decided against it.
  • In the ETC student's case (Mac), we downloaded Ecto (they graciously are waiving the $17.95 fee in exchange for putting their badge on the blog) as a client to do our editing offline. Some kind of offline editing - even if it's a pen and paper where you jot your draft out to save on rented computer/Internet time. (And again the Wordpress interface is not simple enough.)

What are your ultra low-cost global multimedia blogging suggestions? Do you know of easy blogging tutorials that could be useful to non-geeks and English as second language readers?

* For instance, Internet cafe costs are: In Khao Lak, 60 baht/hour; in Phuket, 40 baht/hour; on Phi Phi, 120 baht/hour, on Koh Jum, forget it you'll need your own sat dish. Minimum wage is 180 baht per day, or about $4.50 US. One dollar is about 40 baht right now.

Bonus: I found this aid group blog on their work in one of the poorest countries of the world over at Hugh's blog. (I only have time to check a few blogs about every two weeks. I wish now that I had a team of five myself!)

tags social media citizen journalism journalism blogging blogs weblogs marketing  global education vocational training diversity international business

Comments

[Mike Rohde]

Evelyn, great to see you exploring low-cost and free options for blogging. You mention of an AlphaSmart caught my eye — I have an AlphaSmart Dana, which is sort of the big brother version that runs Palm OS 4 and has a decent sized monochrome screen and something like 20 hours battery life It also can run on AA's in a pinch. Like the AlphaSmart, it's lower cost ($400 retail, $260-300 on eBay), has long battery life and is great for just writing. There is even a Dana that has built-in WiFi if that's important to you (thought it costs about $30 more retail).

http://www3.alphasmart.com/danastore/

One huge advantage to the Dana is the "Send" feature, which lets you write text in their built in wordprocessor AlphaWord, connect the Dana via USB cable to any Mac or Windows PC and press the Send button to zip the text you've just written to whatever open word processor you have open (Notepad, a browser, etc). Soun ds complex in description but is really quite easy and way quicker than Hot Sync.

I would also suggest a low-cost solution for writing and blogging is a Palm and Palm or ThinkOutside folding keyboard. If you aren't picky about the latest and greatest, an old PDA and folding keyboard on eBay could be had pretty inexpesively. The combo is small, light and portable. I've used this setup in the past with great success.

Finally, I'd also suggest a pocket Moleskine notebook too. These $10 notebooks tough, well made, small, light and make great capture tools for ideas when it isn't practical or desirable to pull out a PDA, notebook or whatever. They require no batteries and when combined with a Pilot G2 pen, are pretty near indestructable. They come in larger sizes too, though I think the pocket sizes are idea for travel.

http://www.squidoo.com/moleskines/

I wish you a fruitful trek and safe travels around the region and back home. I pray you have a significant impact both there and back here as well.

Be well!

[Alan Gutierrez]

Evelyn

I'm setting out to draw attention to your work from the context of New Orleans. Unfortunately, the trackbacks on your blog don't seem to be picking up on my links.

Thought I'd make note. I'm acting as a circuit blogger for New Orleans. It's a challenge.