Saturday, June 9, 2012
I write this post as I suspend operations on the main africahub website because I am moving to Lubbock, Texas in mid-July. I've just become too busy to keep up the maybe twenty minutes per night that I'd put into it for what, about ten months. It was fun; I liked it; I learned a lot, but I couldn't keep it up.
I've always had dreams about it (this was called collective because one dream was that several or many people would help with it; this clearly hasn't happened). I dreamed that it would be an extensive resource on all things African; I'm especially interested in Africa's languages and music. Even to have a relatively organized place to find information on each individual country would be nice. Maybe this stuff will appear in the future. But at the moment, I'm very busy just doing what I have to in order to move.
When the dust settles (in Lubbock) - maybe you'll see me again.
Friday, March 16, 2012
update 3/16/2012
OK here are the things I haven't done. 1. Managed to get anyone to help me with this. 2. Develop the resource page, even a little bit. 3. Make the advertisements in the template a little cleaner, make the template cleaner in general. 4. Attract any real audience. 5. Make enough time in my life to develop this better. 6. Integrate it into various other parts of my life, i.e., poetry, novel-writing, music, etc.
So what have I done? 1. Hang on tenaciously to about 10-15 minutes/day of updating the news aggregation.
I miss a few entire days; sometimes, like now, during break, I am able to go a little further afield to find interesting editorials. Thus stretching 10-15 minutes into 15-20; I still don't actually read most of the articles, nor do I scratch the surface in sources I could plunder for interesting news. In short, it's still pretty shallow. How close am I to narrowing it down (to a region? to a country? to a topic, like hunger, or Chinese colonialism?) Not close. Nowhere near, really.
It has changed me a little, though. Many years ago, I was appalled at an American student who didn't know that Africa was a continent, not a country. Recently both Rick Santorum and Sarah Palin admitted the same; both apparently have called it a country. Santorum's goof came early in the campaign and has been forgotten by most. I, however, have been stuck on it. To me, getting to be an adult, and still referring to Africa as a country, betrays profound and disturbing ignorance. This guy wants to be president? Excuse me?
I find myself using my information at odd times. After all this time (I've been doing it only since Sept. 2011) - I know better the differences among Rwanda, Uganda, Congo, etc. So how do I use this? I'm not sure exactly. But I definitely know more. I think the recent Kony2012 viral video was instructive in many ways, but one was that many Americans aren't willingly ignorant. Santorum is, maybe. But think how many people now know that Uganda is in Africa. How many know that US troops are in Uganda? More than knew that, say, in January.
This sleepy portal may not change a whole lot, but Africa is changing, quickly. I'll try to run alongside this fast-moving bus, careening down a hill. You say there are chickens on top?
So what have I done? 1. Hang on tenaciously to about 10-15 minutes/day of updating the news aggregation.
I miss a few entire days; sometimes, like now, during break, I am able to go a little further afield to find interesting editorials. Thus stretching 10-15 minutes into 15-20; I still don't actually read most of the articles, nor do I scratch the surface in sources I could plunder for interesting news. In short, it's still pretty shallow. How close am I to narrowing it down (to a region? to a country? to a topic, like hunger, or Chinese colonialism?) Not close. Nowhere near, really.
It has changed me a little, though. Many years ago, I was appalled at an American student who didn't know that Africa was a continent, not a country. Recently both Rick Santorum and Sarah Palin admitted the same; both apparently have called it a country. Santorum's goof came early in the campaign and has been forgotten by most. I, however, have been stuck on it. To me, getting to be an adult, and still referring to Africa as a country, betrays profound and disturbing ignorance. This guy wants to be president? Excuse me?
I find myself using my information at odd times. After all this time (I've been doing it only since Sept. 2011) - I know better the differences among Rwanda, Uganda, Congo, etc. So how do I use this? I'm not sure exactly. But I definitely know more. I think the recent Kony2012 viral video was instructive in many ways, but one was that many Americans aren't willingly ignorant. Santorum is, maybe. But think how many people now know that Uganda is in Africa. How many know that US troops are in Uganda? More than knew that, say, in January.
This sleepy portal may not change a whole lot, but Africa is changing, quickly. I'll try to run alongside this fast-moving bus, careening down a hill. You say there are chickens on top?
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
progress report 12/7
OK so now that it's Christmas season the time pressure is ratcheted up, and the question remains of whether this is worth my precious time, if my son isn't going to join in, learn a bit, or help me out. He's free to do as he washes; I've pressured him a bit, but I knew going in that it might take or it might not, and it didn't, so, after about three or four weeks, I thought, I'm doing it for me. and I renamed it "Tom's", on both of them.
So now, it's about 10 weeks, and I still put about 20 minutes a night into it, and look forward to it; I find it relaxing & edifying, though I don't really have the time. Some of my free-time pursuits, like my poetry have gone a little untended. New Yorkers sit around the house unread. I sometimes, as now, do this with my eyes half shut.
I hang on here for dear life, and because I like it. It has the potential to be a collective. It has the potential to be a resource on music and language and all the cool stuff Africa has to offer. It has the potential to be a model for programming, coding to make simple stuff look cool and inviting and even play with some online advertising (I have a whole system of writing to show off)...
I have two other friends who are aggregators, and I know one guy in the esl field who has a fascinating setup; I believe he gets the machine to do his aggregating. I'm not sure how he does it. Might be worth looking into. As it is, I don't really even have the time to read the articles I aggregate, but I can also say that 6 articles in about 20 minutes (tonight's haul) isn't an enormous waste of time; it feels productive in many ways, even if I don't get to read the entire articles. One gets used to the ebb and flow of stories, the power players on the continent, the places one goes to find news. I still welcome others to join me. It's a learning experience.
So now, it's about 10 weeks, and I still put about 20 minutes a night into it, and look forward to it; I find it relaxing & edifying, though I don't really have the time. Some of my free-time pursuits, like my poetry have gone a little untended. New Yorkers sit around the house unread. I sometimes, as now, do this with my eyes half shut.
I hang on here for dear life, and because I like it. It has the potential to be a collective. It has the potential to be a resource on music and language and all the cool stuff Africa has to offer. It has the potential to be a model for programming, coding to make simple stuff look cool and inviting and even play with some online advertising (I have a whole system of writing to show off)...
I have two other friends who are aggregators, and I know one guy in the esl field who has a fascinating setup; I believe he gets the machine to do his aggregating. I'm not sure how he does it. Might be worth looking into. As it is, I don't really even have the time to read the articles I aggregate, but I can also say that 6 articles in about 20 minutes (tonight's haul) isn't an enormous waste of time; it feels productive in many ways, even if I don't get to read the entire articles. One gets used to the ebb and flow of stories, the power players on the continent, the places one goes to find news. I still welcome others to join me. It's a learning experience.
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
report
OK so I've been aggregating for about a week, and this is what we have: about a week's worth of articles...not much, you might say. What's the point, you might say. I can say, you're right, I'm not sure the point. You may know that I hope to make a site connected to all things Africa, languages, music, resources, blogs, etc. That has yet to really start. The news aggregation end of it is interesting, but already takes up 10-15 min. a day, more than I really have. I think about it much more, of course; I'm loving it.
It puts me in touch with the biggest newspapers, like turning the pages of the New York Times. It educates me about the news and the corners of the continent. It's relaxing (like reading the newspaper), free & fairly easy to do.
But I would need help to really make it work, as an aggregating service and/or as an online resource. If I do it myself, it will probably be somewhat weak for years.
That may be ok though. Anyone who would like to join me, feel free!
It puts me in touch with the biggest newspapers, like turning the pages of the New York Times. It educates me about the news and the corners of the continent. It's relaxing (like reading the newspaper), free & fairly easy to do.
But I would need help to really make it work, as an aggregating service and/or as an online resource. If I do it myself, it will probably be somewhat weak for years.
That may be ok though. Anyone who would like to join me, feel free!
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Welcome
Interested in helping with Africa Hub? Thanks! I hope that working on and with this site will be beneficial for you.
Africa Hub, which is at http://africahub.blogspot.com, is primarily a news and web resource for people who are interested in Africa. You can probably clearly see that it isn't much now, but it can be whatever the collective of people who work on it have time to make it. In other words, jump right in, make it what you want, and we'll all be better off.
I think that your knowing my vision will help, but it's not necessarily limited to my vision. In other words, I envision a time when whoever is working on it together, make decisions about which direction it may go, and this may not necessarily be what I envisioned or intended. But that's ok, that's what collectives are.
First, I see it as a news resource on Africa, and a web resource on all things about Africa: its languages, its music, its politics, its environment, etc. There is no reason an extensive weblog system or blog system can't be connected to literally everything we want it to. I envision it connecting to African languages, African music, African programs and businesses, and virtually everything African. I am undecided on such things as Western views of Africa, Africans living abroad, etc.; I think limiting our scope may become an issue.
I think Africa Hub could go on a private web system (its own URL, its own web space) but it doesn't have to yet. I feel that it could and should move to its own web domain as soon as possible, but I'm starting it here because I'm more comfortable with this free web environment. When a group of us decide to move it to a better spot, I'm all for it. I also think we should stick to green, red and yellow (traditional colors of Africa) for reasons of simple identification by others. This doesn't have to be written in stone, though.
Second, I see it as a collective of web designers. Use THIS blog to say things like: "I've found a good way to use green, red and yellow together, and make a link resource here." Use THIS blog to say: let's move into music or politics in a separate section. This blog, the collective's blog, is for designers to discuss what we're doing. When you make something new, tell us. If it looks good, we'll copy it.
That brings up another issue: you contribute here; if you have good design ideas, you are primarily giving them away. That's because we can all see them, and we presume that we can use them also. Feel free to develop a beautiful section of Africahub, on blog or private africahub domain, then use it to get a job by saying, look at all this beautiful stuff I made. But we, meanwhile, can copy it and use it too. We need the designers among us to help so that we all get skills in the process. As a collective we are each individually contributing to the whole.
Politically, I would like to see Africahub as primarily apolitical, though this may be impossible, with one exception: whenever there is a dispute over access to information, we will fall on the side of open free access. In other words, we will take no official stand on Gaddafi vs. the new government of Libya (not get involved), but if one of them tries to limit access to information among its people, we will work to let anyone have access to the information on our site. We are a media site which strives to be objective in the western sense, at the same time knowing that may not be entirely possible, but at least not limiting people from reading opposing opinions. Editorials on either side of any dispute will be welcomed and linked to but clearly identified as opinions. Is that fair? If the collective agrees to change its direction, I am willing to consider other options.
With that I launch this site, in hopes it will help us all understand Africa and help Africa and the west reach better mutual understanding. I hope you, the young media entrepreneur, will put your heart into it and make it better in your own way; believe me, there are a million ways you can choose to make it better. I hope you, the young person seeking to make a better world, can help use this site to at least make us in the other continents a better-informed world. Do you feel that you don't really know the difference between countries that many people have never heard of? Join the crowd, but that shouldn't prevent you from learning about them. We're all here to do that, and starting out slowly in this respect is not a crime.
Good luck!
Africa Hub, which is at http://africahub.blogspot.com, is primarily a news and web resource for people who are interested in Africa. You can probably clearly see that it isn't much now, but it can be whatever the collective of people who work on it have time to make it. In other words, jump right in, make it what you want, and we'll all be better off.
I think that your knowing my vision will help, but it's not necessarily limited to my vision. In other words, I envision a time when whoever is working on it together, make decisions about which direction it may go, and this may not necessarily be what I envisioned or intended. But that's ok, that's what collectives are.
First, I see it as a news resource on Africa, and a web resource on all things about Africa: its languages, its music, its politics, its environment, etc. There is no reason an extensive weblog system or blog system can't be connected to literally everything we want it to. I envision it connecting to African languages, African music, African programs and businesses, and virtually everything African. I am undecided on such things as Western views of Africa, Africans living abroad, etc.; I think limiting our scope may become an issue.
I think Africa Hub could go on a private web system (its own URL, its own web space) but it doesn't have to yet. I feel that it could and should move to its own web domain as soon as possible, but I'm starting it here because I'm more comfortable with this free web environment. When a group of us decide to move it to a better spot, I'm all for it. I also think we should stick to green, red and yellow (traditional colors of Africa) for reasons of simple identification by others. This doesn't have to be written in stone, though.
Second, I see it as a collective of web designers. Use THIS blog to say things like: "I've found a good way to use green, red and yellow together, and make a link resource here." Use THIS blog to say: let's move into music or politics in a separate section. This blog, the collective's blog, is for designers to discuss what we're doing. When you make something new, tell us. If it looks good, we'll copy it.
That brings up another issue: you contribute here; if you have good design ideas, you are primarily giving them away. That's because we can all see them, and we presume that we can use them also. Feel free to develop a beautiful section of Africahub, on blog or private africahub domain, then use it to get a job by saying, look at all this beautiful stuff I made. But we, meanwhile, can copy it and use it too. We need the designers among us to help so that we all get skills in the process. As a collective we are each individually contributing to the whole.
Politically, I would like to see Africahub as primarily apolitical, though this may be impossible, with one exception: whenever there is a dispute over access to information, we will fall on the side of open free access. In other words, we will take no official stand on Gaddafi vs. the new government of Libya (not get involved), but if one of them tries to limit access to information among its people, we will work to let anyone have access to the information on our site. We are a media site which strives to be objective in the western sense, at the same time knowing that may not be entirely possible, but at least not limiting people from reading opposing opinions. Editorials on either side of any dispute will be welcomed and linked to but clearly identified as opinions. Is that fair? If the collective agrees to change its direction, I am willing to consider other options.
With that I launch this site, in hopes it will help us all understand Africa and help Africa and the west reach better mutual understanding. I hope you, the young media entrepreneur, will put your heart into it and make it better in your own way; believe me, there are a million ways you can choose to make it better. I hope you, the young person seeking to make a better world, can help use this site to at least make us in the other continents a better-informed world. Do you feel that you don't really know the difference between countries that many people have never heard of? Join the crowd, but that shouldn't prevent you from learning about them. We're all here to do that, and starting out slowly in this respect is not a crime.
Good luck!
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