Jan 11
Posted: under Multimedia, Travel.
Just playing around with some of the photos I’ve shot over the years – this one is a panorama of the city of Tbilisi, Georgia. It’s an amazing town – ancient and modern, and at the time this photo was taken, baking at about 105 degrees Fahrenheit.
The statue barely visible in the distance is the goddess of Tbilisi; she greets you with a cup of wine, if you are a friend. The sword, if you are not. (click to embiggen)
Oct 04
Posted: under Digital Migration, New Media Strategery, Travel.
Tags: Bulgaria, new media. illuminated manuscripts, Rila Monastery
I’m in Sofia, Bulgaria, training journalists & others on how to use the various tools of New Media.
As part of the trip, we went into the mountains, to an ancient monastery. Yeah, I know — a trip up winding paths to a crumbling castle … bring your garlic, stakes and holy water, right?
Actually, the Rila Monastery (as I said in an earlier post) is one of the truly amazing places on Earth. Man, they really loved to decorate this place up.
So here’s a shot of me on the portico of the cathedral here — a quote I heard is that “this place is like the Jerusalem to these people. It’s their Holy Land.” To me, the symmetry of this place lies in the fact that the monks here, for centuries, preserved knowledge by laboriously hand-scribing illuminated manuscripts. Until they were supplanted by herr Gutenberg’s movable type technology.
I am here to teach people about the modern equivalent of that disruptive technology.
Jul 07
Posted: under Art, Multimedia, new media, Travel, Web/Tech.
Tags: addis ababa, artwork, Ethiopia, Ku Klux Klan, Obama, painting, training
I found this painting in a humble little clothing stall in the merkato in Addis Ababa, during my last day there, when I finally got some free time to wander around and explore this fascinating city a little bit.
It surprised me to find such an accurate depiction of the garb of the KKK in faraway Ethiopia. I guess movies or popular culture have exposed even the ordinary people around the world to our more sordid side...
Amongst all the funky art & tchotchkes, this painting caught my eye for obvious reasons.
What you can’t see, of course, are all the other exemplars of Obama’s presence here in East Africa. People walk around with Obama’s face on t-shirts, bumper stickers, hats … his face is pasted onto the clear glass shelves in the jewelry shops, and to the sides of the little “blue mule” micro-buses.
This is a good thing.
Invisible to just about everyone in the U.S., we are in a struggle for influence in Africa, which more and more people are calling “The Last Frontier.” China is spreading around the oceans of money (that we gave them in exchange for cheap plastic consumer goods, but that’s another story), and they are doing it in a very tricky, manipulative way. The U.S. and Western Europe have had decades of work, trying to figure out ways to actually benefit countries with their foreign aid. It has not been the easiest process.
However, we have figured out that nation-building takes time. Lots of it. And the investments tend to be gradual, building up infrastructure, institutions, ecosystems. The kinds of things that people really don’t see all at once – but if you take a snapshot of a country 10 or 20 years apart, you see the radical transformations. I know I did when I went back to both Colombia and Venezuela after 20 years absence in 2007-8.
In Addis Ababa, the modern struggles to catch up with the ancient.
Meanwhile, the Chinese are throwing up big, showy projects. Roads, bridges, dams, buildings. And slapping their branding all over them. Ordinary people see this and say, “Well look, the Chinese are actually doing something for us. What do the ferengi leave behind? They talk a lot, but what do we have to show for it all?”
In this kind of environment, having an African-American as President of these here United States is a definite advantage.
Jul 01
Posted: under Digital Migration, journalism, new media, New Media Strategery, newspaper crisis, Online (Multi)Media, Online Video, Travel, Video, Web Tech, Web/Tech, Webconomics.
Tags: addis ababa, developing nations, Ethiopia, journalism, journalists, mobile web, social media training, State Department
I’ve been in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, for the last week, training the local journalists and government information officers (aka PR flacks) on how best to take advantage of the way that “New Media” is creating new ways of connecting with each other, and the world at large. I’m here as part of the same US Embassy program that has sent me to places like Chile, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Costa Rica, etc., to try to bring people the benefits of experience (aka the way newspapers & TV news has imploded in the U.S.), so they can start planning for the Great Digital Migration.
This is my class of TV journalists at Addis Ababa University (AAU). I tried to cram as much about online video and sharing into my short sessions as I could. Here, I'm showing how to use both professional tools like Adobe Premiere Pro CS5, as well as free alternatives like Windows Movie Maker.
The one thing that everyone here agrees on is that Ethiopia desperately wants to change its international image – c’mon, admit it. When you think of Ethiopia, what images come to mind? Deserts, starving people, vultures, Live Aid, right?
Well, it’s not like that any more. In fact, if you look around at the Addis Ababa skyline, you’ll mostly see cranes and highrise towers under construction. The real-estate bubble that burst and devastated the rest of the world never took hold here.
There are still many reminders that the ancient ways of living are still very much in existence here in Addis, but please also note all the other markers of modernity in this shot.
However, they are facing many of the same challenges as the rest of the world, at least when it comes to the emergence of the internet, and the struggles of newspapers, radio and TV stations to come to grips with social media, and the ability of anyone to become a publisher/broadcaster/internet troll.
The very first place I visited was Sheger FM, the one independent radio station in Ethiopia. This is the courageous owner, who is really struggling to walk the razor's edge here in Addis.
I’ve found many of the same behaviors and attitudes I’ve encountered in the other places that I’ve done web/online video/social media training sessions – stubborn insistence that things will never change, toxic skepticism, and even outright hostility.
After a bit of a rocky start, these guys really came around and appreciated the hands-on lessons I gave them on how to do live video stand-up reports and how to compress video into the best codec to upload to YouTube. The Nelson Mandela building is a challenge, though; between the thin air at this 8000-foot altitude, and having to haul my big carcass up 5 (five) steep flights of stairs, the first few minutes of every class were mostly spent huffing and puffing, and hoping that someone in the class had a particularly insightful comment.
Aug 10
Posted: under Travel, Video, Viral Fame, visual storytelling.
Tags: attendant, fed up, Flight 1052, JetBlue, machinamation, take these passengers and shove 'em
Years ago, it took us a couple of weeks to set up a “re-creation” of the O.J. Simpson-Nicole Brown-Ron Goldman murder chain of events (special shout-out to Yasmin Brennan for finding us someone to play OJ … before she had to flee to Australia to avoid extradition).
Last year, it took 3 days or so to come up with an animated sequence showing a plane crash, using Flash.
Now, only hours after a colorful incident, “machinamation” (done by Next Media Animation in Taiwan) has come out with a short animated video showing their take on what happened on Flight 1052.
Jul 06
Posted: under Mobile Uploads, Travel.
Tags: London, Thames River, tourist shot, uploaded from iPhone
Dave at the Tower Bridge, originally uploaded by Wordyeti.
Walking around London, I was struck by how much I recognized from old episodes of Dr. Who and Monty Python. Also, by the helpful little painted warnings at every intersection, warning the no-doubt “thick as two planks Yanks” to look in the proper direction for oncoming traffic.
It was quite chilly in the morning when I began my stroll around the Old City; by the time this picture was taken, I had been walking for more than eight hours, and my feet were throbbing. Still, the blue sky and fleecy clouds were so cheerful that I almost discounted all the griping and grousing that the Fleet Streeters had always filled my ears with, when justifying their move to L.A.
Jul 06
Posted: under Digital Migration, journalism, Mobile Uploads, new media, Online Video, Travel.
Tags: certificates, frustration, Georgia, group shot, Premiere Elements 8, State Department, students, Tbilisi, video training, YouTube
Tbilisi Journalist Graduation, originally uploaded by Wordyeti.
These are the journalists from the smaller cities & towns outside of Tbilisi, Georgia. They’re all grinning happily, because they’ve managed to survive my intense one-week course, where I set them all up with their own blogs, and then sent them into the field to shoot, edit and post online news videos.
A crucial part of every learning process is making mistakes. They learned not to try to take on too ambitious a project when using makeshift multimedia tools. I learned not to use Adobe’s Premiere Elements 8. That has got to be the buggiest video editing system ever inflicted on an unsuspecting public. I use Premiere Pro all the time and love the rest of Adobe’s various iterations of the Creative Suites … but Elements is Satan on a CD. My students were throwing their headsets across the room in frustration as it crashed … lost work … necessitated a hard reboot of the system … crashed again … corrupted the footage … (rinse, repeat).
I finally installed Sony’s Vegas Video on their systems; not as user-friendly for beginners as the “Grandma-ware” that Elements is known as … but it at least would make a J-cut or an L-cut without locking up the system. Unfortunately, Vegas Video wouldn’t import the footage from the Flip cameras with the audio attached. So we had to export the audio tracks from Premiere, and then import them into Vegas and sync the audio with the visuals.
I was told that this was actually a quite valuable experience, because real-world conditions for indie journalists in Georgia are pretty much like this. Working on cobbled-together secondhand equipment in sweltering offices, where the electrical power is subject to sporadic outages. And when the wind shifts to blow in over the nearby market … well, you want to close the windows, no matter how hot & humid it is.
I just noticed – my arms look inordinately long in this photo.
Jun 16
Posted: under Travel.
Tags: panorama, photo, sunset, Tbilisi
This image is meant to be seen large; the storm that rolled in last night was spectacular, and made the sunset look gorgeous.
The building on the right with the star on top looks like an imitation of the “Seven Sisters,” giant edifices on the banks of the river winding through Moscow. They are also called “The Wedding Cakes” because they have that multi-layered and slathered in meringue look.
When I first arrived, I thought the big tower on tope of the hill on the left was some kind of a tourist attraction. Turns out it’s just a TV antenna… not sure what the big spoked wheel next to it is all about, though.
Feb 13
Posted: under Drinking games, Foodstuffs, Travel, Ukraine.
Tags: Foodstuffs
…and this is where my problems really started…
Note that in Kiev, you can get sex on the beach. The drink, that is.
Actual sex on the beach is not recommended.
Nov 27
Posted: under Colombia, Hugo Chavez, journalism, Travel.
Our training sessions are finally done, we got great reviews from all the newspapers we visited, and we’ve learned tons about Colombia and all the changes that have taken place here. The last six years have seen a sea change in the security situation – and the fact that you can now actually drive between cities, that you can go out at night without worrying about having a burlap sack stuffed over your head – has meant that business and society here have managed to rebuild. 
Yesterday, talking with our driver, he told us stories about the 500 cabdrivers/informants that Pablo Escobar used to have roaming the streets of Medellin, the Hiroshima-like mushroom cloud that hovered over the chief of police’s house after 1,000 pounds of dynamite went off, the solid gold chess set given to a favored underling, and on and on … I’ll write more about those sad subjects later. But the point is that The Bad Old Days are something that people take great pains to point out are far, far in the past.
So here is a photo from the Minas de Colombia, a kind of wholesale emerald, art and golden artifacts store. I’d like to write something about how my joking around with the fuse to the dynamite is symbolic of the changes that we tried to make down here with the newspapers, of the way that we went around trying to tell them to blow up their old business models – but that might be abusing a metaphor too much even for me.
