Enero 12, 2006

The Bolivia Blog Well

The latest installment of the weekly Bolivian blog summary is now posted at Global Voices Online, including the first image/drawing ever to appear. The roundup is very Evo-heavy, which might make sense because of the freshness of the unique electoral victory and curious anticipation of his administration. However, it seems that the recent entry continues a pattern of the content being politics or current events heavy. Surely, there are other topics that could and should be covered, but so far I haven’t been able to find that opening.


During the Global Voices Summit, which took place last December, a session titled “What Makes a Successful Blogosphere?” piqued my interest. Successful is a relative concept, but for me, Barrio Flores has been a minor success only for the fact that my antennae are now better tuned in to what goes on in Bolivia, and I can attribute it all to the upkeep of my blog. I don’t really worry too much about number of visitors or frequency of comments (although I recognize that I do a poor job of replying to comments). But now that I signed up to tackle the weekly challenge of a blog summary, I must keep tabs on the entire ever-growing Bolivian blogosphere.

Session comment:

Indonesian Blogger: A similar thing in other blogospheres; people write about their personal life, which is ok, but looking at gv (Global Voices), I think we have different directions b/t the personal and what we put on gv.

My current tally of Bolivian blog feeds on Bloglines has reached 89. My task is to see what is written, draw connections between blogs talking about the same topic and general entries that give an insight to how a country operates. However, it seems that there is a pattern of many of the same, active blogs reappearing on virtually blog round-up. To me, that’s a tribute to them in that they write interesting things and helps me remember that different experiences translate to different opinions. Yet, I notice that many well-written and active blogs never make the cut to the Bolivian blog summary. I went back to the “Guide to Writing for Global Voices” to make sure that I wasn’t overlooking someone or missing the boat altogether.

It may appear that some of the aforementioned personal blogs are purposely getting overlooked by this blogger, but I still have trouble finding a way to bring them into the fold and give them the recognition they deserve. Some of these literary blogs are very heartfelt, but if it wasn’t for the piece of information indicating that the author is in or from Bolivia, then it could have very well been written by a Colombian or Mexican. It seems to me that Global Voices thrives on country-specific information. However, I am encouraged that there is discussion on adding other broad categories like Food and Music to be incorporated to the mix.

From the irc channel during the session:

[should we try to be focusing on making people have political and social blogs, and less personal blogs? At first there was agreement in the channel that personal is less interesting; another said that in the africa context, we want to get the word out about politics… since it gets more int’l coverage , so someone asked, if I’m from africa (which I am), I have to write about politics or I’m not interesting or important. Final comment: do we have some sense that we could control the # of blogs or issues they could address?]

In the end, I am not applying value to any of the Bolivian blogs in one way or the other. To me, there seems to be a natural fit for some blogs and the overall purpose of the site. Yet, I am hoping to do the entire blogosphere justice. I am looking for suggestions, recommendations, criticisms or any other piece of advice about the weekly round-ups. I would like to expand the coverage a bit, so that more individuals are included, but I am struggling to find ways to do that. I have been writing according to my understanding of the overall Global Voices project, with the hopes that others have taken an interest in Bolivia and have followed one of the links to learn more about this country in the headlines.

Comments welcome (and maybe this time, I’ll actually reply to them).


Posted by eduardo at 05:38 PM | Comments (3)

Octubre 20, 2005

Bolivia - Global Voices

The second weekly Bolivia blog summary is up at Global Voices Online. There are a couple of new featured blogs.

01:37 PM | Comments (0)

Octubre 12, 2005

Bolivia at Global Voices

My first Bolivian blog weekly roundup is up at Global Voices Online. This will likely be a weekly or bi-weekly occurrence. If there are any other Bolivian blogs that I should know about, which contains content usually featured on Global Voices, please let me know.

Posted by eduardo at 02:49 PM | Comments (0)

Septiembre 30, 2005

The State of Bolivian Blogs

Now appearing at the amazing project Global Voices Online is my first contribution. I was asked to write an article focusing on Bolivian blogs in their many shapes and sizes. The article is called "The State of Bolivian Blogs" and I tried to incorporate as many blogs as I could. Hopefully this will the first of other contributions I can make to this site.

If you have not read Global Voices' Manifesto, please do.

Posted by eduardo at 02:53 PM | Comments (2)

Junio 14, 2005

Global Voices Online

If you are reading this blog, chances are you have a passing interest in Bolivian politics and daily life. Maybe the most recent developments in Bolivia led you here to find out more or get another viewpoint besides the growing number of bloggers writing about that subject. I rarely write much about my personal life without it relating somehow to Bolivia or the Bolivian community. I am grateful that some of my entries have been covered by this wonderful project called Global Voices Online from Harvard University.

The Global Voices Online project focuses on blogs of a similar vein from around the world. The mission of GVO:

The primary mission of Global Voices is twofold: 1) To call attention to the most interesting conversations and perspectives emerging from citizens’ media around the world by linking to text, audio, and video blogs and other forms of grassroots citizens’ media being produced by people around the world; 2) To facilitate the emergence of new citizens’ voices through training, online tutorials, and publicizing the ways in which open-source and free tools can be used safely by people around the world to express themselves.

A daily blog roundup finds the very best entries that focuses on real life developments around the world. I have discovered great blogs such as Sokawanele from Zimbabwe, which really covers the awful things that Mugabe is doing to his own people. Limited time really prevents me from discovering all of the wonderful different blogs covered by GVO.

Posted by eduardo at 09:07 PM | Comments (0)

Junio 02, 2005

barrioflores @ aol

Miguel B. tipped me off that we both made Aol @ School Country Watch's Recommended Blogs with Political Content. In addition to being listed, the list's compiler comments a bit about some of the Bolivian blogs. Here are a couple of observations:

BARRIO FLORES
URL: http://www.barrioflores.net/weblog/-Hosted by Eduardo Flores (eduardo [at] barrioflores [dot] net), a US citizen and son of Bolivian immigrants, this English language blog contains the latest news about Bolivian current events, including quotes from newspaper articles, with a slight slant in favor of President Carlos Mesa noted in the author's comments

You think? ;)

Bolivian Blog
URL: http://muereevomuere.blogspot.com/ Hosted by 20-year-old Alvaro Piaggio from Santa Cruz, Bolivia (alvaro_pg@hotmail.com and alvaro_pg@msn.com), this Spanish language blog (which, despite the URL, is not overtly anti-Evo Morales) includes comments and articles on Bolivian current events

Overtly is a nice word.

Posted by eduardo at 10:20 PM | Comments (1)

Enero 23, 2005

El Fascinante Mundo de los Blogs

Gracias a Miguel E. de la pagina "El Forastero" por incluirme en su lista de "blogs" o "bitácoras" que fue publicada en el periódico de La Paz "La Prensa". No sé si habrá más visitas, pero bienvenido al visitante que viene a través del artículo.

* www.barrioflores.net/weblog/ “Barrio flores”. Hijo de bolivianos inmigrantes en los EEUU pero nacido allí, encontró en esta página un camino para regresar a Bolivia.

Posted by eduardo at 07:12 PM | Comments (0)

Diciembre 13, 2004

New Bolivia Blog

There's an interesting new blog from Bolivia, called precisely Blog From Bolivia. Take a look at this tidbit:

I am just back from a two day trip to La Paz. I met with the Bolivian Vice-Minister who has been handling the government’s negotiations with Bechtel..... The Vice-Minister verified that our international pressure campaign against Bechtel has worked and that the company is ready to drop its $25 million legal case against Bolivia - for a token sum of two Bolivianos, about 30 cents

How's that for some inside scoop?

The blog is part of the organization The Democracy Center's website. The center's director, Jim Schultz has been living in Cochabamba for quite some time and has been involved in community activism programs in Bolivia, the U.S. and all over the world. The Center won Top Story of the Year from Project Censored for their work in the "Guerra del Agua" 2000. I met Jim in 2003 through some common friends, and when he gave a very informative presentation to the Maryknoll School in Cochabamba.

There are no immediate plans to add a comments section to the blog, primarily due to time constraints. However, hopefully the active interest of the small handful of bloggers who comment on one another's site will convince him that there is room for more discussion about Bolivia in blogs.

Posted by eduardo at 04:03 PM | Comments (4)

Octubre 13, 2004

Living in Bolivia Update

By now, you probably know that the collaborative website Living in Bolivia has been acting pretty funny. Not ha-ha funny, but frustratingly irksome funny.

You may have also noticed that the Living Network has expanded to include the United States and has also narrowed down to include more countries. It was due to the interest of a few bloggers writing about Bolivia, that lead Living in Latin America to include a Bolivia sub-section.

I was acting as an "editor" by default for the Bolivia page and the other Latin American pages. Basically that task involved answering mail, adding new blogs to the aggregator and a little bit of outreach. Yet, with these inconveniences of not being able to post new articles, I am afraid that the momentum may have been lost.

Like everything, nothing is free. I pay about $60/year for the server space that this webpage is located, which is a mere pittance for the amount of enjoyment and knowledge that I gain. However, with the expansion of new subsections on the Living Network, the cost inevitably had to increase. The previous project was financed out of the pockets of the network creators. There will be experimenting with the placing of ads to generate revenue to help pay for the project.

Right now, the Living in Bolivia page is feeding all of my posts to the front page, including some of the mundane ones (I´d like to think not all my posts are mundane). I do not know how to change that just yet.

Not to be lost in all this talk about ads, money, bugs, and other problems is the overall vision held by the creators. Obviously this entire project was created because of the fascination and the belief that blogging is a powerful information tool. I have learned so much from reading others´ blogs, especially in regards to Latin America.

Hopefully soon, the new software will allow bloggers associated with the Network to directly feed articles in the appropriate sub-sections. In the past, members had to write separate articles in order to be seen in the various Living pages. With the new system, this will be able to be done directly from the respective homepage.

With all this, the Living Network may become a reference point for blogs all across the world. Traffic for individual user pages will surely increase, which often allows for the generation of revenue.

However, I am a bit uneasy with this transition. Whenever money is involved, things seem to lose its innocence. The grassroots approach to the collaborative pages was something I thought was incredible. It sure helped bring people across the world together to share ideas and opinions. Yet, I am not convinced that all this has been lost.

Hopefully this explained things a bit, although this is a summary of two 4--5 page emails that I received explaining these changes. in a nutshell, the powers-that-be are working on the database problems and other glitches; and hope to relaunch everything with the corresponding changes soon.

Thoughts?


Posted by eduardo at 04:29 PM | Comments (4)

Octubre 12, 2004

Almost Famous - Bolivia Blogs

The webpage El Forastero did a great job searching and listing all the blogs related to and devoted to Bolivia.

As he noted, many of the blogs are written by Bolivians living abroad or foreigners who happen to be in Bolivia traveling or living temporarily. Most, if not all, are written in English.

This is how he described this page:

"Barrio flores" Esta es una de las bitácoras más interesantes de la lista. Hijo de bolivianos inmigrantes en los EUA pero nacido allí, ha encontrado en esta página un camino para regresar a Bolivia. Decidió vivir un tiempo en Bolivia, y ahora, un año después de su última estadía, regresa a Cochabamba.

Many blogs have been abandoned for one reason or another. Three other blogs that are interesting and not listed include: the humorous Life in Bolivia, written by an American living in Cochabamba, and two other on Livejournal: Kaikishon, which contains monthly posts, but is written by a Bolivian living in Bolivia (which, ironically is a change from the norm), and Adventures in South America, written by a multicultural Bolivian who recently spent some time in Cochabamba.

Posted by eduardo at 11:41 AM | Comments (5)