I did the Dutch translation for this video that introduces Rising Voices, an amazing project spearheaded by my friend David Sasaki that “aims to bring new voices to the global conversation”.

Let me know if you find any errors in my translation. You can also watch the original video in any other language besides Dutch. If you know a language that this video hasn’t been translated in, feel free to contribute (dotsub makes it real easy to translate)!

Do people imagine someone in their head, even visualize them, imagine how s/he would respond, when writing a piece? You always hear that it is crucial for a good piece to imagine what your audience is – but how many people actually also imagine, even visualize, one specific person s/he is talking to?

Usually when I write, I don’t have anyone particular in mind. The audience I am ‘imagining’, is more like a particular mode I am in – blogging mode, academic writing mode – that guides my writing.

Perhaps I should start to visualize the person I am talking/writing to. Would that be insane? A first step to schizophrenia? Are there other people who have tried this?

When we spoke with teachers and after school programs, it was clear that they recognized that their students were interested in new forms of cultural production that are enabled by new media technologies and new forms of cultural distribution supported by the web. They knew that their students were fans, bloggers, and gamers. But they faced a number of issues: they had no standards by which to evaluate work produced in these new and emerging media; they didn’t know enough themselves to give good advice to student media makers; the students lacked role models to help them understand future opportunities in this space; and the students were facing ethical issues that their teachers and parents didn’t really understand.

Does this reminds anyone of teaching parents how to use the VCR? Except that learning how to tape something is a whole lot less significant for matters such as civic engagement or even entertainment, than learning how to use digital media, especially to produce culture. The awful state of academic education in its ability to teach us skills (social, technical, digital literacy) that will enable us to grow and develop in the new media, participatory culture environment is highlighted by Henry Jenkins, and he suggests what to do about it as well!

The tangled web of logic is written by Brett Banks, someone who, as a friend of mine would say, ‘has the boiling blood of a nomad’, having been to pretty much everywhere in the world, including Canada, Mexico, Australia, many parts of Asia etc. Some of you might also be interested in the Global Citizenship Series at UBC that Brett worked on. It was Brett’s post on Living Like a Refugee that initially caught my attention.

Speaking of refugees, some of you may know I have a long standing interest in issues like the flow of people, and in particular the constraints on this flow, such as immigration laws. I thus wanted to introduce you to a second blog, ImmigrationProf Blog, (the title says it all) run by professor Kevin Johnson, Bill Hing and Jennifer Chacon, all professors at UC Davis. They do people like me a great service in keeping track of the recent developments in immigration law (focusing on the US mostly) and providing thoughtful comments.

An immigrant blog more specific to the situation where I am from is Wij Blijven Hier!. This is a Dutch blog and the title literally means “We Are Here to Stay!” – and although it is within one country, it is a bridgeblog in many aspects of the word – bridging the (mostly Muslim) immigrants to the other Dutch citizens who do not necessarily understand immigrant or Muslim culture. Small sidenote: I somehow wish there was also a non-Muslim Dutch immigrant voice to this otherwise amazing group weblog, which is run by Ashraf, Eighty, Faisal, Khadija, Mehwish, ReFlex, Tasneem and Umar.

For something entirely different, please visit the Hong Kong music review blog 斥測樂壇, (in Chinese) run by Holf Yuen. An independent voice and great resource for getting the skinny on the latest music releases in Hong Kong. Especially now that I am not in Asia myself, I depend on sites like these to find some good music amidst the commercial noise known as the Hong Kong entertainment marketing machineries.

Last but not least, I give you Interlocals, a recent citizen journalist website started by my friend Oiwan Lam and Roland Soong of ESWN fame, as well as Coco, Iam Chong, all from Hong Kong, Chung Kai from Malaysia, Dongwon from South Korea, Chung-pei and Li-bun from Taiwan. The website seeks to stimulate “interlocal” dialogue between the non-English speaking world (using, ironically, English to communicate). Personally, I am most excited about the Letters and Dialogues part where people can send in letters and have them answered by someone from a particular region or culture – it is like a letter to the editor, except for the fact that we are all editors. This blog just started so keep an eye out for it!

Highlights:

What is a blog? Is it something that you write for yourself? I know that other people can go and read it, but I cannot believe that anyone would do that. There are several billion people in the world. Whose blog shall I go and look at? So I think that most people just write for themselves.

Alright, so only nobodies blog. So which one of them do you want me to read? In the end, there is nothing good to read and so we must write for ourselves.

You can write for yourself, but you should not complain that nobody is reading what you wrote, right? I am just curious. Does anyone read that stuff?