By Brenda Zulu
After my interview with Global Voices Online last month on the “State of the Zambian blogosphere” I decided to call for a face to face bloggers meeting for Lusaka based bloggers in Zambia. I sent out the call on facebook for Bloggers to meet.
About 10 bloggers came to the meeting to see how we could strengthen the state of the Zambian blogosphere which is currently weak and also address issues which were limiting bloggers daily blogging.
The bloggers agreed on setting up a formal network for Zambian Bloggers. The bloggers also agreed on setting up a facebook group which is up and running already called Zambian Bloggers which will act as a discussion platform. The bloggers also agreed to meet monthly and discuss issues related to their well being and how they can make money.
They also identified their capacity building needs that can enable them become knowledgeable. It is important that Zambian bloggers have a platform online and offline. The offline space makes it rich for bloggers to meet and add a face to the daily online talks and share their different experiences while the online space remains a link and meeting place for their daily discussions and pointers online.
There is also a need to grow the Zambian blogosphere. It is also important for the bloggers to be trained in citizen journalism, web2.0 applications and social media and how these tools can be used for citizen engagement and advocacy around Zambia.
Zambians need to know how to add content to Wikipeadia, delicious, tag some stories, vlog, social bookmark, how to podcast, leverage RSS feeds, share websites, photo-blog, skype and the use of many more applications and tools.
Bloggers can also use many free and open source tools which include and not limited to GIMP, Audacity, Scribus, Inkscape, Chisimba, Django and Drupal.
There is need to teach Citizen Media techniques to underrepresented communities in Zambia if the blogging community was united and made decisions as one.
This is a space for reflective thinking for my day to day work especially in my work as cover conferences and events in relation to ICT4D issues.
Comments and suggestions are welcome. Get your voice heard and contribute now.
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