It's a summit! But online… We'll have a series of educational Hangouts in Spanish, English, and Portuguese open to the entire community.
We've all wanted to relive the wonderful moments from the community meetings at each Summit that the Latin America team got the idea to recreate them virtually. We've been inspired by the GV Face series and questions that always come up in the authors’ work. We've also taken note of the activities that we've done when seeing each other at the summits with other GV'ers. What also drives us is this process of change that we've experienced as a community and as volunteers. And of course, we are also inspired by how we can continue expanding the ways we represent the majority of the world.
Important: These meetings are open to the entire community. We hope, in fact, that these exchanges will help the flow of ideas and will strengthen the content that Global Voices Online disseminates. If you get any ideas after seeing this calendar, please don't hesitate to let us know about them. We strongly believe that much of what we discuss will benefit the other regions, so if you don't speak Spanish and you'd like to join, send us a message! We'll see how we can include everyone in the conversation.
So welcome to the Latin America Mini Summit of 2015!
What will this “Mini Summit” consist of? Simply put — talks on Google Hangouts about different topics. The idea is for these talks to be educational and to help us expand ideas on writing and sharing. Regional editors and some of the authors have been extremely generous and will be joining us to answer questions, propose topics, and provide tools, and the rest of the team will be there to take notes of everything we talk about and share so that it can be useful for the rest of the community.
What if I can't attend the Hangout?
Not a problem. Everything will be recorded and notes will be taken with links to all of the tools. We're not interested just in participation during the Hangouts, but also before and after. The following calendar will help us get an idea about the activities we're planning. It would be a huge help if you would send us questions before each session to discuss and be included in the conversation.
So if you're up for it, below are the dates, times, topics, participants, and languages.
We're just waiting for you!
Note #1: One part of the Hangouts has still yet to be confirmed or continues to be subject to change. We'll keep you all posted on any updates here!
Note #2: For those of you who, like me, get annoyed with schedule changes and the mountain of people we have around the globe, here is a useful time zone converter [2].
Wednesday, September 9
Global Stories of Impact. Writing stories for Global Voices. [3]
With Sahar Habib Ghazi and Lauren Finch.
In this Hangout, we discussed recent changes in Global Voices, the stories we're looking to tell, those that have been most read, and those that are still yet to be told. A portion of this Hangout was dedicated to style and other useful tips for writing posts and creating headlines that catch a reader's attention.
Language: English
Saturday, September 12
Collaborative Work. Regional Posts, Global Series. [4]
With Taisa Sganzerla and Laura Vidal
This Hangout continued a previous discussion that looked to make the process of collaborative writing more practical. The ways in which we have written posts with a team have ranged from doing a series to special coverages. There have been authors of one region that wrote for another. With this session, we hope to share experiences and get a little bit closer to developing a method that will allow us to collaborate more and better.
Languages: English.
[To confirm]
Communities Connecting to the Global Conversation: Writing for Rising Voices
With Eddie Avila
Now that Rising Voices projects are becoming more and more expansive and inspiring, we think it's necessary to add fuel to the networks and group stories that, despite economic, social, or technological limitations, connect to the flow of online information. In this session, Eddie Ávila will tell us more about projects and articles that keep the Rising Voices page going and how we can collaborate to spark more of these stories.
Language: English
Tuesday, September 22 11:00 am EST
Twitter Experiences: Ensuring GV Latin America's Presence on Social Networks and Creating Promotion Strategies
With Elizabeth Rivera, Roy Rojas, and Lully Posada
For some time now, we have counted on Eli, Roy, and Lully's expertise and wit to promote our content on social networks. We've learned so much and have found many ways to create promotions and strategize that we couldn't pass up the opportunity to have them tell us what they've done and how they've done it to have GV Americas's followers multiply impressively with every passing week. If anyone is looking to learn how to expand content or wants to participate in this experience, look no further, this is the place.
Language: Spanish
Saturday, September 26 at 04:30 PM EST
From Latin America: Reading Citizen Media and Reporting the Continent's Stories
With Luis Carlos Díaz
Luis Carlos will show us how to understand the dynamic of citizen information and how to weave them together in real time to build verified stories. We'll talk about images, video, and online behavior. We'll see what the region's social networks and citizen media say and how.
Language: Spanish
Monday, September 28 at 1:00 PM EST
Ellery Biddle: Freedom, Security, and Censorship on the Continent: GV Advocacy in Latin America
With Ellery we'll take a look at stories of censorship and limits on freedom of expression that take place in the region. From criminalized community radio stations to issues of surveillance, we'll see how these problems come together particularly in Latin America. Similarly, we'll learn to identify stories we can write together with GV Advocacy and, more importantly, we'll learn to watch our backs to avoid problems.
Thursday, October 1 at 1:00 PM EST
Let's Talk About Violence, Let's Talk About Gender
With Firuzeh Shokooh Valle
Firuzeh will speak about various ways we can cover stories and write posts about gender and violence. What is domestic violence and what is it not? What happens when we equate violence against women with violence against men? We'll talk about the different ways in which violence has carved out an important space for itself in the region's stories and how gender differences are present in many of these conflicts. We'll talk about myths and stereotypes, and also about concepts and language.
Language: Spanish
Sunday, October 4 at 12:00 AM EST
Tips for Translators
With Marianna Breytman and Mohamed El Gohary
In this talk, we'll provide tools and other strategies to translate more and better. We'll talk specifically about the process of translating from Spanish into English, but many of these tips will deal with the process in general and with doubts that translators in general may hay. We'll also string together style, guidelines, uses, and differences that come about when going from one language to another.
Language: English
Wednesday, October 7 at 11:00 AM EST
What Are Latin American Networks Saying?: An Amazonian Brainstorm of Ideas
With Laura Vidal and Mary Aviles
This session, which will mark the end of this educational Hangout series, looks to open the conversation about topics that circulate in our region and the ways in which we can write about them. We'll open the debate about the importance of timeliness stories and the ways we can cover breaking news. We'll look at everything shared throughout the Mini Summit and will note conclusions and objectives.
Language: Spanish