Around Asia in ten days

To India and Indonesia with inkpot…

On December 3, 2006 I am going to be India, the world’s largest democracy country, for the Global Voices 2006 Summit. The previous one was held in London at Reuters’s world headquarter. This fast-growing citizen’s media project, in brief, was founded by two Harvard research fellows and being contributed by volunteer-writers from around the world to make unheard voices of grass-root communities be heard. The project was sponsored by and launched from the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at the Harvard Law School. Presently, Global Voices Online is an alliance of global media company, Reuters.

As a contributing-writer for Global Voices Online for about a year, it has been an amazing experience to see how people from all over the world use online tools for collaboration works. And it has been tremendously important to me to work and learn with experienced people from diverse culture. For some reasons, the innovative citizen’s media project has, so far, done some excellent works to bring voices, essentially outside North America and the West, to the world to listening to the rhyme. However more works need to be done. And in this regard, more innovation will need to be carried out. By doing so, a series of discussion among people involve will be vital to the core work. Technology does not change the way people live. It is the way people use technology, more specifically tool, to shape the heart of the world.

The two-day conference will be an important event for contributor-writers, editors and founders of the project to meet and discuss on a number of significant issues of the future works and what has been done. To be held at Habitat Center, participants, including invitees from digital media world, will be able to share experience, have their say and create contact in physical world, if not much less. Walking on an unpaved road for quite some time, it is always a good thing to sit down and see where we are before heading further.

This month last year I was in London, England. One of the most beautiful moments is gone away. This year, in the next couple of days, via Singapore I am heading off for India, Delhi for a less than a week. Yet, I am not going to return home since I have other business in Indonesia. Thus, transiting in Singapore, I am also paying a small trip to Jakarta before getting back for another short stay in Singapore, which is the last destination of my East Asia trip upon returning home, Cambodia.

A tentative travel schedule:
December 15, 2006: Via Singapore, from Phnom Penh, Cambodia to Delhi, India
December 15, 2006 (late afternoon): Arrive Delhi
December 16-17, 2006: Attend the Global Voices 2006 Summit
December 18-20, 2006: Sightseeing (hopefully to visit Taj Mahal) in and around Delhi.
December 20 (late afternoon)-21 (early morning), 2006: from Delhi to Jakarta, Indonesia via Singapore.
December 21-23, 2006: Business to do in Jakarta
December 23-25, 2006: A small trip in Singapore
December 25 (late afternoon), 2006: From Sinagpore to Phnom Penh

Update
December 18, 2006
Waiting for bus to Taj Mahal, Agra
December 17, 2006:
Attended second last day of the conference at Habitat center
December 16, 2006:
Attended first day of the conference at Habitat center
December 15, 2006:
Arrived Delhi late evening on December 15, 2006 at about 8 o’clock after spending several hours in Changi airport in Singapore.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 15th, 2006 at 11:49am and is filed under Journal, Travelogue. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.