About

"Modern Railway... Historical world" by Flickr user Atilla1000

We’re glad that you found us. In the first week of December, 2009 media leaders from throughout Eurasia will meet in Istanbul, Turkey for a three-day workshop organized by Internews on digital media, leadership, and strategizing. Throughout the three days the participants will learn the fundamentals of digital multimedia production and online distribution. They will each produce at least one piece of digital storytelling, which they will publish on this blog and distribute through Facebook, VKontakte, Twitter, Flickr, and Blip.tv.

We will use an assortment of tools to produce these stories, including WordPress for blogging, Picnik and Picasa for photography, Audacity for podcasting, and Movie Maker for slideshows and video. All of these tools are free and relatively easy to use, but even the most sophisticated and expensive media production tools can’t help craft a compelling story. That is up to the storyteller herself.

Feature stories are no longer isolated works of creativity. Hyperlinks, remixes, and block quotes — all frequent techniques of digital storytellers — place each story in an interconnected web of issues, individuals, languages, events, and places. In addition to publishing stories on this blog, we will also explore ways to visualize and make sense of their messages and themes.

Stay tuned to learn more about the lives and tales of media leaders from Tajikstan, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Mongolia, Russia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Hungary, Kyrgyzstan, China, Georgia, Macedonia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and beyond.