A new age in news — on information age, citizen journalism, and online piracy.

Mekong ICT Camp 2010 connecting experts, media, and tech industry — reports overview of the camp, its philosophy, voices from participants.

@melinachan maintains an mkict list.

What we can do is suggest you an accom nearby, Baan Plaidoi (reservation), it’s 15 mins drive to the Camp.

Or an accom in the city: Holiday Garden (reservation) and Chiang Mai Flora (info [at] chiangmaiflora.com). Or any place in that Huay Keaw or Nimmanhemin areas). Some instructors stay in Holiday Garden. Chiang Mai Flora is near BarCamp venue on June 12.

We will provide local transportation between these accommodations and the Camp daily.

See this map to make your decisions: Mekong ICT Camp map.

While Mekong ICT Camp’s hope of educating new generation of technologists and citizen-journalists to enhance their capacity so that they can contribute more to their communities, the week-long workshop is essentially an opportunity that enables people from the region to gather to exchange their skills, knowledge, in particular culture. The 2008 camp in Chonburi Province’s Thammasat University Learning Resort, has more or less inspired participants to go beyond what they learned.
– Tharum Bun, a 2008 Mekong ICT camper

Tharum Bun is journalist and digital media specialist. He writes as a freelancer for Asian Correspondent, a web-based newspaper that focuses on Asia; he also covers news stories for The Phnom Penh Post, Cambodia’s oldest English newspaper. In digital media, he advises news organizations to make the most of web technologies, building and engaging targeted audience.

Timetable for 2010 Camp is now available [pdf]. While we say it’s a draft version, the actual one, that we going to have during June 7-12, will be more or less identical to this version.

Noted that while in the timetable stated that we have three tracks (information-management, communication-advocacy, technology-infrastructure) in three rooms, this 2010 Camp will have one spare room for any ad-hoc session. So in total we will actually have four rooms, three planned and one ad-hoc.

As always emphasized, we encouraged everybody to present their ideas or host their own sessions during Mekong ICT Camp and also in BarCamp Chiang Mai a day after. Some of the BarCampers always registered are include those from Sierra Leone, Hong Kong, Kolkata, Yangon, Hamburg, Knaresborough, and Chittagong. This is YOUR international chance.

Btw, we would like to thank you all of our sponsors: Open Society Institute, ThaiHealth Global Link Initiative Program, Thailand Ministry of ICT, Internews, Siam Commercial Bank, Friedrich Naumann Foundation, Southeast Asian Center for e-Media, Thailand Software Industry Promotion Agency, 3BB Broadband, Bank of Thailand, and Thailand Convention & Exhibition Bureau, who made this coming 2010 Camp possible.

See you in Chiang Mai.

The Camp will be held on June 7-12, 2010, in Chiang Mai.

Situation in Bangkok is calmed down. Chiang Mai is safe. Camp venue and transportation are unaffected. We continue our plan for the camp — no change.

Of your interest, news about general situation in Thailand can be read from many news outlets, for English-language ones they include CNN – Thailand, BBC Asia-Pacific, The Independent [UK] – Asia, Times Online [UK] – Asia, and Aljazeera – Asia-Pacific. You can also follow this “bangkok-redshirt-protest” list by @timokl1, a German lives in Bangkok, and this “conflict-in-bangkok” list by @emjacobi of Digital Democracy.

For those who didn’t make the cut, it may not mean you are not good enough. We just have limited seats, and try to scope the selection to focused on the theme of this year Camp. We looking forward to see your applications again in Mekong ICT Camp 2012.

Thank you every applicants and thank you our selection committee for their dedicated job.

We received almost 200 applications from almost all around the world.

A lesson learned here that, with this amount of applications, it is very laborious to handle all of them using e-mail. As every form has to be copied into a single well-formed database/document for committee to review. (and, again, even we already said in the form that please return it in plain text, almost everybody do attachment. which means more clicks and work to do).

Next time, we should use a more automated system, like an online form that applicants can directly put things into database. Committee can also access and make suggestions directly thru this database.

Selection process is expected to start by this Monday. Sorry for this delayed.

Access method for the moment is by manually downloading each data set. But by this mid 2010 these data will be programmatically accessible thru web API.

Data like these can be processes in a number of ways and for many purposes, from public education to policy making. Many local governments and organizations around the world now moving towards a more transparent, more efficient, and more participating governance thru this kind of open data initiatives.

From World Bank press release:

The decision─part of a larger effort to increase access to information at the World Bank─means that researchers, journalists, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), entrepreneurs and school children alike will be able to tap into the World Bank’s databases via a new website, data.worldbank.org.

Experts say the Bank’s open data initiative has the potential to stimulate more evidence-based policymaking in developing countries by bringing more researchers and innovative analysis into the development process. The move is also likely to stimulate demand for data and increase countries’ capacity to produce it, they say.

And, for the first time, data will be available in languages other than English, with an initial 330 indicators translated into French, Spanish and Arabic.

“It’s important to make the data and knowledge of the World Bank available to everyone,” World Bank President Robert B. Zoellick said. “Statistics tell the story of people in developing and emerging countries and can play an important part in helping to overcome poverty.”

The World Bank Open Data website can be access at http://data.worldbank.org.

Example: Data of Lao PDR, with indicator figures and charts (below)