Who, what, when, where and why

Sourcefabric provides tools for SHIFT. SHAPE. MOBILIZE. 2015

At Sourcefabric, we always look forward to sharing our tools with bright people who have brilliant ideas. So, when the bpb (in English: Federal Agency for Civic Education) approached us to partner with them and n-ost to organise a workshop for bloggers we were more than up for it. That's how we got 21 bloggers together in Berlin for the tools & skills workshop SHIFT. SHAPE. MOBILIZE. 

The project SHIFT. SHAPE. MOBILIZE. happened in Berlin in November 2015. The 21 bloggers which were hand picked from a long list of applicants, brought together in-depth knowledge and experience about the socio-political relevance of blogs in countries in transition. Bringing bright minds together to play around with our newest tools is always very exciting!

When we were thinking about which of Sourcefabric’s tools would be most beneficial for bloggers, Live Blog was an easy pick. But we didn’t stop there. We also explored Booktype by creating a report of the workshop with the bloggers. Last but not least, the bloggers got familiar with our work in empowering local activists in the South Caucasus with microwav.fm and our latest innovation in image verification: Verified Pixel.

Live blogging 101

If you observe the current media landscape, live blogging is becoming a widely adopted practice to report about current events and important news, and using Sourcefabric’s Live Blog we provided the bloggers with a real collaborative blogging experience. Besides presenting the main features, the bloggers had the opportunity to discover the power of live blogging in action, as they reported live from the “Translating Worlds” conference on blogging, photography and foreign reporting.

Thanks to the easy-to-use interface, it didn’t take long for the bloggers to get started using Live Blog. When compiling their live blogs, some selected important statements from the speakers, some took short videos or edited short podcasts on the go. All this content was easily integrated through the powerful universal URL embed feature of Live Blog.

For many of the participants, this was a first. It was their first time live blogging, but you wouldn’t be able to tell… they did an amazing job! See for yourself on the conference live blog.

Working together on making a book

If you have run a workshop before, you have been in the painful spot of having to write the report. You also know how difficult it is to get all the team members input and to edit the content. This time around, we shifted the challenge to the participants and composed our report all together in the form of an ebook.

You might say it's a challenge to write and edit a book with 21 people from different countries, who have just met. Not to mention they had never used the Booktype publishing software before! But never fear, Booktype is so straightforward and easy to use that we were able to complete it in a little over 2 hours. The SHIFT. SHAPE. MOBILIZE. ebook report was created including the contributions of all 21 bloggers on interesting initiatives and projects from their communities. 

Making the most of the occasion, we also co-organised a Hacks/Hackers meetup during the week of the workshop. The perfect platform to raise awareness, forge new collaborations and support the role of bloggers in Eastern Europe as an alternative source of information in society.

The SHIFT. SHAPE. MOBILIZE. workshop is a project organised by the Federal Agency for Civic Education/Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung, in cooperation with Sourcefabric and n-ost. At Sourcefabric we're open to hear more ideas of cooperation on trainings and workshops with a focus on journalism, blogging, radio or activism. Get in touch!