Donatella della Ratta, a reporter for Il Manifesto, the well-known Italian leftist newspaper, spoke at Aula 2006 about Al-Jazeera and the revolution in Arab media. Il Manifesto published Donatella’s report about Aula on June 18th. As of last week the paper has started an emergency fundraising campaign at risk of closure due to financial difficulties. In an email Donatella writes:
“We are a daily newspaper that publishes a national newspaper every day in 80.000 copies but we don’t have any publisher. The newspaper belongs to a cooperative of journalists and citizens… we need more financial support from citizens, we don’t want to be acquired by any corporation.”
Il Manifesto made international headline news through its involvement in the Calipari affair last year, when a reporter for Il Manifesto was taken hostage by insurgents and later wounded by a stray bullet at a U.S. checkpoint. Calipari, the Italian agent with the reporter, was killed in the shooting.
The paper is accepting donations. On the donate page a placard reads: “You support a common good.”
The Aula site is down due to a disk problem – the hosting company is working to fix it and hopefully we’ll be back up and running soon.
Marko Ahtisaari and I are organizing the Aula 2006 – Movement event in Helsinki next week. This will be the largest Aula event yet, and we’ve moved it to a larger venue at Bio Rex to accommodate as many participants as we can.
The theme ‘movement’ points to mobility meeting web 2.0, technologies as social movements, and the overlapping between physical and virtual worlds. On a personal level movement is about not staying still but taking action to shape the future.
The keynote speakers are Clay Shirky on situated software, Alastair Curtis on mobile 2.0, Martin Varsavsky on Fon, and Joi Ito on World of Warcraft. 3 Quarks Daily is posting in-depth profiles about them over the next days in anticipation of the event.
The second day of the event is an invitation only gathering. Speakers include Tyler Brule the founder of Wallpaper, Dan Gillmor author of We Media, Dan Hill of the BBC, Saul Griffith of Squid Labs, Henrik Torstensson of Stardoll; and Danah Boyd on MySpace, Adam Greenfield on the ethics of ubiquitous computing, Arwen O’Reilly on the DIY renaissance, Timo Arnall on interfaces for the local, Aditya Dev Sood on Indian hardware hackers, Joshua Cooper Ramo, Matt Jones, Justin Hall, Thomas Crampton, Cory Doctorow, and many others.
The talks start at 5pm on Wednesday, June 14th at Bio Rex. Admission is free, and there’s no need to register in advance so come early to ensure seating. The open party will start at 9pm in Ahjo Bar in Hotel Klaus K. The conference dinner will be at restaurant Via.
See you there!