why not?: notes on tedx fort bonifacio

Yesterday's TEDx at Fort Bonifacio was, in keeping with TED tradition, a celebration of ideas. Not of the abstract kind, but of the practical kind. Ideas that inspire, challenge, and make one think.

First off, Ana Arce posed a challenge: make the world a little more Deaf-(with a capital "D" as opposed to "deaf") friendly. Have closed captioning and subtitles in movies. Or better yet, have sign language interpreters. For more about Ana's talk, read this.

Dr. Lourdes Cruz, who has worked extensively with the Ayta community in Morong, Bataan, presented the 4-helix model for S&T-based economic development. It's a mouthful, but it basically means giving the community a say in their development. It's a doable alternative to the usual development model, which relies on a 3-way interface between government, the academe, and business.

The inventions of the prolific Dr. David Manalo were actually very simple solutions to common and simple problems. As he said in this talk, "Why complicate the solution when the problem is simple?" His inventions had been awarded grants from the World Bank, no less. An audience favorite was the carabao decoy: kept outside the house, mosquitoes are supposed to flock to it, effectively sparing the people inside the house from mosquito bites. A simple solution, indeed -- but no awards or grants for that one.

Young photojournalist VJ Villafranca showed the audience a different way of seeing the world -- through the lens of a digital camera. From this vantage point, he explored the grit and grime of BASECO, an urban poor community in Manila. Each photo is a story in black and white, framed in stark contrast and harsh reality.

The husband-and-wife team of Drs. Chris and Marivic Bernido ended TEDx with a presentation on the sorry state of science education in the country -- and what they have done to turn it around. The figures are certainly impressive: 1% of high school seniors performing excellently in the sciences, and higher percentages getting average and above-average scores. At an estimated 700,000 high school seniors, 1% is 7,000 students. Wow.

TEDx organizer Gene Battung introduces the next speaker while Veronica Perez, dean of the De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde School of Deaf Education and Applied Studies, signs for the Deaf community.

In the end, what defined my TEDx experience was the fact that the ideas presented in the talks entered not only the broad realm of possibility, but more importantly, of doability.

So why not have more sign language interpreters? Why not involve communities in rural development? Why not use water to generate electricity for communities in the mountains? Why not use photos to tell stories and document life? Why not improve students' performance in the sciences? It's possible after all. So why not?

+++

I'm a TED fan, so it was only natural that, when I heard about TEDx happening at the Fort, I wanted to go.

But just to be clear, this wasn't the first TEDx talk in Manila. And hopefully not the last.

acfj alumni in action

The trade-off: while I was in Paris, alumni of the MA Journalism program of the Konrad Adenauer Asian Center for Journallism (ACFJ) at the Ateneo de Manila University converged in Manila for a homecoming conference.

The conference was the 3rd Forum of Emerging Leaders in Asian Journalism held on 11 and 12 July at the Ateneo Loyola campus.

It turned out to be a productive gathering. Aside from the conference itself, the group met and decided on a number of things, among them:

The formal establishment of the Ateneo ACFJ Alumni Association: With alumni coming from many different countries in Asia and diverse backgrounds, this group has the makings of a solid network for cooperation and unity among journalists and media practitioners. From day one of the MA program, it was evident that we would make good contacts, if not friends, from across the region.

Putting up a blog for the association: In all things, we must practice what we preach. We profess to be producers and gatekeepers of information, so we ourselves must be able to keep up. Convergence and multimedia are the buzzwords of the day, and we must be able to talk the talk, as they say.

Read more about the conference here.

diverse and dynamic

The annual conference of the Asian Media Information and Communication Centre (AMIC), held at the Manila Hotel this year, was an eye opener.

The list of topics and names on the program was certainly exhaustive enough to overwhelm. But to actually be there and see researchers and practitioners sharing their experiences and talking about future directions made one feel how diverse and dynamic the region and the field are.

The session on alternative media was an interesting mix of old and new: Sanskrit writings and their relationship to journalism principles, and a survey of community-based approaches to broadcasting as practised by Church-owned radio stations in the Philippines on the one hand; and citizen journalism as practised by a news organization in Malaysia, and a uses and gratifications analysis of Facebook uses at the University of Singapore, on the other.

It was an interesting session, not only because the presentations were interesting in themselves, but also for the selection of these presentations under the classification of alternative media. Indeed, the term "alternative" is broad enough to apply to old and new -- the traditional and the cutting-edge -- as represented by these topics from the societies of India, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Singapore.

During the conference, AMIC launched six new publications, including the Asian Communication Handbook 2008, Media and Conflict Reporting in Asia, and Media and Development in Asia: Regional Perspectives.