DCI Speakers
DCI 5.0 SPEAKERS
Eduardo Ávila
Eddie has been the Regional Editor for Latin America at Global Voices Online since 2007, and is currently serving as Acting Director of the Rising Voices outreach division. In addition, he is coordinating Global Voices’ coverage of the 2010 World Cup, which strives to cover the tournament from a citizen media perspective by highlighting the conversations taking place on blogs, Twitter, and other forms of participatory media. He currently resides in Cochabamba, Bolivia.
Regional Editor – Latin America. Global Voices Online: http://globalvoicesonline.org and http://es.globalvoicesonline.org. Twitter: @2010
Alette Schoon
Alette lectures TV journalism at Rhodes University. Before this she has produced documentaries and TV inserts, programmed computers and worked for an NGO that teaches community activists to produce media. This past term she’s been teaching a course on producing video on mobile phones and still cameras. Twitter: @Hadeda
Peter Verweij
Peter is a senior lecturer at the School of Journalism at Utrecht in The Netherlands. His main teaching areas are new media studies and computer assisted research. At the School he manages the new media lab, for practice and experiments in online journalism. You can find him at Rhodes University at a regular basis. He gives guest lectures, workshops and runs Highway Africa-related training courses and projects. Twitter: @Peter_Verweij
Carel Pedre
Carel became the voice of his country by using the tools of new age technology like Twitter, Facebook, Skype and Flickr to exhibit the plight of the country to the world after the devastating 7.3 magnitude earthquake in Haiti. He received a Special Humanitarian Shorty Award by the Real-Time Academy of Short Form Arts & Sciences for his Humanitarian efforts. Carel Pedre: www.carelpedre.com. Twitter: @carelpedre
Bobby Soriano
Bobby is currently working with Tactical Technology Collective doing further development of the NGO-In-A-Box and Information Activism toolkits. He was also involved in other training and source camp activities of Tactical Tech. Bobby has fifteen solid years of systems and network administration experience, developing NGO-tools and implementing projects. He has also spent more than five years as an information and communications technology trainer. Tactical Technology Collective: www.tacticaltech.org and Information Activism: www.informationactivism.org. Twitter: @Info_Activism
Kwanele Butana
Kwanele is Grocott’s Mail Citizen Journalism Editor. He obtained a National Diploma in Journalism from the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in 2004 and has reported news for the East Cape News and Grocott’s Mail. During his colourful career at Grocott’s Mail, Kwanele was a finalist for the Anthony Sampson Foundation Award in 2007 and went on to win a national Sanlam Community Press Award in the Local Government Reporting category in 2008. Grocott’s Mail: www.grocotts.co.za
Andile Nayika
Andile is a Grocott’s Mail Staff Reporter and formerly a Citizen Journalist. He finished the Knight Foundation sponsored Citizen Journalism Course at Grocott’s Mail in 2009 and was later selected to join the Grocott’s Mail Newspaper Team. He is founder of the first East Cape Midlands College Newspaper and has been writing poetry and songs since High School. I am currently studying Management Assistant at East Cape Midlands College and planning to start a degree towards a Journalism and Media.
Brenda Burrell
Brenda is the co-founder and IT Director of Kubatana.net, Zimbabwe’s civic and human rights information portal. She has a background in social justice activism and 10 years of experience working in the pro-democracy movement in Zimbabwe strengthening civil society’s use of ICTs. She is currently running Kubatana’s Freedom Fone project, a software development initiative that seeks to opularize the use of interactive voice menus to create information on demand services for mobile phone users. Kubtana: www.kubatana.net and Freedom Fone: www.freedomfone.org. Twitter: @kubatana
Laura Walker Hudson
Laura joined FrontlineSMS as Project Manager in March 2010, and is currently focused on understanding how the software is being used and helping the very active and enthusiastic FrontlineSMS community to grow. Her experience and interests bridge the gaps between several different fields – international aid and development, academia and practice-oriented policy, human rights and humanitarian law, international and UK-based social care. She also thinks and writes about the rights of Gypsies and Travellers in the UK, is a trustee of the Warwickshire Domestic Violence Support Service, and a contributor to the Downing Street Project. FrontlineSMS: www.frontlinesms.com. Twitter: @laurawhudson
Ashraf Patel
Ashraf is currently national program manager at the SA-Finland ICT Knowledge partnership program, Meraka Institute. He has extensive experience in ICT policy, regulation, development and social entrepreneurship in Southern Africa and Africa. He has a keen interest on the importance of affordable broadband and universal service in Africa and its importance for fostering innovation and local economic development.
Kambale Musavuli
Kambale is a Congolese activist, student coordinator and spokesperson for Friends of the Congo. He has written for numerous international news publications. He has been interviewed on Democracy Now, ABC, Aljazeera and myriad radio and television programs throughout the globe. He has toured North America speaking to university students, religious groups, community organizers and many others in an effort to mobilize support for the people of the Congo. Friends of the Congo: www.friendsofthecongo.org. Twitter: @congofriends
Jane Duncan
Professor Jane Duncan is Highway Africa Chair of Media and the Information Society at Rhodes University and DCI coordinator. Before that she worked as the Executive Director of the Freedom of Expression Institute, where she worked from its inception in 1994. She has also worked at the Anti-Censorship Action Group, the Afrika Cultural Centre in Newtown and the Funda Centre in Soweto. She has a PhD from the Wits School of the Arts.
Elvira van Noort
Elvira is the DCI coordinator and runs EvN Media Solutions – a new media company based in The Netherlands and South Africa. She lectures journalism, organizes multimedia projects, trains citizen journalists and does research into mobile media. Elvira has a Masters degree in Journalism & Media Studies from Rhodes University. Elvira van Noort: www.elviravannoort.nl. Twitter: @Elviravannoort
Anya Schiffrin
Anya is the director of the media program at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. She founded the website www.journalismtraining.net, which provides training materials for journalists, and has edited three textbooks and manuals for reporters.
Rory Williams
Rory has been blogging for five years at Carbonsmart, providing a South African perspective on international environmental and sustainability issues. More recently he has begun writing a weekly column on urban planning issues at the daily newspaper The Cape Times, and does occasional freelance pieces. Rory is a professional transport planning consultant. Carbonsmart: http://carbonsmart.com. Twitter: @carbonsmart
Nathalie Hyde-Clarke
Nathalie (PhD) is an Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Communication and Media Studies at the University of Johannesburg. She recently edited “The Citizen in Communication”, an academic text that presents a series of studies detailing citizen journalism and community media in South Africa, published by Juta.
Eric Mokuoa
Eric comes from a community journalism background. He worked for a regional newspaper in Rustenburg, and then a provincial newspaper as a reporter for three years. Eric continues to freelance and generate information for various activist publications and blogs. He is a community activist against mining injustices within the community. Eric started as a field worker for Bench Marks and is now the Manager of Community Activist Monitoring School Program. He is in his 2nd year of his BA in International Relations and Diplomacy at the University of South Africa. Benchmarks: www.bench-marks.org.za
Niren Tolsi
Niren is a journalist with South Africa’s premier investigative newspaper the Mail & Guardian. His primary area of focus is social investigations and social justice. He is currently reporting about the World Cup. Mail & Guardian: www.mg.co.za
