A Skypecast for Haiti: Got Aggregator?

A Skypecast for Haiti is taking place this Sat. Dec. 23, organized by the first Haitian Music Industry Blog aka Karlito's blog and two other haitian blogs. Should be interesting, although as I already told Karlito, I think the topic is way too broad... I'll try to join in this time but I hope something more narrow can be done in the future.

The budding Haitian blogosphere could use an aggregator for example and that might be a great future topic. (See, for example, La Reunion's aggregator, Reunion Permanente. La Reunion is a french-speaking country and overseas French department in the Indian Ocean.) Aggregators are a great way to grow a local blogosphere, apparently.


Photo by inju.

There are many different types of aggregators:

• One is to become your own regional blogger.com, as in Afrikblog.com which hosts a number of francophone african blogs such as Le Blog du Congolais and UDPS Liege. Afrikblog offers a way to create a blog but also a blog directory. I think it's a great model but the directory only includes blogs created in Afrikblog. That is a big minus and would not serve the purposes of growing a blogosphere per se. Also, this model is costly and ambitious and would only be worthwhile if the quality offered was up to par with a blogger or wordpress blog.

• Another, my favorite for now, is the Reunion Permanente model. In terms of blogosphere expansion, this is the best model. It features blogs from any blog services so long as the blog deals with La Reunion (it also transcribes local newspaper columns that it thinks should be on the internet.) It comprises blogs written in La Reunion but also blogs by the La Reunion diaspora, whatever language they use. It subscribes to RSS feeds from these blogs and offers reverse chronological updates. So it is a blog itself. Anyone who goes to the aggregator can see what the latest updates are in the blogs of La Reunion. For a blogosphere to grow, bloggers have to come together and this would be a great first step.
  

(The same would be a good idea for the Caribbean as a whole too or for individual caribbean countries other than Haiti.)

Update: 12/29/06
Skype was down on the day of the Skypecast so it didn't really happen. But I got to chat with Marvin Chery of Reveiled Networks extensively and he promised we'd get to talk about Haitian blogs and internet in a future one. Here are Marvin's live updates that he posted on his blog while attempting to patch the call together. Judging on the number of people who attempted to make the call, it would have been quite well attended.

Technorati: haiti -caribbean -blogs- La Reunion

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