Citizen Reporter

Also this week, the Dubai Taxi Driver project countdown begins, with 4 days left to join the kickstarter funding campaign, and 1 month before the journey starts. If you haven’t yet been to the page, read the plan, or watched the video, click over now as time is running out!

At the beginning of the podcast this week you will also hear music by Neighbor from their new album “Water in the Pocket.” Highly recommended.

Like special series and journeys that I have previously been able to share with you, this one needs your direct involvement. My brand of media is non-commercial and always personal, as is this project.  And if you like what you’ve heard in the past, or if this idea sounds interesting and you’d like to know more, click on the kickstarter link.

Links:

The Dubai Taxi Driver Kickstarter Page

Tony Shwartz’s Audio Collection

On today’s podcast, a long overdue meeting, as I sit down with Frank in Manhattan, and discuss his role in the big picture of internet, media production, and history.

Visit and Listen to his program, The Overnightscape. You can also follow him on twitter and the other usual places.

Rabble was the first ever employee at twitter and had the opportunity to watch how it went from activist tool to massively popular communication medium.  In a world where everyone thinks they know why twitter or tools like twitter exist and are good, Rabble has unique knowledge that can explain why it exists and how things changed over time. He can tell you the good, the bad, and the in between, as is so often the case with such a widely used platform.

Towards the end of the summer of 2013, at hacker camp (OHM), Rabble and I sat down to record this conversation and explore this often overlooked topic.

Special thanks to the Subjective Bus Line from which I recorded some of this audio. When in Gdansk, find their fantastic old-school red bus and take one of the last rides around the shipyard.  And hurry, they are already building over much of this history.

This podcast began as a small conversation on the last day of OHM 2013 among individuals doing projects in South America, the Middle East, Asia and West Africa. As we recorded, the number of participants increased as friends, acquaintances, and curious strangers joined our circle to listen or speak about their project and their impressions of this camp in relation to what is happening in the rest of the world.

My goal with this recording, to make the connections from this temporary microworld that we built, to the rest of the world and the challenges people face everyday.  If you enjoy hearing from dedicated, kind hearted, and fum people, listen to this podcast.

Projects and People Included in this recording:

Lamija Tanovic grew up in a Yugoslavia with a quality of life that makes today’s Bosnia look like another planet. A time where values such as education, cooperation, and participation were essential. An era that would later give way to a terrible war and a dysfunctional plan to create a new nation in its aftermath.  Through it all, Lamija explains, everyone always wished to come home and make a life in this beautiful place. The problem is, today’s Bosnia makes it quite difficult for anyone to have a decent life and as a result, people have left and will continue to leave.

Today on the podcast, I spend an hour in the home of Lamija Tanovi?; educator, human rights activist, politician, and someone with a tremendous amount of life experience, to help explain what Bosnia was then and how it became what it is today.

Kurt Bassuener has been working on the issue of Bosnia for over 15 years and in that time has figured out what many people inside and outside the country have not – what is wrong and what can be done about it.  That is, in fact, one of the key lessons to take home from this Bosnia 101 conversation; there is hope, there are things that can be done, if specific actors would be willing to change the status quo.

At a time where Bosnia seems plagued by corruption and stagnation, Kurt sees things as politically and economically going backwards.  Creating a scenario that will do further harm to people inside the country, in the region, and across Europe.

What is different about Bosnia-Herzegovina in 2013 compared to 1995?  Who makes up this complex nation today and what do they think of the traumatic past, the frustrating present and dour future?

On this edition of CitizenReporter we hear from policy analyst and veteran Balkan observer Kurt Bassuener of the Democratization Policy Council.  He is also the co-author of “House of Cards”, the DPC’s latest Bosnia policy paper.