In the last month, I’ve come to the realization that Facebook is now an essential part of business and organizational communication. For many people, it’s the first thing they check in the morning, and the last item they peek at before going to sleep.  I’m not sure I want things to be this way, but I need to accept this reality.

- I’ve seen friends with email troubles use Facebook as a ‘default’ email.

- Bloggers now promote their posts via Facebook.  Remember those days when blogs ruled the web?

- I’m checking emails/messages on Facebook because people send / respond to them faster than ‘regular’ email.

- I’ve seen nonprofit ICT workers link up on a closed Facebook group, creating an enthusiastic, instant online community. (Despite the fact that experts warning that FB is full of security holes.)

- My friends and I are also crowdsourcing via Facebook postings – for personal, artistic and organizational reasons. Crowdsourcing is a topic near and dear to me.

The vast majority of my social circle is on Facebook — though some make a convincing case for staying off it.

So I’m going state it for the record:

For the time being, for many people: Facebook is the Internet.
I wonder how long this state of affairs will last?

So I decided to draw everyone.
(I needed something to keep myself from compulsively checking social media every five minutes.)

I managed to complete about fifty sketches in five busy days. By then all my worries had long been discarded. Regardless of nationality, we all shared a lot of interests, and curiosity overcame caution. The trainings and lectures opened up new ideas and paradigms that I’m using to this day.

Three years later, I’m preparing to return to Mekong ICT Camp. This time, I’m assisting with the program, and presenting on behalf of Open Development Cambodia, which I’d never have predicted. I’m still in touch with many of the people I sketched; there’s an informal network of Camp alumni scattered around the planet now.

I can’t guarantee this year’s attendees will have the same experience I did. But I’m quite positive they’re due to learn about some mind-expanding new concepts and tools – and make some interesting new friends.

(Via ‘What’s Up Phnom Penh‘)

It’s Cambodian New Year!  If you are not familiar with the holiday, it is like Christmas and New Year Day, all rolled into one.

Wishing the best to my friends and co-workers at these varied institutions!

Naturally, the world doesn’t stop for the holiday.  If you’re in New York, check out ‘Season of Cambodia‘. In Los Angeles, I’m very happy to attend the book launch of ‘The Last One‘.

In 2005, I helped welcome Indonesian ‘Komikus’ Beng Rahadian out for a brief teaching visit. http://komikcambodia.blogspot.com/

Talent runs in the family: his wife, Lulu Ratana, is a filmmaker and here to meet up with other cinema enthusiasts. It was great to get the update first hand on what Beng’s been up to, both with his own comics and the association of comics artists he works with, Akademi Samali.

We caught up at one of the Indonesian restaurants here. (We figured starting off Halal would be OK after a busy day of travel. )
Here’s Lulu Ratna with high school friend Tita Larasati’s ‘Graphic Diary’ – for comics, it’s a small world!

Since this is an extremely brief trip, she was snapping pictures relentlessly to capture what impressions she could. Above: gratuitious squid picture!

Many of the comics reviews and profiles I did in 2003 have evaporated off the internet – I have comics enthusiast Darren Schroder to thank for meticulously archiving them!

Comic Cinta / Sektekomik / Komik Casa / Agung Komikaze / Beng Rahadian / Eko Nugroho / Taring Padi (no pictures) / Indonesian Comic Society

Perhaps time for an update!

(Photo credit: Vannak Eng)

I recently presented on e-books in a ‘lightning session‘ at BarCamp Angkor.  (It was in the afternoon on a Sunday, which makes for a torpid audience.) The following slides are meant to be accompanied by spoken discussion, so it’s really just a taste of the larger issues I’d like to sink my teeth into.

I was happy simply to raise the topic, only a small handful seems to be focusing on this niche in Cambodia at the moment.

I’ve published using one-stop shop ‘BookBaby‘, largely for the sake of convenience, and regularly create e-publications with Our Books.   Publishing E-books eliminates shipping costs, which is a huge challenge when you’re cultivating a multinational audience and located in Southeast Asia. Shipping can cost more than the actual product.

And digital content raises a number of rights issues that I’m exploring both in literary and technical terms. If you sold the rights to your publication decades ago, that doesn’t cover a digital or translated edition.  I’m not a fan of ‘digital rights management‘, but Southeast Asia is rife with bootlegging and appropriative tactics. Few copyright laws are enforced. How can we support Open Source and Open Culture but still allow artists to make a living?

More to come! Links: https://delicious.com/slugdog/ebookangkortalk

Postscript: BarCamp Angkor in the news, in this comprehensive overview of Cambodia’s growing technology sector and how it enables free speech. http://techpresident.com/news/wegov/23659/internet-civic-voices-cambodia-struggle-net-control
 

The story: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/comic-riffs/post/artmaking-a-love-story-how-viral-i-have-your-heart-film-brought-two-creators-together-from-worlds-away/2013/02/13/1d3d4b8c-765f-11e2-8f84-3e4b513b1a13_blog.html

Also: Slick mainstream animation with fan-pop hip-hop by ebullient MC Adam Warrock.
http://www.adamwarrock.com/?p=3024 Free song!

Battle For Valentine’s Day: Cambodia has slowed down a bit since last year.

http://jinja.apsara.org/2012/02/cambodia-wins-the-battle-for-valentines-day/
Less over-the-top, due to directives from the top and police patrols.
Phnom Penh Post:”Police to cool Valentine’s day teenage lust” /’ Show More Love, Please”

Me? No Salon de Refuses this year, I’ve got a date.

For example, there’s rapper Adam Warrock, who’s devoted whole (free) albums to licensed properties. http://www.adamwarrock.com/

Also: Natasha Allegri’s ‘Fionna and Cake’ gender-swapped versions of Cartoon Network’s Finn and Jake (Adventure Time) grew from a simple cartoon…

…to two episodes and a comic book! (The first episode remains the highest rated show of the whole series.)
(c) Natasha Allegri – above (initial) strip found via http://www.flickr.com/photos/84568447@N00/4860628206/

Then there are the more ‘off the grid’ folks such as Cave Clan, remapping what’s *public* land, but technically ‘off limits’.

http://www.caveclan.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_Clan

Then there’s Inspector Spacet… whoops, I mean “Untitled Web Series about A Space Traveler Who Can Also Travel Through Time”.

Untitled Web Series About A Space Traveler Who Can Also Travel Through Time

Much much more at: http://pinterest.com/culturequery/

Note: All art here is (c) respective entities and artists. (For some, I’m working out a technical issue to get images to appear on the dang pin-board!)

So far as I know Chevron had no direct connection with the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster.

However, an oil company touting its work in the Gulf? That wound is still a little too raw. Others agreed.

Twitter is a free service that’s scrambling to monetize itself;  ‘you get what you pay for’.  But for both Chevron, and especially Twitter, this looks like a pretty clueless misstep. Chevron sponsored a provocative tweet, and Twitter’s delivery really didn’t seem to have any consideration for audience targeting.

Curiously, while I was re-tweeted several times:

…the current twitter link defaults to Chevron’s tweet, not mine.

And my original response tweet is not appearing in my web-based Twitter feed. http://twitter.com/john_weeks
(I can spot it on TweetDeck, which is a third-party app.) This has happened to everyone who hit ‘reply’, not just me.
(Search for @Chevron and try it yourself.)

Great way to quash discussion and potential backlash, Twitter!  Sequester hundreds of tweets, make them almost impossible to access as ordinary tweets and redirect their URL to a sponsored tweet. Looks like you want to head off a similar backlash as happened with McDonald’s.

Maybe it’s time to look into Weibo.