A Blog Community For Sri Lanka, Extensible Beyond
Location
About You
Location
Project Street Address
1 Rockwood Place
Project City
Colombo
Project Province/State
Western Province
Project Postal/Zip Code
00700
Project Country
Sri Lanka
Your idea
Will you launch your idea as a business or non-profit?
Non-Profit
Web site (url)
Name Your Project
A Blog Community For Sri Lanka, Extensible Beyond
Describe Your Idea
Innovation
What is your idea? What makes it innovative? Why is it important?
Kottu is a Sri Lankan blog aggregator. It basically collects the Sri Lankan blogosphere in one place. The community already exists, but it needs investment to grow and reach the mainstream of Sri Lankan. The technology and model itself is also extensible and can be packaged for replication in other countries and communities.
A blog aggregator is an innovative use of XML technology to form a community around story-telling. It has a great social impact in terms of political discussions as well as simple friendships between bloggers. The project has already proved sustainable over two years and over 300 bloggers. It just needs investment to grow. In time this investment can lead to a new, citizen-driven form of media in Sri Lanka with benefits for both individuals and the nation.
Blogs, and this blog aggregator by extension, are important because they are a pattern change in media. They empower average people to write and publish and have already proved a potent force worldwide and in Sri Lanka. Here they were a vital conduit to the world during the tsunami and amidst the censorship of war, but they also provide a place for people to simply connect and have fun. A blog aggregator is a further innovation in blogging because it uses XML technology to create a virtual community, and because it enables traffic pooling and more rapid growth.
Impact
What will be the impact of your idea?
Kottu is already a successful community site with over 300 bloggers and over 12,000 readers per month. The aim is to enable more and better Sri Lankan bloggers and readers locally and in the diaspora. This will be actioned by investment in technology, events, education, and marketing. The goal specifically includes ensuring access for bloggers of all languages, and all levels of language ability.
The impact of Kottu 2.0 will be to strengthen this community, make it accessible to more people and begin to have an impact on the mainstream media and discourse in the country and worldwide.
There are already contributing bloggers from Colombo and bloggers from the villages of Mahavilachiya and Bibile. There are bloggers who write in English, Sinhala and Tamil. Kottu supports these bloggers by delivering traffic to them. Even new bloggers can reach a large audience by pooling their content with an aggregator.
The impact of the specific investments in technology, events, education and marketing will be to give Kottu the server strength to support growth, the real-life community to support enacting real changes in the world, the education to enable rural and disadvantaged bloggers and the marketing to make an impact on mainstream media and civil discourse.
This Entry is about (Issues)
People: We are looking for ideas from people who can make them happen.
Kottu is currently managed by myself, Indrajit Samarajiva (Indi). I have one of the more prominent blogs in Sri Lanka (www.indi.ca). I currently work in Content Management for Dialog Telekom, the country's largest mobile, fixed, television and internet company. In the past I managed the Sarvodaya blog during the tsunami, which raised over $800,000 USD and was linked to by the main pages of Google, Apple and Amazon. I also edited Sri Lanka's first English technology magazine (iTimes) and published a 300,000 circulation magazine (Sinhala and English) for Dialog. I studied Cognitive Science at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. I currently live in Colombo 5.
Vesess is the main (probably the only) Sri Lankan web design firm implementing international Web Standards for accessibility and usability. The Barefoot Gallery is the premier Colombo location for art, book launches, concerts and events. They hosted the first blogger meetup in Sri Lanka.
The Wendy Whatmore Academy of Speech and Drama provides English training to teachers, companies and and students throughout Sri Lanka. Tracy Holsinger is a teacher and prominent actress and theatre director in Sri Lanka, as well as a blogger.
Kottu itself also has over 300 contributors, all of them having updated their blogs within the last 2 months. This is a deep pool of talent from which to draw for many activities.
Sustainability
How much will it cost to launch your idea?
The specific itemized budget is included in the attached PDF. It includes USD $6,000 for technology, $5,000 for events, $6,000 for education, $6,000 for marketing and $2,000 for program management.
The technological investments include a strong server and a streamlined codebase built on open source technology (primarily Wordpress). The goal is to build compontents as open source products that other people can easily deploy.
The event budget comprises annual (or bi-annual) blogger meet-ups to build real community to supplement the virtual. This can include blogger awards, training, tutorials and general fellowship.
The education budget is primarily directed towards enabling village and disadvantaged bloggers. Many rural bloggers join the community but few develop and keep posting, primarily because of lack of English skills. Hopefully that will change with overt support and capacity building.
The marketing budget includes advertising in the mainstream media to reach Sri Lankans not online as well as advertising online to drive traffic directly.
This investment is viewed primarily as a stimulus to reach a critical mass of readership and influence. Online advertising is already a sustainable business model in the world as well as Sri Lanka, and once the community grows to a certain size it can hopefully sustain itself. The idea should also have continued appeal to funders trying to encourage community and civil society.
| Attachment | Size |
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| kottu-dec.jpg | 52.11 KB |
| kottu-stats-november.gif | 17.57 KB |
| Kottu Business Plan.pdf | 151.14 KB |
 | samarajiva said: Posted about this on my blog and had a some responses, they had difficulty registering here. Kottu, What Next about this Competition Entry. - 1107 days ago read more > |
| Ravi123 said: I think Kottu provides an alternative marketplace for ideas and a forum for interaction. In a country where traditional media have been ... about this Competition Entry. - 1121 days ago read more > |
| samarajiva said: "many blogs aggregated on Kottu frequently publish libelous comments as well as hugely insulting, vindictive posts that have bordered on ... about this Competition Entry. - 1123 days ago read more > |
| yajitha said: Indi, Congratulations on submitting an entry I strongly endorse. I recognise and share with you the urgent need for the development ... about this Competition Entry. - 1126 days ago read more > |
Comments
Indi,
Congratulations on submitting an entry I strongly endorse. I recognise and share with you the urgent need for the development of Kottu / blog aggregation to widen and deepen Sri Lanka's growing blogging culture. Kottu for me, over 4 years ago was the first introduction to blogging and compelling new writing from Sri Lanka. To be aggregated on Kottu is to be noticed, and to be noticed is for (most) bloggers incentive to write more, write better and interrogate traditional media's lethargy.
You mention in your PDF proposal that "The only criteria to join [Kottu] is to have a working XML feed and basic ethics (avoiding plagiarism, libel or obscenity)". And yet, many blogs aggregated on Kottu frequently publish libelous comments as well as hugely insulting, vindictive posts that have bordered on hate speech. You and I have often been the targets of hate speech for what we say and do. Are you going to in the future more rigorously apply content standards? If so, how will you deal with the fact that less diversity may lead to less interest in Kottu and the emergence of more open / unmoderated aggregation portals? You are aiming for an extensible aggregator architecture PLUS upgrades to Kottu. Will the first be free for anyone to download / use - leading to perhaps many 'Kottu's' in Sri Lanka? How will YOUR Kottu deal with this competition and differentiate itself?
More info on meet-ups (a VERY useful idea) would be great. Not everyone knows Barefoot, lives in Colombo to come there for meetings or cares to meet there. It could be one venue, but not the only? Do you want to have more across the country?
Love the English education angle - more on how that would work and fit with your central idea of developing Kottu? Finally, Vesess looks great, but it is not the *only* web design firm implementing international Web Standards for accessibility and usability!
All the very best,
Sanjana
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Sanjana Hattotuwa
Ashoka News & Knowledge Entrepreneur
Editor, Groundviews (www.groundviews.org)
"many blogs aggregated on Kottu frequently publish libelous comments as well as hugely insulting, vindictive posts that have bordered on hate speech. Are you going to in the future more rigorously apply content standards?"
I think Kottu actually polices those standards OK. Libel is something very rarely prosecuted and 'opinion' and 'public figures' are generally acceptable defenses. I think you and I kinda fall under the latter. There has been stuff like padashow and maharajah of bad which makes fun of bloggers, but I haven't seen anything that crosses the border into hate speech. Yet.
"You are aiming for an extensible aggregator architecture PLUS upgrades to Kottu... How will YOUR Kottu deal with this competition and differentiate itself?"
Dunno. Maybe a better one will come along. Kottu is a community and as such it's not the technology that matters so much anymore. Competition is probably good for the scene as a whole, but the extensions are seen more for other countries/communities.
"More info on meet-ups (a VERY useful idea) would be great. Not everyone knows Barefoot, lives in Colombo to come there for meetings or cares to meet there. It could be one venue, but not the only? Do you want to have more across the country?"
That would be great, but in this case I'm suggesting what I know can work. The vast majority of bloggers are still in Colombo, tho I think there was a Kandy meetup. That could be supported.
"Love the English education angle - more on how that would work and fit with your central idea of developing Kottu? Finally, Vesess looks great, but it is not the *only* web design firm implementing international Web Standards for accessibility and usability!"
The rural bloggers become dead nodes, post once or twice then stop. For them to contribute (and Kottu to benefit) I think they need some training. Again, Vesses is what I know. In my experience there are very few web standards companies in Sri Lanka.
I think Kottu provides an alternative marketplace for ideas and a forum for interaction. In a country where traditional media have been muted Kottu's importance in terms of disseminating information has increased.
The project needs to expand and attract as wide a readership as possible and I understand that partnering with Changemakers will make that happen.
Posted about this on my blog and had a some responses, they had difficulty registering here.
Kottu, What Next