Despite the fact that ‘Belgrade and Beyond’ blog exists in other form {digital serendipities}, I am still writing  about interesting events and electronic resources on Belgrade, Serbia. For those of you who are not familiar and you happen to reside in Belgrade for some reason, this information may be valuable to you.

Belgrade Foreign Vistors Club (FVC) presents the online community for foreigners in Belgrade, created by  Jonathan Davis. Beside Belgrade FVC there is Belgrade Foreign Visitors Club Wiki, an online information resource for foreign residents and visitors to the city of Belgrade, where you can find high quality community edited information resources and guided directories with useful links.  Also, check out Belgrade FVC forum where you can interact with other members, Twitter feed, and there is Facebook group informing users with current events, reviews, recommendations. I hope you’ll find this information and links useful especially if you are planning a trip to Belgrade or maybe to move here.

I got email this morning from managing editor of Schmap Guides that one of my Flickr photos - Waag Newmarkt [from Amsterdam set] that I was asked to submit few weeks ago, has been selected for inclusion in the newly released fifth edition of  Schmap Amsterdam Guide. w00t! This is the photo of Waag square, that I took from Waag house last autumn, from the top of the apartment that Waag Institute usually hosts their guests.  It doesn’t pay the bill, but is nice to know that if you use an iPhone or iPod touch, then this same link will take you directly to  the iPhone version of the guide, and looks like this.

Share and enjoy!

Recently, I’ve read in media  the results of the survey by “xy” marketing agency (don’t want to advertise them here) who did research of the usage of Facebook in Serbia. This is my response and strong argument against  superficial output without research corpus statements of the author, agency, and unverified data published. I loathe these strong unverified allegations that appear officially. What it was about?

All Serbian media published the ‘results’ of commercial marketing agency’s survey about the popularity of the “sites for youth” in Serbia and they came to conclusion that the most popular are Facebook and My Space.  Beyond this general data, there are other things here I want to share with you, those they have ‘found out’. According to them, their target group was youth, age 18-25:  30%  of the examined population use everyday Internet and 61% of them have Facebook profile, and 37% have profile on My Space.

“They [youth] see Facebook as serious web site which enables them to communicate with people who live far away, to find soul-mates, and to have fun there. They are also emphasizing that those who don’t have Facebook profile - are ‘out’ ” (translated from Serbian, they are not cool, my remark).

Furthermore, the author of this research says that young people are noticing lot of fake profiles and (re)presentations, and Facebook is the reason they communicate less face to face, and therefore conclusion: they have negative Facebook opinion, privacy issues,  and connotation including the Facebook addiction. These three sentences on Facebook was everything we got from ‘research of marketing agency. Yuck!

Now I have to say something and respond to this kind lump of smattering, no survey corpus, non reliable conclusions.

First, this kind of surveys are ‘ordered’ from marketers or agency for certain [non - academic] purposes not to mention that companies of this kind try to demand and fence their users in certain boxes and or pre-ordered groups. Why? There is huge list of e-market interests in Serbia for future (re)shaping their users and making fertile e-ground for new ‘projects’ and investments.

Second, on this survey’s ‘results’ published in all Serbian media:  this unverified data should be kept under huge question mark and reserve from several reasons. There is no corpus of the research - no numbers of people included in this survey: what Serbian networks? Is it University network? High School network (there are no high school networks created on Facebook in Serbia, in general, dear agency)? No-network search of the users? All Serbia network? Methodology? Data? Charts?

For your information, including today: there are 143,891 people in Serbia network, and further - there are 1,619 people in the University of Belgrade network. Does this mean that the author and the agency did survey on  10,000 people? Or maybe 1000? We will never find out that. Did they send their questionnaires to classmates from high school, university, colleagues, ex housemates, lost friends so they have qualitative kind of output? There is nothing in this survey  that would show or notify us about indications regarding research (where is summarized corpus with quantitative and qualitative data?).

As above mentioned privacy issues: they are talking about privacy issues but they didn’t mention the most important fact that those teens and youth are exposing their FB profiles to the public along with their photos from parties, open for public. I got feedback data (youngsters) in Serbia network, as i was noticing and reporting to some of them that their profiles can be seen to everyone (along with photos).  From my direct talk with them, they didn’t know that their profile is exposed (not literate enough to find and adjust privacy settings) and this is the most often case with the group of undergrads who simply was not familiar with privacy mechanisms.  They were in shock (”oh my god!” reactions, and “I thought it was ‘friend only”) “,  which indicated that this small sample of youth in Serbia are self-aware that Facebook is network !read Network! for gathering with friends with whom they know from real life and re-establish connections (already existing) with, primarily, high school mates, university colleagues, etc.  They don’t care about strangers  or unknown people pending on ‘friend requests’ list. Of course there will be ‘collectors’ of strangers and friends for such purposes (we have them in everyday life), but finding soul-mates? I’m afraid , dear agency, that Serbian youth are gathered around Facebook for different reasons but finding soul-mates. They are soul-mating on other places.

“Conclusion there is negative Facebook connotation including the Facebook addiction” is hideous and contradictory if we have in mind above numbers (61% have Facebook profile and is the most popular site). If Facebook is such a bad and negative social network site, then why would many thousands of Serbian population get connected, socializing  with their friends, colleagues, classmates and communicate with them on daily basis? They are on Facebook to hang out with their friends and classmates in pre-existed relationships from real life, or re-connecting with those they’ve lost contact with, or connecting with their allies they never met face to face. There is huge University of Belgrade community on Facebook who talk about upcoming exams on the boards, exchange information, how-where-to find that book for exam, info on conferences, projects, etc.

Few years back, when I was doing research for my Master thesis - the existing surveys of Telecom (national telecommunication company) or CePIT(center for the research in Information-communication technologies) , have got not only explained methodology and all important basic data from their research, but also they’ve created user-friendly charts as you’d read at any e-journal, magazine out there. Open accessed and published to all media.

Said that, I am strongly arguing against this kind of public superficial announcements in media with suspicious outputs as millions of people in Serbia are reading them and (probably) taking them for granted, without having in mind the facts (Serbia network on Facebook as well as the other networks -university, work, region), social-technological context, survey corpus, criteria, purpose.  Question everything, question me!

On socio-ethno-anthro context of “you are  noone if you are not on Facebook” in Serbia,  I will write in the upcoming texts.

This is the name of the presentation on Saturday, October 4, 2008, in O3one Gallery in Belgrade as the part of regular program of  B-LINK festival of New Communications. It was created two years ago as a rare example of an initiative to show and adequately promote creative and innovative tendencies within web environment, primarily in domains of experimental art, web design and now researching new technologies and the impact they have on society.

Social Me section brings ID/Entity where I’ll be presenting with my co-author, visual artist and lecturer Aleksandar Macasev, educational content on Identities (personal, social, national, virtual) using different forms:  video, micro-video forms, blog, live casting.  Co-authored blog - “Me Virtual You” - will be opened for the public after the talk and presentation. We will not be physically present: Aleksandar will tune in from New York (where he works and lives) and I will be at the other geo-spot on BlogOpen meeting giving a talk. This is great opportunity to test communication performances in virtual space with attendeees and partcipants in physical space (gallery) while we are on different geo-places. You are welcomed to come and see what’s in there.

Three weeks ago, when I was about to move my blog from old address to this - new one I’ve noticed that people in blogosphere have gone crazy about the post I’ve written two years ago about Michael Palin’s visit to Belgrade.  In the meantime I figured out that peeps across the pond got a bit excited not only by upcoming elections, but because of controversial and hideous appearance of Sarah Palin character. It hard to explain to decent European what’s going on there, especially if one is not into world news services.

Recently, I found out that one of my readers jokingly grabbed Palins photo and gave lol-cat treatment regarding the above political story. To be clear here, I deeply respect and love Michael Palin’s work since I was a kid and watched every episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

Then, the title of this photo [The Vagina Vote], got me today into wonderful serendipity and to laugh-out-loud article “Drill, drill, drill” written by Eve Ensler {playwright, feminist and activist, best known for her play The Vagina Monologues}, starting that she is having S.Palin’s nightmares… I wonder how world would be more peaceful and friendly place if Michael Palin was a candidate.

I got email this morning from my old friend and colleague commenting, among other things, on my Flickr photo blog and 365days project.  One of the photos drew his attention to write these words that astonished me, because…:

I was very amazed about a picture from eating Serbian women. I’m not a psychologist, but sometimes when I often see this behavior, it comes up in my mind, that they are not happy, lack of love, attention and so, and as compensation starting to eat. And soon growing up their bums. And particularly what they consume: “ugly Mac-food”.”

…because these women are no fat, the context of this stolen click - photo (as the title says) they love to eat, they are not starving, they are healthy, normal women with [if so] a bit wider hips [but hey, why many men love those hip-hop and soul singers with hips, ‘bums’, and drool over photos of Monica Bellucci? And if you see below this photo, several people from different geo-spots made a comment and none of them (both female and male) mentioned that these girls are overweight or fat. I thought that curves make women feminine, and still think so. But this is not the end. When new information hits you in the morning, the other comes along with it, from the daily news. And it is a story of Czech supermodel who was attacked by Brazilian ‘fashion police’ that on recent runaway show she appeared to be fat, with the critiques on “back fat, love handles and cellulite”. Hello! Is this fat?

Maybe, these are the reasons why society and media push up young girls and women-to-be into sick state of mind and health: skinny, starving and sick go together. Recent article shows also that in the past two years there were two cases of girls who died from anorexia (eating for weeks only lettuce and Coke). After this story I got a bit intimidated by the photos of the food I posted on Flickr here and there, which makes me ‘fat’ and i guess ‘rich’ person according to the media.

I couldn’t help but wonder shall we live the healthy lives the best we can according to our set of standards or shall we follow the world ‘trends’, starve, die and be remembered as ‘beautiful and thin’ sticks without cellulite?  I guess many of us should re-examine our own values and listen to ourselves, our body and biorhythm trying to make a balance in life.

I’m suggesting you to watch this inspiring TED video staring key speaker Mark Bittman, and contemplate our eating habits, for the start.  As for me, I’m going now to have an apple for a snack, fish and veggies for lunch, followed by rich ice-cream for desert.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/danche24/2626913505/

Month of May, month of May -everything is lovely and gay. Culture in Serbia is meeting cold turkey (heard today one landed in Belgrade right from Ireland?!?) and more in preEuroTrash called Eurovision (contest for the best EuroSong). It’s not the fact that the official web site for Eurovision Belgrade 2008 is quite hideous but also the words of ignorance I came across yesterday of P. Schofield (British Broadcasting Corporation) at this Facebook group, where the creator is contemplating EuroSong contest “in Elbonia or wherever it is this year” (even more hideous for someone working in media, no?). Anyway, as I’ve missed this years Belgrade’s Design Week and lectures I wanted to attend ( Ascan Mergenthaler, CH, Herzog & de Meuron - Flowing into Landscape and Daniel Libeskind, US, The Architecture of Memories). But, what I won’t miss is the 5th Museum night (last year was organized through whole Serbia, and this year will be the same) and early drawings of Picasso, Air and Space Museum, History of computers exhibition, video installation, computer animation in Jewish Museum, Italian design in Superspace, Museum of Science&Technology and many other places through the city. Over 63 spots on May 17th from 6pm until the dawn, check the program and enjoy! I’m coming to take you to the Museum: )

Radiohead released today a video broadcasting globally, which aims to raise awareness of human trafficking. The lead singer, Thom Yorke, and his bandmates produced a music video together with MTV EXIT (End Exploitation and Trafficking) for “All I Need,” a song from their In Rainbows album. The video was filmed in Australia by Oscar-winning cinematographer John Seale and director Steve Rogers.

The United Nations’ International Labour Organization estimates that there are around 2.5 million people in the world who have been trafficked.

“They’ve produced a video of two parallel stories running, one of a little boy in the West and one of a little boy in a sweatshop in the East, and the boy [in the West] ends up buying the shoes from the sweatshop. It’s actually quite powerful,” Yorke said. “It’s the sort of images I have in my head anyway. Sometimes when you’re walking down High Street and you’re looking at the incredibly cheap [sneakers], you sort of think, ‘Hmmm, well how did they manage to make that so cheaply?’ It sort of reminds me of one of my preoccupations, so I’m touched that the music goes with that. I think it’s great.”

& once again Thom

“I think it’s important for everyone in the West or on High Street to understand the consequences of our economic activity. You must be aware of the level of exploitation that’s going on,” Yorke said. “It’s part of our Western life, and one we should accept responsibility for. There’s no such thing as a free lunch or a free ticket to another country.”

I hope this is just beginning of raising the awareness of this issue around the world and involving more people in the campaign against human trafficking.

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=cdrCalO5BDs]

UNESCO office in New Delhi, as a clearinghouse for dissemination and sharing of information and knowledge in all fields of UNESCO’s competence, published ebook Open Access to Knowledge and Information: Scholarly Literature and Digital Library Initiatives – the South Asian Scenario. I wrote earlier that some of the major edu. institutions started to practice free flow of information (some didn’t yet) by giving the open access to their repositories of electronic documents, realizing that locked archives are keeping their users, mostly academics, researchers, away from the source of knowledge and information. For global institution for Educational, Scientific and Cultural affairs - UNESCO, open access is “ an innovative mode of scholarly communication within the digital environment, which is gaining momentum in developed countries that already have necessary information infrastructure.” One of the conditions for information structure is developed information society, and the book presents successful open access initiatives in the South Asia sub-region, available in the forms of “open courseware, open access journals, metadata harvesting services, national-level open access repositories and institutional repositories.” It is good to know about South Asian initiatives and efforts in making the knowledge and information open! You can download this book here.

The Library of Congress began last year first collaboration with Flickr and now has launched its pilot project called The Commons. Yesterday they announced a partnership that will put photos from the LoC’s collection online in a social environment and users to interact with them. LoC started organizing historical photograph collections through Flickr offering 3000 photos (so far): two sets of digitized photos from the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information and photos from the George Grantham Bain News Service. “The key goals of this pilot project are to firstly give you a taste of the hidden treasures in the huge Library of Congress collection, and secondly to how your input of a tag or two can make the collection even richer.” By tagging or commenting.  From official web site Library of Congress you can find more information about this project, as well as on the blog of LoC.

Also interesting additional information on new tagging initiative - The Commons  says that these photographs from the Library “represent materials for which the Library is not the intellectual property owner. Flickr is working with the Library of Congress to provide an appropriate statement for these materials. It’s called “no known copyright restrictions.”

I have been tagged by Bora with a bit complexed meme, more as blogging and scientific experiment in cyberspace evolution and I’d like to see how it has progressed so far, from ‘my grand-grand parent’ to parent. Here are the rules, and my answers:

There are a set of questions below that are all of the form, “The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is…”. Copy the questions, and before answering them, you may modify them in a limited way, carrying out no more than two of these operations:

* You can leave them exactly as is.

* You can delete any one question.

* You can mutate either the genre, medium, or subgenre of any one question. For instance, you could change “The best time travel novel in SF/Fantasy is…” to “The best time travel novel in Westerns is…”, or “The best time travel movie in SF/Fantasy is…”, or “The best romance novel in SF/Fantasy is…”.

* You can add a completely new question of your choice to the end of the list, as long as it is still in the form “The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is…”.

* You must have at least one question in your set, or you’ve gone extinct, and you must be able to answer it yourself, or you’re not viable.

Then answer your possibly mutant set of questions. Please do include a link back to the blog you got them from, to simplify tracing the ancestry, and include these instructions.

Finally, pass it along to any number of your fellow bloggers. Remember, though, your success as a Darwinian replicator is going to be measured by the propagation of your variants, which is going to be a function of both the interest your well-honed questions generate and the number of successful attempts at reproducing them.

My great-grandparent is Metamagician and the Hellfire Club.

My grandparent is Flying Trilobite.

My parent is A Blog Around the Clock.

The best time travel novel in SF/Fantasy is:

Hyperion by Dan Simmons.

The best neo-noir SF film in scientific and cyberpunk dystopias is:

Bladerunner by Ridley Scott.

The best sexy song in rock is:

Rose rouge by St Germain

[edit] as I mixed genres, above is more jazzy-groovy.

The best sexy song in rock is:

Personal Jesus by Depeche Mode.

The best cult novel in ex-Yugoslav fiction is:

A Tomb for Boris Davidovich by Danilo Kis.

I am tagging the following people,this time my Twitter friends, to do the same:

Curt Hopkins

Anatole Fuksas

Uldis Bojars

Paul Jones

From Wikimedia Foundation listserv officially comes happy news that Wikimedia Commons now has over two million files. Since March 2007,  Commons routinely have over 100,000 files uploaded every single month. It is becoming more and more common to have over 5,000 files in a single day, since Commons is still a very young project,  say administrators from Commons.

Now comes the exciting part. The 2 millionth file on Commons was an audio file. From the Commons database was extracted that the 2 millionth file on Wikimedia Commons comes from Serbian Wikimedian -Nikola Smolenski who uploaded this file on 03:34, 9 October 2007. Congratulations!

Just came back from Netherlands where I’ve spent great, useful quality of time talking, discussing with colleagues and professionals from different backgrounds, participating, exchanging information, sharing information. They all have in common new concepts and ideas of learning, using new media tools, as well as exploring institutional and cultural issues. Waag Society hosted two day conference on alternatives in education with four major groups of topics that lecturers, presenters, and participants have been discussing during intense programme - download full programme here with abstracts.

Since my 60 min.session was interactive and I asked from my participants to be active, prior to the session I created wiki page (shareslides here :: open knowledge and education at the new level of the web paradigm), as well as ’starting topic questionnaire’ at wiki (guidelines through an hour). Wiki is open, everyone can participate in discussion, post some of the works, slides, or documents, thoughts, examples, unfinished thoughts on and from the session.

[slideshare id=122709&doc=open-knowledge-and-education-danica-radovanovic3029&w=425]

British researchers recently focused on two most popular social networks -Myspace and Facebook. Here is what they have found out in their study: face to face interaction is the key if you want your friendship last, said Will Reader, an evolutionary psychologist at Sheffield Hallam University.

“Nearly all our close friends require face-to-face contact,” Reader told a meeting sponsored by the British Association for the Advancement of Science.

In their study, Reader and colleagues asked people a series of questions about their attitudes toward friendships and found 90 percent of individuals said it was imperative to know somebody face-to-face to form the tightest bonds.
…
Other studies have shown most people have about 150 people in their extended networks, with just a small number considered a member of the inner circle of close friends, Reader said.

Ok, this is my REAL life story - where the line between analog and digital world is very thin (or does it exist?).
Yesterday one of my former student (big Myspace fan) said that he despises Facebook because of many reasons I shall not expose here but are connected with accessibility, their own social circle (they existed first at Myspace, before Facebook appeared), also in the last weeks found out that many friends in analog world discovered Myspace in the past 2 years, as I started with it since 2003 and didn’t pay attention on music demo bands and others. But nevertheless I got funny situation today. So here is the story.
Person A: moi. Person B: analog female friend. Person C: analog male friend. All are from the same block -city area. Person B:she is my friend for 11 years. Person C: He is my friend for 5 years. She is very into Myspace. He is alternative, but still on Facebook and doesn’t have time to e-socialize, an idle Facebook(er). He doesn’t know for her, but from my professional story/conversation we had today he found out for my (analog) friend - person B -from Myspace. He asked me this evening to show him the link as he is interested to be in her network. But if you want to be her friend, you need to join Myspace -I told him (via Google talk) *. Despite the fact that he is idle e-socializer, he joins Myspace and in two hours creates profile, makes design, etc. (he is idle , he doesn’t like it BUT if he wants to be the friend or more with her, he is filling up all those fields.). Meanwhile (2 hrs), phone conversation**: with person B, we talk ‘girls talk’ and among other things on social networks (she is psychologist) - we analyze. I mention that Person C (from our hood) would like to meet her, but he is a bit shy (he is very smart and creative designer and anthropologist), so I am sort of mediator/communicator. Ok, she said - tell him to add me as a friend at Myspace. Gosh! End of phone call. On the other side Person C is buzzing me via Google talk***. Seems his primal analog instincts made him to call me (”can I call you now?”) via phone*****, and we talk the same amount of time as I did with Person B. So, he wanted to find out, via phone, what he has to do to be her friend (not directly, no way!). After my directions for Myspace, he joined community this evening, added me as his first friend, and suppose will add her tomorrow. Where is the point? In the future posts you’ll more to know - not about person B and person C but on digital/analog and social online networks in practice. For now the only answer would be *****.
***** - person A, person B, person C => didn’t see each other for more than months, live approx. 20 minutes walk downtown area, and all are very busy, which doesn’t make any excuse for not seeing each other face to face.

After annual Wikimania - International Wikimedia conference in Taipei, two interesting articles/readings (New York Times): interview with Jimbo Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, and the other on presentations, panels, discussions during the conference.

The sci-fi he novelist, famous for inventing the word ‘cyberspace’, William Gibson, is launching these days his latest book Spook Country . In the interview he reveals the relationship between technology and society ever since his cyberpunk classic Neuromancer, also what he missed in it, why he’s not a technophile, on Second life, hypertext way of writing, corporate futurism… His new novel is set in the present, in fact, the near past. Interesting fact is that one of the characters in the novel is young man name Tito, from Cuba

speaks fluent Russian, lives in one room in a NoLita warehouse, and does delicate jobs involving information transfer.

Someone said that Gibson gives up on the future. I couldn’t agree. Maybe beacuse the present is now?

Mars na Drinu is the best, my humble opinion, war ex-Yugoslavian film, made in 1964. My favourite, watched it several times on Tv when I was kid. Why this film is special beside this:

The film was made during the communist era of Yugoslavia. Unlike 99% of war movies made during that time, this one doesn’t deal with WW2 and communist revolution, but a historic and epic battle of WW1.

The topic was handled excellently, it was very authentic. For that reason, the film was “shunned” by the official TVs and movie theaters for years.

The topic of this film is the first battle of WW1 that was won by the allies, when small and outnumbered army of Serbian Kingdom defeated Austro-Hungarian invading forces. The plot revolves around a small artillery section, the men and their lives. The cast was excellent and they did their job superbly.

Historically, battles of Drina and Cer, in Serbia, were the first two victories in WW1. Unfortunately, overwhelmed by the invaders, serbian army had to retreat all the way to Greece and wait there until the allies were ready to open the front at Solun.

..there is one great monologue of well known Serbian actor Branislav Jerinic, lovely scene where in the middle of war surrounding during the night while the rain falls, like right now, this Alexa character shares great poetic thoughts with his camarade:

“Bre… Kad pripeče zvezda oko Svetog Ilije, pa misliš – izgore sve! Pa tek će jedne noći kiša… Letnja, plaha, k’o ova. A ja kažem mom Proki… Proko, kiša, burazere. Pa iziđem napolje, pa postojim tamo među šljivama, ono pada – k’o Bog da plače. A ja, mokar već, al’ još k’o ne verujem da pada, pa dignem ruku te pipnem one šljive nad glavom, a one mokre, pa sve kaplje od njih, niz ruku mi curi.”

During the 90’s this monologue was frequently broadcasted at one of the Radio programmes in Belgrade. For those who can read and understand Serbian - great, others -> find film Mars na Drinu. Also, if someone has a copy of this film: tape, DVD, or any other video format, please let me know!