en.medi@, from month to month

Luís Ángel Fernández Hermana - @luisangelfh
15 May, 2018
Editorial: 201
Fecha de publicación original: 8 febrero, 2000

No-one gets fat by just licking

Today we are going to contemplate our own navels. In other words, we are going to talk about ourselves a bit. Exactly one year ago, after many a sleepless night and years of preparation, we finally got en.medi@, a conceptual technology developed by Enredando.com, S.L., off the ground. Its objective was the creation of an area for debate, research and group work in order to generate content, knowledge management, a collective learning process and the furthering of shared ideas. From then on, apart from some justified hiccups due to holidays and other seasonal obligations, the en.medi@ figures have continued to rise moderately as far as subscribers go, while the index of participation and, above all, content quality has improved notably. During January, the average number of messages per month doubled, and for the first time since en.medi@got going, there were more contributions from another country (Argentina) than from Spain. Nevertheless, en.medi@ is still in its infancy. We have only just started to explore the possibilities that a space of this kind affords, the global projection of which we will unveil in various phases in the medium term. We are celebrating this birthday by opening up some new pages in the en.medi@web which will facilitate consultation and the management of knowledge contributed by participants.

There might be some objections, serious or otherwise, as to what extent en.medi@ has remained faithful to its objective of becoming a space for debate and research into New Media in the Information Society. But, let me say what I do know, and that is that we have more than fulfilled our idea of encouraging collective learning, of moving forward together, and, above all, of generating content and managing knowledge. During this year, en.medi@has shown its potential to become a space for interrelating, where many present concerns about the Internet, such as excess information, its quality and authenticity, are approached from a different perspective. We have been involved in debates crammed with intelligent and very varied references in which it was clear that participants had worked very hard to produce contributions of an extremely high standard. And together we have created a methodology, a certain culture of discussion and knowledge exchange that has coloured relationships amongst participants.

At the moment, more than 800 people are subscribed to the space, a more than respectable figure if we bear in mind that right from the start the emphasis has been on quality rather than quantity. And that the only publicity it had was this editorial and word of mouth, which has undoubtedly been much more effective than the distribution of en.red.ando. From the messages that we receive through “internal affairs”, we know that university departments in Spain and Latin America, from various disciplines related to communication, social psychology, engineering or anthropology, use en.medi@ for consultation to support theses and for the exchange of knowledge.

As readers of this space will know, every month we publish a round-up of our most interesting debates as well as a statistical summary of subscribers’ participation, origin and profession. We also add all contributed knowledge resources, Internet addresses, bibliographical references or any other kind of documentation. So far this summary has been simultaneously distributed by e-mail and published in the I+D+D web page, along with other contributions from the corresponding month. This made it difficult, or at least a very laborious task, to follow all the subjects debated in en.medi@ since its creation.

From now on, these summaries will also be grouped in “en.medi@, mes a mes”(from month to month), a new area of the web which will make it easier to get an idea of what’s going on in the debate at a glance. The link to the pages where monthly summaries, statistics and all resources contributed by participants are to be found will, of course, be called “Resumen del Mes” (Monthly Summary), and as from today will form part of the menu of en.medi@’s web pages. In March we will be creating “en.medi@ topic by topic”. Published here will be summaries of the most important debates based on the number of participants or contributions. This will also make it easier to get a general idea of what is going on in en.medi@. In addition, in this way, both subscribers to this space as well as visiting internauts will have the opportunity to follow what is happening in detail and, at the same time, take advantage of the collective knowledge accumulated there so far.

As far as “encounter technology” and knowledge management is concerned Enredando.com is in the proposal phase of developing en.medi@technology for different clients (companies, organisations, co-operatives, local administrations), adapted to the particular needs of each case. These initiatives will benefit from the experience obtained from the space that has been working in en.red.ando so far and will, in exchange, open up new possibilities for constant improvement.

Finally, I don’t want to close this number without warmly congratulating Vicent Partal and Assumpció Maresma, director and “alma mater” of Vilaweb, respectively, for winning the “Ciutat de Barcelona” prize for the media in 1999, the first time that an Internet-based media has won. When I phoned Vicent to congratulate him on the award, the first thing he said was that, “This is in recognition not only of Vilaweb’s work but for everything that all of us have done on the Internet over the last four or five years in Catalonia”. One day, when he’s not looking, I’ll pop an en.medi@into Vilaweb to prove that these years have not passed in vain.

Translation: Bridget King

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