Caucasus New Media

So here is the end of Barcamp Caspian. there will be Barcamp Korpu (Bridge) which is especially for Azerbaijani participants and then Barcamp Azerbaijan in the middle of summer. Barcamp in Kazakhstan – Central Asia, B arcamp Kyrgyzstan and 2 more Barcamps in Russia- Moscow and Sankt Petersburg and one in Ukraine will be held in the summer and in October. See you there!

Neats.az will be new project, which just based on open sources and rock ideas. I am listening to their presentation with rock-n-roll melody. They are talking how to create web company without money. They are using all possibilities of Google (which is the next presentation) and planning their roles online or by meeting in cafe, pubs or chaikhana (local tea houses). They are great guys with few things to show now, but there are many built inside of them.

Just learned from Opera developer, that it is possible to translate browser into local languages of Caucasus and that they have earned from CIS the most part of their revenues. So they need now provide more services for local people. Delta Telecom says, that they still provide 75-80 % of ISPs in Georgia, working with such countries as Iran, Turkmenistan. These doesn’t like Internet, but we are providing it for them. Delta is the only company getting Internet and selling it for other providers. So it is nice to listen to real monopolist. What is interesting – in previous presentation on Opera we did not have Internet, now we have in this room! So that’s perfect to see how man from Internet monopolist took Internet with him into our room. Hola!
Update!!! Delta Telecom will have data center in 2 months, the biggest in region and they want all web-sites to place there. So may be Azerbaijan will see more problems, as it is in Kazakhstan. Officials could change law and make all web sites to be housed in Azerbaijan and then to censor them. Now Delta Telecom has them for free, but what will happen in future?
Update 2: Delta want to “decrease” prices for 3 times, if everything will be based in Azerbaijan. Right now they want all international mirrors to be located here too. Will see in couple of months.
Update 3!!! Delta Telecom officially announced, that Azerbaijan has only 3-4 % of broadband users, the rest dial-up users. That’s why nobody could see bright realities and end users need very fast changes.

We just started with Delta Telecoms presentation, but the main interest for me is WIMAX in Azerbaijan. Just waiting when it will start in Azerbaijan. Waiting for Google presentation too. Stay tuned!

I just spoke about new and old media and their death. Who will be first? I just told it, not for everybody. secretly at Barcamp Caspian. Now we have problems with Internet, thanks to general sponsor – Delta Telecom, the monopolist in Internet sphere in Azerbaijan. Now sitting at last presentation about future of BarcaMPS AND REMEMBERING ONE MAN CALLING ME FROM Budapest AND ASKING QUESTIONS ON HOW WILL BARCAMPS DEVELOPED. Sorry about different fonts and no links, i will update it in 3 hours and wil write more. now I am blogging very fast. Sitting in the room with the first Barcamper in CIS is very interesting. Tomorrow we will have presentations from sponsors and some interesting events. Stay tuned!
I have leared that the end of Barcamps is close. Everything is about death today 🙂 We had presentation from TOL people from Uzbekistan, Czech republic, Georgia and Azerbaijan. New media is developing!

I am in Barcamp Caspian in Baku now. We just started. Nobody believed that it is possible to have so much people – more than 250 in one place interested in new media, social networks, blogs, citizen journalism, etc. Now after 1 year of work with everybody and everyone we have succeeded as Transitions Online to make it. One of the first presentations is on neweurasia, which is partially TOL project. And presenter is from Uzbekistan and speaking about new media in totalitarian countries. Super! I will write all day about this.