Arua-06 report AWR Staff: • Yves Senty (AWR-Europe Program Director) • Daryl Gungadoo (AWR Resource Engineer) Primary Objective: Deliver 200 MegaVoice Ambassadors + 1 Megavoice Scribe, along with training Secondary Objective: Gather a quantity of pictures for AWR-PR’s usage October 2006 SUNDAY MONDAY TUESDAY WEDNESDAY THURSDAY FRIDAY SATURDAY 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Heathrow 4 Entebbe 4 General Media Re-purposing & Megavoice Practicals Visit of a Dubai 4 Arua training on Podcasting concepts. recordings part (Megavoice Sudanese Entebbe (Eagle Air) Adobe Megavoice Workshop: II. Scribe Refugee Camp (Emirates) audition, mic 1) deployment File naming usage). (first impression of Intro meeting techniques brainstorm. structure. megavoice usage in a village) 2) Training & Recording Studio Visit of local of spots, part I. Equipment markets… overview 15 16 17 Arua 4 Visit of Dubai 4 Entebbe. Dhabayya London Entebbe 4 Shortwave TX Dubai site (Abu Dhabi) Preparation: It took a good week of preparation before departure. Apart from the medical preparation (updated vaccines, Malaria pills, etc…), we were most concerned by the possibility of being stopped at Customs upon arrival at the Entebbe (Uganda’s international) Airport. Beverly Koester who was our initial liaison informed us that any computer and computer related equipment was tax & import duty free in Uganda. However it was hard to link a computer to an Ambassador… On the Megavoice Database of pre-recorded test messages, we noticed a message about AIDS by the Ministry of Health, Uganda. So we populated 20% of the Ambassadors with this message, and added an AWR sticker to these, for easy recognition. Oct 08 - Arrival: Many of our friends were praying for us on this trip. When we arrived in Entebbe, we prayerfully approached Customs… and to our relief, we were whisked through with no complications. We had to spend 1 night in Entebbe because our arrival time was later than the flight to Arua, so we stayed at a Bed & Breakfast, recommended by Beverly Koester. Oct 09 AM – Arua: The next day, we caught the small prop plane to Arua. Upon checkin for the local flight however, we were queried as to the content of our suitcases (as the X-Ray machine revealed some “unusual” content. This is where taking the time to record the AIDS message from the Ministry of Health – Uganda, helped a lot. As soon as we played this message, they waved us by. As the plane to Arua was very small, the weight limit was 20kg, we were well over. We however got a substantial discount on the overweight payment, due to our “humanitarian” purpose. We landed in Arua (on a dirt runway), and was greeted by the whole production staff and by Beverly. We drove a few miles across Arua, to the compound where the South Sudan Field is based and after a few minutes of freshening up we started with an introductory meeting. Oct 09 PM – Staff intro.: We had a tour of the facilities, and each of the participants introduced himself. Beverley Koester (the wife of the field Treasurer), in preparation for her permanent return, has recently delegated the responsibility of administering the “Message of Love” Studio Production team as well as the Bible Correspondence School, to Richard Lasu (pictured: Top-Left). However, the studio started with only Beverley and Samuel Sorre (Bottom-Left). They learnt by themselves the used of Cool Edit (later, Adobe Audition), and have become quite resourceful and proficient at computer usage in general. Samuel Sorre is not Adventist. He’s actually an Episcopalian Priest, and started by translating scripts back in 2001. For years he was the only “talent” available. Since 2001, he has single-handedly mixed the majority of the programs. Benjamin Mugabe (Center-Right) is the most committed of the staff (as far as staying at his job, and not looking for grander opportunities abroad). He is officially the press manager and also the technical support for computers and anything electronic for the field. Idris Suliman (top-left) and Stephen Kumuko Bangi (bottom-left) are employees of the Bible School, and spend their fair share in the Studio. Oct 10 General Training: We first spent time assessing the needs of the local staff, to custom-create our training material. We covered material based on popular demand such as: • Adobe Audition o Audio processing o Limiting/Compressing o Normalization o Filters • Mic techniques (positioning, feedback, etc…) • Recording Levels • Solid State Recording (using the Marantz) • (Briefly) Content (this is Ray’s specialty therefore it will be dealt in depot upon his visit, in 2007) Oct 11 Media Repurposing: The concept of making available to other medium of communication, the audio files that are already produced for Shortwave broadcasting made perfect sense to the Sudanese producers. Naturally, Internet was very appealing to the staff, and we have come to the common agreement to start at least one podcast (in Juba Arabic) to judge the amount of potential Diaspora consumers we would have. We shall analyze the statistics over the next 3 month before deciding if we ought to add the other languages (Moro, Bari, Dinka, Zande, and later on Acholi). One view of the Juba Podcast (in Apple iTunes) ) The current Juba Arabic podcast is history in the making, as there are hardly any web content in Juba because it’s not a written language. Access to the Podcast is available through : http://www.podnova.com/index_podnova_station.srf?url=http://www.web pasties.com/podcast-3875-998.xml http://odeo.com/channel/141363/view http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZ Store.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=203162561 (for iTunes owners) As of November 3, this is the distribution of the podcast subscribers: It clearly shows an interest in the “western” world by the Diaspora of the Juba Arabic language. Megavoice Ambassador: So as to have the Ambassador project be “owned” by the Sudanese producers (as opposed to something imposed by AWR or others…) we took extra time to have the producers come up with their own ideas on how best to deploy the 200 Ambassadors. This yielded some very interesting results, some that we could have never though of on our own. Initially we had the idea of having all the produced languages on one single Ambassador, however when talking to the producers we realized that the languages spoken are geographically delimited. Furthermore the field is divided according to these language zones. So our pre-emptive deployment plan needed a complete revamp. Taking into consideration, the current organizational structure of the field: Field -> Ministerial Director -> 15 District Leaders (zoned by language groups) -> 80 Gospel Workers After much discussion, as a group, we concluded that the best way to deploy the megavoice was through the Gospel Workers who are equipped by the field with bicycles and rove from village to village in their assigned geographical zone. There is a bi-yearly meeting of the District leaders at the field offices in Arua (next one coming up in December 2006). It would therefore be the opportune moment for the District leaders to be distributed the Ambassadors as follows: Gospel workers: 80 x 2 = 160 (2 per gospel workers) District Leaders: 15 x 2 = 030 (2 per district leaders) Field office & Studio: = 010 --------------------------------------------- Total = 200 Depending on which “language zone” these Ambassadors will be used in, they would be pre-programmed (in Arua) with the needed language content. As each program is 30 minute in length, on the 64Meg model of the Ambassadors, we will be able to have 80 programs (40 hours). As each language is produced once a week, that amounts to about 1.5 years of programming! The team also came up with an accountability system that is based on a “Library system”. The Ambassadors will be borrowed by the listener for a predetermined period of time from the Gospel worker. An accompanying sheet of paper will track each program that is listened to. The form should be “illiterate friendly” so the listener just needs to tick each consecutive box. If more time is needed, it can be negotiated with the Gospel worker. The process is to remain free and not involve any compensation to the Gospel worker for borrowing the Ambassador. Language: Juba Arabic Date Lent: Return Date: Gospel Worker: Lent to: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 Those forms shall then be turned-in to the District leaders who in turn will bring them (twice yearly) to the field office for tally by the studio / bible correspondence school personnel. Other items of note: • Although only 200 are being deployed at present (to test the demand of such devices), the Gospel workers cannot promis more in the future. • There will not be (warranty) replacement if any get damaged. • The borrowing of the Ambassadors is a free process Oct 12 Megavoice Ambassador Content: For each produced language (except Colloquial English, as it was deemed not important by the team, for the moment), we recorded an Intro and an Outro Jingle. The script in English is as follows: Intro: This device is the property of “Messages of Love” for Sudan, and it is free for you to use for a certain period of time, as determined by the provider. Pressing the top left circle button for over 5 seconds will turn-on the device. Pressing it again for 3 seconds will turn the device off. The Arrow UP & Down control the volume. The button on the top-right pauses & resumes the playback.