Por la Cultura.en

Friends of Kewelta,

Since 2005, we have been together, by e-mails, in theatres, in movies, in music shows, in congresses, in the universities, institutes and public places, always counting with the help of many people. In our houses in front of our PCs or reading a printed e-mails.

It has passed four years of effort and sacrifices, all these with an only goal:
To know every event of the cultural world that happens in Havana and, of course… To Have a good time!!!

Thanks to you, that has also contributed to this Project of cultural enrichment …
Thanks to all the institutions and individuals who have who have given us encouragement in every moment.

Happy New Year 2009!!!
And…Have Fun!!!

A big hug, RBOL team

The desktop, is a software solution created by Freyre, and enriched by Julio Carlos and Zuzel for the use of our editors. It enables editors to provide the information that the site will show as new entries.

At only a week of starting in the Project, I had the great responsibility (as a programmer) of allowing, through the desktop application, to asses an event (one of the most important features that the Portal will have). For this purpose, I “digested” almost all the source code of the kw_desktop, and began, as soon as I could, the task assigned.

At first, it was hard for me to understand (as always happens in matters of a foreign code), everything was easier as soon as I become acquainted with the code. After 2 nights of hard work, the result could be hardly seeing in this application to which my predecessors had spent months working in its improvements:

But that far of discouragement, it motivated me to continue adding functionality to this software that I already feel like mine. The next day, besides reflecting the Rating in the main window of the application, I achieved the software to be able to export and update the site, and that way it was (as I thought), 100% functional.

Nothing was further from the truth, because a few hours later I discovered that the eliminated events were not sent to the trash, and when I tried to extract some of those events that were there: Kabooom! The application launched an exception.

That day I was until 4am trying to solve the problem, (do not forget that the code is not mine and there are things that I´m still completely unaware of). So, I fall asleep over the keyboard about 3 hours, in what I called “the revealing dream”. I do not know if anyone had experienced this, for me it is totally unusual. The truth is that I dreamed how to proceed to solve the problem with the trash. At the time I awake, shocked, I could not believe what I had dreamed of, and much less that it was indeed the solution to a matter I had dedicated so many hours… So, I phoned Blast and told him happened … “Hahaha, it happens!!” he told me. But I wasn´t sure until I spoke with Zuzel who confirmed what, later led to the code, was 100% clear.

When I heard Estelita talking about radiobemba(at)uh.cu, I was still a MATCOM student at the University of Havana. I can say that I was one of the firsts to receive their e-mails about cultural events, but I was far from imagining that I would be some day a part of the RBOL team.

At that time, had a deep desire to find alternatives for fun, to know where to go and in which place was planned the activity I needed. But in terms of distribution lists, radiobemba(at)uh.cu had me dissatisfied…

First and foremost, was to assume the challenge of being involved in a social Project as Kewelta, unprecedented in the island. Then it caught my attention, particularly, how seriously, every member of this group of young people, take their job… to the point that they seem to be “possessed” with the magic of their leader: Blast (aka Carlos Manuel), who impose to the Project such an energy and dynamism, which one comes to be convinced that, in his only 24 years old, has leaded projects from adolescence …
So, I am proud to be part of this team with which I feel identified and intend to spend all the time required, and do everything that is expected of me.

Greetings,
Garcés Luilver Briñas, Programmer of Kewelta Project.

We would like to admit that the Post of Bloggers CUBA called “Threats, constraints and barriers to the arrival of Web 2.0 to Cuba” has aroused a particular interest among several friends of our project and Cubans bloggers. We believe it is our responsibility to publish step by step in our blog how Kewelta Project has come true, and the ideas that we intend to develop in order to make an important step in a topic that is far more than technology and approaches the reality that has been imposed in many latitudes, and which is not far from touching the Cuban territory, and is the implementing a social model based on the 2.0 philosophy inside the Cuban Web. In this post we will limit ourselves to talk about the current Keweltas´s Social Model and the changes that should be happening, later we will talk more about our experiences.

1.0 and 2.0 These concepts are widely disseminated: Portals like Kewelta, La Jiribilla, CUBARTE Portal, Cubasí and Juventud Rebelde, to name a few, all have implemented a Publishing Model in which information goes through an editorial flow with some rigor until it is published. So it is said that these websites are of the old school or that they follow the 1.0 concept, in which the portals as issuers of information play the most important role because the team behind them is the one who decides what to publish and what not.
The truth is that, technology, communication and years have shown that above 1.0 concept prevails the 2.0, in fact, history has shown that the portals 2.0 literally devour the 1.0 sites. This revolutionary philosophy in every aspect of daily life, simply argues that each portal should be a facilitator of communication between users, who are the makers and publish the information, at the time it is consumed. Some examples of portals that follow this philosophy in our lenguage are Meneame and Wikipedia, among many others.
To finish this part I would add that, perhaps in our country the most interesting rapprochement to the 2.0 philosophy are the forums of La Vanguardia newspaper, though its been talked about a lot of projects like http://blogs.sld.cu, La Vanguardia wins by being 100% public and online.

As we know in Kewelta, the 2.0 philosophy is not an option, is simply the way forward to achieve a cultural orientation service with the quality standards of our planet today. Certainly, to follow each of the cultural activities that are conducted only in Havana, take control of the changes, cancellations and new events that occur, we would need a building the size of FOCSA full of journalists (to give an example), because if we really quantify the additional resources, it would require too many telephone lines, all of the bandwidth that Cuba has at this moment, various vehicles to transport us and an endless unthinkable resources, just to keep the track of what happens day by day in our capital, we would have to reproduce an entire tracking apparatus like the one that exists today for organization and execution.
Do you understand the point my friends? We are forced to open up the system so that the artists and institutions themselves are allowed get close to users through the Portal that allows them to make public the schedule of its events. Kewelta has to be the way to facilitate communication between users that promotes information and users who are eager to know that information, and, as the years and history have shown, those users, at the end, are the same

RBOL Development Team

Or editorial valuation. The thing is that our editors can assign a numerical value (a number from 1 to 5) to the events they publish. It is an idea with which we intend to qualify the most representative of Cuban culture. It seems simple, but is far from it.

To do this, our editors must prepare themselves very well, because there are many criteria to be taken into account when assessing an event. As a programmer, my task is to enable editors to allocate the valuation in the event (basically, to put the number) but this is only the simplest part. What does it mean that an event has 5 points, or 3 or 1? This is the complicated part.

Formula… Calculations…? No, we can not count the culture! There are so many indicators with which to evaluate an event! They’re all so different for each event, and among them, everyone has a different importance. Recently we met to discuss this issue, and it has generated a good debate, with many different conclusions, including the need for assistance from the critics. The “Music” events are not measured with the same parameters with which we measure “Movies”; the place of occurrence of the event, when to take into account the price of entry, with what kind of critics to contact to, etc …

Another issue is how to visualize this assessment. We can use stars, vertical bars, horizontal bars… on which side of the chart in the event…

The editorial valuation is also geared with the Votes and Mystique, helping the event to become “Tokao”(most popular). The Rating is translated to a number that is added to the Mystique at the time of the Vote, allowing events with more Rating to become More Popular faster than others. It also affects the order of the Events, because the events placed in “On hand” are ordered by Mystique in a descending order. So two events with the same Mystique but with a different valuation, at the time of voting, the event with the highest rating is the first.

Then, the Rating influences, but does it determine…? No, an event only becomes “Tokao” through the Votes from users. For example, an “Event A” can have 5 points and an “Event B” can have 2 points; for the same amount of votes, the Mystique of the “Event A” (5 points) increases faster and becomes “Tokao” faster than the “Event B”. But if we vote more for the “Event B”, this can become “Tokao” before the “Event A”.
Our goal is to guide our users and the general public towards a culture with quality, which represents the Cuban culture. It is very difficult, but it is our intent.

Since April of this year we decided to publicize Kewelta. To achieve this, we needed to have sufficient cultural information for our portal. To ensure that, we replicated some documents related to our Project, and allocated them to the main directives of major cultural institutions in the Capital.
These materials, that had information about Kewelta, its history and objectives, were delivered by ourselves. That took us to walk many days under our under our characteristic Sun.

Then, we decided that we should not get on only in higher organisms and that we should visit the institutions that make the culture themselves.
Another time to walk with our fliers under our arms, ready to let us know at the base. For months we were visiting institutions basically, those ones placed in the center of the Capital, presenting us and letting them that little piece of paper.

October arrived, and we had our first appearance on national television, in the program Parentheses (Paréntesis) from Havana Channel. At that time everyone in the Capital had the opportunity of knowing from our Proyect, our e-mail and a detailed explanation of how Kewelta works.

In the same month of October, we had our formal presentation at the “Hermanos Saiz” Association. Many important personalities were present: Minister of Culture, Main Directives from the “Hermanos Saiz” Association, and other leaders in the industry. It was also a great opportunity for a new interview, this time to the program “Site of Art”,and to distribute hundreds of flyers for all attendees, the cartel prepared for that day, among other documents.
The members of our team are constantly participating in cultural events, looking anywhere for the cultural information that Kewelta needs (websites, printed billboards, radio and television…)
We have been attending some courses that deal with cultural issues in the different municipalities, and we have taken advantage of it to present the features of our Project to the cultural promoters.

But my friends, after all this pilgrimage, the information still does not reach us… Are those institutions not interested in promoting their cultural activities? Could it be that they do not recognize the value of a Cultural Billboard as Kewelta?
We fail to understand what is really happening. Meanwhile, I leave you with these questions open to a debate and perhaps you, who are reading this, can contribute together to push us to reach fruition.

Ivonne.

Our work in Kewelta increases qualitatively every day. More information, greater numbers of visitors, and thus of users accessing our site. Thank you very much for all those who, in one way or another, are contributing with our Project and uses the information we provide.

In Kewelta we count with two very important tools for us as editors. One of them, and commented from one of the members of our team is the “editors desktop”, the other of which we haven´t talked about yet, is the “institutions desktop” in which we organize all the data from the cultural institutions (address, phone number, e-mail address…).

This post intends to be a wake-up call in this respect towards our friends, the contributors.
We found that the information comes to us incomplete. In most cases only the name of the event, place and date. In many cases it is easy because they are artists or famous places, in others not so well. We need more detailed information, including also the particular event, place, date and time, also kind of activity that makes the artist, or genre, demonstration, and above all, the place where the data is presented, referring in the name of the place, address, telephone and even people to contact.
Again, greetings and thanks to all who are in contact and we hope that with the cooperation of all increase the quality of our proposal.

Greetings,
Ivonne

Our Project, that began a day, as an innocent mailing list, today has become a great opportunity for young people interested in Cuban culture. Kewelta today is known by many, a lot of friends write us daily to congratulate us and make us valuable recommendations and interesting proposals. To all of them, we thank for letting us be a part of their plans to enjoy the cultural life of Havana.

But being part of this great team, not only involves the commitment of carrying out daily quality work, it also involves preparation, training and ownership of the daily lives of those who have many years in the cultural world and who, undoubtedly, have a very valuable experience for us.
Thus, our team has already participated in several courses with cultural promoters and programmers, have learned from their work, their functioning, and has given us a more complete picture of cultural information … where it comes from, where it is going …

We are pleased with the joy with which we have been received in these courses and the enthusiasm shown by contributing with our project.

Friends of Kewelta, on this journey, where many people had joined us, you can always be sure that we work so that the outcome is everything you deserve…

See ya!
A hug, Citacu

Since last Sunday’s, CUBARTE´s servers have experienced several problems. Those people over there are very kind and have given a great support to the Project, however, the burden they have in their hands is greater than the response capability they have.

On the other hand, before starting on CUBARTE´s servers, we were already exploring the possibility of starting in ENET, an ETECSA´s dependence dedicated to hosting and data transmission. We have already made contact with the commercial area of ENET on behalf of the institutions that sponsor us and we hope soon to have ready the service for the Project. The idea is to take advantage of the technical failure inside CUBARTE to give an effective solution to Kewelta.
We have not been able to have ready the bulletins in CUBARTE, and the Portal is now without updated information, all of these because of the instability in CUBARTE´s service. We hope to solve all these issues in ETECSA as soon as possible.

A hug for everyone,
RBOL Development Team

Yes friends! Our friends of CUBARTE have just enabled us the account of habana(at)kewelta.cu We want to apologize to everyone that have written to our mail and have not been able to come into contact with the team. Now there are only a few more details to implement in order to start sending bulletins.

Greetings,

RBOL Team

 Since the presentation of Kewelta on the 17th, we have been making big efforts to have ready the bulletins through which we will send all the information related with cultural activities to the users, as well as the havana(at)kewelta.cu e-mail address, through which we receive all information to edit.

Due to some issues on the functioning of our server in CUBARTE, this has not been completed yet. We hope, though, that it could be ready by this weekend, so the server´s administrators can give the final touches we need.

We are sorry for any inconvenience that it may cause you,
RBOL Team

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Friends of Kewelta,

This Wednesday our team of editors will attend the first class of the “Concentrate Course of Edition” that teaches Professor Juan Nicolás Padrón at the Salvador Allende Memorial- House.
Organized in twelve lectures that include several hours of practice, this course will provide our publishers of essential knowledge and tools to improve their performance. It will be, without any doubt, a very helpful course!!!

Greetings,
RBOL Team

On October the 17th, a large group of cheerful and enthusiastic youngsters gathered in the small room of the Literary Cafe of the Cuba Pavilion to celebrate the 22nd Anniversary of the Hermanos Saiz Association. Several projects, including our Billboard “Kewelta Habana”, were presented during the celebration activities of this day.

As we expected and wanted, our presentation was a great success. You can imagine how happy we are because the entire effort was worth it. The sleepless nights, the hiking, the long hours-meetings … It was very gratifying to see the audience interested and excited about the proposals of Kewelta. We can already say that young people have now a quick and easy to use tool, that allows them to know what´s happening in Havana.

Although we have passed the first stage, we have before us, one full of challenges and potential difficulties. However, today we have an experience that we hadn´t when we began this Project, so we are confident that we shall succeed!!!

Here you have some photos of this day…

Greetings!!!
RBOL TEAM

Friends of Kewelta,

With great joy, we are pleased to announce you the imminent presentation of Kewelta. Yes indeed friends, tomorrow October 17th, we will present our Project in front of representatives from the Ministry of Culture, the Hermanos Saiz Association, the College Students Federation and members of various cultural institutions.

Kewelta exists today thanks to the confidence, determination, and the work of a group of young people that, concerned about the cultural activities of the contemporary world, decided to become a part of it.

To you, our loyal supporters, we will always be grateful. Thanks for not fainting, for joining us always, for the confidence placed in us, for your patience … Thanks!

Maybe, many of you cannot be with us in the presentation tomorrow, even so, we want to bring you a little piece of what will happen through this Blog. Here you can see the promotional poster, the flyer and the presentation card we will give to the presents…

See you soon!!!
RBOL Team

Friends,

Last Thursday October 9, Kewelta was in PARENTHESIS, a Cuban television program of the Educational Channel 2. The program dedicated it´s broadcast to talk about two new digital publications responsible for promoting the Cuban young artists and intellectuals´ work, among them: Kewelta.

Our backgrounds, objectives and goals, ways to send us the information, among others, were some of the topics that were addressed during the program. It was very important for us to be at the National TV and be able to give information about our project to the viewers. Today many of them write us excited and interested in the Project.

We sincerely appreciated this great opportunity!!!
RBOL Team