Diego Gomez, Building Community-Based Digital Experiences

Gomez spoke of his experiences working with Hiperbarrio, an outreach program in the libraries of Medellin, Colombia, working with young people in working class neighborhoods and slums. His presentation started out by defining the concept of “digital experiences,” then moved on to offer a case study of Hiperbarrio and the digital ecosystem built in Medellin. Finally, Gomez concluded by talking about the role of libraries and their importance to Hiperbarrio’s work.

Digital experiences that transform life
When thinking about digital experiences, Gomez noted, the concept is comprised of two words. “Digital” conjures up ideas of technology, ones and zeros, and machines, he said, while “experiences” entail experimenting, feeling and tasting. In general, digital experiences are those experiences mediated by technology.
As an example, Gomez offered the case of Hiperbarrio, which offered workshops in the slums of Medellin as a way to go into the communities and allow the young people to tell their own stories, and then to make their stories visible to the broader world. Hiperbarrio began as a storytelling experience using blogs, video blogs, and holding video workshops.
“It was exciting to see how the people we were working with began developing their own experiences,” Gomez said. For example, he cited a youth, a former gangster named Frankie, who came to him one day saying he had found a solution to the group’s lack of cameras (one had been stolen and the other broken). Frankie had managed to use basic photography knowledge from elementary school to construct a rudimentary pinhole camera.
To demonstrate the group’s use of the homemade camera, Gomez played a a two-minute video from a LabSurLab meeting, showing youths using the pinhole camera. So impressed were the by the resulting photograph, one youth depicted in the video pulled out a cellphone to take a digital photo on the pinhole camera photograph, saying he was then going to upload the photo onto Facebook.
“Do you see the beautiful paradox here? It’s incredible,” Gomez remarked. “This is a good example to define to limits between where the analog world and digital world is.” In this case, Gomez said, Frankie created something that was shared with all his friends in the neighborhood via an “analog experience,” but that wasn’t enough—he wanted to share it with the whole world, so he created a blog. As such, Gomez said, experiences are amplified by digital technologies.

Digital Medellin
Gomez then moved on to talk about the creation of the digital ecosystem in Medellin, which was made possible mostly because of the commitment of the local city government, which during the past eight years has been investing in the city’s slums, building libraries and schools and infrastructure.
The three main basics of Digital Medellin, Gomez said, were connectivity, contents and services, and appropriation, or getting people engaged with the technology. For example, he said, he participated in building an education website, with Wikis and chats, but after it was up and running, no one was using it. To explain this, Gomez came up with two concepts: top-down strategies and bottom-up strategies.
Top-down strategies create more and more infrastructure, and pretend that everyone is using it. For example, he cited a Digital Bus, equipped with a satellite and the latest technology equipment, that drives around the city showing kids how to use technology. But since the bus only makes it to a particular community once a year, it accomplishes little.
So, while infrastructure is important, what really are needed are bottom-up strategies, Gomez said. Bottom-up strategies create communities, create individual and group experiences, and then pretend you have the infrastructure to develop these experiences.
Hiperbarrio, he said, is a balance between the government-driven strategies, and community-driven strategies.

Hiperbarrio
Working in the community of La Loma, Hiperbarrio started off working with pre-existing groups, as the idea was not to create communities, but rather to empower communities.
The key terms that describe Hiperbarrio are: collaboration, experience of citizen journalism, and learning by networking.
In the five years since Hiperbarrio started, the group has seen many outcomes, Gomez said. For example, they began working with Rising Voices, which made them realize the importance of making connections with other cultures and people around the world. As such, Hiperbarrio adopted the slogan “Local Stories, Global Audiences.” Beyond writing blogs and winning awards, Hiperbarrio also started curating information from communities beyond La Loma, replicating the experiences of La Loma with the youths from La Loma acting as coordinators and leaders of the new outreach projects. One such youth, Katalina, who won the Talented Woman Contest (Medellin eliminated beauty contests), has learned to speak English, has started writing for Global Voices, and is coordinating new digital experiences in other communities now.
Gomez referred to Hiperbarrio as a living lab, explaining that when the youths of La Loma realized their community did not appear on Google Maps, they took it upon themselves to map where they lived. More than a mapping project, it was a process of self-recognition, Gomez said. He showed a video of the youth working on the map project, as they noted that “If we’re not in the maps, we don’t exist.”
The success of Hiperbarrio and its hacking labs, citizen journalism, photography, video creation and mapping labs is in part because of its decision to work with local libraries, Gomez said.
In Medellin, libraries are a social space for people to connect and have fun. Eight years ago, the newly elected mayor made a commitment to invest in the slums, dedicating 80 percent of the city’s budget to education and building a series of libraries, Gomez said.
“What’s magic about libraries? We tried start projects in other spaces, but they didn’t work,” Gomez said. “The library is perfect place to make connections, to connect people, and we realized that’s what Hiperbarrio needed to do: to make connections between individuals and between groups, to connect us to the local community..We built a learning environment.”
Gomez said he wants to see Hiperbarrio replicated in other communities throughout Latin America, with the youths from previous “digital experiences” coordinating new experiences. Of course, he said, as far as sustainability goes, he recognizes the vital role of the government and the libraries for making their work possible.Gomez concluded his presentation with a final video showing the youths working on their various digital projects.
“I believe in the ability of writing to change conceptions,” one youth in the video summarized.