I happened to attend the first POWO meet-up at the
iHub Nairobi. For those hearing it for the first time, POWO is a forum for poetry and creative writing bloggers. The main agenda behind it, as per my perception, is maximizing the internet, as their writing platform, for promotion and exposure.
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| POWO - Poets and Writers Online |
POWO - The First Meet-Up at *iHub_
The place was sufficiently packed with a variety of writers, and I have to say, I was impressed. Anyway, the meeting kicked off with a performance from
Muki Garang (a literary
artivist). His People TV 101 presentation was something different; new and entertainment.
Then there was @Wamathai.
Wamathai.com has some of the best pieces of creative writing on the Kenyan blogosphere. Definitely worth checking out, and it was nice to see who's behind it. He basically looked back at how he started out and how he got Wamathai.com to where it's at today with over 2.5 million views.
Potash was the final speaker. Potash writes his blog at
A Kenyan Urban Narrative, he also has some great content at
The Black Campaign that you should check out. He spoke about three vitals aspects of writing: Information, Education and Communication, and how writers should approach this topics.
POWO's First Meet-Up - A Success
While time was not on our side, I can confidently say that the first
POWO was quite successful. And even though I was blatantly denied an opportunity to say anything... smh... I have nothing but love for the cause. Anyway, here are some things you might be interested in:
Copyrighting your content,
Plagiarism, and @
Blogs_Kenya.
Copyright Your Online Content for Free
As a writer or poet on the Internet, one of the things that kills the buzz is that you have no documented proof of copyright. A way to protect your creation: Be it a simple Web Page, A Blog, even a Feed. A POWO Must-Know. Well, there's a solution for that.. and it's free. Visit
MyFreeCopyright.com, register for an account. Then go ahead and click on
Protect My creation. Then choose what you want to protect: File, Blog/Podcast, or Webpage. Am assuming you have a blog, so just go ahead and click on
Blog. It'll ask for your feed address, and ...that's all. Once you've protected you blog, anytime that you update, it sends you an
email with copyright information. Save that mail. I personally have an email folder called "my creations" into which, just as it sounds, I throw in any new creations.
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| Copyright Your Content |
Use Creative Commons License on your Blog
Another alternative, an even much better option, is using a Creative Commons license on your blog. To get Creative Commons for your blog, audio page, archive, webpage , etc,
CLICK HERE. @Nepurko uses it on her site;
The Village Beauty (check it out). If, however, you find it hard to implement on your site, you can always use MyFreeCopyright.
Plagiarism
If there is anything I do hate, it's plagiarism. When someone copies your content, pastes it somewhere else without even giving your site credit. I have had article parts from my site plagiarized, it's quite irksome. Kenyan newspapers have, sadly, made an habit of this. Back to online content, if you see your content on another site, the first thing you need to do is confront the writer. Ask them to either credit you, or remove it. If they do not budge,
report at Google. I like Google zero-tolerance stand towards content-thieves.
Sometimes
you have no idea your work is being plagiarized. Visit
Plagiarismchecker.com and you'll get the tools to search for stolen content. You can then go ahead and report at Google, or other sites through the same website. Google almost immediately removes that link from the better parts of its SERPs.
@Blogs_Kenya
Just visit
twitter.com/Blogs_Kenya. I started this twitter handle in order to get updates from my favorite blogs. Over time, many bloggers and interested readers followed the account, and I decided to broaden it. Many guys sent me links to blogs they liked and I now feature over 170 bloggers. It is very efficient to have a link that, be it on mobile or laptop, you can see what Kenyan blogs have updated recently. By the way
getting featured isn't rocket science, if you have a blog, just contact me at @Blogs_Kenya or @peteretelej - I'll sort you out. I plan to create a standalone website for local content, so if you are interested in joining the venture, just tweet me.
Anyway, this post was about
POWO. So I'll cut short off my
A.O.B lecture. If you need some techie help or advice just get me on Twitter. The next POWO Meeting is on 21 may 2011, see you there. Anyhow, later.
Follow POWO (Poets and Writers Online)
POWO on Twitter (@POWO)|
POWO on Facebook | Email: PoetsNWriters
[AT]gmail.com