Podcast from Amman with Ahmad Humeid

Ahmad Humeid is a Jordanian entrepreneur, newspaper columnist, graphic designer, information architect and, to the best of his knowledge, the first Jordanian podcaster, perhaps the first podcaster in the Middle East. He and I took a few minutes after a conference in Amman – “The Future is Open” – to talk about blogging and podcasting in the Arabic-speaking world, why so many Jordanians blog in English, and how technology may be helping to create dialog throughout the Arab world. (Audio file. mp3, 19 minutes, 8.8mb)

You can learn more about Ahmad by reading his weblog, 360east, or by following his column in the English-language daily, the Jordan Times.

Ahmad will be joining us for the Global Voices blogger gathering tomorrow night, at Wild Jordan in Jabal Amman, at 7pm – if you're a Jordanian blogger interested in learning more about Global Voices, please contact Isam Bayazidi (ibayazidi AT gmail DOT com) and let us know you'll be joining us.)

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Written byEthan Zuckerman

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3 comments

Pingback: 360east | Ahmad Humeid’s blog and podcast » Blog Archive » My interview on GlobalVoices with Ethan Zuckerman

[…] Earlier today I had a great chat with Ethan Zuckerman, who’s here in Amman for the Open Source Opportunities seminar. Both of us were ’showing off’ our Apple gear (Powerbooks, iPods in the lobby of the Jordan Intercontinental. We talked about blogging, podcasting, media, technology, youth and self expression. Ethan just posted this podcast of our talk on the GlobalVoices online site. […]

27 July 2005, 14:49 pm
Pingback: …My heart’s in Accra » Badly overdue note on my trip to Amman

[…] Turns out they’re also all blogging in English. This isn’t entirely surprising, given past British influence in Transjordan, and the fact that Jordan’s bloggers are – by their own admission – a highly educated and wealthy elite. What’s really interesting to me is the extent to which Jordanian bloggers seem to be committed to the idea that they’re blogging for an international audience. Talking about this the day before the meetup with Ahmad Humeid (on a podcast we posted on Global Voices), Ahmad made the point that Jordan’s a small nation, with few people online, and that Jordanians want to be heard by a wider audience… which means blogging in English, the current default language of the web. […]

4 August 2005, 18:08 pm
Pingback: …My heart’s in Accra » Mitt said it, not me.

[…] In the course of writing this paper, I found myself thinking a great deal about blogging communities that explicitly try to reach audiences in other countries. It’s pretty clear to me that many of the middle eastern bloggers I read regularly are self-consciously writing for audiences in North America and Europe, hoping to challenge stereotypes about their nations, the Arab world, and Muslims as a whole. Ahmad Humeid of 60east says as much in an interview we did for Global Voices. My friend Haitham Sabbah builds projects like NoToTerrorism.com to demonstrate that the majority of Arabs are as horrified by terrorism as most Americans are. And Mahmood Al-Yousif, on the “about” page of his blog, Mahmood’s Den, says the following: Now I try to dispel the image that Muslims and Arabs suffer from – mostly by our own doing I have to say – in the rest of the world. I am no missionary and don’t want to be. I run several internet websites that are geared to do just that, create a better understanding that we’re not all nuts hell-bent on world destruction. […]

16 September 2005, 13:21 pm

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