Preetam Rai. Blogger, educator and member of Global Voices Online.

We first met during BarCamp Johor Bahru few months back. When he is not busy teaching, Mr. Preetam can be found at PestaBlogger or wondering the globe and contributing to Global Voice online. Global Voices is a leading participatory media news room for voices from the developing world. Begun in 2005 as a simple blog hosted at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, Global Voices has grown into a vibrant global community of more than 150 active volunteer authors and translators and more than 20 freelance part- time regional and language editors (source). Thank you for answering out questions. (Top photo By Joi)

Q. How long have you been blogging? What attracts you to it?
A. Have been blogging since 2002 I think. I started blogging about my travel and through the blog I met many people who were traveling to the same place or living in the place I traveled to. That helped me enrich my travel experience so I continued blogging.

Q. Tell us about Globalvoice, its objective and your role in the organization?
A. Global Voices was a project I was contributing to last couple of year. The non-profit project was founded at Berkman Centre for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. The aim of the project was to highlight the voices from different parts of the world via the bloggers in that particular region. My role was to help encourage bloggers in South East to aggregate interesting blog content from their countries.

Some of the global voices members

Q. Do you see blogging as an effective platform that can help to improve the political, social and economic situation around the world?
A. I think blogging and other complementary platform can help in bringing people with ideas together. These medium serve as a glue or a link but a lot still depends on the actions of the people. We are seeing good examples in Cambodia and Indonesia examples around the world where people are using these social tools to rally volunteers to help in education, fund-raising and disaster relief. Blogs go a long way in creating awareness of a situation.

Cambodian bloggers sharing knowledge

Q.What are the projects that you are currently developing or involve in?
A. Currently, I am helping plan couple of Barcamps, one specifically for teachers. I am also trying to design a low cost hardware that can help people learn.

Q. What is your other interest beside blogging and computers?
A. Travel, history and studying popular culture. I travel mostly to learn about what interests people in different countries. I also try to observe innovations or ideas that are in use in a region and see they can be applied in other areas. Another think I am interested is in product design.

A bamboo baby stroller from China, I wonder if we can make this for other countries too.

Q. I was informed you are currently living in South East Asia. How did you end up there in the first place?
A. South East Asia is one my favorite places and I am feel very happy and at home once I am here, it could be Indonesia or Vietnam or the Philippines or Malaysia, it doesn’t matter. I first came to this region in the late 90s to help out in some e-learning projects in Thailand and Singapore. And since then have spend most of my time in this region.

One of my favorite place in South East Asia, Northern Thailand where the borders of Burma and Lao meet.

Q. You have travelled to many places before. Name 3 of your favorite places that you have visited before?
Chengdu in China, Bratislava in Slovakia and Penang in Malaysia. If you ask me some other day, my list would be different, I seem to enjoy most of the places I visit.

Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia.

Q. Who are your favorite bloggers?
A. Again too many to list. I usually visit the specific country sections under Global Voices website. They will collect the current interesting blog posts from many countries. If I am planning a trip to a particular country, I will start reading the related Global Voices content a couple of weeks before my journey. That way, when I am in a particular country, I am already familiar with the latest issues and able to easily strike conversation with the people.

Q. What are your future plans?
A. Probably spending some years in South America or East Africa as these are the regions I don’t have much exposure too.

Website : http://preetamrai.com, http://flickr.com/photos/preetamrai

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