Novelty Birthday Candles

ALAIC 2010 in Bogota July

international events can be good, average or bad, but they have one advantage: they are places for meetings and reunions, both in terms of intellectual exchange as in the development of friendly complicity. In the case of the tenth congress of ALAIC, the advantage was double as well to see good friends or to meet other, the event was quality and all who were gathered for three days at the Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, we were satisfied.

I was with friends

communication scholars from several countries in the region, Peruvians, Argentines, Mexicans, Ecuadorians, Brazilians, Chileans, Colombians, of course ... and Bolivians, as José Luis Aguirre, Erick Torres and Carlos Arroyo, among the highlights of my country.

I joined the well-deserved tribute to him ALAIC José Marques de Melo, met again after 30 years Hector "Toto" Schmucler, and instead missed the presence Jesús Martín Barbero and Omar Rincón, absent though both live in Colombia.

My specific task in the X Congress of ALAIC was the coordination of the Thematic Group on Communication and Social Change, as I have since this group was created in 2006. Our first encounter, at the Eighth Congress of ALAIC near Porto Alegre, was attended by twelve people, five different nationalities. We met again in Tlalnepantla, Estado de Mexico in 2008 and was renewed the group with a similar number of participants.

Photo: Irma Avila Pietrasanta

not suspected, however, that in 2010 would have 29 presentations, more than any of the other 21 thematic groups ALAIC. Participants from eight countries (Bolivia, Colombia, Mexico, Chile, Brazil, Uruguay, Venezuela and Argentina) showed that most relationships on communication experiences for social change, and the state of their academic research or specific activities. Although technical difficulties, the connection was via Skype with a colleague from Chile that he could not travel to Bogotá.

Our room was packed every night of the event not only for exhibitors, as is usual in these conferences ALAIC, but to colleagues interested in hearing the presentations and participate in discussions. The focus group said not only that, but also for being the only one who has a website own and a platform for dialogue in Google Groups, which allows us to exchange documents, send messages to the whole group, and publish news on members of the GT-CCS.

In Bogotá the participants decided to extend for two years my role as coordinator of the Thematic Group on Communication for Social Change, and elected as co-coordinator Amparo Cadavid (Dean of Communication and Journalism UNIMINUTO) and Technical Secretary to the young Colombian researcher Raigoso Liliana, who was my right arm in the organization of group ALAIC 2010, taking over the receipt of submissions, updates the group's website and correspondence with participants.

In just three meetings, the Thematic Group on Communication for Change Social consolidated as a demonstration of the growing interest in a communication whose focus includes not only the experience of participation and community practices, but which reflect policy and communication strategies for development and social change.

few days before I ALAIC Congress in Cartagena de Indias, the beautiful walled city water and washed by the Caribbean, which already has for me a familiar for the times I've visited in the last ten years. There was on National Meeting of Students for Social Communication (ENECS) , valuable because he managed to create a new student union media, which no longer existed in Colombia because the former had lost its legal status.

ENECS organizers invited me to speak of social change communication on the closure of the event, as did other speakers, had the detail to develop a short video presentation. I do not know how tricks were found on the Internet for pictures of me and all the biographical information to include in this short video can now be seen on YouTube .

Immediately after Cartagena, I was invited to Bogota for talks in several successive sessions with students and teachers of the race UNIMINUTO social communication and the Faculty of Social Communication for Peace of St. Thomas University, both interested in creating specialty or Masters in 2011 with emphasis on communication for social change. Thus

soon Colombia will become the Latin American country with most universities interested in promoting a specialized approach to communication for development and social change.