What happens when you put a Swiss/Italian social activist and German/Jordanian political scientist/journalist on a train from Berlin to Tehran, have them carry a video camera, microphone and laptops and have them blog/vlog/podcast like there’s no tomorrow.

Sounds like a radical media experiment that I would be interested in. That’s why 360east and my company SYNTAX is sponsoring Karawan: an occidedent-orient trip of dialogue and discovery and new media project, conceived by rebell.tv’s Stefan Seydel and Bashar Humeid.

The guys are already in Istanbul after making a few stops in central and eastern Europe. Their output (some of it English, some of it German) is continuously being uploaded the rebell.tv’s text/audio/video website/one-man-media-empire.

In Iran, Stefan and Bashar want to meet Iranian officials and people on the street. The ultimate aim is helping answer the question: “how should we live together?” continuing the idea of the German poet, Goethe, named “The West-East-Diwan,” which is based on dialog and mutual respect between civilisations.

With clouds of gloom and doom gathering over the Middle East and the world, we surely need voices like these (especially when they are armed with citizen-media tools)..

Here is more info on this project:

Idea
Rebell.tv is organizing a tour by train from Berlin to Teheran. During this tour we will meet various
personalities who are interested—like us—in the orient-occident dialog.

We will meet bloggers as well as experts and people on the streets of the places we will visit during the trip.

Documentation the whole trip will be documented by:

TV: http://tv.rebell.tv/-karawan/
RADIO: http://radio.rebell.tv/-karawan/
PRINT: http://print.rebell.tv/-karawan/
BLOG: http://blog.rebell.tv/-karawan/

The trip and documentation will be done by:

Stefan M. Seydel: studied Social Work at the University of Applied Science (St. Gallen-Switzerland)
and the University of Humboldt (Berlin, Germany). In 1987 he co-founded intervention LTD. The company implements projects in the fields ofsociology, philosophy, religion and politics.

Intervention LTD focuses on complex problems facing states and communities. For example, it provides consultants on alcohol consumption.

Bashar Humeid: Double Masters degree in Politics (major), Islamic Studies (major). University of Erlangen (Friedrich-Alexander), Institute of Modern Middle Eastern Studies. Masters thesis theme: “Modern Islamic Movements between
Violence and Non-Violence”.

From 9/2002 till 3/2003 he obtained a scholarship from the University of Bamberg (DAAD-Program) for attending a language course at the “International Center for Persian Studies“ at the University of Tehran. Currently, he is working as a freelance journalist.

Introducing Rebell.tv:
Rebell.tv is one of the most important internet bolg-/vlog-portals in the German-speaking part of Europe. Rebell.tv produces vlogs (TV), podcasts (RADIO), texts (PRINT) and fast blog-posts online on a daily basis.

The aim of this portal is to comment on ideas and news and provide alternative perspectives by raising
new questions and publishing ideas and news suppressed by the mainstream media.

Rebell.tv is one of the first projects in its field. The founder and director of rebell.tv, Stefan M. Seydel, is also field correspondent for rocketboom.com, one of the most popular vlogs in the USA. Together with rocketboom.com and separately, rebell.tv was cited and portrayed in the most popular media worldwide:

The New York Times
Forbes (USA)
Businessweek (USA)
The Boston Globe (USA)
Wired (USA)
Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Switzerland)
Die Zeit (Germany)
Die Süddeutsche (Germany)
Der Standard (Austria)
>German TV (first channel)
Swiss TV (first channel)
tv5monde (France)

For a full overview see: http://tv.rebell.tv/static/was-die-medien-ueber-rebelltv-schreiben

Rebell.tv does not use fixed formats and can, therefore, change its method of reporting in a way suitable to the situation. In the archive of rebell.tv, one can find hundreds of unedited interviews with politicians, intellectuals and artists in addition to extensive lectures. rebell.tv is not under time or economic pressure like the established mass media. Therefore it is able to elaborate and comment thoroughly on complex political and social problems.

One of the important motivations of rebell.tv is its disappointment with western culture. The colonization, the industrial abolition of natural resources and the industrial killing of people in the holocaust and in two world wars are historical events that should make us critical about spreading western ideas worldwide.

Rebell.tv is interested in the traditional question: “how should we live together?”. We ask this question in a global perspective. That is why we are interested in continuing the idea of the German Poet, Goethe, named “The West-East-Diwan,” which is based on dialog and mutual respect between civilisations.

About Karawan

Travel Time We are planning to start our trip in February 2007. Travel Duration About three weeks

Travel Stations: berlin – wien – sofia – istanbul – ankara – tatvan – (ferry) – van – tabriz – teheran.

Motivation

Our motivations to do this trip are:

a. we find the step made by the Iranian
president to write his letters very important for a better dialogue between
east and west.

b. The dialogue with the east has a long tradition in western history (see: the
West-East-Diwan by Goethe)

c. The Koran also asks believers to go on tours on earth and make comparisons
between cultures to reach a better understanding

d. We see in blogging a chance for a better and frank communication between east
and west on a grassroots basis.

Targeted groups and actions

We will target three groups during our trip

a. The community: we will go to people on the streets and ask them if they have read the letters written by president Ahmadinejad. If they haven’t, we will ask them why. If they have, we will ask about their responses to this
letter.

b. Experts: we will meet experts and gather ideas, experiences and examples that bring people from east and west together or that separate them from each other.

c. We will seek to meet bloggers who are located in the stations of our trip and make small video documentaries about them.

Media-partners Media partners are allowed to publish the information that we produce. We are not seeking to get the attention of conventional mass-media. Our network with rocketboom.com allows us to get in contact with other bloggers, vloggers and podcasters, who will accompany and publicize our trip. We already have the approval of rocketboom.com (New York) as a partner of our trip and also approval from jetsetshow.com, which is a vlog based in San Francisco and targets youth and teenagers in the USA. Also the Arab blog 360east and the German eurient.info showed interest in our project.

The conventional mass media is already interested in our project (See: Sonntagszeitung on 26.11.2006). The possibility that other mainstream media will cover our trip is very good. We are also open to being accompanied by a tv-team from Iran, Germany or any other country.

Supervision we will contact personalities, who will accompany us on our trip. they will comment on our trip by writing
posts in rebell.tv (blog). They will also help us to find people we can contact during our trip.