Costa Rican bloggers, twitter users and other internet enthusiasts enjoyed their own first DELM on August 30, 2009. DELM stands for Domingo En La Mañana [1] (Sunday Morning) and has been taking place in various Latin American cities such as Santiago, Chile, Barranquilla, Colombia, and Guanajuato, Mexico. These meetings are held, just as its name states, on Sunday mornings, but can take place at a café, park or even at someone's house in order to share knowledge and experience.
[2]Photo by María José Lerena and used with permission.
David Alfaro had the opportunity of attend and participate in the meet up. He shares some of his personal thoughts [3] related to the range of the different types of social networks in his blog Tiquicia Sublime [es]:
Las diferentes tecnologías de medios sociales tienen diferentes grados de inmediatez y de sostenibilidad de conversaciones.
Inmediatez: Me refiero a la facilidad de acceder a medio cuando ocurre el impulso expresivo, la rapidez de publicación y la rapidez de recepción. Una alta inmediatez permite una alta virulencia.
Sostenibilidad: Me refiero a la longitud de una interlocución, cuántas idas y vueltas conversacionales con alguien es realística y cómodamente tener.
The different technologies applied to the social networks have diverse degrees of immediate response and sustainability of the conversation.
Immediate: I refer to the facility of access that a person possesses when the expressive impulse occurs, the promptness of publication, and the velocity of reception. A high-degree of immediacy allows for a quick expansion.
Sustainability: I refer to the length of a dialogue, how many conversational comings and goings with somebody are realistic and yet comfortable to have.
Moreover, Alfaro stresses some important differences [es] [4]between Twitter and Blogs:
Twitter tiene una enorme inmediatez, a pesar de su sistema de replies, Twitter una baja sostenibilidad de conversación, esto es debido a su falta de hilos de conversación y grupos.
Por otra parte los Blogs tienen una inmediatez bajísima, pero una sostenibilidad altísima pues permite al autor construir un tópico, crear su posición e iniciar una discusión, hasta en hilos si quiere.
Twitter possesses a huge promptness, despite its replies system. Twitter experiences a low support of sustainable conversations because of the lack of conversational strings.
On the other hand, a Blog has a low promptness but a higher conversational sustainability because it allows the developing of a topic and discussion if desired.
Reiner Sibaja, author of Hoy en Costa Rica [es] delivers a detailed summary of the activity [5], as well as some pictures. On the discussion held regarding new media in Costa Rica (blogs, twitter, podcasts, & live streaming), he writes:
Para concluir el tema de los streamings, quedó muy claro que todos podemos tener un streaming siempre y cuando le pongamos cariño pero sobre todo esfuerzo en el contenido que presentaremos a nuestros “viewers”.
Also, he writes about the participation of the international guest [es] [5]:
Christian Van Der Henst – @cvander – fundador de proyectos como Maestrosdelweb.com y Forosdelweb.com hizo su participación desde Argentina vía Skype. El compartió una perspectiva a nivel latinoamericano del fenomeno social que esta pasando la web en estos momentos.
Feedback and reoccurring meetings are part of the next challenges that the DELM organizers and participants will be facing in order to offer continuity to the project. DELM was widely commented in Twitter under the hashtag #DELM [6], which is surely helpful to not only gather opinions, but updates on coming gatherings.