Campcaster 1.1 heads to Sierre Leone
Our friends over at the Media Development Loan Fund’s Center for Advanced Media Prague (CAMP) have released version 1.1 (“Freetown”) of Campcaster, the long-awaited open source radio station management software. Using Campcaster, community radio stations can manage broadcasts, archives and networking. CAMPer Doug Arellanes is heading to Freetown, Sierra Leone to work with the Cornet network of community radio stations on installing the software and training staff.
And there’s more Campcaster on the horizon…“Kotor”, 1.2, is planned for deployment in Montenegro. In the next version, Campcaster will be integrated with Campsite, the open source online publishing suite developed by (you guessed it) CAMP.
Although Doug and Sava will probably kick me in the shins for saying this, software development is the easy part, relatively speaking. The harder part of software for the non-profit sector is deployment wthin the civil society organizations that needs it, and making sure that staff members have appropriate hardware, training, connectivity, electricity, ongoing support, and access to upgrades and bugfixes. Hats off to CAMP for getting Campcaster to 1.1, and for working in the field with community radio networks to get it in use. Can’t wait to hear how things go in Freetown. Good luck!
Campcaster v. 1.1 press release
Full disclosure: The Open Society Institute Information Program, my employer, is a funder of the the Campcaster software.