A comment I’ve heard too often when mailing out my Looks Like Beirut Certificates. Back in 2000, when I deployed my first Yahoo! Keyword Alert for the word “Beirut”, I was surprised to see the term used to describe a state of destruction and despair in contrast to the city I was currently living in. Fast-forward to 2009 (with the Keyword Alert still active), it dawned on me: why don’t I do something about it? The world is now accessible to anyone with a few mouse clicks – one person can now change the world. That is how the LLB Certificates came to existence.
Moving the site’s history to one side, I’m here to tell you about a very exciting development AltCity.
Located in Hamra, one of Beirut’s cultural and intellectual hubs, the AltCity social venture is an open and creative community collaboration space for entrepreneurs, media producers and social activists, set to launch in stages starting this summer. AltCity will provide relevant business and organizational development services, creative workspaces, and access to media tools and streams, plus a variety of trainings, exhibits, and events organized by the AltCity team and the broader community. We also will provide various forms of support specifically for social impact entrepreneurs.
AltCity will be organizing the AltMedia Experience Week from July 25 to the 30th. The week-long event, at the end of July, will include media-focused art exhibits, demonstrations, workshops, and discussions, as well as fun and participatory cultural events in the evenings, bringing together alternative media, new media, citizen journalists, media innovators, creative expression, and advocacy all at one venue.
A definite must-be-there event for anyone interested in leaving a mark on society. Event details are in the process of being finalized and will be made available on the event’s dedicated webpage. For more details, visit AltCity online or contact them through Twitter.
There’s no need for anyone to live in ignorance especially with all the information available at our fingertips. Though it doesn’t hurt to show them the truth.
Though it doesn’t hurt to show them the truth.
Truth is such a relative thing, though. There’s more than one kind of ugly, and as long as HA is there Beirut sure isn’t pretty.
Truth may be relative but it does have some absolutes. For instance, Beirut is not a war zone. The aftermath of a riot or natural disaster does not look like Beirut. And rundown, old buildings do not look like Beirut.
All cities in the world have ugly sides, no city is immune to it. If you are of the opinion that HA makes Beirut look ugly, that’s fine by me. If HA holds a gathering in La Verne, California and you make the comparison that La Verne looks like Beirut, I wouldn’t send you a certificate because that would be true. Now if you said that the 2009 La Verne Brush Fire resembles Beirut, then that would deserve a certificate.
La Verne? Is that where my IP tracks to these days? Two towns over from me and not very nice. I’d be willing to bet that it looks much worse than Beirut 🙂
I can relate to what you’re saying but as you know I live in Southern California and we’ve got a lot of gang territory around here. I for one don’t evaluate places by how they look, I evaluate them by how they are. If somebody said “looks like Azusa”, for instance, I would not assume they meant it looked particularly bad, because it doesn’t. It looks a lot like many other run down Southern California towns that were nice once, but aren’t any more. I’d assume they meant there were a lot of shady looking addicts roaming around, drug dealers hanging out on the street corners, and gangs patrolling their turf.
Anyway, I think I do understand your campaign but you can’t really control people’s perceptions 🙂
You can’t control them. You can try to adjust them closer to reality, one painful degree at a time.