2011年3月9日水曜日

The Satoyama Satoumi Project Portal (in English, tentative) is up!

It's been nearly two months since I mentioned our need for an English language portal for the Satoyama Satoumi Project, Kanazawa University. I am pleased to announce the launch of 

http://adm.kanazawa-u.ac.jp/satoyama/en/ -> http://www.adm.kanazawa-u.ac.jp/satoyama/en/

The site is at its evolving stage as are our projects. We plan to replace it with something more comprehensive in the future, but since it's taking forever with the thesis supervision and the fiscal year-end and whatnot,, Meanwhile we've uploaded the Web version of our “turning the world from its tip” themed leaflet from COP10 Nagoya. Hats off to the Satoyama Meister students who have assisted in the work:
  • COP10 theme design … Yuki Hagino
  • Web design … Takaaki Kobayashi
  • English text edit … Rachel Olanoff (auditor)

If the site image does not accurately reflect the individual designers' work, the blame goes to the coordinatior (me). We did this bit of work in a hurry to meet  the First Global Conference on the International Partnership for the Satoyama Initiative (IPSI), 10-11 Mar. I'm writing this from Nagoya right now as Kanazawa University will be presenting at the Public Forum on the morning of the 11th.
See you there!

2011年1月24日月曜日

Satoyama in Swedish

I just received two copies of the Swedish Magazine "Natur" from Mats Hellmark. They ran a coverage on Noto satoyama and the COP10 Nagoya. Some of it can be seen here:
http://sn.snf.se/sveriges-natur/artikel.cfm?CFID=21089&CFTOKEN=26919258&id=1593
As we are barely getting used to having Noto's satoyama being covered in English, now we have something in Swedish.
Thanks, Mats, for the great work!

2011年1月19日水曜日

Kanazawa University's Satoyama Satoumi Project Page

Yesterday I mentioned Kanazawa-U's need for a web portal for non-Japanese readers interested in our satoyama-satoumi related activities. Here's our current portal in Japanese: http://www.adm.kanazawa-u.ac.jp/satoyama/

At the time of the launch of this portal, we were representing ourselves as an aggregate of various ongoing projects including our "Noto Satoyama Meister" Training Program. By fall last year the "metaproject" has been integrated into the formal organizational structure of Kanazawa University. Now we have the "Kakuma Satoyama Headquarters" at the University Main Campus, and "Noto Operating Unit" at our Noto Gakusha, reflecting our bifocal approach to satoyama research and revitalization.

Getting Kanazawa University into the International Partnership for the Satoyama Initiative and whatnot

If you've followed the Japanese Satoyama movement, you couldn't have missed CBD COP10 Nagoya and its decision to support the Satoyama Initiative. COP10 saw the launch of the International Partnership for the Satoyama Initiative (IPSI) with Kanazawa University as one of its founding members.
Getting KU into IPSI and serving its contact person have, in fact, been part of my side assignments since last fall (and poor excuse for not updating). Now that the IPSI site is up, we're faced with the fact that KU has yet to construct a web portal to introduce its satoyama-related activities to the non-Japanese speaking world (hence its outgoing link to the exchange students' portal). Here comes the new side assignment.
Spreading new ideas across the globe is a painstaking task. First came the brochures, the exhibit panels, the novelty goods we have prepared for COP10. Prior to that we had next to nothing to hand to non-Japanese visitors eager to learn about our projects. We've actually come quite far in several months, and we're getting there -- almost. So again, do stay tuned.

ETA: Creating a website may be a good excuse to try and post those months-old articles