Dec 2007
It has been Quite A Year!
December 22, 2007/ 13:52 | Filed in: A LETTER FROM TANJUNG BARAT
Dear visitors,
As we are approaching the dawn of the New Year of 2008 here in our office, we've been looking back on 2007.
It's been quite a year for the Interseksi Foundation and our site, interseksi.org. 2007 was a remarkable time for us with its momentum and challenges. In January we moved to our new office here and a lot has changed ever since. In June we organized Forum Interseksi 2007, the first Forum since we established the foundation in 2003. In August not only did we publish the second book based on our further research on minority rights and multiculturalism but we also published the second impression of Hak Minoritas. Dilema Multikulturalisme di Indonesia, which has been our best-selling book so far. In November we started our new project on audio-visual research in Wana community in Central Celebes. In addition to that, we also had six monthly discussions with various topics and excellent speakers. Of course we made some mistakes here and there, but overall we've been doing good.
On the other hand, the visitor to our web site has grown by tens of thousands of people. Compare this to the number of visitor in 2006, our site has attracted more than four times as many visitors during 2007. It was simply amazing. Despite some technical glitches, the site is now more stable and more mature than ever before.
We'd like to thank all the contributors, our researchers, the speakers, partners, sponsors, local communities, and the visitors for all their support.
There were some lines in that an old song from the 1961 that went "Gona build a mountain from a little hill. Gonna build a mountain, least I hope I will. Gonna build a mountain, gonna build it high. I don't know how I am gonna do it, only know I am gonna try...I am gonna build a daydream from a little hope. Gonna push that daydream up the mountain slope." And they really are true here. They are perfectly capturing our situation right now. Everything I just went through were really small things in themselves. Scattered dots on a blank sheet. But when we put them in perspective, they laid down a foundation for what we are going to pursue in the future. Those are small hopes to build a daydream, and yes we want to push that daydream up to the mountain slope.
Without your support we really wouldn't be what we are today. We owe you a great debt of gratitude, so BIG THANK to all of you!
Next year is going to be a very exciting time for the foundation, Interseksi.org and its visitors. In the first quarter of 2008 we'll be releasing a documentary film based on our audio-visual research in Wana community. Frankly, we are testing the water with this project, but rest assure that we put the best of our efforts to make it shines. We cross our finger for this too! And as there are, presumably, huge footage taken during the research, we will have to have a new storage system to store them so that it will be available for future project(s) and for anyone interested in utilizing them. It will be part of our growing, albeit slowly, library collection, and we are very pleased to invite you to see them. We will further our research on the issues of minority rights and multiculturalism in other areas in the next fiscal year of 2008/2009. And if everything goes as planned, next year we'll be conducting another research in other five local minority communities throughout the country, and some other interesting new projects. Our research team is also hard at work on preparing yet another research on a totally different subject. So please keep visiting us here.
When you have great enthusiasm, a passion with what you are doing, you'll need a vehicle to push your enthusiasm forward. To do that, we'll be releasing new version of Interseksi.org (and for the lack of a better name let's just call it Interseksi.org Version 3.0), and with that some changes are happening, even more than we had anticipated. Due to the changes we're making, we've unfortunately had to push back the release schedule. But on the positive side you'll be rewarded with a much better experience!
Again we'll keep firing on all cylinders. We will continue to throw some dots in hope of connecting them to draw meaningful lines in the future, and your support is what make it possible. Thank you so much for helping us keep our dream of building a mountain with a lot of care.
Happy Holidays. We wish you a healthy, peaceful and more prosperous 2008!
Best,
Hikmat
As we are approaching the dawn of the New Year of 2008 here in our office, we've been looking back on 2007.
It's been quite a year for the Interseksi Foundation and our site, interseksi.org. 2007 was a remarkable time for us with its momentum and challenges. In January we moved to our new office here and a lot has changed ever since. In June we organized Forum Interseksi 2007, the first Forum since we established the foundation in 2003. In August not only did we publish the second book based on our further research on minority rights and multiculturalism but we also published the second impression of Hak Minoritas. Dilema Multikulturalisme di Indonesia, which has been our best-selling book so far. In November we started our new project on audio-visual research in Wana community in Central Celebes. In addition to that, we also had six monthly discussions with various topics and excellent speakers. Of course we made some mistakes here and there, but overall we've been doing good.
Those were really small things in themselves. Scattered dots on a blank sheet. But when we put them in perspective, they laid down a foundation for what we are going to pursue in the future.
On the other hand, the visitor to our web site has grown by tens of thousands of people. Compare this to the number of visitor in 2006, our site has attracted more than four times as many visitors during 2007. It was simply amazing. Despite some technical glitches, the site is now more stable and more mature than ever before.
We'd like to thank all the contributors, our researchers, the speakers, partners, sponsors, local communities, and the visitors for all their support.
There were some lines in that an old song from the 1961 that went "Gona build a mountain from a little hill. Gonna build a mountain, least I hope I will. Gonna build a mountain, gonna build it high. I don't know how I am gonna do it, only know I am gonna try...I am gonna build a daydream from a little hope. Gonna push that daydream up the mountain slope." And they really are true here. They are perfectly capturing our situation right now. Everything I just went through were really small things in themselves. Scattered dots on a blank sheet. But when we put them in perspective, they laid down a foundation for what we are going to pursue in the future. Those are small hopes to build a daydream, and yes we want to push that daydream up to the mountain slope.
Without your support we really wouldn't be what we are today. We owe you a great debt of gratitude, so BIG THANK to all of you!
Next year is going to be a very exciting time for the foundation, Interseksi.org and its visitors. In the first quarter of 2008 we'll be releasing a documentary film based on our audio-visual research in Wana community. Frankly, we are testing the water with this project, but rest assure that we put the best of our efforts to make it shines. We cross our finger for this too! And as there are, presumably, huge footage taken during the research, we will have to have a new storage system to store them so that it will be available for future project(s) and for anyone interested in utilizing them. It will be part of our growing, albeit slowly, library collection, and we are very pleased to invite you to see them. We will further our research on the issues of minority rights and multiculturalism in other areas in the next fiscal year of 2008/2009. And if everything goes as planned, next year we'll be conducting another research in other five local minority communities throughout the country, and some other interesting new projects. Our research team is also hard at work on preparing yet another research on a totally different subject. So please keep visiting us here.
When you have great enthusiasm, a passion with what you are doing, you'll need a vehicle to push your enthusiasm forward. To do that, we'll be releasing new version of Interseksi.org (and for the lack of a better name let's just call it Interseksi.org Version 3.0), and with that some changes are happening, even more than we had anticipated. Due to the changes we're making, we've unfortunately had to push back the release schedule. But on the positive side you'll be rewarded with a much better experience!
Again we'll keep firing on all cylinders. We will continue to throw some dots in hope of connecting them to draw meaningful lines in the future, and your support is what make it possible. Thank you so much for helping us keep our dream of building a mountain with a lot of care.
Happy Holidays. We wish you a healthy, peaceful and more prosperous 2008!
Best,
Hikmat