Welcome to Radioswap.net exchange server.
Radioswap.net is a system aimed at exchanging and co-producing programs between independent radio stations
Radioswap.net is a project...
Seeking multilingualism :
The Radioswap.net project is developed by six independent non-commercial community radio stations from Belgium in partnership with several university researchers. Three partner radio stations are French speaking (Radio Panik, Run and Radio Campus) and three are Dutch speaking (Radio Centraal, Urgent and FM bssl). >From the start the stress was laid on the multilingualism : the radio stations deciding to join us in the future should intensify that dimension. Even if the interface is only available in English at the moment, the programs that are exchanged can be in any language (...including non-Indo-European ones)!
Directed at volunteers :
This project try to be an answer to a series of questions that have been there for several years. Most of the collaborators in our radio stations are volunteers : the amount of time they can dedicate to the radio can be quite limited. Even if those volunteers are numerous in a radio station, it's not always possible for them to develop the contents they dream about. For example to make documentaries, fictions or reportages that are a bit detailed and present more than one standpoint, you have to embark on doing sound takes, recording different contributors and interviewing people, sorting out rushes, editing sounds and mixing them... To produce such programs on a day-to-day basis is difficult as a volunteer. Even outside those long-term projects, who has never dreamed of including in his/her program sequences - made elsewhere and by somebody else- that could reinforce the program by bringing up another angle on the subjects of the week?
Giving a greater place to forms of self-management :
Radioswap.net proposes to give the radio collaborators an opportunity to spread their programs beyond their original radio. Programs - considered to be particularly appropriate by a collaborator (are all the programs suited to be exchanged ?) - could be proposed to other radio stations and collaborators... who would themselves propose programs. The point of all of this is not to build a « normalized network » such as some of the networks we can find in the commercial radio world. It is rather to develop a common tool whose management would be shared and that the radio stations and their collaborators could use according to their needs in order to reinforce their singularity and specificities. The collaborators are the ones who decide to propose their programs ; the radio station will not do it for them. Those who are interested in the exchange perform the acts that make it possible. Moreover, there is no obligation to propose a definite quantity of programs, nor to broadcast one coming from the other partners. It rests entirely on the choices and the implication of every contributor to the system!
Dreaming of co-productions, partnership and news exchanges :
Another objective of the project is to make it possible to use the system to set up co-productions between radio stations, or with outside partners. The system should allow collaborators to work together from afar on the same contents and the same programs, each one using her/his own way of working, with his/her own culture. We also would like to set up functionalities that could be used to exchange and produce committed and alternative news of good quality, by allowing to swiftly put on-line short sound sequences, texts and links. Those who are interested in this « news » part of the project should contact : pierre at radioswap.net
Willing to experiment :
This website is based on the technology developed by the StreamOnTheFly project and is a first attempt at answering those different needs. The present site is « technically » experimental : its use should be an opportunity to test the soundness and relevance of the technical solutions. It is also experimental at the functional level : some parts of the users and radios profiles management, permission granting, indexation, ... proposed by the SOTF project are different from what was drawn from our inquiries. The website such as it is now is only a partial answer to our partners expectations and is sure to give rise to other wishes : this experimentation also aims at imagining/formalizing new functionalities. Radioswap.net is planned in a way that shall make it possible to modify greatly this system, or to build another one from scratch should this one not come up to your expectations. For this we will more than ever need all the remarks, suggestions and questions from those who take part in this test. Send them without the slightest hesitation to : webmaster at radioswap.net
Looking for partners :
All the radio stations, and also all the individuals (producers, directors, associations, ...) that are interested in exchanging programs on that experimental basis are invited to contact us : contact at radioswap.net
Radioswap.net is also interested in the radio stations from the Southern part of the world and seek to launch a research dynamic about the possible use of the open source technologies and the free softwares in those countries... If you are interested in this specific aspect of our work, please contact : didier at radioswap.net
Thanks for your collaborationThis multiannual research programme is financed by the Belgian Federal Public Planning Service - Science Policy : http://www.belspo.be