It was an interesting situation, one I don’t often find myself in. A few of my colleagues from Operation Groundswell and I were having dinner with five Mayan Q’eqchi people from the communities of El Estor, Guatemala. I don’t speak Spanish nor do our guests speak English. And yet, there we were, sharing a meal together. Through awkward smiles and broken Spanish (on my part, at least), we exchanged names and warm greetings. We dug into pupusas, burritos, black bean soup while trying to converse through a mix of hand gestures, our translators, and more smiles. As lovely as the encounter was, I wish I had met these wonderful people under very different circumstances…
Angelica, German, Margarita, Maria, and Rosa were not in Toronto as part of some citywide tour or vacation. They were not here to enjoy the culture and sights our city has to offer. No. They are all victims of extreme human rights violations by Canadian company Hudbay Minerals—a company accused of forcibly evicting local indigenous communities in Guatemala. And they were here to give testimony on three precedent-setting civil negligence suits concerning the gang rape of eleven Q’eqchi women, the assassination of community leader Adolfo Ich (Angelica’s husband), and the shooting and paralyzing of German.
They shared their pained experiences with us, explaining their purpose for coming to Canada as just one step in their long and bitter fight for justice. Though a colleague spoke enough Spanish to translate, we really didn’t need an interpreter to feel the grief and sorrow these people had endured and carried everyday in their hearts.
We hear stories of these human rights violations everyday. But that’s all they really are. Stories. Abstractions so removed from our daily life. It’s a harrowing but necessary experience to come face to face with the people behind these stories and to realize that these are not isolated cases taking place in just one small, remote community. From Guatemala to Honduras and beyond, conflicts and violence involving foreign mining companies abound.
Action needs to come from the Guatemalan government to uphold rule of law and put an end to the poisonous culture of impunity, but also from the Canadian government that allows the actions of these corporations. For instance, the Canadian International Development Agency has established development projects in partnership with the very same mining corporations responsible for these human rights violations as well as environmental degradation.
As non-profit organization MiningWatch stated, “Aid money is meant to address poverty, not to promote the commercial interests of Canadian mining companies. Nor should it subsidize the obligations of mining companies to provide benefits to affected residents and rehabilitate damaged environments”.
If we are to demand change and action, we must begin at home.
Everything digital fascinates me. We're living in such a fast-paced technological world, it's hard to keep up as individuals with what's new and what's hot. Can you imagine what it's like to undergo these changes as an institution? As an industry?
The publishing industry has been shaken up by new technological advances and media hype has even threatened its very existence. I recently had the opportunity to interview freelance editors Britanie Wilson and Jeremy Lucyk who have recently penned a new ebook series on breaking into this industry in an uncertain environment. The bulk of the interview is covered in TalentEgg and discusses educational training, internship, resumé, and networking tips. But here's a snippet that deals exclusively with the digital face of the publishing industry
Why did you decide to publish your book electronically as opposed to print?
Jeremy: Part of it is practical, part of it is ideological. What really appealed was that given our working schedules, we knew we wouldn’t have the time and freedom to sit down and go through a classic book writing schedule. We’re doing is drawing out the normal process. We’re putting out what would be normal individual chapters in a full book. In a few months, once we get all the topics we want to talk about, we can create one giant e-book and potentially print. E-books are easy to edit and revise as you go. One of the things we’re focusing on is how quickly things are moving in the industry so it would’ve been out of date by the time it hit print.
Britanie: It takes about a year to produce in print. By the time you add in the production schedule, manuscript, etc...you’re always a year behind. In publishing right now, it’s not possible to keep up. It’s changing by the month. Copyright is changing right now, digital is changing, some of the middlemen are being taken out, some added. It’s constantly in flux and trying to catch up with that in print is really tough and it arises in educational publishing a lot, which is kind of what we’re doing. It’s a bit of a hybrid trade and educational series because it’s for people coming into university who may have this career in mind or they’re not sure of what to do. It’s also trade because it’s also interest-based. It’s a look into the industry. There’s not a lot out there that shows you the innards of publishing, especially in Canada.
Jeremy: The idea was that it would be equal parts textbook and for general readers so we tried to write it and market it that way. We’re trying to reach out to people who are like us a couple of years ago, flailing around not quite sure of what to do. If we had something like this at our fingertips, it probably would have made the decision easier if not immediate.
So what's your take on the whole debate about the publishing industry's future in this digital era?
Britanie: There are people so stringent on keeping print that they ignore digital completely. One of our major points in this digital series is that it’s not that there is no place for digital or print. There’s a place for both. The industry just hasn’t discovered which is which yet. There are certain books that should be digital and should only be digital. There are other books that cannot convert into digital. Like coffee table books. You want to be able to hold that in your hand and see those colored pictures. There are children books that have felt in them and that just can’t be replaced. That physical experience. This is all happening so fast that the industry just hasn’t quite caught up on how to market them and sell them differently. Instead, they put out a copy of both and let the consumer decide, which is a bit inefficient when you think about it in terms of cost. But it’s all they can do to keep up with everyone else. Publishers haven’t had time to sit back and question if this really makes sense.
Jeremy: The other thing is that publishing is, by nature, very conservative and that mostly comes down to the people that work in it. It’s partially a generational thing and partially an attitude. Those who get into publishing obviously love books so there’s a tendency to idolize and fetishize the book as an object. There’s also the generational aspect because we’re right on the cusp of the digital transformation. But we’re at the point now where the people who have the decision making powers either don’t have or don’t want to have any experience with the digital world. They just naturally resist it. So it’s very difficult to convince them of the switchover. That’s going to ease up in the coming years but it’s a major bone of contention right now.
Britanie: We want to stress that coming into publishing right now is not a disadvantage. You’re very much in an advantage in that you see the market differently: how we can market these books, how we can reach different audiences with different platforms. Executives in publishing companies have been in this for so long that they’re trying to squeeze new ideas into old models and it’s not something that can happen. It’s a clash. The whole process of publishing needs to be reformed.
You're both graduates from the post-grad certificate program in Book and Magazine Publishing at Centennial College. Have you been given digital training as part of this program?
Jeremy: As much as possible. But there's a lag time between reality and teaching. Rather than teaching us directly how to use digital platforms, it was more of a philosophical stress. Be aware that you are in a time of massive change. Be ready for it as needs require.
Britanie: They were very honest. If there was something that they weren’t very sure of, they told us. In terms of actually creating the e-books, like coding, it’s not even at the point where they’re offering that ability. It’s mostly because there’s no standard to teach a student. So for example, Apple has different standards for an iBook than Amazon. Amazon has different standards for the Kindle. Kobo has different standards for it's e-reader as does Sony. So you’ve got four different platforms and on top of that, each one is constantly updating their standards. To try to formulate a program right now and teach a student on how to code an e-book would be near impossible and I assume that’s why it hasn’t happened yet.
Jeremy: I do some digital production work for an educational publisher and every single book project is completely different. There’s much more emphasis on being trained in-house by the publishing company than a universal way to do things across the industry. This can be very alarming to some people if they don’t want to be off on their own accord and they want to be told exactly what to do every single time. But it’s a huge advantage for self-motivated, self-starters because they have all the freedom in the world.
I've just recently wrapped up a course with the Institute of Technology and Social Change (TechChange). If you know me or read this blog, it's pretty obvious that I'm deeply involved in the tech space. But recently I've also taken a keen interest in social entrepreneurship, a field that's been increasing in popularity over the past few decades. More recently, there has been a real movement of social entrepreneurs developing technological solutions to complex social problems. Naturally, I had to learn more. I storified what I've learned over the past few weeks along with some of my favorite readings and videos from the course. Enjoy!
Wednesday, December 5, 2012 at 12:22AM 
