Opening Window Of Change With YemenPortal Net - Interview With Walid AlSaqaf

Barely six month old, the YemenPortal.net undertaking is attempting to open a window of possible change in the field of information accessibility. Individual efforts with noble cause will ultimately make the difference, interview.

Walid AlSaqaf, welcome to the interview.

Q. How did YemenPortal.net’s idea start?
Walid: When I arrived to Sweden to do my master degree studies, I realized how difficult it was for me to learn about happenings in my home country, Yemen. As any journalist would tell you, not being informed about events is the worst thing that could ever happen to you. So during the first months of my stay here I kept a long list of bookmarks for dozens of news websites that would once in a while have a new news item that I could read. But it was quite tough for me to go through each and every news websites to stay updated on events in Yemen, which was at the time, going through the presidential and local election campaigns.

On a cold winter night in January of 2007, I thought to myself: why can’t I build a website that would gather all news items from all those websites and put them on the same page for me to follow? I must confess I did underestimate the effort that would be required for such an endeavor, but still found it a solution that would keep me along with thousands of Yemenis like me informed about events in Yemen on an daily basis without having to look into each website individually.

Furthermore, the university where I am doing my master degree in Global Journalism, the Örebro University in Sweden http://magj.se, gave me the green light to go ahead and work on the portal as part of my academic curriculum for a course called ‘media project’. Indeed, my course administrator, Mr. Roland Stanbridge, was quite keen and interested in the project from the day I informed him that I have reserved the domain to work on. So Örebro University is also a partner in this project, which is certainly an indication of the university’s open-mindedness in pursing new ideas and initiatives.

The new year of 2007 begun initiating this project using my extensive programming experience as a graduate with a B.Sc. in computer engineering, and put the pieces together to assemble the first English/Arabic news engine of its kind on the Internet.

The idea of having a portal for Yemen was originally proposed to me by Irena Knehtl, a good friend, who had been in communication with me during my years as the editor-in-chief of Yemen Times. At a memorable night while having a dinner in Sanaa, Irena suggested launching what she called a ‘Yemeni portal’, which would serve as a gateway in English and Arabic for people interested in Yemen. The idea was to have a website offering a diversity of services to those wishing to visit or learn about Yemen because the country lacked such a website and people who searched for Yemen on Google would often be directed to the CIA fact book or some other less informative news websites.

In order to have a portal that would attract readership, I realized that I needed to have dynamic content that would get people addicted to visiting the website often. I thought that at the beginning, perhaps news is the best and most effective way to link people to the country. It is the factor that would keep people coming over and over again to stay informed about the events taking place in the country.

Upon imagining the potential of this project, I went ahead to reserve the yemenportal.net domain, which was –luckily- available for me to purchase.

The actual project may have departed a bit from the original proposal, perhaps for the good.

Q. What were the responses?
Walid: When I launched the website on 22 May 2007, which marked the 17th anniversary of the 22nd May unification anniversary – as former south and north Yemen become one country on May 22, 1990, I did not expect such a warm and immensely strong response. I got people emailing me saying that this is something that they have been anticipating for a long time. News website owners sent appeals to include them in the growing list of indexed websites, and researchers in particular found it very informative.

But most important of all, I realized that the portal’s idea was something different, something new, and something inspiring for Yemen. That’s what makes me proud, yet enthusiastic to continue building on this experiment.

Q. Can you reflect on the experience so far, for example hits per day, distribution of readers, etc?
Walid: In the last 6 months, the site had grown by leaps and bounds in all aspects. The growth – as can be seen in the attached graph- has been steady throughout the period except for the month of October due to the month of Ramadan, which is a period that witnesses considerably stagnancy in online activity for Arabic websites across the board. Yet even then, the momentum kept on growing throughout the month of Ramadan to reach the same level it had at the beginning of the month. But after Ramadan, the popularity skyrocketed and reached much higher levels.

Furthermore, the number of unique visitors, who came from all parts of the world, but mainly from Yemen, has also increased steadily. By the time of this interview, there was an average of 1,500 unique visitors per day. That is a high number given the fact that the site is only six months old.

Furthermore, an interesting fact is that many who started visiting the website for the first time, just kept on coming back again and again. I heard many saying they have marked the website in their bookmarks. Some even said they made it their homepage bookmark, which is the first page that opens up whenever they open their browser.

That speaks a lot about how appealing the service has become. I believe the trend will continue even in a stronger pace in the future due to the expansions that the portal will experience once every few months.

Q. What support and from whom are you getting?
Walid: The only support so far was moral support, support from visitors, support from website owners, and of course, support from my university.

The most recent motivational support I received was in the form of the formal acceptance of my university to use YemenPortal.net as an academic research tool towards fulfilling my master thesis. The university and its Global Journalism master programme directors have encouraged me to pursue and develop this project all along and have allowed me to use time allotted in the academic program for this cause.

The biggest support I ever had came from my family: my wife and daughters. I recall the long nights when I used to do the programming of the website and see my wife comforting me every once in a while, easing the pressure of work on every occasion. She was the one who would test the various functions of the website when it was in test mode and would give me frank comments for the development of the website. It may surprise to know that she sent emails and messages on the portal to dozens of Yemenis, who –like herself- became addicts to the portal and continuously hungry for new updated news on Yemen.

Q. YemenPortal.net up to now brings news on Yemen mostly in Arabic but also in English. What other features are planned and when?
Walid: Indeed, the portal has roughly about 70 - about 90% in Arabic- news sources indexed every half hour to retrieve the latest news content and store it locally. But in early December, the Portal expanded its scope to include forums, opinion articles, blogs, videos, and magazines. In total, it now covers more than a thousand sources including over 900 blogs, most of them in Arabic.

This expansion was planned a long time ago but due to time limitations and other practicalities, I was only able to complete this phase recently. By expanding into those new arenas, YemenPortal.net is not any more confined to news. Viewers have the option now to know about the gossips taking place in forums and the views of Yemenis and others concerned about Yemen. They are able to watch videos and have a feel of what the online community sees as important and contrast that with the priorities of the online media.

This is part of a long-term plan to expand the services and diversify them. I certainly believe that more energy and time need to be invested in the portal to achieve yet higher levels of growth and quality of service. But I like to take things gradually without having to rush into a new field before properly doing all the homework necessary to achieve success.

Currently, am working on the draft the vision for the future of the portal and have it more interactive and service-oriented for the people living inside Yemen. The ideas are many, but it will take considerable time and energy to put them into practice, something that we hope to do in the coming months.

Q. As former editor in Chief of Yemen Times newspaper you bring a wealth of experience to the YemenPortal.net undertaking. Your reflection on your time as editor in Chief of Yemen Times and the challenges that were then dominant from the challenges Yemen is facing today?
Walid: That’s a tough question but a good one. I can’t state everything about how my experience in the helm of Yemen Times contributes to my work for YemenPortal.net. But what I can say is that my experience helped me tremendously. What I learned from my time as editor-in-chief of Yemen’s largest English newspaper is to ensure that credibility and neutrality are held to the highest standard possible. Taking sides on issues regardless of how sensitive or critical they may be is a sure recipe for ruining your reputation.

This experience helped me ensure that YemenPortal.net has a representative spectrum of the various news sources available online. I didn’t marginalize the opposition in favor of the governmental media, nor did I filter out a political video just because it was deemed ‘offensive’ by the government. My idea is to ensure that every source has the right to be represented fairly. To do that we will have to stick to our principle of remaining neutral all the time even if that would drive some people mad.

Although there is a fundamental difference between YemenPortal.net and Yemen Times in that the latter produces news while the portal aggregates them from different sources, they both share some similarities such as remaining on the observing side and not interfering in the shaping of opinion. We both put out the facts for people to see and let them decide what they want to read and believe in.

As for Yemen’s challenges, I believe this is a very wide subject and perhaps another more comprehensive interview opportunity could be worth it. It would otherwise be unfair to such a humongous topic.

Q. You have proposed initiating the first universal index for freedom of expression. Tell us about the initiative, what is the aim and what are you trying to achieve?
Walid: From my years in working in the press and from interaction with international human rights and press freedom advocacy organizations, I have come to see that many violations committed against the press are gone unaccounted for. In Yemen, for example, there are not enough resources to document those cases to expose them to the international community and pressure groups. I would argue that a similar situation is probable in many developing countries.

I realized that by harnessing the Internet, we could use a website or series of websites to serve as an interactive portal to receive reports from normal people like you and me and to track them all the way until they are resolved. This will eliminate a massive bureaucratic process that demands financial and human resources. There may certainly be challenges to overcome with such an initiative, such as confirming authenticity of reports and verifying factual accuracy. But there will certainly be learning curve that it will have to go through before it could be well-established. The bottom line is that one needs to take the initiative and start humbly with a new idea and from that point move forward.

The idea has lots of merit if taken from a number of angles, but it needs to be further refined and at a later stage, funded to realize its potential. Anyone interested in this project is welcome to communicate with me.

Q. Is there anything you would like to add?
Walid: Yemen may be a small country with very weak economic indicators. But it doesn’t lack brains, nor does it lack the potential. The fact that YemenPortal.net is the first initiative of its kind in the Arab world should help cynics in Yemen’s ability to be a progressive and advanced country rethink their views.

On the other hand, there is no doubt that there many challenges facing Yemen today in all imaginable levels and scopes. Whenever I hear negative news on or from Yemen, I feel dismayed, yet committed to do something about it.

By developing YemenPortal.net I attempted to open a window of possible change in the field of information accessibility. It may appear that a website or several websites will not be enough to achieve the desired change we aspire, but I believe strongly in that individual efforts with a noble cause, no matter how small they may look, will ultimately help in making a difference. It will trigger change. But if doesn’t do so today, it may do so tomorrow, if not, it may take a while longer. The bottom line is that it will make a difference…. and that is what matters.

Walid AlSaqaf it has been pleasure talking to you.

Picturing Walid AlSaqaf of YemenPortal net undertaking