Kottu 2.
0
1. Project Goals and Objectives
Kottu.org aims to grow and support the Sri Lankan blogging community. Kottu is already a
successful community site with over 300 bloggers and over 12,000 readers per month. The aim is
to enable more and better Sri Lankan bloggers and readers locally and in the diaspora. This will
be actioned by investment in technology, events, education, and marketing. The goal specifically
includes ensuring access for bloggers of all languages, and all levels of language ability.
2. Project Description
Kottu is a Sri Lankan blog aggregator. It basically collects the Sri Lankan blogosphere in one
place. A blog aggregator is an innovative use of XML technology to form a community around
story-telling. It has a great social impact in terms of political discussions as well as simple
friendships between bloggers. The project has already proved sustainable over two years and over
300 bloggers. It just needs investment to grow.
Kottu is designed as a simple list of the latest posts from the Sri Lankan blogosphere, the most
popular posts, and the latest photos. Technically, Kottu uses XML technology (Wordpress and
plugins) to syndicate hundreds of blogs into one constantly updated digest. It also counts
outgoing clicks to calculate popularity. The content comes from over 300 Sri Lankan blogs who
have submitted links. With so many contributors, Kottu is constantly updated and is read by
about 400 people per day. In November Kottu recorded about 12,000 unique visitors.
Blogs, and this blog aggregator by extension, are a pattern change in media. They empower
average people to write and publish and have already proved a potent force worldwide and in Sri
Lanka. It's a new paradigm for publishing, where average people write without the filter of a
corporation or government, or even an editor. A blog aggregator is a further innovation blogging
because it uses XML technology to create a virtual community around a geographic space. It does
not control what the people write, but it does make for interesting reading.
Kottu has a singular purpose, to support bloggers and provide something interesting to read. It is
open to anyone blogging about Sri Lanka, regardless of politics, race, language, religion or class.
There are bloggers from Colombo and bloggers from the villages of Mahavilachiya and Bibile.
There are bloggers who write in English, Sinhala and Tamil. The only criteria to join is to have a
working XML feed and basic ethics (avoiding plagiarism, libel or obscenity). Kottu supports these
bloggers by delivering traffic to them. Even new bloggers can reach a large audience by pooling
their content with an aggregator.
This results in a site which in an interesting and authentic place to read about the lives and ideas
of average Sri Lankans. This is the community that the site seeks to organize. A virtual
community of bloggers from Montreal to London to Colombo, organized around their Sri
Lankan identity. The technology is also easily replicable for building and supporting any type of
community and could be distributed.
Kottu 2.0
Kottu 2.0 aims grow and support the Sri Lankan blogosphere by investing in technology,
meetups, education and marketing. The specific costs are broken down below. Each component
has a project manager responsible for coordination and delivery.
Kottu 2.0 $25,000
Program Manager Indrajit Samarajiva (me) $2,000
Technology to scale $6,000
Server Memory Dreamhost $1,500/year
www.dreamhost.com
Wordpress Customization Vesess $4,500
Lankitha Wimalaratne, Founder
Project Manager Vesess
Meetups to build community $5,000
Annual Events Barefoot Gallery $3,500
Nazreen Sansoni, Director
Project Manager to be decided $1,500
Education to support village bloggers $6,000
Online English Training Wendy Whatmore Academy $2,500/year
Tracy Holsinger, Director
Wordpress Customization Vesess $2,000
Project Manager Tracy Holsinger $1,500
Marketing to grow $6,000
Postering/Advertising Local vendors $4,000
Online Google AdSense, Facebook $2,000
Team
Kottu is currently managed by myself, Indrajit Samarajiva (Indi). I have one of the more
prominent blogs in Sri Lanka (www.indi.ca). I currently work in Content Management for Dialog
Telekom, the country's largest mobile, fixed, television and internet company. In the past I
managed the Sarvodaya blog during the tsunami, which raised over $800,000 USD and was linked
to by the main pages of Google, Apple and Amazon. I also edited Sri Lanka's first English
technology magazine (iTimes) and currently publish a 300,000 circulation magazine (Sinhala and
English) for Dialog. I studied Cognitive Science at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. I
currently live in Colombo 5.
Vesess is the main (probably the only) Sri Lankan web design firm implementing international
Web Standards for accessibility and usability. The Barefoot Gallery is the premier Colombo
location for art, book launches, concerts and events.
The Wendy Whatmore Academy of Speech and Drama provides English training to teachers,
companies and and students throughout Sri Lanka. Tracy Holsinger is a teacher and prominent
actress and theatre director in Sri Lanka, as well as a blogger.
