Jakarta - The Kartunet Community, a community of young people with disabilities, participated in the annual blogger festival, which this year was rebranded as On Off, held at Epicentrum Rasuna Said on Saturday, December 3, 2011. The On Off event is a gathering for bloggers across Southeast Asia. The event, themed "Ideas Meet Opportunities," featured performances by Saykoji, Nikki & Sheila (Wannabe): Danger Ranger, as well as children's music performances, and the launch of a book titled "Berkatngeblok" in collaboration with nulisbuku.com. Several stands participating in the event included:
- The blog of writer @TheHermes, who offered to help kartunet.com by providing volunteers for the creation of audiobooks, especially for novels.
- The VOA stand, which distributed souvenir bags to visitors. At this stand, visitors could try acting like broadcasters.
- The US Embassy stand.
- The Batik technique stand.
- Blogger Benteng Tangerang (Twitter @blogerbenteng).
- Blogger IMO.
- Acer.
- The "Healthy Internet" stand,
and many other equally interesting stands around the venue. The main sponsors of the event included: the US Embassy, VOA, and Acer. Several media outlets covered the event, including ANTV, Metro TV, and inilah.com. Kartunet.com also had the opportunity to meet colleagues from fivanews.com. Not wanting to be outdone, Kartunet also set up an exhibition stand for speech computer technology at the event. M. Ikhwan Toriqo (@riqo_zhi) and Aris Yohanes (@Aris1985) were responsible for introducing the speech computers at the kartunet.com stand, each demonstrating one speech computer. What was demonstrated included: - how visually impaired individuals can browse the internet, open Twitter and Facebook, - how visually impaired individuals can type in Microsoft Office and other applications. At the stand, many visitors were enthusiastic about Kartunet, from simply looking to even tinkering with the speech computers out of curiosity about how they worked. Visitors included journalists from Metro TV, ANTV, several participants of the Kartunet.com semi-SEO contest, and other equally enthusiastic attendees. There were also visitors from inilah.com, fivanews.com, and others. Most of them, it turned out, still didn't know that a visually impaired person could operate a computer like the general public. During the breakout session, kartunet.com, represented by Dimas Prasetyo Muharam (President Director of kartunet.com), participated in an IT forum discussion with Candra, Ivan, and Fitra from the freshyourmind forum (http://www.freshyourmind.com/ Twitter @freshforum) on the topic "Getting Opportunities from Social Media." On that occasion, Dimas stated that Kartunet, as a social movement advocating for disability issues, has utilized new media such as websites and social networks in its campaign efforts. In the forum, he also explained that kartunet.com continuously publishes articles about the world of disability and conducts "tweet lectures" on disability issues so that our primary target, young people, can have their paradigms shifted to view people with disabilities more positively. From this event, Kartunet hopes that Indonesian society can be more inclusive in accepting people with disabilities who are already an integral part of Indonesian citizens. We thank the organizers of the On-Off 2011 event for inviting Kartunet to the Blogger Party, which also coincided with the International Day of Persons with Disabilities. Our presence here can also be seen as commemorating the International Day of Persons with Disabilities on December 3rd. Because through the internet, the acceleration of building an inclusive society, a society without discrimination, can be realized. Kartunet will always accelerate to create an inclusive world. Thanks to Ms. Dewi from the committee representation who invited Kartunet to participate in this On Off event. Thanks also to the Kartunet.com stand keepers who helped document and distribute Kartunet brochures and introduce Kartunet generally to On Off event visitors. Thanks also to @TheHermes, who was willing to help kartunet.com in providing audiobooks. Thanks to freshyourmind for joining the discussion with Kartunet during the breakout session. Thanks also to the visitors who filled out the Kartunet sympathizer form and helped spread disability issues in the community.