During a recent Voces Bolivianas blogging workshop in El Alto, Bolivia, Cristina Quisbert fielded a question from one of the group participants. The question was related to Cristina's trip abroad to attend the BlogHer Conference in Chicago, Illinois held on July 24-25, 2009. As 1 of 5 international female bloggers awarded the International Activist Scholarship to attend the event, Cristina especially encouraged the female participants of the workshop to get involved in blogging because in the Bolivian blogosphere, females are not well represented. She shared stories of how she drew inspiration from the female bloggers who shared their stories and experiences at the two-day conference.

Cristina Quisbert at BlogHer Conference. Photo courtesy of Cristina Quisbert.

Cristina described her experience on her English-language blog:

It is a month since I had the possibility to participate at BlogHer 2009 Conference that took place last July 24, 25 in Chicago and although it is a bit late I would like to share some thoughts about this event. (…) I have to say that for me, it was a complete surprise to see such a huge group of bloggers in the same place.

For Cristina, the event was well worth it and she sums it up by writing:

It was my first time to attend BlogHer Conference. To be there, meant to enrich my life and my knowledge.

BlogHer recently announced that is taking nominations for the next group of International Activist Scholarship winners. The 2010 Scholarship winners will receive a full 2-day conference pass to BlogHer '10, as well as round-trip airfare and accomodations. They will also present their work during a panel discussion during the conference.

Nominations close on January 31, 2010.

Another talented female blogger from the Rising Voices community also took an international trip to share her experiences with citizen media. Catalina Restrepo of the HiperBarrio project in Medellín, Colombia was invited to speak at BarCamp Santa Cruz, Bolivia on January 16, 2010. She writes about that experience [es]:

Para mi, cada oportunidad de viajar es una oportunidad enorme de aprender. Participar de este evento no podía ser la excepción. Tal como prometía la programación, hubo cosas muy interesantes. A mí personalmente,lo que mas me agradó fue escuchar hablar Aymara (así fuera solo un ratico), y luego escuchar la experiencia de Jaqi Aru quienes desean «posicionar” esta lengua indígena en internet (teniendo en cuenta que es hablada por el 43% de la población boliviana)

Photo of Catalina Restrepo speaking at BarCamp Santa Cruz. Photo used with permission by BarCampSCZ.

The event also featured Hugo Miranda of Voces Bolivianas and Claudio Ruiz, who leads the Creative Commons project in Chile.