A “Digital Baptism” brought digital inclusion to Belo Horizonte [1], the capital of the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais [2]. The event this Saturday, organized in a partnership between local Government [3], Public Ministry and the Lan House Association [4], had the goal of promoting digital inclusion and on-line entrepreneurship. This was the first time the Digital Baptism took place in Belo Horizonte, although the event had already happened sporadically in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro since 2005.
Under a big tent in one of the capital's squares, there were 50 computers connected to the web and during the whole day 100 facilitators helped people of all ages and backgrounds on the online ladder. There were two main types of workshops: the Digital Baptism 1.0, for those who had never had the chance to operate a computer to learn the basics and surf the Internet for the first time, and the Digital Baptism 2.0, for more advanced users who wanted to delve deeper into the world wide web and investigate new tools. Fábio Santos [5] reports on Twitter:
[5]
Twitter user @fabiosan also tells us the story of the 67 year old lady who had never used a computer before and decided to attend the Digital Baptism so that she could learn new ways of communicating with her already connected sisters, who live in another state:
This post [6] from the event's blog contrasts new “baptised” users by age. The top picture is by Flickr user pvilla [7]:
[8]
Todas as idades passam por aqui!
This one [9] introduces the new Twitter users from Belo Horizonte:
Com auxílio do Rosalves, os novos agentes aprenderam a Usar o Twitter!
Below is a video of the event posted by equipeteiamg [10]. Some more videos can be accessed via the event's aggregator [11].
The event was lived blogged [12] and streamed [12] through a website that collected all reactions on Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and blogs, among others, tagged with the hashtag #bdigitalmg.