Mike, thanks much for your positive comments on our project.

Your points about community radio being a mainstay of progressive communications is a very important one - and something I believe a lot of people have forgotten. In running the project for 6 months, we've found out some very interesting things:
1. The global community is affected greatly by local, small-scale successes. We have been in touch with community radio stations in India and Africa. They have been excited to tell their community stories because they saw that we could do it easily. Our connection to them makes us more interested in their issues. A global network of such community connections is important for people to feel like their voices count (especially when media conglomeration drowns those voices out constantly)!
2. Communities (even completely untrained ones) do as good a job as professionals. The people involved in this project came together because they wanted to uplift their audience (in whichever way that works out - whether through death metal or ambient soundscapes). And they've exceeded our wildest expectations: they tell the community stories better, they play better music, and they bring up issues that are not addressed in the "mainstream" press.
3. The general American audience has been completely sick of commercial radio for some time, and most people don't tune in to radio at all, unless they've forgetten to update their CD collection.
Every week we hear from a complete stranger who comes by our station and is absolutely thrilled that they've been able to find something worth listening to on the radio again!
4. We could not have accomplished our global reach in this project without the absolutely outstanding software and social-net tools that the open source community has provided.

We'd like to be able to spread our success so other community stations can spring up worldwide, and be able to tell their stories and share their talents with the world.

We really appreciate your vote!

Speak Shop is bringing together networks that will reduce poverty by creating online tutoring opportunities for skilled educators in developing countries and connect people from other cultures across time and space for language and cultural learning.

We're also working on tools to link language learning with virtual spaces such as Second Life, so that people can be transported to a location and "study abroad" alongside people from all parts of the globe, visiting replicas of towns, natural wonders, etc. and creating their own countries and spaces. The more ways people can learn about each other, communicate and interact through web technologies, the more peace we'll find together in the real world.