Insight with Sean Langan: Tales of the Taliban and Other Stories
Talks
Date: January 30, 2009 7:00 PM
Sean Langan is a British journalist and documentary film-maker and has made a name for himself by making video-diary style films in dangerous and volatile situations, from Latin America to Zimbabwe. Most recently, he's made a name for himself with his films Fighting the Taliban and Meeting the Taliban in Afghanistan. In 2008 he was kidnapped while filming in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region and freed three months later after his family had negotiated his release.
Sam Kiley is an award-winning foreign correspondent who has covered wars and insurgencies, of one kind or another, for the last 18 years in over 30 countries. He worked in print for many years before moving on to make television documentaries for Channel Four, BBC2, and Sky One. He has just returned from six months in Helmand and is writing a book about the British war in Afghanistan for Bloomsbury.
Sam Kiley is an award-winning foreign correspondent who has covered wars and insurgencies, of one kind or another, for the last 18 years in over 30 countries. He worked in print for many years before moving on to make television documentaries for Channel Four, BBC2, and Sky One. He has just returned from six months in Helmand and is writing a book about the British war in Afghanistan for Bloomsbury.
Tags for this entry: Afghanistan, kidnap, Sean Langan, Taliban
I am sorry to have to tell you this but most websites are abysmal, and the Frontline Club's is no exception.
By a head, shoulders and a country mile, the best website is Wikipedia. I am not intersted in layout, look&feel and all the other time wasting garbage. I want content. Anything preventing me from getting content is an irritation. Thus, most websites are irritating.
Without doubt the worst sites in the world are watch manufacturers sites, and other luxury goods producers. These are ideal examples of how a website should not be constructed.
Most people use one or two axes to organize their life and one of them is ... time. The BBC websites are a prime example of a website which should have a time-line upon which everything is accessible.
I have just spent half an hour fooling around on the Frontline Club website trying to watch videos of talks I have missed while I have been up country and guess what, I am about to give up and leave the office.
Most websites would benefit from a table of contents and an index and the Frontline Club's is no exception. If you find 'Talks' in the index, and you press it, you could then be presented with a list of talks, chronologically 1->n with a 'watch' or 'download' button on the RHS. How difficult can it be ? The same goes for just about any entity on the Frontline Club's website.
If you need an example, goto Wikipedia. I cannot make it simpler than that.
I shall spare you my theories of how web publishing comes to be so abysmal.