kaPow! Inc. plans to launch its online hip-hop community website, www.hiphopspeaks.org, on September 2 with a deejayed launch party that will showcase regional hip-hop artists working in music, film and dance.
A core group of about a half-dozen volunteers has recently met bi-weekly to work on site design and content and “to provide a mechanism for team accountability and continue to build community” among various sectors of the hop-hop community, including deejays, producers, event planners and advocates, said Donyale Yvette Hooper-Reavis, president of kaPow! Inc. in Philadelphia.
One goal is to provide a “voice for educating and advocating on behalf of the hip-hop community,” regionally and nationally, Hooper-Reavis reports.
Webmaster Anthony Forcet-Howard, has been hired and the project is advertising for 12 editorial interns, who will act as a rotating staff, reviewing and approving blog entries, critiques and commentary, and a news section that seeks to focus on such issues as federal copyright developments, peer-to-peer file sharing, trademarks and arts funding.
The project issued a call for content to build out the website, which was recently presented, in theory, to an American Media Literacy Association conference in San Francisco.
Site developers are now at work creating such site features as a “Hiptionary,” which will define different elements of hip-hop culture, sections on hip-hop trivia, featured artists, a hip-hop timeline and links to various artists, galleries, photographers and filmmakers. The site will also include a section with case studies and information on how to be an independent artist.
The kaPow! site is using Macromedia Flash and Dreamweaver and Adobe Photoshop. It has set up a UNIX server for hosting and is programming the site in HTML and PHP using a MySql database.
