Indra de Lanerolle

Activist, Change agent, Connector, Consultant, Educator/Teacher, Filmmaker, Idea generator, Parent, Producer, Social entrepreneur

Accomplishments I am a storyteller, social entrepreneur and teacher. I have been part of some great teams that have created some of the most innovative, and popular programs on South African television, programs that have gone beyond entertainment to have a social impact in changing understanding, attitudes and behavior. As a practitioner in social communications in South Africa, I have contributed to trying to reduce the spread of the HIV and AIDS pandemic working with leading NGOs in the field as well as with government. I have built communications and collaboration networks to enable NGOS and community based organizations to work together in dealing with crises like the xenophobic violence that exploded in 2008 and as an innovator and teacher, I have worked with his University students to create mobile broadcasting networks using Bluetooth and WAP technologies. As well as being a social entrepreneur I would like to think I am a kind of social intellectual – someone who is inquisitive, who searches out new ideas, connects them, shares them and moves them, with others, into practice. Other achievements At 28, I became one of youngest senior producers ever appointed by the BBC. I worked in more than 15 countries and was one of the first journalists to enter Kuwait in the 1st Gulf War. In the transition to democracy in South Africa, I produced coverage for the BBC and for the South African Broadcasting Corporation, interviewing and filming with Nelson Mandela and the other leaders of the democratic movement. I also advised the SABC CEO in the transition. In Johannesburg, ! co-founded and built a successful television and communications company employing over 60 people and later sold it to listed media group. I produced and executive-produced films and programs that won awards internationally including an Emmy nomination, a Peabody Award, the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival and the Japan Prize. I was a leader of the strategy team that created probably the largest HIVAids awareness campaign in South Africa - ‘Khomanani’ (‘caring together’) involving television and radio content, advertising and peer education. I also created ‘Zola 7’, the most popular factual show in South Africa, that offers a helping hand to ordinary South Africans who want to make a difference in the lives of those around them. At the University of Witwatersrand, I created one of first courses in the world teaching the making of mobile television - in conjunction with Nokia and Multichoice (Africa’s leading pay television network) - using DVB-H, Bluetooth broadcasting and WAP. Passionate interests/causes/issues Last year, during the xenophobia crisis, I started saemergency – a voluntary group of media and on-line professionals who are creating online and mobile tools to support the work of some of the leading NGOs and international agencies working in SA on humanitarian crises. It has encouraged me in thinking about how we can transform the capacity for social and economic development through improving the fabric of communications. Connecting with open source developers in other countries in Africa and beyond has also transformed my ideas on intellectual property and new models of organization and collaboration. For the last year I have been conducting research in network theory, in the growth and transformation of communications networks and how this offers opportunities for those countries and individuals on the margins of the global economy. I believe that in addressing the many and well documented challenges of this century, one of the most important tools we have is to exploit the network power of the communications tools we have built in the last two decades so that we can eliminate some of the barriers between finding solutions and implementing them on scale. I love teaching and believe everyone can be a teacher or coach to at least one other person. I love hiking, my most recent hike was in the Fish River Canyon in Namibia. Lastly, I have played music since the age of five. Music, meditation and really being with my wife and my two young children, are the most centering activities in my life.

Turning ideas and experiences into stories and turning stories into conversations capable of spreading across the world...

Experimenting to find new ways of connecting mass media and communications for social change... I have been a leader of the team that has created world’s first “community make-over” television format, ‘Kwanda’. I am now an Executive Producer and project manager of the project. Five teams (over three hundred people altogether) are currently working as volunteers in their communities addressing crime, HIV and AIDS, alcohol abuse and supporting vulnerable children. The teams supported by coaches and tracked by television crews. The project brings together media, development experts, social activists, government, and a group of NGOs and community based organizations and is being broadcast on television in South Africa. The project has been the most challenging and difficult project I have ever worked on. But it is also a privilege to participate in a large scale project that could offer some new ideas on how to successfully connect mass media, internet, and social development.

film producer, HIV/AIDS programming, Social Change Media, Social Network Analysis, Television Executive Producer

I studied Artificial Intelligence at university, and, in 1980, (before IBM launched the PC) was one of a small number of people outside the US using ARPANET, which later become 'the internet'