Colmena is your digital tool box for local and community media productions. It's a 100% free of charge, secure, open source solution for mobile and desktop environments.
Colmena bundles all essential tools for resilient local and community media productions in just one application. With our free an open source software you can: record, edit, do remote interviews, live-stream, meet and plan with your team, share files and publish from almost any digital device.
The lightweight app, PWA (progressive web application), performs on a wide range of mobile and desktop devices. Colmena is designed for easy online/offline creation and collaboration. This makes it an ideal tool for local and community media or content producers in crisis situations “on the move”, with irregular Internet access. Colmena enables you to create content that will be shared automatically once you are connected.
Colmena is committed to language diversity. Together with community media partners we have already translated the menus and manuals into: English, French, Spanish, Arabic, Portuguese, and Swahili. What is more: the app is build to easily integrate new languages. Additional translations can be generated collectively by the collaborators themselves
Colmena is free software and parts of the application are based on libraries and other free/open software and provide high standards of security. You can deploy an instance of Colmena on your own private server. Check out the Colmena code on GitLab.
We call them honeycombs and they come with a chat protocol, encrypted, audio conferences and a corresponding folder structure to collectively manage all your documents.
Honeycombs can be used by colleagues from one media or set up for networked collaborations between different partners.
“Colmena allows us to build and share other ways of journalism with a super-collaborative communication.”
Michelle Nogales. Muy Waso (Bolivia)
Whatever your device is:
if comes with a mic or a line-in, Colmena converts it into an audio recorder with vu-meter and quality compression.
“It is a tool that allows independent media to overcome the usual mess of workflows and to focus on what we are here for: making stories.”
Dima Khilchenko. Tech Expert (Ukraine)
Your space to interact with guests and experts in virtual round table discussions and collective online interviews. All talks can be recorded or shared live as audio-streams.
“With Colmena, everything becomes digital and the loss of audio files and recordings become a thing of the past.”
Maurine Akinyi. Gulf Radio (Kenya)
Trim interviews or edited complete podcast episodes from your mobile or desktop device. Local edits can by synchronized with the cloud storage for collective editing.
A handy tool to co-edit meeting notes, scripts or articles. You can also insert pictures from you galleries and collectively prepare publications.
Virtual spaces, similar to the honeycombs focusing on exchange and group work, driven by the collaborating media outlets. Create your spaces like save spaces for women, fact checking groups, digital rights dialogues, etc. Mini-manuals will guide your way…
Publish your content directly on social media like Whatsapp and Twitter. More custom made content outplays can be co-created.
“Colmena offers us the possibility to share our stories that need to be told not only in our territories, but also abroad.”
Mariana Kankuana. Remando (Ecuador)
We call them honeycombs and they come with a chat protocol, encrypted, audio conferences and a corresponding folder structure to collectively manage all your documents.
Honeycombs can be used by colleagues from one media or set up for networked collaborations between different partners.
“Colmena allows us to build and share other ways of journalism with a super-collaborative communication.”
Michelle Nogales. Muy Waso (Bolivia)
Whatever your device is:
if comes with a mic or a line-in, Colmena converts it into an audio recorder with vu-meter and quality compression.
“It is a tool that allows independent media to overcome the usual mess of workflows and to focus on what we are here for: making stories.”
Dima Khilchenko. Tech Expert (Ukraine)
Your space to interact with guests and experts in virtual round table discussions and collective online interviews. All talks can be recorded or shared live as audio-streams.
“With Colmena, everything becomes digital and the loss of audio files and recordings become a thing of the past.”
Maurine Akinyi. Gulf Radio (Kenya)
Trim interviews or edited complete podcast episodes from your mobile or desktop device. Local edits can by synchronized with the cloud storage for collective editing.
A handy tool to co-edit meeting notes, scripts or articles. You can also insert pictures from you galleries and collectively prepare publications.
Virtual spaces, similar to the honeycombs focusing on exchange and group work, driven by the collaborating media outlets. Create your spaces like save spaces for women, fact checking groups, digital rights dialogues, etc. Mini-manuals will guide your way…
Publish your content directly on social media like Whatsapp and Twitter. More custom made content outplays can be co-created.
“Colmena offers us the possibility to share our stories that need to be told not only in our territories, but also abroad.”
Mariana Kankuana. Remando (Ecuador)
4 organisations on 3 continents are the base of the consortium that makes possible Colmena.
DW Akademie
Cambá
Redes por la Diversidad, Equidad y Sustentabilidad A.C.
Tanda Community Network
Meet the organisations who are co-creating Colmena and making part of the Community.
The Colmena Consortium is a coalition of institutions dedicated to the support and development of independent media, community-centered communication and connectivity,software development and infrastructure provision.
In a complementary way, this coalition of partners contribute human, technical and financial resources to ensure the development, maintenance and servicing of Colmena.
Colmena believes in a connected world where alliances allow us to grow collectively. Meet our alliances made so far.
This project is part of the global initiative
"Transparency and media freedom - Crisis resilience in the pandemic"
