Digital Democracy

At crossroads in my life, I bike across countries. Nine years ago, I biked across the United States. Today, I find myself at another transition: I am moving on from my role as President of Digital Democracy. In honor of that change, I’ll be crossing the Dominican Republic and Haiti on the island of Hispaniola. [...]

What is an open-source protest (or in Egyptian nomenclature, a wiki-revolution)? Can technology tools be used to develop new methods of distributed grassroots decision-making? It’s clear that the Occupy movement is about something much bigger and greater than one person or group … how can the large numbers of people who identify with the movement [...]

Guatemala is a country with a complicated history. Although the 36-year civil war has ended, Guatemalan society is still struggling to rebuild from this history of war and ethnic conflict. One opportunity and challenge is the need to engage young Guatemalans, many of whom continue to be marginalized from political life. Participating in elections is [...]

2 years, 21 countries, some revolutions and a lot of new friends – Digital Democracy is proud to launch our first annual report. The online version and PDF below are interactive, so feel free to click on links and pictures to hear to stories and read more about our projects. Digital Democracy 2009-2010 Annual Report// [...]

There is a different approach to projects between techies and filmmakers. Those in tech rapidly prototype and release ideas and applications, while the filmmaking community is much more prone to keeping a project under wraps until it has reached near-perfection. I had the extreme pleasure of witnessing this creative conflict first hand when I attended [...]

What is the current discussion around how technology is being used for supporting people advocating for democracy around the world? Please vote for the panels we and are friends are trying to host at the upcoming South by Southwest Conference in Austin, Texas. SXSW is shaping up to be a pretty exciting festival this year. [...]

“I paid maybe the first and last bribe in my life for “The Economist” in the Soviet Union. It was 3 rubles. A babushka (grandma) sold it to me for 6.” So says Giga Bokeria, the Secretary of the National Security Council for the country of Georgia. And he should know. He’s a crucial part of [...]

Its an honor to be invited to speak at the White House . Its especially exciting to see an administration that understands the power of youth and works to pull in our voices. The White House was pulling together 20 “awesome” youth leaders to discuss the future of international foreign aid. The conversation was between [...]

I just returned from Vilnius, Lithuania where Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s Innovation Team gathered over 100 people to discuss how technology can be used to further civic engagement. Techcamp was a fantastic experience, bringing together 18 facilitators & experts from around the digital space (Twitter, Facebook, VOA, NGOs) & activists and NGOs from the [...]

What is the future of cybersecurity and what is the impact on youth, as well as democracy advocates around the world? I recently attended the EastWest Institute’s Cybersecurity Summit to discuss and present on these issues amongst the worlds leading technology security firms. There I met Michel Nienhuis who wrote a thoughtful piece that I’m [...]