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.

Haiti faced a crossroads when it was devastated by the 2010 earthquake. Digital Democracy had a team on the ground at the time, which meant the event shook me to the core as well. The Dd team sprang into action, contributing to humanitarian aid efforts to map where people were in need to help save lives.

Yet once Haiti disappeared from the headlines, the real work to rebuild the country began. In response to increased levels of rape post-earthquake, we worked to empower women as key actors in Haiti’s reconstruction with a commitment to the Clinton Global Initiative. This year we worked in Haiti to launch the 572 call center, the country’s first rape-response hotline (a sort of 911 for violence against women), connected to a secure database and interactive mapping system. Next we’re working to scale these solutions nationally.

Now I’m at a crossroads too. Over the past three years Digital Democracy has grown from an idea to an accomplished nonprofit. With Dd a sustainable organization, I’m ready to move on and am looking to explore opportunities that allow me to pursue innovative projects with larger enterprises. I’ll still be involved in Digital Democracy, in a guiding role to support the work of my co-founder Emily and our amazing staff.

Since Digital Democracy launched, I’ve been able to draft policy in Iraq, securely document crimes against humanity in Burma/Myanmar, develop an international education initiative, work with government heads and active citizens in the Caucasus, host trainings with Secretary Clinton in the lands that my family fled from, and speak at US Congress and at the White House. It’s meant the world to me to work on these initiatives with such incredible people over the past few years. When I biked across the US I learned that people can achieve anything they put their minds to. I’m excited to see what this new trip will teach.

Tune in to Bike Hispaniola to join my friend Rob Munro & me on the journey. Follow the blog, featuring a live map that updates our location, twitter feed, photos and more. Please ask us questions, share tips and ideas, and let us know of people and sights to see. I’ll be sharing stories and stopping by our partners’ offices in Port-Au-Prince to see the call center staff and further explore how technology can continue to make a difference in Haiti and around the world.

You can sponsor my 500 mile ride by contributing to Digital Democracy’s end of year matching campaign in honor of the trip. All donations will go to Digital Democracy core programming in Haiti and beyond in 2012 – not the ride itself – and be doubled by generous matching donors.

Happy holidays to you and thank you for your support over these years. I look forward to hearing from you and keeping in touch wherever my travels take me and where yours take you.

Sincerely,
Mark Belinsky

You may have heard about SOPA, the innocuously-named yet frighteningly over-broad Stop Online Piracy Act. If you believe in the power of technology as a social and economic good, and think that due process of law is a good thing, now is the time to take action against this noxious bill that’s zooming through the US House of Representatives. If you are an American citizen, you can call your representative now to voice your opinion on it: http://engineadvocacy.com/voice/ 

This past year has demonstrated the astonishing power of Internet technology to effect change for the better, and shown the potential for more to come. From Arab Spring to the Occupy movement and beyond, we’ve seen policy brutality exposed on YouTube, movements organized on Facebook, and conversations and events “broadcast” in real time through novel live-streaming technologies. None of this would have been imaginable just a few years ago.

As an employee of a tech company and a member of Digital Democracy’s advisory board, I’m terribly concerned that if SOPA were to become law, this blossoming of empowerment through web-based innovation would grind to a halt. In the name of copyright enforcement, SOPA gives corporations outsized and unchecked power to stop the business of perfectly respected sites, without due process of law. (For a bit more detail, here’s a good infographic and a great video.)

The chilling effect on innovation on the Internet could be awful in two major ways. First, entrpreneurs would be severely discouraged from creating any website that hosts user-generated content; one errant link out to a site that illegally distributes copywritten content offshore, and they could be shut down in a week without any court involvement. Second, SOPA would institute a censorship regime on the Internet in the US, both by effectively compelling individual websites to review all their user-generated content, and also by empowering the US Attorney General to rework the plumbing of the web and block access to sites.

The recording industry says that SOPA’s opponents are overreacting, that we can trust them to judiciously apply these unprecedented powers of corporate thuggery to go after only really bad guys. But their track record of intimidating helpless individuals with huge lawsuits says otherwise. Plus, the way the law is written, just about anybody could make spurious claims or even outright lies about a site and still get that site shut down.

A broad base, from web entrepreneurs to news editors to human rights organizations to even the recording industry’s hometown LA Times, has slammed this bill as a huge step backwards for freedom, due process, and innovation. If you’re in the US, add your voice to the chorus, and tell your congressperson right now that they need to vote against SOPA. Just put in your name, phone number, and zip code and you’ll be connected directly to their office: http://engineadvocacy.com/voice/

I’ve joined Digital Democracy because I believe in the need for technology tools to be harnessed to empower the voices of marginalized groups and ordinary citizens to fight for their human rights. I hope you’ll join me and millions of others in working to keep the web a safe and healthy place for innovation and political action by voicing your opposition to SOPA today.

Jesse Friedman is a member of Digital Democracy’s advisory board. He leads marketing for Google Politics & Elections, and is part of the company’s team resisting SOPA. 

Thanks to all our friends, partners, advisors & supporters who joined us last Thursday for Digital Democracy’s 3rd Birthday Party. We are so grateful we were able to celebrate with all of you.

Photos from the event are up on our Flickr … check out the excellent images by Jon Reznick, as well as the fun photos shot by party-goers in the photobooth, with automatic uploads thanks to Mifi. If you’d like a print of one of Jon’s images, please contact him directly. A professional photo makes a great gift for the holidays.

Huge thanks to Elizabeth Hodes Custom Cakes & Sugar Art, who not only contributed the best looking cake we’d ever laid eyes on, it was delicious to boot! Thanks to DJ iBeat & Will for spinning tunes and our excellent gang of volunteers who kept the party running smoothly. Thanks to Trader Joe’s for providing delicious snacks, Lucy’s Whey for the excellent cheese trays, Sustainable Party for eco-friendly supplies, and Bulldog Gin & Brooklyn Brewery for the great libations.

Finally, thanks to the great folks at Google’s Community Affairs Team for contributing a fancy new Google Chromebook to the cause. Thanks to raffle sales, tickets & donations party-goers were able to contribute more than $2,000 to Dd’s core mission to empowering marginalized communities, donations that are being doubled by generous donors.

We can’t wait to see where we are a year from now!

The past few weeks I have been spending time in Zucotti Park as part of the people’s microphone. Since tech-based amplification is banned, people have improvised, and together shout the words of whoever is speaking until it is loud enough so that everyone can hear them. That decision making is slow and laborious, while also beautiful and egalitarian.

“What do the protesters want?” is an oft-repeated chorus coming from mainstream media.

OccupyVotes is an open source approach to encourage participatory decision-making: collect & prioritize our ideas in an open, efficient & accountable way.

With around 10,000 votes in the first 36 hours of launching the site, it’s exciting to see the project taking off. It’s clear that this platform helps fill a void – people want to share their vision for demands for the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Occupy Votes was built on the open-source All Our Ideas platform. Not only does it allow visitors to vote with the ideas they like best, it provides them a forum to submit their own ideas and see the votes by other users. As more people contribute their ideas, we look forward to taking a deeper look at the data to understand the differences between opinions from those voting inside Liberty Park, in other US cities, from different platforms and around the world. Stay tuned to find out what the data has to say about the decision making process.

It’ll be interesting to get deeper into the data to understand the differences between opinions from those voting inside Liberty Park, in other US cities, from different platforms and around the world. Stay tuned to find out what the data has to say about the decision making process.

Why did we choose All Our Ideas? Other platforms exist, including Google moderator. With that system, good ideas often get stuck at the bottom of the laundry list and tend not to rise, unless a troll forces an issue up. People don’t tend to scroll. Or trolls will upvote only the issues that they’re interested in, not the rest. This creates lopsided results. Plus, this tool is easy to use and visually clear. The user interface is itself more democratic in that way.

All Our Ideas randomly generates a pairing. As more and more people vote, the information can become statistically representative and truly reflect the interests of the group. Or points of disagreement. All of that information is available in the data, which is open and available. We’ll be publishing it in the interest of transparency.

We’re looking to gather volunteers to set up a voting booth in Liberty Plaza (Zuccotti Park) and engage people in the process of voting and presenting their specific demands. This site is an initial attempt to see if the tool speaks to people. Digital Democracy has had some initial successes with this with our friends in Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco, and I’m hoping we can take the lessons and open source tools we’ve been working with around the world to continue to support the marginalized, even in this country – the 99%.

We welcome your thoughts, feedback and – of course – your ideas!

Disclosure: All of the ideas on the allourideas site are currently seeded from unscientific polls that I’ve seen covered in a variety of media sources. Fast Company, CNN, WSJ & occupywallstreet forum, plus Michael Haack and Matt Taibbi. Additional ideas related to financial concerns have been added by users. Thanks to the Meetup team for providing their headquarters in New York City for the Occupy Together Hackathon where this project was synthesized.

Update: Check out this Mashable article which talks about the project – Occupy Wall Street Hackathons Produce Digital Tools and New Activists and on the All Our Ideas blog.

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

With deep gratitude to our global community of supporters who have made this work possible, we are thrilled to launch our first annual report. Covering the period from November, 2008, when we incorporated under the auspices of the Institute for Multi-Track Diplomacy until the end of 2010, when we filed for our own independent non-profit status, the report documents our work to empower marginalized communities around the globe, and the inspirational ways they are using technology to build their own futures. Special thanks to Bill Hopkins Media for generously donating our New York office, Drew Frist for the Dd logo, Zago who designed this Annual Report, our team, our funders, our advisory board and generous individuals like you.

Societies are stronger when more people participate and along with the report, we also have a new promotional video to go along with it and help spread this message. Javier Saavedra is the editor with Steve Benjamin doing the graphics. All the footage is from our past two years in the field, either taken by us or our partners. We hope you like it:

Sincerely,
Emily Jacobi & Mark Belinsky, co-founders

Today we announce the launch of the only phone-based emergency response system dedicated to rape and sexual assault in Haiti. Together with our partners at  KOFAVIV, the Commission for Women Victims for Victims, we at Dd have designed, launched and tested the Call Center that is helping bring emergency care to victims in Port-Au-Prince. The KOFAVIV Call Center is supported by mobile-service providers Digicel and Voila, major phone providers in Haiti, where there is no 911 or similar system for reporting emergencies. Now, free calls to the number “572” connect victims to critical emergency care including medical, psychological and legal support.

The Call Center is one of four components of the Dd commitment to the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) to use technology to address rape and gender-based violence (sGBV) with women in Haiti. Dd and KOFAVIV are seeking $150,000 to support the Call Center and expand its reach throughout Port-Au-Prince, announced Dd at the CGI Annual meeting today.

“When we first started working with Haitian women leaders, there was no accurate information on the increasing rates of sexual violence in the tent-camps,” explains Emily Jacobi, our Executive Director. “The Call Center is a key component of an information management system we built with KOFAVIV to accurately capture data on the real scope of the problem, and get urgent preventative care to the most vulnerable cases.”

A recent report from Human Rights Watch observes that earthquake recovery has largely failed Haitian women and girls, noting, “Emergency contraception and other post-rape care is available in some health facilities, but many rape victims don’t have access to this care for the same reasons that women and girls have difficulty accessing other health services: they lack basic information about what is available and where, or they have difficulty paying for transportation to reach the services.”

Our partnership with KOFAVIV directly addresses this lack of information. Women who contact the Call Center receive urgent personal care, but the information collected also contributes to the macro-solutions for the problem. KOFAVIV collects data on cases and uses a system built by Dd to generate monthly reports, maps and data visualization to share with government and international bodies that provide critical security and lighting.

“The technology trainings that began in 2010 have brought about a major change in the capacity of grassroots women, particularly us, the women of KOFAVIV,” say Malya Appolon and Eramithe Delva, co-founders of KOFAVIV. “They have given us more confidence in ourselves, and have given us tools to help more people understand the reality of those living in the camps, a reality that gets harder everyday.”

KOFAVIV and Dd first partnered in April 2010, building a comprehensive system that uses technology to improve the fight against sGBV in Haiti. The partnership is the cornerstone of Dd’s commitment to CGI, promising to provide Haitian women’s groups the technical tools and training needed in their work to create a comprehensive approach to prevent rape in Haiti with a coalition of lawyers, health and psychosocial service providers, and strong networks of Haitian women and girls.

KOFAVIV & Digital Democracy Database System

“572 not only provides support to victims, it represents urgent medical care. When a woman calls our number within 72 hours of an incident, we ensure she gets the medical care she needs to prevent transmission of disease, HIV/AIDS and unwanted pregnancy,” says Jocie Philistin, a Project Coordinator for KOFAVIV. “Medical support is the first step to receiving ongoing legal and psychological support.”

Through the first month of testing, the Call Center was promoted in 24 tent camps and communities by KOFAVIV’s network of 65 Community Outreach Agents, some police precincts and the General Hospital. Ready to accept calls from throughout Port-Au-Prince, the Call Center needs financial support to spread awareness across the city.

The Abundance Foundation, United States Institutes for Peace (USIP), the Channel Foundation, USAID/OTI and individual donors have supported Dd’s work in Haiti to date.

Press Release: Dd & KOFAVIV Launch Only Emergency Response System Dedicated to Rape and Sexual Violence in …

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 the recent Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC) Producers Institute on “indigenous science.” The concept was ambitious: coupling documentary film projects with indigenous science from those communities. At Digital Democracy, we’ve been implementing grassroots empowerment projects of marginalized groups, including indigenous Mayans in Guatemala, but the opportunity to attach that work to film projects is an interesting expansion of the scope and reach for some of that work.

There’s a new level of interactivity that film affords and people are exploring what that new transmedia looks like. I interpret it as understanding how audience can be a fellow producer and not just consumer of media. Unfortunately I’ve only seen a few successful examples of this, such as Baratunde’s viewing parties around his “Future Of” TV show and the interactivity of Al-Jazeera’s new show “The Stream” (which I’ve guest hosted). At the public event, there were many discussions on how to blend new technologies into storytelling from an exciting group of mentors and pulled together by Wendy Levy. I discussed how mobile phones are a big part of this as we can now consider them an intregal part of our lives. They’re now our mobile homes as we live our lives out of them.

The group of participants were an exciting one:

• Kashmir is Beautiful: a hybrid social game for people in India who are rewarded online for doing real-world actions to clean the environment in their neighborhood
• We Were Here: interactive timeline and curriculum to share the story of the devastation of the AIDS epidemic to the gay community
• Rekindling Venus: augmented reality and 3d exhibit to show, in real-time, current devastation to the worlds coral reefs
• Question Bridge: a website and museum installation for black males to talk about their racial identity
• Equal Footing: social cartography provides indigenous communities in Mexico with information and legal resources that they have never had.

My focus was on this last project on a team that consisted of director/producer Aaron Soto-Karlin, anthropologist Tim Trench and myself, with support from the BAVC mentors & staff:

Keepers of the Earth is a film following an indigenous Mexican man’s struggle to keep his traditions intact as environmentalists and armed revolutionaries try to exploit the rainforest that he calls home.  The technology piece comes in where he and his people are being zoned off of the land that they’ve lived on under the guise of protecting the rainforest. Digital tools can make this process more equitable as the local people have more chance to participate in the negotiations that will govern the region for generations.

“Equal footing” is meant to bring the indigenous people to the negotiating table with equal footing. With indigenous mapping and an interactive visual database, local groups can for the first time see the implications of the paperwork they’re signing off on by having it projected onto a map. Moreover, they can help redraw the borders according to their wishes and concerns. Having the digital available as printouts on paper and vice-versa can help overcome the current technology barriers. And partnering with the right NGOs who have been there for decades ensures a grassroots led process.

We installed a working prototype and the results were shocking. In our initial renderings of the government produced surveys, we immediately found that they had miscalculated the geo coordinates. This means that many more people were to be displaced than even they had intended. This initially proves that the tool can also be powerfully helpful to the government players as well.

As we continue to map what is written in the legal documents that have been signed and are now being renegotiated, there are hundreds more problems that might arise and force people from their lands. This project can help keep people on their land and save the rainforest at the same time. With such an important piece of land for global climate change, it’s necessary to make the proper decisions collectively. The dangers are too great.

Thanks to BAVC and best of luck to all the filmmakers as you cross the bridge between filmmaker perfection and techie agility.

View more presentations from Mark Belinsky

Vote for our panels at SXSW

SXSW is shaping up to be a pretty exciting festival this year. Kudos to the awesome Baratunde who is going to give the opening keynote. This year we’re exploring the little discussed aspects of the implications of technology. How can it empower but also endanger people and what creative strategies are currently being pursued around the world? The second is about how women are drivers of change. Please check out more details about them below:

Panel:How To Not Die: Using Tech In A Dictatorship

A discussion about how technologies that are often built in the west are being used around the world in extremely dangerous situations. Often there isn’t an idea of how to protect individuals and their human rights when developing these tools, even when they’re being used by activists and changemakers around the world. So this will be concrete examples from Burma, Tibet, Liberia and Egypt.

Speakers: Mark Belinsky – Digital Democracy

1. Lhadon Tethong – Tibet Action Institute
2. Brian Conley – Small World News

Panel:Women Drive Change: Tech in the Global South

The use of technology by women in the Global South is growing fast! From Africa to South America to Southeast Asia, women in the Global South are using technology tools in new and creative ways with astounding results. Teen girls and senior citizens alike are finding the freedom to use technology to let their voices be heard, to foster an independent living, and to bring about revolution. We will talk about what this means for women, how their online personas might differ from real-world personas in societies where women have fewer rights, and where technology tools need to go next in order to meet their specific needs.

Speakers: Jenn Sramek –CivicActions

1. Kara Andrade – Ashoka
2. Zawadi Nyong’o – Africa Cancer Foundation
3. Emily Jacobi – Digital Democracy
4. Catherine Harrington – Women’s Learning Partnership

Panel:Is that the mobilenet in your pocket or…

Mobile phones are a game-changer in filmmaking. Is it good, bad or ugly for the industry? This panel brings together the people who let us film the bleeding edge of film.. from our pockets. I’m looking to host this panel as part of the film fest given my history in documentary film and recent experience speaking at SilverDocs and at the Tribeca Film Institute with BAVC.

Friends’ Panels: There are some panels being put on that we highly recommend checking out as well and giving some votes to. Here’s our list. Feel free to add your own in the comments! We’re excited to learn what else is out there.

Panel: Internet Power: After Cyber-Optimism and Pessimism

Description A year ago one could have had an honest argument about whether the Internet was increasing the power of the oppressor or the oppressed. Events in Tunis, Cairo, Daraa, Tehran, Moscow, and Beijing have shown that it can benefit both and that the effect of digital technology on power will be complex and contradictory. What are we to make of freelance hacker orgs, transparency activists and covert cyber war?

Speakers: Chris Bronk – Rice University

1. Richard Boly – Office of eDiplomacy, U.S. Department of State
2. Mary Joyce – The Meta-Activism Project
3. Ron Deibert – University of Toronto (Canada Centre for Global Security Studies, Citizen Lab)
4. Patrick Meier – Ushahidi

Panel: Africa, Tech & Women: The New Faces of Development

2010 is the year that Africa will finally connect to the global undersea cable network powering today’s broadband internet traffic. How can Africa use the arrival of this high speed super highway to it’s advantage? What impact will broadband communications have on Africa’s development? Are we looking at Africa 3.0?

Speakers: TMS Ruge – Project Diaspora

1. Ebele Okobi-Harris – Yahoo!
2. Liz Ngonzi – New York University Heyman Center for Philanthropy & Fundraising
3. Isis Nyong’o – InMobi Africa
4. Milly Businge – Kikuube Village Council

Panel: How to Run a Social Site and Not Get Users Killed

Facebook helped foment an uprising. Twitter kept the world rapt as revolution unfolded. But for all of their benefits, the use of social networks often puts activists–in Egypt, Syria, China, or even the United States–at great risk. Your privacy policy and terms of use, as well as how you enforce them, could mean life or death for an activist (or an ordinary user) using your site. What can you, the social media company, do to help keep your users safe?

Speakers: Jillian York – Electronic Frontier Foundation

1. Mathew Ingram – GigaOm
2. Kacem El Ghazzali – none
3. Danny O’Brien – Committee to Protect Journalists
4. Sam Gregory – WITNESS

Panel: Social Change Film: Strategy+Transmedia+Evaluation

our job is not done once the film is complete. In fact, in today’s media landscape, early strategic thinking, transmedia collaborations and entertainment evaluations are critical components to increasing the impact of film’s for social change. They can help you reach a larger audience, amplify your message, connect with your audience, understand what worked and what didn’t work and bring in additional funding

Speakers: Debika Shome – harmony Institute

1. Shaady Salehi – active voice
2. Lina Srivastava – Lina Srivastava Consulting LLC

Panel: Social Design Fractals

What would Coca-Cola taste like if if the company improved the labor standards in its factories? What kinds of software would Microsoft produce if it made its CEO-to-worker pay ratio more equitable? When we think about socially responsible design, we tend to think in terms of physical tweaks to products and supply chains, meticulously calculating carbon footprints and life cycle analyses and whole-life costs. But ultimately, thanks to the fractal nature of complex systems, there may be less of a need to calculate than we think – changes made in the marketing or operations or human resources departments will inevitably manifest themselves in product development.

Organizer: Stephanie Gerson – Purpose

Panel: Better Food through Open Data Standards

There is an explosion in the number of services created to help people make better choices about how we produce, consume, and interact with food. Challenges related to the accuracy and completeness of data hamper the rate of innovation. A panel of leading food, data and technology doers shares their initial framework for an open standard for reporting, recording and sharing food information.

Speakers: Anthony Nicalo – Foodtree

1. Niles Brooks – Clean Plates
2. Danielle Gould – Food+Tech Connect
3. Chacha Sikes – Code for America
4. Britta Riley – Windowfarms

SXSW2012 panel picker data visualization

If you’d like to see more about what SXSW is all about, see above for an interactive dataviz on what the focus is this year.

Community Additions:

Panel: Your iPhone Is Political: Mobile Democracy

Thanks to Katherine Maher for suggesting this panel.

By 2014, more of us will access the Internet with mobile devices than with desktops or laptops. Android phones, iPhones, iPads and other mobile devices are quickly becoming our primary gateways to the Internet. Everything we do online — the ways that we produce news, organize our communities, and communicate with each other — will increasingly depend on access to these devices and the broadband data connections they provide. Meanwhile, wireless companies are seeking to determine what content we can see and how we can access it.

Speakers: Josh Levy – Free Press

1. Nilay Patel – Thisismynext…
2. Parul Desai – Consumers Union
3. Katherine Maher – World Bank

Panel: Recognize This! Ethics of Mobile Face Tagging

Thanks to Sam Gregory for suggesting this panel.

With the ready availability of social media, digital databases of ID photos, high-resolution cameras and free, powerful face recognition software that can run on smartphones, we are entering into an unprecedented shift in the visual privacy of everyday people. Technology that was once the domain of authoritarian states, is now being put to use by the hottest tech startups, who often lack the capacity or capability to consider the broader cultural impact. What right do people have to control personal images in a socially-networked age or to be visually anonymous in a video-mediated world?

Speakers: Sam Gregory – WITNESS

1. Harlo Holmes – The Guardian Project
2. Bryan Nunez – WITNESS

President Saakashvili of Georgia

“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 the youth in government that have run Georgia since the Rose revolution of 2003.

I recently visited the county to understand what a successful transition from dictatorship to democracy looks like. To meet with the people who ran the transition to hear from them how they succeeded where so many other countries failed. Their time in power has seen an elimination of the rampant corruption that existed, a minimization of bureaucratic morass that made it so difficult to start new businesses, and a reversal of the negative recidivism trend for youth – they’re now actually staying to build their country. At the same time, facing war with it’s much larger neighbor Russia and being accused of radical libertarianism.

I was to meet with senior political figures and give a series of lectures to the public as part of the Atlantic Dinners, that brings together opinion makers on major contemporary issues, thanks to Marquardt & Marquardt. After the recent conflict with russia, they’ve been increasingly trying to align with the rest of Europe, showing it’s cultural, religious and intellectual similarities. This event brought foreign dignitaries and thought leaders to discuss a variety of topics facing the country.

I had the pleasure of being invited to speak on two panels and to meet a number of invited revolutionaries trying to transition their countries of Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, and Syria, as successfully as the Georgians had theirs.

There were a number of events and panels staged throughout “European Week.” Here’s a brief overview:

“Social Networks and the Arab Spring“: Faraz Sanei (Iran and Bahrain Researcher for HRW) Mohamad Al Abdallah (Programme officer, International Centre for Journalists, USA, Syrian Blogger and Activist) Nora Younis (web editor of Al Masry Al Youm, Egyptian Blogger and Activist) Bassem Bouguerra (Tunisian Blogger and Activist) Vincent Cespedes (Philosopher, France) Moderator: Alia Ibrahim (Middle East Correspondent, The Washington Post and Senior Correspondent, Al Arabiya)

It’s fascinating to hear people who have recently gone through a revolution discuss their personal experiences. Unfortunately, they also rehashed the fact that the struggle continues. Stories told by Bassem of the police continuing to assault citizens were sobering to those who had expected more success, no doubt in part due to their own experiences. Meanwhile Faraz detailed cases of countries such as Bahrain, where attempts of citizens to stand up for their rights were being brutally repressed. The optimism Around technology’s role as a tool for empowerment was also peppered with cautions to not discredit the people themselves. After all, technology can help bring people to the streets, but it’s up to them to decide what to do once they are there.

“Revolutions from East to South” which included people who supported the fall of the iron curtain, tech skeptics and myself : myself, James Crabtree (Financial Times) , Denis MacShane (Member of Parliament UK) , Hans Christoph Buch (Writer, Germany) Moderator: Marc Semo (Foreign Affairs Editor, Libération)

Given that just beforehand, a number of leaders from various Arab world uprisings said that while technology didn’t preclude the power of people and individual action, it was still essential to the successful overthrow of governments. The panel, aside from me, denied this entirely. My favorite quote being that “Mao did not need twitter.” I guess they haven’t thought about modern distribution methods for his little red book.

The other consensus i battled was that freedoms needed to be supported to preserve the “dignity” of humanity, specifically discussed with regards to Libya. I again came down as the dissident, warning that this similar language was being used by Sarkozy, trying to “civilize” the Internet, rather than aknowlodging the udhr has already been ratified by all nations and can have more teeth as a legal statuate to initiate any said protections for humans in repressive situations.

My overall point being that in the post-industrial Revolution in which we’re now living, we must identify the new institutions necessary to protect and preserve our liberties. Just as it took many years to ban child labor in the industrial age, we need such principles as net neutrality, universal broadband, privacy standards and more in the new age. It’s frustrating to continue to face leaders who do not understand these issues but I’m hopeful that there will be more cross-generational dialogues happening.

“The Rise of the New Diplomats” with myself, Baratunde Thurston (cofounder of Jack & Jill Politics) *Anand Giridharadas (writer at The New York Times) Moderator: Felix Marquardt (Founding President of the Atlantic Dinners).

There was much more agreement on this panel, but skepticism from the audience. One young student in particular pointed out his frustrations that, despite our optimism, the government wasn’t prepared to listen to the likes of him. Oh how quickly people can feel abandoned by a revolution, even a successful one.

However, in the new diplomacy, situations change rather dramatically. I explained that I was rather public about meeting the president, even beforehand, on twitter. Had he asked me to ask a specific question to the leader of his country, I would have. This is a powerful if relatively unique new channel available to citizens. The international journalists covering the region and the issues he’s concerned about are also more highly accessible now than ever before in the past, on twitter rather than just the usual expensive restaurants.

In the audience was Mark Mullen of Transparency International Georgia, who set up a fantastic interactive democracy project where Georgian citizens get updates about what their parliament is doing via SMS and social media. Our friends at MobileActive have a nice write up of the project.

The events came to an end with the Atlantic dinners themselves. This video is a strong summary:

After dinner, President Saakashvili (Misha) spoke from the heart of lessons and insights. It was incredible not only to hear him, but to see Bassem spring into action. We hopped onto the President’s wifi network and he pulled out his computer to live stream the talk to his friends and fellow revolutionaries back home. When I asked him if he’d asked permission, he laughed and said that he’s finally free, why ask for permission.

It strongly echoed the quote that Misha started off with:

“You cannot be ready to be free until you are free” – Kant

Bassem Bouguerra

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 us, the head of USAID (United States Agency for International Development) Raj Shah, and the internet. It was broadcast live on the White House website, with a realtime conversation happening on Facebook and on Twitter, hashtag #USAIDyouth.

For instance, in the Middle East, almost 65 percent of the regions’ people are youth. In many places, they’re stuck under oppressive regimes and increasingly frustrated by the lack of positive prospects for their future. In Egypt and Tunisia, this came to a head. Politicians around the world took notice. The US government is starting to realize that despite its large foreign aid packages, youth were not involved in the decision-making nor in the reception of this aid, despite being a majority of those affected by it.

A 48 starred flag, painting of George Washington, an eagle, and the golden chandelier lent the air of authenticity to remind me that this building has stood for hundreds of years and that this conversation can, at its best, change the course of history. 20 eager youth, experts in the fields of environment, health, security, and technology all sat with intense looks in their eyes. The groups varied from Truman National Security Project, National Center for Global Engagement, 350.org, Americans for Informed Democracy, Bamyan Media, The Millennium Campus Network, and others. We were ready to take up the challenge.

Many of the ideas bouncing around the room seemed to agree that there was a need to fund the best and most innovative groups, not the ones that were just the best at writing applications and getting funded. The tension is how to do that successfully while doing large-scale support and making sure that they money trail is transparent and trackable.

There’s also an interesting tension in the perception of this aid to the American people from which its coming. Recent debates about cutting the US economy have targeted wings of the government such as this foreign aid. It’s not surprising why, when the average American sees it as consisting of 20% of their taxes. The reality is that it accounts for less than 1%. There’s not much room for innovation when under fire.

It’s important to be able to see how investments in science, technology, education and math (STEM), as well as green technology, are going to have a positive impact on our own economic prosperity in addition to those people working their way out of poverty around the world. But for the innovative and impactful ideas, it’s the youth who are closest to the new solutions and can help usher them in with the right support.

We all went to the White House, and were excited and honored to have been invited, but not for the photo op, but rather to make some changes. I’m encouraged by the dialogue but hope that we’re able to.

Please see the video below and visit the USAID YouthImpact site for more information about the initiative.