Tag Archive | "governance"

Iranian social media police

Monday, July 13, 2009

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On passing through the immigration control at the airport in Tehran, she was asked by the officers if she has a Facebook account. When she said "no", the officers pulled up a laptop and searched for her name on Facebook. They found her account and noted down the names of her Facebook friends.

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Terrain Vague, Citizen Engagement & the Open City: The Roerich Garden Project

Monday, July 13, 2009

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Terrain Vague, Citizen Engagement & the Open City: The Roerich Garden Project

My first Artefatica project is coming along. Sooooo slowly. A draft of the website for our first book — Terrain Vague, Citizen Engagement & the Open City: The Roerich Garden Project — is up! Check it out, send some feedback, add your story or your vision.

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Michael Thompson: Algae fighting over the surface of a ping-pong ball

Friday, July 3, 2009

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We've been stuck swinging back and forth between the hierarchical and individualistic, the old public versus private debate. This model is inadequate and misleading. Instead we should imagine four different colours of algae competing over the surface of a ping-pong ball. When one gets bigger the others shrink. The edges are constantly changing.

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ParticipationCamp: Just like being there

Saturday, June 27, 2009

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I wanted to attend ParticipationCamp in New York. Apparently I can. From Montreal. They have live video feed with great quality: Of course social reporters can use add the #PCamp09 tag to their tweets, which are aggregated on front page of their website. Great use of social media and attention to virtual participants: livestreaming video, twitter, skype. [...]

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Digital revolutionaries: What’s your Plan B?

Thursday, June 25, 2009

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Farhad Manjoo wrote an article in Slate: The Revolution Will Not Be Digitized: How the Internet helps Iran silence activists. Consider this: According to the Wall Street Journal, Iran has one of the world’s most advanced surveillance networks. Using a system installed last year (and built, in part, by Nokia and Siemens), the government routes all [...]

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Ushahidi: Crowdsourcing Crisis Information

Monday, February 2, 2009

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Ushahidi (“testimony” in Swahili) is an experimental web platform that crowdsources crisis information. People can submit reports via text messaging using a mobile phone, email, or the web. Looks like it can be deployed (sorry, geek speak) for a specific crisis. It was most recently use to track events in Gaza and was also used [...]

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The Community Manifesto

Thursday, January 22, 2009

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I just posted the first draft of the Station C Community Manifesto to our blog. Would love your feedback. Here’s the meat of it: Station C is a space that fosters community, collaboration, innovation. People come here to work and connect. We are a hub for creators and innovators: entrepreneurs, geeks, artists, social activists. Station C is [...]

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Omar Azfar

Thursday, January 22, 2009

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There are certain people I don’t maintain relationships with. Haven’t seen them in years; don’t keep in touch. But I like them. Fiercely. I respect what they do. And I know that we’re all working toward the same goal: repairing the world. My friend Karim Kasim, in his lovely poetic and Egyptian way, says that [...]

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Reflections on “I Believe in Open” candidate responses

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

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I was just browsing through the results section of the ibelieveinopen.ca campaign website. Candidates can respond yes or no to each of the five commitments and post comments, some of which give nice insights into the sort of people you may be voting for. I noticed two things: Andrew Graham, the NDP candidate from New Brunswick Southwest, [...]

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I believe in open: Take a stand for government transparency

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

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I recently joined the advisory board of VisibleGovernment.ca, a non-partisan, non-profit organization that promotes online tools for government transparency in Canada. We’ve just launched our first project — ibelieveinopen.ca — a site that collects pledges from Member of Parliament (MP) candidates to commit to making five improvements to government transparency. The site also collects signups from [...]

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Blogging for Good Governance

Saturday, June 28, 2008

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This week I was in Kampala and had the opportunity to meet a friend-of-a-friend, John Gattorn, a super-cool dude who does human rights and democracy work. As I’m obsessed with finding practical ways to use technology for social change, I told him about Global Voices Advocacy and their guide to blogging anonymously. Two days later, [...]

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