George from Meedan

With an amount of nostalgia that exceeds my (significant) carrying capacity for such that we share word that our dear friend and colleague George Weyman has taken a post at the British Library. The title of this post plays on the English word ‘from’ – which connotes both going and belonging. I intentionally invoke it in both senses, though, the emotional referent leans more to the sense of belonging, as my memory goes to the message on George’s voicemail. There is, in the belonging/geographical shadings of the reference, a sense... Read The Rest →

Meedan 2011 Annual Report

We are delighted to present the Meedan annual report for 2011, published today on Issuu. You can view this below, download or share. The report covers Meedan’s partnerships, technology development and programmatic focus through a year of tumultuous change in the Middle East. In presenting this report, we are grateful to the brilliant design work of Meedan Designer Maya Zankoul. We hope you enjoy it. Open publication – Free publishing – More arabic Share → Tweet

Interview with Meedan design star Maya Zankoul

It’s with great pleasure that Meedan can announce that we’ve expanded our engagement with the marvelous Maya Zankoul, who gave the Meedan Blog an *exlcusive* interview this week: How do you feel about joining the Meedan team? I’m very happy to be part of Meedan. I love what Meedan stands for and worked with the team a couple of years ago on creating the ‘Meedan in plain English‘ animated short movie. Since then I’ve enjoyed the spirit of the team and am very glad to be a Meedani once again!... Read The Rest →

Mapping Meedanis: an inside look at Meedan’s distributed team approach

One of the great benefits of having awesome designers like Maya Zankoul on the Meedan team is that she makes beautiful things like this, which shows the global nature of the Meedan team: Looking at this magnificent map gives us pause for thought on how Meedan’s distributed team works and what we’ve learned from not only advocated for making the internet a better place for cross-cultural interaction, but from also practicing those values as we go about our work. Meedan currently has 17 core team working across 5 continents (+... Read The Rest →

Welcoming new Meedani Dina El Hawary

As football transfer windows slam shut around Europe and new acquisitions don their new team’s colours for the first time, it is with great relish and excitement that Meedan can reveal that we’ve made THE big signing of the summer: enter Ms Dina El Hawary! Dina joins Meedan full-time as a Cairo-based Program Manager after her fantastic contribution to the organization of our citizen journalist training programme in Egypt earlier this year, where she oversaw the training of 137 citizen journalists in 6 cities across Egypt. Prior to joining Meedan,... Read The Rest →

Meedan welcomes creative talents to international web development team

Appreciating a good conspiracy, and with the strategies and performance of global NGOs undergoing a round of public scrutiny for reasons viral and bizarre, I want to address head-on recently circulated rumors that Meedan has a secret and unstated mission. It is time to lay bare our true intentions and own up to them in the clarifying sunlight of complete disclosure.  It is true.  Meedan has gradually transformed from a few pretty great ideas to a lot of really great people. So, while we are all together in service of... Read The Rest →

Announcing Meedan’s newest Member: Me, Anas Qtiesh

It is my greatest pleasure to join the Meedan team–again–as a Research Associate. I had the opportunity to work with Meedan briefly as a content producer in 2009. I had to stop as I was traveling to the US for study. Nevertheless I kept a close eye on Meedan’s progress over time, and I’m thrilled to be back on board. A little bit about me: I’m a Syrian blogger, translator, and tech enthusiast. I’ve written about the Syrian blogosphere and online censorship for Global Voices Online. Also, I’m a Google... Read The Rest →

Meedan welcomes Alaa Batayneh at Damascus developer retreat

Damascus is surely one of the hidden gems of the world. I say hidden because there are far fewer tourists here than the historical riches would suggest. The old city in particular is breathtaking – an endlessly fascinating labyrinth of narrow streets replete with shops, restaurants, Turkish baths, mosques and churches. It surely is a match for Venice, Paris or Rome. So I guess I have been very lucky to join Meedan developers Khaled Al-Hourani and Alaa Batayneh on a three-day development retreat in this beautiful city. An established talent... Read The Rest →

The San Francisco office: Mission*Social

We’ve been having a great couple of months here at Mission*Social, a new coworking space in San Francisco. We feel like it’s a grand spot for basing our offices, please come by any time!  We’re are 972 Mission Street, between 5th and 6th near the Powell St. Station. We love having visitors! Share → Tweet

Open design collaboration through "feature tags"

A couple months ago, as Meedan took on a new partnership with Cambridge Interfaith Programme, we decided to be as transparent as possible with all of our design research, by putting it on Flickr and organizing with “feature tags.” We’re just getting started but we can already tell that we really like working this way. It’s a bit like taking your ideas out of a private conference room, and putting them on display at a nearby coffeeshop — you get a lot more ideas, and have a much easier time... Read The Rest →

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