On the Meedan Radar – February 2013

Journalism & Tech - Blog by general manager of French newspaper Les Echos on the need for a Digital “New Journalism” – interesting insight into how he views audience source awareness and trust: http://www.mondaynote.com/2013/02/17/the-need-for-a-digital-new-journalism/ - One to watch out for here, with a new series of posts by the team at Witness + special guests (Andy Carvin, Liam Stack etc) on citizen video for journalists http://blog.witness.org/2013/02/citizen-video-for-journalists-1/ - Twitter Devolutions – post by Marc Lynch assessing whether social media was doing harm to the Arab Spring http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/02/07/twitter_devolutions_arab_spring_social_media There’s also an interesting... Read The Rest →

Open Up!: How can Open Data, Civic Engagement and Technology Make Governments More Accountable?

Transparency advocates from as far afield as India, Africa and the Middle East gathered in London on Tuesday to share their experiences working on open data and civic engagement projects in some of the world’s most gruelling political environments. Attendees at the Open Up! event in London’s ‘Tech City’ spoke eloquently about their attempts to put technology to the goal of greater openness and citizen empowerment in their countries, despite what some reported as profound infrastructure constraints, government hostility and even harassment. Highlights included ‘Yemi Adamolekun‘s introduction to Enough is... Read The Rest →

Student engagement up as Meedan multi-lingual discussion platform gets a new look

Students of Qatar Foundation International‘s exchange program were discussing questions of space exploration, the environment, democracy, and technological innovation this week following a major update to the discussion forum they use to communicate, which is powered by Meedan. The exchange program alumni were logging in in record numbers and taking part more actively than ever thanks to a sweeping design refresh to the YALLAH platform (Youth Allied to Learn, Lead and Help), a three-language multi-media discussion forum. The design improvements, led by Meedan’s latest recruit to its creative team –... Read The Rest →

Google Middle East Regional Manager Wael Fakharany Joins Meedan Board

We are very excited to be welcoming Wael Fakharany, Regional Manager at Google Middle East, onto the Meedan Board of Directors.  Based in Cairo, Wael has over 20 years’ experience managing technology businesses in the Middle East and brings a wealth of business development knowledge that can help Meedan become sustainable.   We asked Wael some questions about joining the Meedan board, what he thinks he can contribute and where Meedan can bring value to Middle East web users in the years ahead. How do you feel about joining the... 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 →

Translating Tweets from the Arab Spring: Towards a Translation Workbench for Twitter

Think about the Arab Spring and you probably think about citizen media.  Syrians, Egyptians, Libyans, Bahrainis, Tunisians have not just been taking to the streets over the past year, but documenting their experiences in text, image and video – even building whole new social movements with a digital dimension. Has there ever been a historic moment of this scale unfold before our eyes through new media publishing tools? Surely this is inspiring to the rest of us who are not in the Middle East.  More than ever before, an American... Read The Rest →

Meedan named as finalist in Changemakers Citizen Media comp, voting starts now!

The wonderful folks over at Ashoka Changemakers have named the 11 finalists in their exciting and important Citizen Media competition. It is a great honour for Meedan that we are among those 11, alongside some seriously cool projects. We really encourage people to head over to Changemakers.org/CitizenMedia to check out the first class array of ideas and innovators from around the world who have entered the competition. One of the great things about the voting system is that it allows users to vote for up to THREE entries – so... Read The Rest →

Meedan at the Oxford Internet Institute: Understanding the role of the internet in Egypt's revolution

The role that social media played in the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions is one question among many in understanding these profoundly important social events.  But perhaps it is a particularly important one for Meedan – after all we are strategically wedded to the idea that the web makes possible a more networked world in which information and ideas can be exchanged more freely.  That this debate has gathered such steam through the Arab revolutions is in part a feature of the newness of social media, but also the extent to... Read The Rest →

UK Research Grant supports Meedan web service to improve communication between religions

Meedan’s Nurani platform – a digital project to develop online dialogues between Muslims, Christians and Jews –  has won a prestigious UK Research Councils’ grant worth $450,000. Developed with our partners at the Cambridge Inter-faith Programme and the Coexist Foundation, Nurani is a pioneering web service that enables cross-language discussions between religious leaders, scholars and civic groups in Arabic and English. The research grant, which is part of the highly competitive Digital Economy Programme, will support the creation of the world’s first inter-faith library of religious texts and the further... Read The Rest →

Translation as Means of Increasing Intellectual Production in the Middle East

What is the relationship between translation and intellectual production?  It is not obvious, you might think. Translation, by necessity, does not provide new insights but rather makes existing knowledge available in another language.  If everyone spoke English it would not really be an issue. Image courtesy of Hishaam Siddiqi on Flickr, CC Attribution NonCommercial NoDerivativeWorks. At Meedan we do think there is a deep link.  Let me try to explain why with some tidbits from the recent Arab Thought Foundation annual conference, FIKR9, that we were lucky to attend. For... Read The Rest →

« Older Entries

Meedan Blog