100 people = the world

Today Nicholas Kristof, Nobel Prize-winning columnist for the New York Times, retweeted a website that breaks down the world in a simplified manner. If the world were made up of 100 people who would have what? How many people follow what faith? How many people would have access to clean air or water? How many people are literate? Etc.

Please do take a look at it. It is an informative and eye-opening collection of graphics.

The graphic below pertains to a topic that is personally very important to me. There are 25 more on the site. If your bored or want to see some pretty cool infromation take a look.

Reporters Without Borders awards Iranian Blogger

This year Reporter's Without Borders awarded Iranian blogger and women's rights activist Jila Bani Yaghoob with a freedom of expression award. Her blog, We Are Reporters can be read in both Persian and in English. Bani Yaghood and her husband were arrested in June after the fraudulent election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Reporters Without Borders writes of Bani Yaghood: "Her Persian-language blog deals with the news in Iran, social issues and the subject of women. Jila is in the forefront of the struggle for freedom of expression in her country. She and her family have already paid a high price for her commitment. Reporters Without Borders is proud to award her this prize and through her pay tribute to all Iranian bloggers and journalists who have been arrested, imprisoned for driven into exile these past months" (Source). You can read a full transcript of their announcement here.

Interview w/Dr. Nahal Akbari @ GWU Iran Blogosphere Conference

This audio file is of an interview I conducted with Dr. Nahal Akbari of the University of Maryland on Monday April 12. Dr. Akbari attended the blogosphere conference at GW and was kind enough to let me interview her about her thoughts on the use of technology and blogs in Iran. Dr. Akbari regularly monitors the goings on of Iran through multiple news sources--blogs, BBC Persian, newspapers from inside and outside of Iran, and NPR among others. Dr. Akbari is not a regular user of social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter but does think that they can be useful. Definitely take a listen to what she has to say.

You can hear it here (give it a second or two to load).

One more thing. . .

One more thing from Dr. Dabashi's website: The video below is in Persian but talks about Israeli cinema. They focus on two Israeli films: "Lebanon" and "Waltz with Bashir." Each film is about Israel's war in Lebanon during the 1980's. It is really fascinating and was unexpected when I first watched the video; I was surprised they were talking about it Israeli film.

It's really cool. If you speak Persian or just want to watch I high encourage you to do so.

Iranian scholarship and multimedia

Similar to George Washington University's conference on the use of technology in today's Iran, Columbia will be hosting "New Generation, New Perspectives, New Media." The event is taking this Saturday April 17th. I wish I could go because there are some great Iran scholars up at Columbia, one of whom, Dr. Hamid Dabashi, I wrote about a few weeks back in Reading List 2.

Dr. Dabashi has a section on his website that features a segment called "Week in Green." "Week in Green" features short clips of Dr. Dabashi covering relevant events or talking with Iranian scholars and figureheads, like Dr. Ervand Abarahimian or reformist cleric Mohsen Kadivar. Most of the clips are in Persian and do have English subtitles so if you are interested in seeing how one of the foremost minds on Iran has utilized multimedia, check out some of the videos.

Also Dr. Babashi has a facebook page, youtube channel, and twitter account--check them all out.

Inside Iran

Great website that encourages internet usage/assistance to Iranians: Inside Iran

This site/organization is run by a panelist from today's conference, Geneive Abdo.

Panel 2

The second panel of the day is focusing its discussion around the matter of engagement. These panelists have emphasized how Internet can be a tool for cross cultural exchange and how the internet can be used to fight the oppressive tactics of the Iranian regime. While the internet is a great tool for helping generate dialogue "it does not replace face to face contact," says panelist Sonya Reines.

From Iran's Blogosphere and Grassroots Voices: Risks and Rewards of Engagement @ GWU

Azar Nafisi

Ms. Azar Nafisi just finished her fantastic keynote speech

From Iran's Blogosphere and Grassroots Voices: Risks and Rewards of Engagement @ GWU

Watch the Iran's Blogosphere Conference live now

Watch the conference live here

Iran's Blogosphere and Grassroots Voices: Risks and Rewards of Engagement @ GWU

Just got to GWU a short while ago. Here's a quick look at the pre-conference set up and program.

From Iran's Blogosphere and Grassroots Voices: Risks and Rewards of Engagement @ GWU

From Iran's Blogosphere and Grassroots Voices: Risks and Rewards of Engagement @ GWU

From Iran's Blogosphere and Grassroots Voices: Risks and Rewards of Engagement @ GWU

New feature

I just discovered a great blog called Global Voices.Started in 2005, it features blogs from all over the world and is translated into 15 languages. They have more than 200 bloggers working for their site worldwide "who work together to bring you translations and reports from blogs and citizen media everywhere, with emphasis on voices that are not ordinarily heard in international mainstream media." (Source: Global Voices - About)

Their expressed goals are to:
- Call attention to the most interesting conversations and perspectives emerging from citizens’ media around the world by linking to text, photos, podcasts, video and other forms of grassroots citizens’ media.
- Facilitate the emergence of new citizens’ voices through training, online tutorials, and publicizing the ways in which open-source and free tools can be used safely by people around the world to express themselves.
- Advocate for freedom of expression around the world and protect the rights of citizen journalists to report on events and opinions without fear of censorship or persecution.
(Source: Global Voices - About)

What is great about Global Voices is that they allow readers, like me, who have a website or a blog to post a newsfeed to their respective site. In an effort to broaden the information on this page and expand my blog's multimedia capabilities I have added to the right side of my blog a newsfeed of Global Voice's Iran headlines. So whenever anything happens on their site pertaining to Iran, it happens here too.

Enjoy!

A picture is worth a thousand words. . .

For this week's thousand word picture here is a cartoon by renowned Iranian cartoonist Nikahang Kowsar. Mr. Kowsar will be a speaker at GW's "Iran's Blogosphere and Grassroots Voices: Risks and Rewards of Engagement." Usually his work is in Persian but I was able to find this one in English. Similar to one of my first thousand-worders this one plays off of Tianemen Square and emphasizes the use of technology in the Iranian protests.



(Source: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Znc6n3fd3fQ/S79TO7dAN6I/AAAAAAAAAPY/ieIunRkyO28/s1600/Nikahang.jpg)

Iran's Blogosphere and Grassroots Voices: Risks and Rewards of Engagement

This Monday morning (tomorrow) I will be attending a conference on Iran's Blogosphere at George Washington University. The conference,
"Iran's Blogosphere and Grassroots Voices: Risks and Rewards of Engagement" promises to be greatly engaging and informative, as many excellent speakers, including Iran author and scholar Zar Nafisi (who wrote a superb book called "Reading Lolita in Tehran") will be in attendance.

I plan on keeping both my blog and Twitter well-updated throughout the day so keep an open eye. Also if you are interested in following the conference live you can watch it streaming online here. Check out the conference facebook page and twitter too.

It will be a great time.

Additional Photos of Campus Iranians

Here are some original photos of mine from Iranians on campus. They were taken on by the camera on my phone so please excuse the poor quality. Nonetheless enjoy.

From iranians @ UMD

From iranians @ UMD

From iranians @ UMD

You can also check them out on my very first Picasa photo album. More pictures are on the way.

Visualizations of Iran

Aside from the content that I have posted from local events here in Maryland here are some photos that I found on Flickr through the website Creative Commons. The pictures below are depictions of events that have occurred in Iran in the last nine months. Some of them are political illustrations created in response to the regime's criminal actions. Others are photographs of the protests.

Also check out this great website, Sabz Photo ("Sabz" is Persian for "green"). It is a superb site that regularly posts high quality photos--sometimes artistic, sometimes not. It is an endless bank of photos relating to the Green Movement. Take a moment to take a look at it.


(Source http://www.flickr.com/photos/arasmus/3629543561/)


(Source http://www.flickr.com/photos/hamed/3636927440/)


(Source http://www.flickr.com/photos/harrystaab/3653879028/)

Photos from Nowruz

I want to first and foremost thank my classmate Sahar for giving me permission to use some of her photos from Nowruz. These are hers and she very graciously let me use them, knowing that they were relevant to my blog--so thank you, Sahar-jan!

These are just a small sampling of the unreal time that was Friday night.

ISF's Nowruz 1389 Celebration

Hello again.

Our most recent class assignment requires that we being to incorporate relevant multimedia into our blogs. Over the last few weeks I have tried my best to involve content beyond just plain text--most specifically found in my "one thousand word" posts and links. It's time to take it to the next level. As basic and essential as text is to a quality blog or publication, the most advanced news sources have begun to include audio and video into their output. While many go as far as to include viewer-produced content others like the NY Times will not put articles online without some sort of interactive video or chart to supplement the article. Maybe taking it a step further CNN has a segment called iReports which is composed of viewer generated material. My point is that multimedia is the new media; instead of just getting an article they give you that and then some. It's awesome.

For my topic, Iran and Tech, its a little tougher than I'd like to generate original content from Iran. So with Prof. Yaros's permission I will begin posting some content regarding Iran that occur on campus. Hopefully in the near future it will be easier to go to Iran and post and publish the facts without fear of being arrested--but until then I'll be covering whats going on here at Maryland. The first of such goings-on is from this past Friday.

On Friday night the Iranian Student's Foundation (ISF) hosted its annual Nowruz celebration. It was a great time to say the least. They hosted over 250 guests from around the Washington DC Metro area as well as students--both heritage and non. As in years past, this years event was held in the Grand Ballroom at Stamp and was decked out with lights, dance stage, and ridiculous food spread. Below are some videos of the awesome time it was. I apologize ahead of time for the poor sound quality--between the DJ's really loud speakers and my crappy phone it wasn't easy. But nonetheless here is the first series of multimedia on Iran and Iranians at the University of Maryland. If nothing more this should serve as a glimpse in to life at Maryland and its incredibly vibrant and awesome Iranian community.

Enjoy!