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: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAp9TTK2YBF8lvaOF4uBgkKmvHRTu3LMOMy7iy_e9JEGxQI4HYcma3MHFwnOUA6Ge5HskZNXnX9cVw0AhZYU97iRB-2dcdYJzcun_OigS_aHv0wIzydqBqBaDYyYx9udIsRzdZQz_jmNHW/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.