Tag Archives: twitter

2012 Fletcher Summer Institute

From June 24th to June 30th, ICNC in partnership with the Fletcher School for Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, hosted the 7th annual Fletcher Summer Institute for the Advanced Study of Nonviolent Conflict. As usual, myself, my ICNC colleagues, along with Fletcher faculty and staff worked tirelessly for months to bring 42 participants from all over the world to participate in this intensive week-long institute. Check out this blog posting I wrote for the Fletcher Features blog to get an overview of some of the highlights from the week. Personally, one of my highlights was meeting many of the amazing participants who attended this year.  However, I did not get to know them as well as I would have liked due to the various aspects of the week for which I responsible.

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TC106 – New Technologies for Educational Practice

Above is the intro video Nick Martin and I recorded and shared to kick off the first iteration of TC106 – New Technologies for Educational Practice. I had the pleasure of co-facilitating this course with Nick and, as is always the case when working with TechChange, it was a fun and exciting experience filled with all sorts of new learnings, many of which you can find by checking out the Storify board I curated throughout the course. There you will find more than you could ask for in terms of content, and get a general sense of the various themes that were covered each week. Continue reading to see the course description and its learning objectives.

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Presentation at Point Conference in Sarajevo

This past weekend I gave a presentation (via Skype) on the use of ICT for nonviolent action at the Point Conference in Sarajevo.  I was invited to participate by my friend, Darko Brkan, who had attended ICNC’s 2010 Fletcher Summer Institute.  You can learn more about Darko by checking out this On the Ground Interview I conducted with him a couple years ago.

My presentation looked at four main ways nonviolent movements have been leveraging ICT in their struggles – communication, mobilization, organizing/coordinating, and documentation.  Continue reading to watch and listen to a slidecast of the presentation…

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Global Innovations for Digital Organizing

For the past three weeks I was moderator and guest expert for the Tech Change online course, Global Innovations for Digital Organizing.  The course explores how technological innovation has resulted in the development of new channels of communication which are democratizing access to and production of media. The impact on social dynamics is evident from the Obama campaign’s youth mobilization efforts to the ongoing uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa. The three-week online professional development certificate course evaluates case studies where new technologies have been used for activism and what factors and contexts are most influential on outcomes. It also provides participants with strategies for maximizing the impact of new media and train them in the effective use of analysis and message management tools.  This was a fascinating experience that put me right in the middle of an innovative organization that is truly advancing both content related to technology and peacebuilding and the creative ways to engage people in learning experiences online.  Continue reading to learn more…

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National Peace Academy’s Peacebuilding Peacelearning Intensive

From July 17th – 24th, I attended, along with approximately 45 other participants from around the world, the National Peace Academy’s Peacebuilding Peacelearning Intensive, held on the Champlain College campus in Burlington, VT.  The goal of the intensive was to “nurture your holistic development as a peacebuilder by engaging in deep reflection and critical inquiry into your own worldviews, values, principles, and assumptions…In supporting the development of peace systems we [NPA] will engage you in a reflective and integrative planning process that will culminate in the development of your own unique, ‘Peacebuilding Plan Proposal.'”

This was a truly transformative experience and one of the best workshops/community gatherings in which I have ever participated.  The diversity of people that were in attendance, the quality of presentations, the power of the reflective processes, and the community that was built around our visions for peace was something that furthered my commitment to the beloved community of peacebuilders and peacelearners across the globe.  Continue reading to learn about my experience over the five days.

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How to Ignite, or Quash, a Revolution in 140 Characters or Less

On July 13th, I attended an event at the New America Foundation: How to Ignite, or Quash, a Revolution in 140 Characters or Less, which looked at the promise and limitations of technology in spreading democracy. July 13th also happened to be my birthday, and one of the most special messages I received that day came in the form of a tweet from Ghada Shahbender (@ghadasha), an Egyptian human rights activist and one of this year’s winners of the James Lawson Award.

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2011 Fletcher Summer Institute

From June 19-24, I attended, helped organize, and presented at the 2011 Fletcher Summer Institute for the Advanced Study of Nonviolence Conflict. This yearly institute is the only professional level course of its kind offered in the world that explores the strategic use of nonviolent civic action – strikes, boycotts, mass demonstrations, civil disobedience, etc. – as a method of fighting for and defending human rights, social justice, and democratic self-rule.

This year the institute brought together 45 participants from 26 countries and delved into topics such as forming a movement, the paradox of repression, citizen journalism and movement media, negotiations and transitions, and the role of third party actors in supporting civil resistance movements. My colleague, Nicola Barrach, and I co-presented a session on digital and social media in civil resistance, which looked at the uses and limitations of digital technology, social media, and the internet in waging nonviolent struggle.

In addition to presenting, I also helped coordinate various media elements of the institute by integrating the use of our FSI alumni network Facebook group page as a platform for continued discussion and resource sharing; organizing live, communal note-taking on Twitter with the #fsi11 hashtag; curating and sharing key tweets and resources mentioned during the different sessions using Bundlr; recording audio interviews with participants and presenters and sharing those recording on Twitter using Audioboo; and conducting longer video interviews with select participants and presenters for the ICNC website and our On the Ground Interview Series.  Needless to say, I did not get much sleep, but I did have a great time, learning a lot from some amazing organizers, activists, and educators!  Continue reading to learn more about the institute, the various sessions, and some of the key take-aways from each.

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4th International Conflict Resolution Education Conference

I just attended the 4th International Conflict Resolution Education Conference, which was held from June 8 – 11 in Cleveland, OH (download full conference program).  Educators from the United States and all over the world – Korea, Ghana, Kenya, Trinidad & Tobago – gathered at Cuyahoga Community College to participate and present a number of key workshops.  I was joined by my colleagues, Hardy Merriman and Maciej Bartkowski from ICNC.  I facilitated a session titled, “Liberation Tech? The Influence of the Internet and Digital Activism in Nonviolent Struggle.”  Continue reading to learn more…

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2011 Personal Democracy Forum

What do you get when you bring together some of the leading thinkers, activists, scholars, hackers, writers, and designers in the fields of social media, open-source and digital technology?  You get the 2011 Personal Democracy Forum.  Luckily, this year I was one of 1,000 attendees to participate in this yearly gathering to learn from and network with these brilliant minds and innovative creators.  I also had the pleasure of enjoying this conference with two of my ICNC colleagues, Nicola Barrach and Althea Middleton-Detzner.  While we were there we also got to meet up and hang out with our friends Eric Stoner, Bryan Farrell and Nathan Schneider from Waging Nonviolence, Katie Halper from Living Liberally, Matthew Slutsky from Change.org, and our friends Emily Jacobi, Mark Belinsky, and Biz Ghormley from Digital Democracy.   In addition to getting see our friends, we also saw some great presentations.  Click through to learn and see more about some of my favorite presentation from the conference.

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AU Social Learning Summit

In the spirit of this summit, I decided to blog about the different panels I attended by copying what I thought were some of the key tweets that other participants had been sharing during our #sls11 “communal note taking.”  I was a panelist for the Peace through Tweets sessions and really enjoyed talking about the various ideas and debates within that field.

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