PALCONNECT – The First Palestinian Social Media Conference
The goal of the conference is to gather Palestinians from various sectors together for the first time in one location to start a dialogue about the Palestinian social media landscape and the potentially important role it can play in building and strengthening Palestinian civil society, economic, and educational competitiveness. The conference will assist Palestinian social media practitioners, universities, journalists, and private sector representatives to organize and expand their networks, increase their knowledge, understanding, and use of new and innovative tools and technologies to benefit their efforts, get products to markets, and learn how to “tell their stories” more effectively. The conference will include presentations; panel discussions; work groups; strategy development, etc
Overall, the conference intends to create a culture of social media within the Palestinian society. It will be a unique and first-ever opportunity for social media practitioners with past initiatives and campaigns to get to know each other, in order to unite their work and increase the effect
A wide range of topics will be highlighted, with particular focus on 4 main areas. These include the use of social media for:
a. Advocacy
b. Education
c. Business
d. Technology
Other aspects will also be discussed including citizen journalism, new social media tools and skills, utilizing social media to make a change, using technology to support activism, granting social media activists support and protection, ICT infrastructure, networking and expanding existing networks, balancing the personal life with the social media profile, amplifying messages and reaching out to a larger audience through social media networks, economic innovation, effective story-telling for the internet, etc
Several local and international keynote speakers and panel participants will participate in the conference in order to lead conference panels. Video Conference will be utilized to link between conference participants from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip throughout the conference. Currently, this is the only mean of communication available due to the siege imposed on Gaza and the lack of access of movement between the two parts of the Palestinian Territories. Part of the panel sessions will be lead by participants from Gaza broadcasted to the West Bank via video conference
Live streaming of the entire conference sessions will grant the Palestinian audience from various areas around the West Bank and the Gaza Strip regions, that are unable to be physically present at the conference, an opportunity to “attend”, benefit, and take part in the conference. This feature is particularly aimed at large groups of people, such as universities, who will be encouraged to follow the conference activities and actually interact and participate in the conference
In addition to the series of panel sessions and discussions, there will be networking time slots, during which participants are granted opportunity to communicate and get to know each other to discuss networking methods and collaboration opportunities
:THE SPEAKERS
Robert J. Lopez
Jillian C. York
Jillian C. York is the Director of International Freedom of Expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. She writes regularly about free expression, politics, and the Internet, with particular focus on the Arab world. She is on the Board of Directors of Global Voices Online, and has written for a variety of publications, including Al Jazeera, The Guardian, Foreign Policy, and Bloomberg. Views expressed on this blog belong to Jillian alone and do not represent her employers, past or presen
http://jilliancyork.com/
Chris Hoadley
Dr. Chris Hoadley is an associate professor and director of the Educational Communications and Technology program at New York University. Hoadley has degrees in cognitive science, computer science, and education from MIT and the University of California at Berkeley, and currently his research focuses on collaborative technologies and computer support for cooperative learning (CSCL). Other interests include research on and through design, systems for supporting social capital and distributed intelligence (especially for educational reform), the role of informatics and digital libraries in education, the psychology of computer programming, sustainability education, and science and engineering education
Hoadley is the director of dolcelab, the Laboratory for Design Of Learning, Collaboration & Experience. He is an affiliate scholar for the National Academy of Engineering’s Center for the Advancement of Scholarship in Engineering Education (CASEE). Hoadley previously chaired the American Educational Research Association’s Special Interest Group for Education in Science and Technology and served as the first President of the International Society for the Learning Sciences. For the 2008-2009 school year, he was a Fulbright Scholar in South Asia studying educational technology in rural Himalayan villages
http://www.tophe.net/
Katrin Verclas
Katrin Verclas is the co-founder and editor of MobileActive.org, a global network of practitioners using mobile phones for social impact. She is the co-author of Wireless Technology for Social Change, a report on trends in mobile use by NGOs with the U.N. Foundation and Vodafone Group Foundation. She served as Executive Director of NTEN: The Nonprofit Technology Network. Previously she was the program officer at the Proteus Fund, focusing on the use of technology in civic and democratic participation and government transparency
She is the editor of a forthcoming book on IT leadership in organizations, published by Wiley & Sons, and author of a chapter in Mobilizing 2.0, a book focused on engaging young people in public life. www.mobileactive.org
Christoph Sydow