http://www.andycarvin.com/podcasts/0503241812.mp3
There are 3000 delegates from around the world holding a mock United Nations meeting here, including 500 of them involved in a mock World Summit on the Information Society. It's quite disturbing, in an amazing way, how it reminds me of the real thing. I got to address the delegation this afternoon, including a 40-minute speech and then 25 - count 'em - 25 questions from the audience. They were most well informed bunch I've met so far in all the meetings I've had about WSIS, and they asked tough, diverse questions ranging from the fight over free and open source vs. proprietary software in developing nations, the connection between bridging the digital divide and reforming the World Bank and IMF, the effects of media cross-ownership on content diversity... I could go on and on but I'm too exhausted thinking about it. :-)
I spent a lot of time also talking about ways they can get involved in the WSIS youth caucus, other working groups, and using Meetups and blogging as tools to promote WSIS. (When I asked the group how many of them blogged, somewhere between 75 and 100 students raised their hands.) Even if only one percent of those in attendence get involved in WSIS because of this experience, I'll be absolutely thrilled. But from the conversations I had afterwards, I have a feeling a lot more than that will get involved.
I recorded my speech as well; I'll post that online a little later if I can get the bandwidth here to cooperate.... -andy
-- ----------------------------------- Andy Carvin Program Director EDC Center for Media & Community acarvin @ edc . org http://www.digitaldivide.net http://www.tsunami-info.org Blog: http://www.andycarvin.com ----------------------------------- _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
