This one is rather a late one, as I have already seen @BenjaminEllis, @Yvonne_PLM and @pcmcreative posting materials from it, whereas I spent my days on sleeping for 14 hrs (not done since Dawid was born:P) and recovering after two weeks of commuting to London:( So here is a quick write up of last Thursday’s event. Media Camp London 3 was my second event organised by @audio/ Social Media Mafia and once again I spent the day with very inspiring people.

After morning coffee with @Rubyxxcube (so happy we finally met) and warm up session on networking with @jobucks during which I met two Polish boys from Imre (very switched on when it comes to SEO – promised support on that:)), I listened to Jamie Riddell presenting his session on “Setting up a Business with No Investment and Succeeding”. As I am very interested in the process of setting up new businesses – not for me, but in the processes related to it – I was fortunate to see few issues a new company might face and might have to be prepared for. I think I agree with most points, although I did make it clear that in my opinion there will always be place for many social media agencies – no need to panic, let’s just let them all do a good job:) Benjamin Ellis, whom I was very happy to see again, once again spoke very inspiring thoughts – this time on management of creative people.  After lunch portion of Oxford gossip with @oxcom (thank you for sponsoring:)) and @ianwilliams, I presented my bit of social media ethics focussing on:

1. pointing out how much of our daily decision making is related to ethical questions;

2. encouraging event attendees to join the discussion, as I believe the abstract idea of social media ethics can only be grasped by questioning our values, freedoms and behaviours.

I am very happy to see that 40 min I left for discussion seemed not to be enough, and I hope at least one person went home with this concept! For the life streaming recording made by @pcmcreative (which I am extremely grateful for!!!) I will send you to her Qik account here.
After this one, I joined @pcmcreative‘s session on Amb:IT:ion project. I must say I am very impressed with the project and I really hope I can get involved in it more – at least on the networking level! If you are social media savvy and would like to support art communities, joining their network is a must, so do it now!:) (and me in the meantime I will try to get hold of the slides;) This filled me up with ideas enough to have a chat with @oxcom on the way back to Oxford.

Here are the photos for the event!

Thank you very much to Chris Hambly for organising and to all the sponsors for making it possible!:)

I really hope to see another one, and all of you there:) Come over and share your ideas!

Global Voices community is celebrating its 5th year and I really cannot describe how much it means to me… I think I managed to describe quite well the feeling of community Global Voices is when I got back from Cairo – maybe because while sitting on the plane I had time to think it over, I was inspired by people I just met and I had plenty of time to put it down on paper.

It’s December, it’s almost Christmas time here, in the UK and I am spending my time off work meditating last year in preparations for new one, which will bring new commitments and a rather conscious shift in my career, as well as private life. I am spending my evenings with family, sipping hot tea, glancing at cold winter nights through the windows of my little flat all the time thinking: what has changed me so much!

No matter how hard I try to deny it, all my recent small, but crucial successes resulted from the shift in my perception of reality and my own self, and the majority of those positive changes come from working for and with Global Voices.  You see we all have jobs, and if we are lucky our jobs not only provide us with means to live but also with satisfaction and development of our skills. Sometimes we tend to think that our free time should be committed to less serious actions, but I belong to those, who prefer to invest in their free time to learn more and to contribute to the communities. Hence why Global Voices has been a great learning curve for me – maybe not as such in writing or social media, but in values and in networking with people who share those values. By working together for no money at all, we build a community of dedicated, self-motivated individuals. None of us expects magic, however now and then something nice happens: one of us has a baby, gets married, travels to our part of the world and we get to meet! We share those moments and I am sure that others will agree: we cherish them as great memories! For me personally, all GV meet ups this year (Cairo, Amsterdam, London, Oxford, Skopje) reinforced in my pursuit of happiness. It’s exactly what I wrote: the inner need to achieve happier life, find my place in the world, with the type of people I respect and learn from – every single day!

Some of this year’s stories grabbed my attention and stayed at the back of my head: Gaza and Iranian election were great stories to see from a completely different angle – not only from the online coverage but also from discussions and great support of the team on the mailing list. Recent Climate Change conference in Copenhagen took up the majority of my attention in the fourth quarter of the year, as I strongly feel about this issue myself, and I am glad GVers were present there. Violence against women remains an issue I feel strongly about, not only due to my own experiences but simply because of the scale of the problem globally and in the UK. There is more work to come. There will be more intense, interesting, in depth reports on all current issues but also interesting articles about parts of the world I am not familiar with, and maybe do not hear about in the mainstream media. I am sure Global Voices will open my eyes to many more challenges, but for now, I am trying to think back and measure how it affected my own life so far. And I must admit that one thing, something entirely unexpected has happened: it changed the way I see myself today! I clarified many questions about my own life and pushed me to act and improve the way I live.

You see, I am a geek, but I do have few very traditional habits – like writing a journal. I have also two notebooks: one dedicated to writing down all my ideas – regardless of the fact, that some of those might be crazy and unrealistic, another one is my dream book where I put dates against things I want to do in my life – at least once;)) This year many of my ideas and one of the main dreams (my childhood dream actually!) became reality! I am not sure if I would be able to achieve it all without the inspiration of voices from Global Voices team. One of my dreams for next year is for this project to grow in number and strength of the voice! And me, with my little life in full bloom of its renaissance, I hope I can contribute to the fulfilment of this dream myself;)

Hugs to all GVers on our 5th Birthday!

(btw, here and here you can find out what other GVers think of this anniversary;))

Oh, how many times have I asked myself this question in recent months! And today @ernestopriego asked me during lunch – how come I post so much! Well, funnily enough, I am still convinced I do not post enough. Even though my friends tell me off for being too hard on myself, I remain stubborn that I should be doing more. I think I could do more, but I need time off – of the web, off work, off creation – simply time to sit down, enjoy the music and the lovely view from my living room on the garden and wandering clouds. There is nothing more beautiful than watching the sunset from my sofa with a little boy cuddled in my arms, cheek to cheek! Only then can I go back to the great, common, more and more open minded and supportive on-line community and read another good piece of modern philosophy! (Click through and download the free copy of e-book published by Seth Godin and his friends.) It’s time for real-time – as Le Web proves it – and it’s time to make things happen, so stay inspiring!

 The reason why I travelled to Skopje was a very kind invitation from GVers – @ieli and @razvigor (working on a daily basis for Metamorphosis Foundation) to I Media conference dedicated to discussion around the state of traditional and new media in Macedonia. The first day was based on panel discussions, whereas second gave all attendees a chance to actually discuss the state, challenges and future of media in the region. To cut the story short I will only share my own observations and learnings, as you can find the rest on their site here. I do apologise if I am wrong at any point – do correct me. I only had one day to come to those initial conclusions.

First of all, I am honoured that I witnessed the times when Macedonian media is just on the verge of a social media revolution in a unique way: opening itself to the global arena, sharing regional developments and passion for spoken/written word. I saw a country where old media sees the revolution coming, is weary of full usage of the new tools as – sadly for some – they will advocate freedom of speech. I do not think that (mentioned by a local worker of press industry) manipulated photos posted in newspapers will be accepted without comments for long. I do not think ladies like @Arheoblog will need to face potential difficulties with their brave initiatives to disclose unlawful behaviours, this without a network of strong, supportive voices from her community and from outside of it. I do not think global, English speaking social media will appear distant and slightly patronising for long. As soon as the regional voices, organisations, NGO’s and other initiatives enter the space with a strong commitment to making a change – and realise the true power of social media -we will all see the big shift some are so scared off, and others impatiently await.

From the discussions during the conference my first impression was that the is a strong feeling of passiveness – for instance, why would a young generation of users expect Wikipedia to come up with ideas on how to improve the content of the site it this particular project is based on open, public contributions and almost per definition is there to take ownership of it?
I felt it was crucial to remind everyone the main characteristics of social media there and then, and luckily I had a second during the open discussion on the second day of the event:

• • Social media is open and transparent – there is no space for pretending to be who you are not.

• • Social media requires you to be genuine, thus gives you the power to use or misuse the potential of building trusted voices and brands – you can easily, for a free show the local and global community who you are, what you do, what are the things you are passionate about and what are our opinions. As NGO you have a great potential to introduce your work, and if you link it to activities for your cause you can promote the transparency of your spendings. You can join the discussion, you can listen to the needs or your target audience and establish a dialogue with your audiences.

• • Social media is social – you build personal, hopefully, long term relationships with people representing themselves, but also organisations and brands, so you can use it for networking, informing, searching information, or co-operation.

• • Social media is about contributing and sharing – you need to put a side the financial motivation here because this community is built on social capital; you are almost expected to share openly and to contribute meaningfully to the discussion. Take a test: take 10 bits of information you own and put it on paper – look at the list and decide which one can you give away easily? Which one would be the second? Can you give away the 5th one without any expectations to gain smth back? Can you give away the 10th, the most unique and valuable idea of yours? Why not? Yes? Why would you do it? Why would you not mind to do it? Why would you loose on sharing it? Once you get used to the idea of giving away the 10th idea you are just about there to join this community;) You will also be expected to cooperate – to comment on others blogs with valuable opinions, to add content and to commit your skills to projects where those can be needed. Why? Because if you do so, you will become a respected personality and trusted voice – and when it is you who needs help, you can count on the rest of us!

• • Social media is free but might need a financial injection – when it comes to NGO’s in social media, I totally understand that we are tempted to think of grants and donations, however vast amount of social media branding, communication and cooperation can be done for free. Actually, if you use free tools, those tend to be used by large communities and are enhanced with more and more networking options. This should b enough for a start. Once you have your on-line presence and community you can use it for projects which do involve financial investment to enhance your brand and activities (events, self-hosted platforms or simply fees for maintaining your presences). But when you’re at this stage you should have a clear idea of how much money you need because you are using the tools already and know which bit of your project needs further development so it should be easier to put a proposal together and pitch for money as well as predict results, measure risks.

• • Social media is not a monster – I am preaching about social media because yes, I do believe it’s extremely powerful world with very appealing mechanisms and so far the most supportive, creativity and achievement focussed communities I have seen. But please do not forget there is always a human being at the end of the line. It

So learn to listen, talk, share, contribute and co-operate. Join global arena (not because it’s better, but because it is there to listen and contribute to your great ideas too!). Do it openly. Be brave in your honesty and goals. And do not forget: social media is tools to empower us, at the end of the day it’s always about people – incorporate this virtual reality into your everyday life and use both wisely.

I really trust the ambitious bloggers from Macedonia are gradually heading towards those realisations and with their initiatives will change the face of local traditional media and support their NGO’s in their wonderful work. Mind me – some of the local bloggers are now aware of the fact IT IS ALREADY HAPPENING THERE;)

Thank you for the invitation!

Update: here is an article on the conference from Macedonian press (here in Macedonian).

It’s been more than a week since Oxford Twestival and I am finally able to sit down and think about it. It’s been a huge success. We have raised £1570 for Oxfam’s Mali sanitation project, which I will hopefully be able to send over to them soon (I am still waiting for few payments). For me personally, if you remember my pre-event statements, it has been a great pleasure to have the main parts of my life in one place – charity/activism, social media and art.
Catweazle artists have been amazing – not only from the point of you of their performances but also simply for the fact that they arranged their equipment, helped with the programme and with every little bit that needed doing (even putting up the posters!). And even though I was running around like a headless chicken ensuring all the bits are working fine, I managed to hear all the performances, and watch them afterwards. It’s great to have geeks around too, you get to see it all documented online:)
So the social media bit was there too. We had bloggers from Nokia tour, who arrived in Oxford after visiting few other Twestivals. We had bloggers from Oxford Flickr group who offered help with taking photos. We had organisers fighting the local wifi to get the message out to the blog. We had Matt helping out with the Twitter wall. We had Ben Walker sending us a video message since he could not attend.
The charity was present in rather a sublime way. One of the artists, Ellen, works for Oxfam – she wrote a wonderful poem for the event related to water, which we hope to publish on the event blog soon. Assets from Oxfam helped us to give our guest a hint that the event is for the cause. We did not want to push it too much, but I am very happy to say that everyone did a great job in donating, talking about the cause, supporting it by buying auction items and raffle tickets.
Other organisers: Amanda, Camilla, Ben, Ernie and Marcus did a great job in sharing the responsibilities and I really felt that it was a team effort – and it’s really a pleasure to be a part of a team like this one!:)
For me, it was a busy night, but a part of me – the deepest, the closest to my passions was very, very happy. And I hope others went home happy too:)

I would like to thank everyone involved once again… I cannot wait to see our page in the Twestival book. It will be a lovely keepsake! Just as my #oxtwestival T-shirt:)

(pic by @benwerd)

..is a great event, something I strongly believe in regardless of criticism. The second Oxford Twestival is happening tomorrow thanks to support of @amandafclark, @benwerd, @mapkyca, @ernmander and @girlterate; great Oxford artists and brilliant sponsors! It will be an awesome party, one of a kind – documented on-line but also in form of a book (ok, one page, since there is another 149 cities celebrating;)). So if you want to see us there tomorrow, support Oxfam in their efforts in Mali, get a present, network and have fun – get a ticket now!

I had a great conversation with @jerichotraining about where we are with social media today. One of the points – how we both think the online presence is only an extension of our daily life, once which is potentially a fruitful source of business connections, new friends and interesting events but always only a tool, not means. I also had a talk with DonorBaby who always is honest with me and I love her for that. Here is a serious side of the story: according to @Mashable US has now its own rehab centre for Internet Addiction – more info on the programme called reSTART on their site.