Sarajevo –- A POINT To Be Made.
This post has been authored by Anna Kuliberda, the NetSquared community team member. It is one of the community driven posts that Alicja and Anna are collaborating on.
Last week I participated in the POINT Conference (Political Accountability and New Technologies) in Sarajevo, Bosnia. POINT was a regional event open for everybody interested in using the Internet and mobile phones for public transparency and civic engagement.
During the 3 days of a very tight program, I had an opportunity to learn about the great things happening in Western Balkans as well as to meet people and organizations interested in what happens when social change, new technologies and civil society meet. I was a presenter at the conference, and I introduced Fundacja Techsoup as well as the NetSquared model for social innovation. Together with the audience we have discussed opportunities lying in connecting business, civil society and geeks, so that they can form one socially oriented and innovative community. Our conclusion was that it is very possible that civil society as well as the geeks, really need this common safe space to communicate and to cultivate social innovation. (BTW: if you want to kickstart such a space -- a Net2 local event -- in your city, please let us know!)
The meeting was especially interesting because the organizers had plan enough time for networking and fun socialization. It was done to enable deeper exchange between the participants of the conference. I really enjoyed it!
I’ve seen a lot of interesting project, but the most interesting were discussions after each of the presentation/panel - they allowed a foreigner like me to understand the situation in the societies of Western Balkans and Albania. Regional and local civil society organizations take advantage of all possible benefits of new technologies. You can find open data projects, websites about promises of the politicians as well as modern Freedom of Information requests sites there – all what is globally popular. What is more, organizations like Dokukino and MJAFT! are running an amazing non-violent actions to achieve social goals.
II would like to say big thank you to the organizers as well as to the participants of the conference. These three days were amazing. If you want to see how it went – please read the Twitter stream of #PointSarajevo and visit the website of the conference.
