I was invited to contribute to a new blog associated with a UN-affiliated meeting on "Our Common Humanity" taking place from November 28-29 in New York. I decided to do a general "best practices" post pointing to innovative uses of ICTs to promote positive social change, including some of my favorites like WITNESS, Global Voices Online and Food Force. The purpose of the forum is:
To gather top-level speakers, including Nobel laureates
and some of the leading thinkers and innovators of our time. They will
focus on the values that unite our common humanity and how these values
may be expressed globally through the Millennium Development Goals, empowered by the new and rapidly developing information and communication technologies.
Sounds a bit vague to me. But if it can get some of the more innovative actors together with major UN and governmental players, it might serve a useful networking and scaling up function. I would love to see Wil Wright and Philip Rosendale chatting with Kofi about the power of games and virtual environments to change people and their perceptions.
I would also _love_ “to see Wil Wright and Philip Rosendale chatting with Kofi about the power of games and virtual environments”…Something to definitely think about for the next UN ICT-related event. 😉
btw – I agree that the blurb is a bit vague, and I think that it’s because while some of the partners involved understand the impact of ICTs, they don’t yet fully comprehend the potential. Visuals and a “demo” are sometimes needed.
That said, we’ll also be holding a simultaneous virtual forum in teen Second Life and will also be hosting a webcast and public chatroom. We’re hoping that this experiment will present the potential of real/virtual world events so that it becomes not only a part of the UN event infrastructure but an expanded way of thinking about bringing together community.
~Josephine Dorado
on behalf of the Fulbright Alumni Association and the Committee for the UN forum on “Our Common Humanity in the Information Age”
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