Today was the launch of Green.tv, the first "broadband TV channel" on environmental issues. Sponsored by the UN Environment Programme and a host of other sponsors, the site will carry films from around the world produced by non-governmental organizations (NGOs), community filmmakers, public sector bodies and companies with a firm interest in protecting the environment….
Category: Information Society
Freedom to Connect Conf in DC April 3-4
Just found out about the "Freedom to Connect" or F2C conference happening from April 3-4 in DC. Sounds like it will be an important gathering of policy-makers, experts and activists on internet public policy. The goal of F2C:Freedom to Connect is to bring a wide range of thought leaders to Washington, DC to share experience,…
Learning about grassroots media activism
I’m at a media reform activist event at the New America Foundation in Washington DC. This series of panels is sponsored by the Media and Democracy coalition, which is being facilitated by Consumer’s Union. The first panel this afternoon is on “Telecommunications and Media Around the World.” The star-studded array of panelists included Jonathan Lawson…
Network-centric views on policy change
I attended an interesting briefing at the Ford Foundation yesterday that featured a couple of researchers who take a network / systems perspective to advocacy and policy change. The first was Richard Rogers, who teaches New Media at the University of Amsterdam. Richard spoke about "issue networks," which he defined as a set of actors…
UNESCO launches online consultation on WSIS implementation
UNESCO has just launched an online space for various actors to post recommendations and proposals on how to implement the various action lines of the WSIS Plan of Action. Basically it’s a discussion board, which I suppose I should be excited about. What’s interesting is see what areas of the WSIS agenda UNESCO sees itself…
APC: the Unsung Hero of the WSIS
I just finished reading a "reflection" report of the Association for Progressive Communications on the World Summit on the Information Society. It’s a nice flyover of the main issues faced by civil society and how APC navigated through a difficult international policy space. Entitled "Pushing and Prodding, Goading and Hand-holding," the report issued last month…
Kofi releases new UN management reform report
The United Nations reports that Secretary-General Kofi Annan presented to Member States his proposals for a fundamental overhaul of the United Nations Secretariat called “Investing in the UN”. He states that the organization’s rules, systems and culture need significant retooling and investment if the UN is to fulfill growing expectations and demands placed on it…
Trouble in River City: Ma Bell is Back
Reuters reports that AT&T plans on acquiring BellSouth of Atlanta, one of its only rivals in the long-distance telephone and DSL business. At a price of $67 billion, AT&T will have “residential customers stretching from Florida to California and business customers comprising more than half of the Fortune 1000.” This is an alarming trend for…
New Design for $100 Laptop?
I was getting pretty attached to the mean green machine (left image) I thought was the approved designed for MIT’s “One Laptop Per Child” initiative. But Gizmologia shows a couple of other winning concept designs (right) that look quite different from the green model debuted at the WSIS by Nicholas Negroponte. Most notable is the…
1,600 Tunisian dissidents released from jail, groups call for others to be freed
Sounds like there are some rays of hope in Tunisia, as well as need for further reforms as more than 1,600 prisoners of conscience were released from prison recently, while others remain incarcerated. The US Government, Amnesty International, and Tunisian Monitoring Group of the International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX) welcomed the release of the…