Technology plays an important role in journalism. It enables us to witness, hear and live worldwide events between countries without being there, or putting our lives at risk. As recent events in this region have shown us, journalists play a crucial role in society. They are the impartial witnesses to war, up-risings, corruption and disasters. Without that impartial record of events a great many travesties would go unrecorded and unresolved.

The International Conference for The Protection of Journalists in Dangerous Situations took place in Doha on January 22. It was held in the Ritz-Carlton Hotel and was organized by the National Commission for Human Rights under the patronage of H.E. Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al-Thani, the Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs.

It is thought that as many as 550 journalists have been killed in the past five years whilst reporting from dangerous situations. That translates to roughly two journalists killed per week.  Two-thirds died in areas where there are armed conflicts or political violence, the other third were killed due to criminal activities by gangs and drug dealers.

At the event several real-life cases were presented explaining the dangers journalists faced and exploring the kinds of protection they should be afforded according to International Humanitarian law. There were many inspirational ideas; chief among them was the hotline for the International Red Cross. The hotline creates a connection between the journalists and their families as well as government institutions, enabling them to stay informed about journalists’ current locations and condition. Not only that, but it also helps in reporting news of the wounded, tracing missing people and transferring bodies should the worst have happened.

The conference also included several workshops on issues such as developing an international treaty for the protection of journalists and providing a formal channel through which investigations can be carried out. Several recommendations were made, including:

• For Governments: Agree that families of murdered journalists have the right to receive compensation either directly or through media institutions as well as the establishment of a fund for the victims.
• For News Organizations: Increase awareness of the conventions as well as legal and regional legislation
• For Journalists: Develop a culture that upholds responsibility for the safety of oneself and seek to train all journalists who travel to areas of conflict.

Journalists who stand between truth and danger saw much hope at the conference, therefore, the hope is that these recommendations won’t be merely ink on paper, but become a reality so that they gain international protection and legal immunity to safeguard their life and their dignity.

Everything’s changed. And privacy will keep changing just as the way we access and use data is. ictQATAR recently held its latest “Connected Speakers” event, which featured Jules Polonetsky, Director and Chair of the Future of Privacy Forum. Jules spoke to ictQATAR about how social media, mobile and online advertising are changing the future of privacy.

Check out this video interview to know more about what tomorrow’s privacy will be like:

Creative Commons Qatar and ictQATAR brought Liam to Doha this week to meet with numerous institutions in Qatar to explore how they could work to help grow a vibrant Wikipedia community in Qatar and the Arab world, openly share content and contribute to knowledge available in the public domain. Much of the valuable content created here has value well beyond our borders, and if shared through Wikipedia, can greatly add to the world’s collective knowledge. The Wikimedia Foundation is planning to invest significant resources in the MENA region, so Qatar has a great opportunity to take a lead in increasing shared knowledge from the region. Here’s a quick recap of some of the meetings.

Qatar Museum Authority – Liam spoke to Qatar’s museum community, including people from the Museum of Islamic Art, the Qatar National Museum and Mathaf. In his presentation he said that Wikipedia is a way to bridge cultural divides and encouraged QMA to find ways to contribute to the Wikipedia community. He stressed that QMA, by sharing some of its valuable content, whether digital images, artist profiles, or expert knowledge on artifacts, the museums could establish themselves as leading voices in their areas of expertise and share they collections far beyond their museum walls.

Liam Wyatt talking GLAM (by CC Qatar)

Liam challenged the museums in Qatar to make more contently freely available, and to make “free” the default policy. He shared tangible examples of ways other museums had participated in the Wikipedia community and highlighted efforts he led during his time as a Wikipedian in Residence at the British Museum. Museums here seemed enthused about the ideas and discussions are under way to develop some concrete projects here.

Al Jazeera – An early adopter of Creative Commons, it’s no surprise that Al Jazeera was extremely receptive to being a more active part of the Wikipedia community. Al Jazeera’s rich multi-visual resources would be invaluable to Wikipedians if they are shared in a way that can be used freely. Already, still shots from Al Jazeera footage is used on Wikipedia, however images from their Flickr account couldn’t be used because of their licensing. Right after our meeting, Al Jazeera changed the license on their Flickr photos to CC’s Attribution-Share alike license, making them usable by Wikipedians and they are already populating Wikipedia.. Also, Al Jazeera is exploring ways to make it easier to use their content as sources for articles and also considering offering video footage in an open source format so it can also be used on Wikipedia. Great potential!

ictQATAR – Yes, I made sure Liam met with my organization too. Liam specifically met with our teams leading digitization programs and business incubation efforts. As a result of the meeting, ictQATAR will work to ensure that any work cultural works digitized through ictQATAR are shared in a way that can be used by Wikipedians so it reaches a broader audience, and also ictQATAR will look at more “open” business models for a variety of incubation services.

Let’s Tweet in Arabic (Taghreedat)– You can’t help but be impressed by the work of Taghreedat. What started as a small group that wanted to Tweet more in Arabic has grown into an active community of more than 15,000 people on Twitter that are discussing a wide range of topics regularly and even working to develop the Twitter Arabic interface. Liam met with numerous Taghreedat members and shared a variety of ways they could be engaged in the Wikipedia community, including enhancing the Wikipedia Arabic interface and becoming active Wikipedia contributors/editors. I am expecting some exciting Taghreedat/Wikipedia collaboration soon!

Members of the Taghreedat community discuss Wikipedia (by CC Qatar)

Education City – The librarians at Virginia Commonwealth University Qatar and Northwestern University Qatar organized a public presentation on Wikimedia for the Education City community. Liam shared a range of ways educators, librarians and students could become more active contributors to the Wikimedia community, including as editors, translators and by sharing original works in the Wikicommons or Wikisource. He showed examples of schools that have incorporated Wikipedia editing into the curriculum and also highlighted some innovative libraries sharing more of their collections in ways that are usable by Wikipedians.

Clearly, there were a lot of positive meetings and discussions! I’m hopeful we’ll see some excellent Wikipedia/Wikimedia oriented initiatives coming from Qatar soon, in addition to the formal partnership of Qatar Foundation with the Wikimedia Foundation. I look forward to working with the various organizations as part of CC Qatar to share more knowledge from Qatar freely!

This post originally appeared on the Creative Commons Qatar website. 

A bit scary, right? This comes directly from the website of the Future of Privacy Forum, which is a Washington, DC-based think tank that seeks to advance responsible data practices in the digital age. Jules Polonetsky, the Director and Co-Chair of the Future of Privacy Forum will be in Doha on Monday, November 28 as part of ictQATAR’s Connected Speakers Series. (Register here) Jules, a former Chief Privacy Officer at AOL, is one of the leading experts on privacy in the world, and his current focus areas are online data use, smart grid, mobile data, apps and social media.

I spoke with Jules a few weeks ago as he was preparing for his talk and was truly astounded by the sheer amount of data that is out there about each and every one of us, and just how little regulation there is about how this data is used. The fact is, each of us willingly shares more and more data each day, whether it is through our favorite websites, a mobile application or via various social media networks. The Internet has certainly made sharing easier and more of the norm, so it’s likely we will continue to share more about ourselves online. The question then is, how can we be sure this data is used responsibly and that we are protected from serious risks? Clearly there are tons of innovative uses of this data, but what is the line between innovation and privacy? I’ll leave that to Jules to answer during his talk!

For anyone that is interested in learning more about the future of privacy, particularly online privacy, I highly recommend checking out the resources on Future of Privacy Forum website, and of course, don’t miss Jules’ talk on Monday, November 28 at 6:30 p.m. at the Sharq. To register, visit the event’s Eventbrite page. Also, feel free to submit any questions via comments and I’ll share them with Jules before his talk. Hope to see you there!

To address this major gap, my friends at the Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI) established a partnership with the Wikimedia Foundation with an ambitious first year goal of adding 50,000 new articles in Arabic to Wikipedia. QCRI held a forum with the Wikipedia Foundation this past weekend (which sadly I missed) that brought together a smart mix including a number of students, educators, computing experts and business leaders, all with the shared goal of growing the amount of Arabic content in Wikipedia.

In an article in the Gulf Times, QCRI Executive Director Dr. Ahmed Elmagaramid said “We need to make it easier for Arab contributors to contribute to Arabic Wikipedia and improve the experience for users of the content. We see an opportunity to be a leader in Arabic language technologies, but not just in researching technologies and developing computing solutions, but making what we do relevant to the average person.” The article also states that a number of initiatives are being developed to grow the Arabic content in Wikipedia, including the development of incentives and authoring tools, incorporating Wikipedia into curriculum and the creation of new Arabic translation tools.

All this sounds great and I’m excited to see how the QCRI and Wikimedia Foundation partnership works, and will certainly be in touch to see if there is anyway ictQATAR or Creative Commons Qatar could be involved. Still, in my opinion, I believe the most important part of this partnership should be in grooming true Arab Wikipedians – people that are passionate about sharing and contributing their insight to the broader community. Wikipedia is amazing because of the diversity of people around the world that passionately edit, revise and manage it each day. The quality is phenomenal because people care and want to share the knowledge. The majority of these people are simply volunteers and often contribute to Wikipedia in their spare time – it’s not a paid job and they don’t generally have any extrinsic benefits. For some reason, the Arabic speaking world has clearly not embraced the intrinsic value of contributing to the world’s encyclopedia.

The initiative to incorporate Wikipedia into classrooms in Qatar and around the Arab world hold the most promise. Having classes learn how to contribute and seeing their work published can go a long way to building that passion for sharing. Hopefully the program plans to work with students in both primary and secondary schools, as well as the many excellent universities here. It will be important to teach the culture of sharing and collaboration, not just forcing contribution in classes. I am hopeful QCRI and Wikimedia will work to tap into existing communities that are passionate about Arabic content and the Arabic language, such as the team that developed the successful “Lets tweet in Arabic” Twitter campaign, which has now grown into a partnership with Twitter.

Language is such a valuable part of one’s identity, and the Internet is increasingly the place where the world connects with other cultures. There is no doubt Wikipedia is one of the most important resources on the Internet today, so the Arab world should do everything it can to make sure it is represented more completely on this platform or it risks having its voice not fully heard. Bravo to QCRI for this partnership and I hope it is a resounding success!

Of the many issues covered over the three-day summit, perhaps the most interesting was the plans for version 4.0 of the Creative Commons License suite. Like any tool in the digital age, there is always a need to update and innovate to address the emerging digital trends and issues. Version 4.0 would in many ways simplify the Creative Commons licenses to make them more user-friendly, while tackling copyrights issues in a more global way.

Perhaps the biggest change being explored is the development of a global CC license, which would replace the “unported” licenses and also, in theory, end the need for license porting to specific jurisdictions. In Qatar, we are working on porting the CC licenses to Qatari law, but are currently using the unported version, which has proven to be quite effective. In my opinion, a solid global license would give even more confidence to our local creatives. I can also see the benefits of not having 50+ ported versions of the license, especially when we think of the Internet as a global resource that doesn’t respect boundaries. At the same time, not porting (or aligning) licenses to local laws may leave some people nervous about whether the licenses would stand up in a court of law if their rights were infringed (although let’s be honest, how many cases end up in court?). Nothing has been decided on Version 4.0 yet, but expect to hear about some interesting developments over the coming year.

CC Arab World affiliates meeting at the CC Global Summit (by Bilal Randeree)

As the CC Qatar public lead, was happy to represent CC Qatar on two panels at the summit. The first focused on how galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAM) can use CC, and I showcased the ways the Qatar Museum Authority, including the Museum of Islamic Art, Mathaf and the Qatar National Museum, are exploring using CC licenses to share their collections and resources. The others panelists shared some really creative efforts, including a showcase from Japan where visitors were encouraged to take photos of the art in the museum and share the photos under a CC license, and a Wiki Loves Art project that took place in the Netherlands. I am planning to share these ideas and more with the museums here.

The second panel I took part in focused on how to build an affiliate team. CC Qatar is hosted by ictQATAR, but has an active group of volunteers and activists, including a strong legal lead, that are truly propelling its progress over a short period. I highlighted the benefits of having a government organization as the affiliate sponsor, including funding, credibility and access, but also discussed some challenges, such as politics and sustainability. I’ll be posting both presentations on SlideShare soon.

You can see many of the presentations given at the CC Global Summit on SildeShare, and for a great  photos from the Summit, check out the CC Flickr Group. Hopefully there will be some more presentations, photos and videos to come. I’d be thrilled if the keynote from CC founder Larry Lessig is posted – trust me, you will want to watch it!

A special thanks to our wonderful hosts in Warsaw – you made everyone feel welcome and were key to making the Summit a huge success.

It's time for Arabic hashtags!

If you are an Arabic speaker and on Twitter, you’ve probably come across the increasing demands from the Arabic-speaking community in Qatar and the Arab world for Twitter to start supporting Arabic hashtags.

With the #letstweetinarabic movement going strong in Qatar and spreading in other Arab countries, Twitter is increasingly becoming a hub for quality Arabic e-content. But users in the Arab world are want more from Twitter than just their great platform – they want to be able to index their content in their own language through Arabic hashtags that match the Arabic e-content that they’re creating there.

We want more than just a hashtag though. We also want Twitter’s support of an Arabic interface that allows users to have Arabic usernames, index content via Arabic hashtags and have their profile settings and site-wide instructions in the Arabic language. This is a move that other social networking websites, most notably Facebook, have already taken in recognition of the great numbers of users from the Arab world.

But for now let’s focus on the hastags and why having Arabic hashtags is important– and  yes we did have to use the English #letstweetinarabic for our Arabic campaign!

Here are ten reasons why I think Twitter needs to support Arabic hashtags:

1. Arabic Content Indexing: It’s simple – the main function of Twitter hashtags is that they help organize Twitter streams and index content just like a funnel in which a variety of content goes through or a book with millions of pages that needs an index to help readers recognize the various topics rather than browsing millions of pages. With over 22 million tweets generated by users from the Arab word during the first quarter of 2011 (as per the Dubai School of Governance Twitter Report), it is evident that content indexing in Arabic is quite needed at the moment.
2. Increase Opportunities for Arabic Speakers’ Usage of Twitter: Recent figures say the estimated figure of the active Twitter users in the Arab world is around 1.15 million (out of an estimated Arabic Twitter population of over 6 million). Not all of these users are equally proficient in English & Arabic and the latter remains their native language. An Arabic Twitter interface, and subsequently, an Arabic Twitter hashtag means wider access for those who either can only read and write Arabic or actually prefer to express their thoughts and tweet in Arabic.
3. Increase Quantity of Arabic e-Content on Twitter: The current tweeting rate in the Arab world is around 252,000 tweets a day which means 175 tweets a minute or 3 tweets per second. Arabic hashtags will motivate users to post more tweets, knowing that they can easily index them in Arabic.
4. Widening the Reach of Arabic e-content posted on Twitter: Hashtags facilitate re-tweeting, improves content visibility and increases the probability of people seeing the indexed content and acting upon it. Having this for Arabic e-content will certainly increase the amount of Arabic tweets hence the percentage of Arabic e-content posted on Twitter as a platform.
5. Improving the Interactivity of Arabic e-Content Posted on Twitter: we all know that Twitter isn’t just about posting tweets – that’s just a small part of it. If you are familiar with Klout scores, you probably know that your Klout score will not go up unless your followers act upon your content. Since hashtags allow for more content visibility, this opens more conversation streams around the indexed topic and with Arabic hashtags, and more conversations can easily arise among Arabic speakers.
6. Better Usability, Easier Search: For Arabic speakers, searching for Arabic themes or topics using English hashtags can be a daunting process due to a major linguistic difference between Arabic and English. Due to the absence of Arabic language support in various social sites and apps, Arabic users have turned to an “English-Arabic” style whereby they write Arabic words using English language characters(Latin characters) to compensate for the lack of Arabic support. Arabic hashtags will guarantee better usability in that regard, as users will no longer have to express meanings using dispersed, multiple ways in English. For example, to hashtag a topic for العربية, there are over 5 or 6 ways an English hashtag can be written (#3arabeya, #3arabiya, #3arabeyah, arabeyah..etc). Like Internationalized Internet Domains, Arabic hashtags will unify this process and have users no longer guessing how to index using Latin characters.
7. More Trending Opportunities, Better Visibility: We all check daily for the top trending topics on Twitter and they are all (or mostly) top trending hashtags. With Arabic hashtags being activated and supported on Twitter, this increases chances that they could make it to the top trending topics as long as there are sufficient conversations around them. This allows not just for better visibility for Arabic e-content, but also grows global conversations around those topics for all Arabic speaking people around the world who, yes, are not just located in the Middle East.
8. Equal Importance Assigned to Arabic: Twitter now supports Latin languages (French, English, Italian..etc), Russian, Korean, Chinese and most recently Japanese. With all these languages supported, Arabic hashtags will be a move that gives equal importance to the Arabic language.
9. Matching Rising Twitter Usage Figures in the Arab World: Like any product, it’s all about supply & demand. Demand for Twitter in the Arab world is definitely growing, especially since the beginning of 2011. In a country like Qatar, Twitter usage is booming to an extent that Qatar is now the top Arab country in terms of Twitter penetration (an assessment of active Twitter users divided by total population figures – a percentage that has become close to 8% by Q1 2011). More demand means higher need for supply – whether in terms of technical support or wider support for other languages such as Arabic.
10. Encouraging the Usage of Arabic Characters: as mentioned in point 6, Arabic hashtags means less dependence of Arab users on Latin-characters equivalents to index Arabic words as topics. More usage of Arabic characters as عربي instead of 3arabi for instance does enhance Arabic e-content in a way and provides less confusion when it comes to content indexing in Arabic.

Let’s start asking Twitter to support hashtags at this link!

ictQATAR’s ICT Skills Development Manager Reem Al-Mansoori encourages youth in Qatar to take part in the upcoming World Summit Youth Awards in this guest post.

Social media, blogs, vlogs, mobile applications and websites. We’re using them all day, every day in Qatar. Are you interested in using these digital platforms to make a difference in the world?

If yes, here’s your chance to show how digital content can be used to tackle major world issues such as fighting discrimination, eradicating hunger or protecting the environment.

The World Summit Youth Award (WSYA) is an annual award that brings together young creators of e-content that use the Internet, mobile phones or other digital media advance the United Nations Millennium Development Goals.

If you are currently doing innovative work through digital media to advance the UN Goals and you are under 30, you should consider entering the awards at www.youthaward.org. There are six categories for this year’s awards:

• Fight Poverty, Hunger and Disease
• Education for All
• Power 2 Women
• Create your Culture
• Go Green
• Pursue the Truth

The deadline for registration is July 15^th 2011, so you’ll have to act quickly to submit your new media project.

An international jury comprised of young ICT experts will evaluate the projects and will pick three winners and two runners -up for each category.

If you’re one of the lucky winners of a WSYA, you’ll be invited to the WSYA 2011 Winners’ Event in Skopje, Macedonia. You’ll also get the chance to present your project on a world stage, attend workshops, meet new friends and network with the best of ICT world.

Winners of the 2010 WSYA in New York

This is a great opportunity for young e-content creators in Qatar to showcase their work and gain access the WSYA network. The Youth Award network will you offer the chance to develop your projects, refine your business plan and even find sponsors on an international scale.

For more information about World Summit Awards or to see some examples from last years’ winning projects, visit www.youthaward.org. You can also follow ictQATAR’s TumuhaTEC initiative on Twitter for frequent updates @TumuhaTEC.

Guy Kawasaki at QITCOM

In her address at the opening of QITCOM 2011 ictQATAR’s inaugural Conference and Exhibition, Dr. Hessa Al-Jaber described Guy Kawasaki as “one of the true visionaries of our industry” and said that he is “a clear thinker and an innovator, and I am sure we can all learn from him.” Kawasaki, keynote speaker at QITCOM, went on to enthrall the audience in the  conference hall with insights from his many years of experience in the ICT industry.

His keynote was  a crash course for wannabe entrepreneurs and innovators. If I was asked to sum it all up in one sentence his message was – no matter what, just don’t be discouraged and keep on moving forward. That is also the essence of innovation, the theme for the first day of QITCOM.  Kawasaki shared ten (eleven in fact if you count the “bonus” tip he shared at the end of his keynote) insights that could make or break any innovation. I will talk about a few that I thought really struck a chord.

“Make meaning” – Kawasaki’s first tip – is really a most practical and basic thing when you start something new. If your innovation or idea doesn’t provide a meaningful outcome you can try your best to sell it but no one would notice. The other thing that impressed me was about “jumping to the next curve”.  It is not always about what the idea is about now, but it’s definitely about what it can potentially provide. How can your now be the next big thing? “Don’t be content with doing things 10 or 15 % better,” Kawasaki said, “Think about doing thing 10 times better.”  And when you do the thing 10 times better, do it with a panache, “roll the dice” and have depth in your innovation which equates to having many functionalities; and products “that are smart, complete and elegant”.

He also advised that if you are new to this game of making things, do not wait for the moment when your product is absolutely perfection. Of course that doesn’t mean you start dumping junk products in the market but once you have on hand a product that has some great elements, just ship it out. Once you ship your product out you might face another dilemma – all the marketing research and strategy that you based your target market on might fail.  The people the product is designed for may not buy. They may not use it for what you thought they would. In such a situation, let the market decide what the innovative product can do or what it will be used for. Kawasaki’s advice: take your best shot at making an innovative product, market it the best you can and then just wait and see how people and markets embrace it.

Create a niche for yourself by creating an innovation that provides the highest value to the consumer and has the highest uniqueness. I was wondering what he meant by the “highest uniqueness” when Kawasaki elaborated. Your product is unique if it addresses something missing in the market…something that only you can do and something that the market and the end users find remarkable.

Kawasaki concluded his keynote with this simple tip that he says is really effective is presenting your ideas or products in a really effective manner. This was the 10-20-30 rule for PowerPoint presentations –

• 10: the maximum and most effective number of slides you should have in your presentation
• 20: the maximum and optimum amount of time you should spend in explaining these 10 slides
• 30: the optimum font size for emphasis

And it was his concluding tip that I like very much, especially the “20 minutes” part despite the fact that Kawasaki’s last slide was numbered 61! You can access Kawasaki’s presentation here or watch it below.

I’ll fess up, I’m one of the people involved in planning the event, so I know it will be unlike your standard launch. No ribbon cuttings here. Expect a night filled with amazing music (mixes!) and visual remixing, great food (W Doha!) and some big announcements from local organizations and individuals that are using Creative Commons. To attend, register at the CC Qatar Eventbrite page.

The official invitation to the CC Qatar Launch

After the launch, CC Qatar will start to do the real work of building a vibrant CC community in Qatar. A series of topic specific workshops is being planned, and the first will be held on June 1, 2011 for visual artists (more details coming soon). Planning has also started for workshops on photography, filmmaking, web development and graphic design. Let me know if there is a topic you think would make for a good CC workshop. Beyond workshops, CC Qatar will organize community meet ups, a CC iftar during the holy month of Ramadan and will also be reaching out to more organizations and individuals about how they can benefit from applying Creative Commons to their creative works. A lot of creativity, right?!

For those of you who are still unclear about what Creative Commons is, I recommend watching a video titled “Wanna Work Together?,” which I showed recently at the Doha Tweetup. The video gives a quick overview on CC principles and how CC licenses work. I had some trouble uploading it, so you can watch it on the CC website.

I’m hoping you all want to work together and take advantage of the power of sharing and collaboration. You can follow CC Qatar on Twitter via @ccqatar, and also become a fan on Facebook. Look for the CC Qatar website to be launched in the coming weeks (certainly before the launch event!) that will showcase local work under CC and allow creators to share their works.

Look forward to seeing you all on May 31 and working with you to grow a vibrant CC community here!