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OpenSesame-BarCamp-Lebanon-press

Page history last edited by Joe Abdo 14 years, 5 months ago

 

 

                    
                     OpenSesame BarCamp Lebanon Main Page - Feb. 09 Event - Nov. 09 Event

                OpenSesame BarCamp Lebanon Feb 2009:  Main - Notes - Press - Pictures

 

 


Open Press Release --  MAKE YOUR CONTRIBUTION!

Dear all, this is an effort to have an "open" press release.  Please contribute your quotes, pictures, thoughts, statistics, etc.  Share what you learned, how you benefited, etc!

The related pages:

Main page: 

http://www.barcamp.org/OpenSesame+BarCamp-Lebanon

Session Notes:

http://www.barcamp.org/OpenSesame-BarCamp-Lebanon-notes

 

*** Press Release – For Immediate Release ***

OpenSesame BarCamp-Lebanon

Saturday, February 28, 2009, 10am-4pm

American University of Beirut, Nicely Hall

More info available at: www.barcamp.org/OpenSesame+BarCamp-Lebanon

Media Contacts: 

David Munir Nabti, RootSpace (03-138-770, innovate (at) therootspace (dot) org)

Sami Tueni, Naharnet (03-311-588, sami.tueni (at) naharnet (dot) com)

***    ***    ***

OpenSesame BarCamp-Lebanon Organizers and Sponsors:

Organizers: RootSpace (www.therootspace.org), Naharnet (www.naharnet.com)

Sponsors: Microsoft (www.microsoft.com), VISP (www.visp.net.lb), element^n (www.elementn.com) 

Host: American University of Beirut, Olayan School of Business

Co-Organizers: Creative Commons (www.creativecommons.org), Youth Shadow Government

***    ***    ***

To help promote "openness" in various contexts (social, innovation, politics, business, education, and more), RootSpace and Naharnet joined forces organizing the "OpenSesame BarCamp-Lebanon" in Beirut on February 28, 10am-4pm, at AUB. Over 65 people came despite torrential rains and hale to discuss open source technology initiatives, collaborative problem solving, Creative Commons and intellectual property in Lebanon and the region, tech tools for promoting transparency and good governance, open business models, Arabic on the web and collaborative sites (like Wikipedia, etc), and more.  (More information about the specific sessions available online on the other pages listed above.)

"Openness" provides many benefits in education, society and social development, technology, innovation, government, the business world, civil society, arts and creativity, intellectual development, and much more. 

In addition to participants from Lebanon, participants from Syria, Jordan, Bahrain and Yemen attended this event, the first of its type in the Arab World. “BarCamp” is simply an "open source conference" intended to make gatherings of people much more fun, interesting, and beneficial than a typical conference (look at www.barcamp.org for more information). Prior to the day of the event, the organizers (RootSpace & Naharnet) proposed a theme for the gathering and people suggested session ideas online (anybody can join the website to add information or contribute ideas). On the day of the event, the first activity for everyone in attendance was to collaboratively create the schedule for the rest of the day.

In addition to this dynamic event, RootSpace and Naharnet set up a system for participants to blog and document the latest updates throughout the day, so that people not at the event or in other sessions can all learn from what was happening in each session.

This event is part of RootSpace’s core work of promoting the development of a sustainable knowledge-based economy in Lebanon (and the region), largely through promoting social innovation and social entrepreneurship. RootSpace and Naharnet partnered with many organizations and companies who share their vision in reaching out to society and spread these efforts, such as VISP, Microsoft, Olayan School of Business (AUB), Creative Commons and the Lebanese Youth Shadow Government.

This initiative by RootSpace and Naharnet is a precedent in the IT industry in Lebanon, bringing to the forefront a topic of great importance and will play a major role in the future of IT.

Many of the participants found the event so beneficial that many already started discussing future plans for similar such events, including BarCamps on specific topics (such as Creative Commons and intellectual property, ICT in education, ICT in improving Lebanese politics, digital mapping & GIS, ICT tools to help civil society efforts, green energy, Arabic on the web, and more). Plans are being developed and will be publicized soon.

Several of the sponsors have long been working passionately in the field of “open source” and fostering innovation in tech use in Lebanon and the region:

About Microsoft: Microsoft focuses on delivering value to customers and partners through partnerships that ensure interoperability and strengthens Windows as a solution platform (Such as Novell, Sun Microsystems, Mozilla, and RedHat to name a few). As a result, to date, there are more than 79,000 open source applications using Microsoft platform technologies.  In addition, almost 200 projects started by Microsoft product teams have had their code released, ranging from WiX - the Windows Installed XML toolkit, to AIDS vaccine research tools from Microsoft Research.

About VISP: VISP, an Internet service provider in Lebanon, runs all its systems on open source, and is trusted by many (in the public, security, and private sectors) as the most secure Internet provider in the country.

About element^n: element^n is a web development company with an innovative user-centric approach to web design and development, based in Lebanon and working throughout the Arab region.

About Creative Commons: Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization based in San Francisco US that works to reduce barriers to collaboration. We provide free, easy-to-use tools that give everyone from individual creators to major companies and institutions a simple, standardized way to make their creative work available to the public under the terms that they choose. Creative Commons licenses enable creators to easily change their copyright terms from the default of "all rights reserved" to "some rights reserved" which is not an alternative to copyright, but instead apply on top of it, so that creators can modify their copyright terms to best suit their needs.

***   END   ***

 

Testimonials:

"Lebanon has the potential to become a technology and innovation powerhouse in the region, and the world, and we saw that at this event. We just need to create a climate of openness and support, and events like this to bring people together to push technology and innovation forwards." (David Munir Nabti, CEO of RootSpace, and co-organizer of "OpenSesame BarCamp-Lebanon")

"It was an incredible opportunity to gather people from different Arab countries to talk about openess which is the needed element to push creativity, innovation and  development. Lebanon has a great energy and an enourmous amount of creativity and at Creative Commons we are looking forward to develop more activities here and to start a Lebanese Creative Commons project which will hopefully help to push openess and innovation forward. We are grateful to Rootspace for having organised such an outstanding brand new event!" (Donatella Della Ratta, Arab World media and development manager, Creative Commons)

"It was a fruitful experience and a perfect opportunity to meet like-minded people. Not only were the sessions constructive and interesting, but all the discussions with the fellow participants were beneficial and useful. " (Samer Nakfour, Founder of LebGeeks.com, the Lebanese Technology Network)

"BarCamp particularly reflected the availability and potential of a tech-savvy community in Lebanon and the Arab World, insisting on the need to organize similar events where developers, managers, journalists and activists, to name a few, openly discuss the challenges of technology from a local and regional perspective." (Michel Barakat, Software Engineer, OpenStreetMap)

 

... ADD YOUR OWN TESTIMONIAL HERE!

PICTURES

(Best to add pics to another wiki page, or a site like flickr/etc, to keep this page a reasonable size.  Please add links to pics here.)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/35846696@N02/