Program Format

Summit sessions will take the form of both plenary and breakout sessions. 10-minute citizen media showcases will be interspersed throughout the day. We are facilitating online participation and will be capturing and recording the knowledge coming out of the meeting as part of the process.

Planned Sessions

Focus on Chile

We are holding the summit in Chile in part to examine Chile's vibrant citizen media landscape What factors influenced its development, and what effect has it had on the country, its government and its citizenry? What can other countries learn from Chile's citizen media experience and how can they replicate it?

Libraries, education, and public access

What role do libraries play in facilitating civic participation in the digital age? This session looks at examples from Chile, Colombia and elsewhere.

Participation and power: open government and civic participation

The changing information sphere has given citizens new tools and methods for holding public officials accountable, from government watchdog initiatives and local movements to improve community health care to environmental movements. This session looks at examples of public accountability projects from around the world and how citizens can encourage and take advantage of open governance tools and initiatives to enhance government accountability.

Citizen media wears long trousers

Ordinary people throughout the world are increasingly rising to the challenge of reporting on their own realities to audiences at home and abroad, with various degrees of success. By reviewing case studies from countries such as Madagascar, Iran, Uganda, Cuba, Myanmar and China, this session looks at how we design and build useful, compelling digital media projects and communities in the developing world. How can citizen media projects organize to produce valuable information, especially in situations of conflict, limited access, and in repressive environments? How do these projects relate to the production of news, advocacy movements, and development?

Open applications and open content: innovation in the developing world context

This session examines how access to open tools and open content facilitates innovation in developing world citizen media and the roles citizens can play as defenders of open platforms, and in defining priorities for action. The panel will highlight examples of the best of innovation, from code and content management systems to mapping to multimedia production.

Lessons from the Global Voices translation exchange

In 2009, Global Voices received a grant from the Ford Foundation to explore the development of an entity that would facilitate the translation of various kinds of content into multiple languages, building upon the work done by Global Voices’ Lingua translation community. This session will present the findings and explore questions including: How are language and translation issues manifesting in media today? What are the possibilities for mainstream media and citizen collaboration? Can multilingual bloggers act as ambassadors for reaching multilingual audiences? What is the relationship of regional news to multilingual sources, and what efforts can be made to bridge that divide?

Measuring and evaluating the impact of citizen media

As citizen media mature, they begin to set goals for themselves. What impacts do they seek to achieve, and how do they define learning and success? What are useful measures for analysing the impact of digital media initiatives? Do fields such as development, governance, transparency and political reform furnish useful lessons as regards measuring impact?

Breaking Borders Award

The Breaking Borders Award is a new prize created by Google and Global Voices and supported by Thomson Reuters to honor outstanding web projects initiated by individuals or groups that demonstrate courage, energy and resourcefulness in using the Internet to promote freedom of expression.

Global Voices and Google will be awarding prizes to the winners during the Summit.

1. Advocacy, given to an activist or group that has used online tools to promote free expression or encourage political change 2. Technology, given to an individual or group that has created an important tool that enables free expression and expands access to information 3. Policy, given to a policy maker, government official or NGO leader who has made a notable contribution in the field

Possible Workshops

The Aymara Blogosphere

A look at the state of Aymara-language blogging and content online. Possible speakers:

• Ruben Hilari - http://aym.globalvoicesonline.org/author/ruben-hilari/
• Alfonso Flores - Visviri Public Library
• Luis Carvajal - http://www.luiscarvajal.cl/

Draft Schedule

Day 1

Day 2