Conferences

We reach Erbil in time for a suicide bomb attack near the headquarters of Iraqi Kurdish security services, not far from here we land. By the time we deplane at three in the afternoon, the airport has been put on lock down, dozens of police and army vehicles swarm the entrance, no cars are entering or exiting the area, except the shuttles which carry passengers to and from the meet and greet area – about a mile from the airport.

I’m traveling with Sean McDonald from Frontline SMS and we’re both here as technology trainers for the United States Institute of Peace’s PeaceTech Camp training event. Our focus is transparency in a post-conflict area. It’s Sean and my first time in Iraq and we don’t know quite what to expect when we step out of the plane. While Sean waits at baggage claim, I make my way over to a counter at one end of the airport to buy a pre-paid mobile phone card. I end up chatting with a British man named Rob who stands in line behind me. He’s been here before, he tells me, it’s a good place to do business and it’s the safest part of the country. I ask for his business card, I give him mine, we shake hands and part ways.

Sean and I step out into the arrivals platform and I immediately notice two things: there’s no cars picking up passengers – not even taxis – and large shuttle buses arrive one at a time and release crowds of luggage-toting people to the platform. People move quickly. Most of the people on our plane get on the first shuttle and leave, scurry away. We stand in the shaded part of the platform and feel the waves of hot dry heat just like Texas, where I began my journey, fifteen hours earlier. The terrain is flat and bare, thousands of years have passed here and the dust that blows in our faces is ancient. We are both looking for the driver that has been sent to pick us up. We are looking for a sign with “Tangram Hotel” on it. We don’t see the sign or the driver, so I go inside to get money from the ATM and ask some questions at the information desk about taxi and potentially paging the driver. The woman at the counter is nervous. “I don’t know ma’am, an incident has happened.” She moves on to talk to the other person. What incident, I ask. But she is ignoring, except for a man in a dark suit with a CB radio in his hand who is watching me as I try to get her attention. I give up and look around for clues of what could be happening.

I come back and ask Sean if he’s seen the driver, nothing, he says. I tell him to text and call Luke, the event coordinator, while I put in my SIM card and re-start my mobile phone. Another shuttle brimming with passengers arrives, empties, leaves, the platform is empty again, except for Rob. Rob is also texting on his phone in the far off corner near where the bus unloads its passengers. I start to get that feeling I often get in Central America when public places empty out: something is either about to happen or something has already happened. Either way it’s time to move. I reach down for my backpack to get the number of the hotel. As I’m reaching over, the man with the suit and CB radio comes over to us and says: “There are not cars coming in and out of the airport, there has been an incident.” An incident, Sean and I repeat and look at each other. “Yes an incident. It will be better for you to get on the bus.”

He leaves and we’re both silent. Sean looks at his mobile and Luke has texted back and is telling us to stay where we are until they can send a car. By now I have walked over to Rob and asked him what he makes of this “incident” business and where is his driver? Could we get a lift with him? We’d be happy to pay him. As I’m speaking to him, the next bus arrives, empties its passengers and both Rob and I go up to the driver and ask him if the shuttle can drop us off outside the airport. He nods. It’s hard to tell if he’s understood. Rob looks at me and I say, “let’s do it.” I run over to get my bags and Sean who is now intently on his cellphone alternating between typing and taking calls.

“Let’s go,” I tell him.

“They don’t want us to leave the airport,” Sean says. “They want us to stay right here.” I tell him I’m not staying here, it’s time to go. I roll my suitcase quickly to the bus where Rob and the bus driver are waiting. Sean is reluctant, but then throws his backpack on and runs over to catch the bus with us. The bus is now just us and we look out the window at the slow moving terrain, past the sculpture that looks like a steel wired gun pointed in the direction of the airport. We arrive into a large parking lot with empty cabs sitting outside and a large sign in Arabic and English that reads “Meet & Greet”. We are dropped off and as we attempt to linger inside we are quickly asked to stand outside by the security guard. The same thing happens as in the previous platform outside the airport, so we take the next shuttle.

We get on the shuttle and I notice an cellphone on the seat next in front of us. I debate how safe it is to pick it up and after a few seconds, I pick it up, take the cover off, look inside, take the battery out and put it in my backpack. My logic: Since it didn’t set off a bomb on the bus, the owner must be looking for it.  So I’ll take it with us and then I can leave it in the lobby of our hotel for pickup. I forget about the phone as we get on the shuttle which takes us all the way out of the airport. We pass the main entrance with its checkpoint, that’s when we see them: the dozens of police cars, army vehicles, security guards, police and the blocking off of the entire area. Traffic is backed up as far as the eye can see. The bus turns left and drops us off in the corner, makes a U-turn and returns to the airport. We can’t stop staring at all the action in front of us. I come to and ask Rob: “Where is your driver?”

“Oh right!” He says searching nervously in his pants pocket for his mobile and sees he has a missed call. It’s his driver. He calls him and I can hear him giving instructions. “Follow me!” As we walk parallel to the long line of cars headed north his driver is walking quickly towards us, like a worried mother. He is waving his arms at us and talking to us in Arabic. I get the feeling we’re being lectured.

“I have been waiting for more than an hour!” He tells our friend. “We must leave this area, something has happened.” The entire time Sean is receiving various calls both from our own driver and the coordinators about our whereabouts and instructions on what to do (which is exactly the opposite of what we’re doing). He is getting frustrated. On top of this he has also received a message that his dog is in surgery because a bone went down the wrong way and now it has to be removed back in Washington, D.C.. “Could things be any more irrational?” He says out loud.

We continue to walk the unpaved area and I look into all the cars with the drivers looking both mad and helpless at the pile up. We get in the car and the driver’s son is behind the wheel. There is an ensuing discussion in animated Arabic as to where we should go next and finally I say to Rob. “Let’s go to our hotel and then you can wait with us there until all this clears up.” Maybe I should go to work in stead, he says out loud. Work now? I say to him. He nods, tells the driver, and then we’re off and headed in the opposite direction,

As we begin to make our way across town, Sean’s phone rings. “Should I answer it?” He says, more as a statement. “Yes,, but tell them we’re good.” On the other line, I can hear Luke’s panic and frustration.

“Luke, we’ve got it covered, Kara met someone at the airport who is giving us a ride to the airport.” Silence on the other line and I know that just didn’t sound right to Luke.  Should I tell him we both have insurance that will airlift us out of here? “Don’t worry, we’ll see you at the hotel!” Sean says and hangs up as we hit another line of cars. The driver and his father start another animated conversation and then we got off-road into unpaved road and through the back area of parts of town with crumbling walls, children playing in the dirt and trash in large open areas. Erbil is definitely under construction.

There are sirens, honking, and stalled cars and we’re just weaving. I ask out loud what has happened and the older man says: “Bomb, near Center.” And I tap the British guys shoulder. “Did he say bomb?” I think so, he tells me.

It catches Iraqis in Erbil, the capital of the autonomous province of Kurdistan, by surprise because Sunday’s blasts, Aljazeera states, were the first to hit Erbil since May 2007, when a truck bomb exploded near the same Asayesh headquarters, killing 14 people and wounding more than 80. Now four car bombs were detonated near the headquarters, followed by gunfire, and wounding 36 people.

It is normally very quiet here, everyone tell us, almost apologetically.

As we continue to make our way to the hotel the silence is broken in the car by the sound of Arabic music. It’s not the car radio, but I think it is until Sean says: “Can you answer your phone?” I remember the small pocket radio I usually travel with and search my backpack to turn it off. That’s when my hand touches the cellphone I picked up.

“It’s actually not my cellphone ringing,” I say out loud. “It’s a cellphone I picked up on the shuttle.” Simultaneously both Sean and our Rob turn to me and yell: “What? You picked up a cellphone that’ s not yours!” I nod and say it’s the only way the person would get their cellphone back. They are both aghast as the phone continues to ring.

“Don’t worry,” I tell them. “If it had been a cellphone-detonated bomb we would have been dead by the time we got off the shuttle.” They are both speechless. It’s true, we’d had a string of those types of bombs in Guatemala a couple of years ago and I had thought about that before picking it up, I had even thought to throw it off the bus. I counted and watched the phone intently. I figured removing the battery would turn off the phone, but the phone had restarted once I had put the battery in again while we were rushing around.

The phone keeps ringing and I tell the older man to answer it and tell the person calling that the phone will be at the hotel. He answers it and explains everything to the man on the other line who is the owner, now in Dubai. The older man says, “Tangram Hotel, Tangram Hotel,” and hangs up. Sean shakes his head and looks out the window.

We arrive the hotel and are greeted by the local organizers who look very pale and worried. We’re the first ones to make it back from town, the others were near the Center not too far from where the attack happened and are still stuck in traffic.

“What happened?” I ask Afrah, one of the local organizers who is now pale from worry.

“Suicide bombers,” she said. “I’m sorry for all this trouble. This never happens here.” I smile and give her a warm pat on the back.

“Don’t worry,” I tell her. “We made it.”

She smiles weakly and when I turn around Sean has already disappeared. I hand over the lost cellphone to the receptionist and tell her someone will be picking it up. She nods. “Welcome to Iraq,” she says. “I hope you have a pleasant stay here.”

We have begun to take control of own narratives, telling our stories using whatever tool and digital means is available to us. We have not only begun to tell our stories, but we’ve connected them to others’ stories being told simultaneously around the world. That act of storytelling interconnects us – creating an imaginary and real social fabric. The storyteller becomes a diplomat, a trickster, an opportunity creator, an entrepreneur, a node for change.

How do we tell our stories? How do we help others tell their stories? How do we create opportunities by telling these stories both for ourselves and others? When does our personal story shift from “me” to “us”? How do we make these shifts? How do we inspire action and empower others to tell their story? How does information and technology help us do that? What are the emerging trends in storytelling that can help us become changemakers both online and offline?

Additional Supporting Materials

http://www.slideshare.net/kandrade/ashoka-future-forumintro

http://www.slideshare.net/kandrade/peter-aff

Questions Answered

• What does it take to not merely convey a message, but to change actions & attitudes after a story is told?
• What goes into the making of a modern-day movement— not just buzz, but sustained change?
• How do you catalyze behavior change among people whose names we’ll never know and whose lives we’ll never directly touch?
• How can we tell if we’re successful through our storytelling?
• How do we teach people to become authors and agents of change in their lives?

Speakers
Peter Rohloff Wuqu’ Kawoq
Pamela Yates Skylight
Alisa Del Tufo Threshold Collaborative
Kara Andrade HablaCentro NFP and LLC

Organizer
Kara Andrade Hablacentro LLC and NFP

August 28, 2013

In Ramallah, I lose my voice. It is the second time in my life this had happened. The first time I was getting our stolen laptops back in Guatemala, but I’ll leave that story for later. Suffice it to say this time around, it wasn’t a surprise. When I first arrived at the Cesar Hotel in Central Ramallah the evening before our TechCamp training would be held from August 28 – 29, the manager of the hotel was smoking as he showed us all the rooms we would be using. I tried to stay on the opposite end of the smoke or would duck to avoid it, at times stumbling on chairs or tables like a klutz. I looked up apologetically and he looked at me confused. But by the end of the evening, the cough started – the annoying cough that serves as a warning of the eventual closing of passages.  Not a cough I like to get. I took out what little I had in my inhaler and did what I could to buy myself some time. I sat in one end of the empty room hoping my body would adapt by tomorrow’s event which would fill the room with some one-hundred people. I asked the hotel manager if smoking was allowed in the building. He looked at me as if I’d just asked him if goats flew in his country.

“Everyone smokes inside here,” one of the Techcamp organizers whispered in my ear. “It’s terrible.” It hadn’t been a problem for me the first Techcamp because it was an all-women attended training and the fact was, I noticed during breaks and meal times, that very few women smoked. So I took my breaks after everyone had finished and tried to find spots in the hotel where no one would be liesurely having their smoke. I ducked to the bathroom as often as possible. Fate, I knew, was inevitable.

We’d had a great event launch with the U.S. Consul General and the representative of Jawwal telecom, the company helping to organize the event, making opening remarks at the slick Jawwal headquarters that could easily have been a building in Palo Alto. Nate Smith from Mapbox and I kept the corners of the formidable table warm, front and center to a large audience of men and women – some of whom I recognized from the year before. I designated myself the Techcamp elder since this would technically be my seventh Techcamp, including the one I organized in Guatemala.  I could easily channel Noel Dickover, long-time MC and resident master pumpkin carver at Techcamps, at any given point in the training agenda.

The first day was hectic, full of excitement and beautifully marched on like the first day of school. During coffee breaks the huge plumes of smoke would follow and torment me.

By the beginning of the second day of trainings I was, however, croaking out sentences, and couldn’t help to MC the event.  I was depending on my translator to mind read since she couldn’t understand me and neither could anyone else for that matter. On the third day my voice was gone completely and I was writing all my sentences out on my reporter’s notebooks. My handwriting was sloppy and the fact that anyone could read what I wrote was a miracle. But I didn’t care, I was inspired. Ramallah inspired me. It inspired me the first time and it was inspiring me again. There was a hunger by participants to learn and an ability to grasp complex concepts that challenged me to connect things with the participants that I normally wouldn’t be able to do.

During my session on authorship and storytelling, I asked the group what they wanted to learn, that I was here for them and so I would teach them whatever they needed to do their work. But one after the other said: Teach me to tell a good story, how to make people watch, read and tell stories. You don’t want to learn Facebook, Youtube, Vimeo? No, they said, we want to tell our stories. We want to tell people how difficult it is for us here. And that’s when I started to understand. Israelis didn’t know how Palestinians lived their day to day lives anymore than Palestinians knew Israeli lives.

During the break I sat next to a working reporter in Palestine and I asked him about his life here. I wanted to know more, to understand.

“Life here is very difficult,” he said in a very slow, sad voice. “We work hard for another country in a country that is not ours. We pay our taxes to the people who repress us, we are the only people who do this in the world.” We continued to talk and he told me about the religious conflicts between the countries, about the U.S. and how they supplied funds to the Israelis, how they were at fault for suppying the guns, the funding and growing the rift. It was a difficult conversation and the entire time I just listened, asked more questions. When I thought I had asked all my questions, there would be more. How can anyone truly know how someone else lives their lives? Did Israelis really care any more than your typical Palestinian how the other half lived? Where could you even begin to create empathy?

The rest of the day was a whirlwind of activity, with groups dedicating their entire days to matching technology solutions to particular problems that they had brainstormed the day before. I gave up on trying to speak and simply wrote out all my sentences. Our group was creating an online crowdfunded campaign to buy 15,000 backpacks (with school materials) for Palestinian children going back to school on August 2014. It was a good, concrete goal and so we set about developing both an online and offline strategy for fundraising $50,000. By the of the day all the different groups presented their action steps and various stages of project development, including a game using online an mapping platform, video tutorials on how to use video in your work and ways to move from “Clicktavism to Activism”. By 5:30 in the evening even the group picture was done and everyone headed out quickly to beat the weekend rush hour (Fridays were a holiday that people used to go home).

In the evening the international trainers ventured out to the handful of bars and cafes that foreigners made the rounds at. At La Vie Café there was talk among the foreigners that Ramallah was an artificial economy created from all the nonprofits that were based out of the city. It was like Oz with the looming threat of chaos  – now there was Syria. No one wanted to talk about, too much was happening too quickly.

Just one week ago Israeli soldiers shot and killed three young Palestinians in the Ramallah district of the central West Bank. “The Israeli army claimed the Palestinians were about to throw Molotov cocktails at soldiers and settlers in the Bet El settlement.” This resulted in the suspension of the fourth round of direct peace talks with Israel in protest of these three killings. The plot thickened.

Later at Lawain a few locals mentioned that much of the night life had been cancelled in Ramallah due to these deaths. The mood was somber before the DJ started spinning tracks from Spotify, which he complained required too much bandwidth. At midnight the music began to play for a handful of people on the modest dance floor which included Americans, other foreigners from Jordan and South Africa, gay folks, locals, you name it, it was diverse bunch. By two in the morning, the bar was packed.

In the smokey bar, I stood at the end of the counter waving my notepad at the bartender. I scribbled to him: “Whiskey, please, no ice, just whiskey.” He nodded and disappeared behind the bar.

August 26, 2013

Last night I slept sitting up and today I floated in the Dead Sea. Knowing what I’m up against, I sleep the entire trip from Newark to Tel Aviv, no movies, no studying, just food and sleep. The crying babies are mere whispers in my Ambien-induced stupor.

It is my second time back in the Holy Land and this time I want to be prepared to dig deeper, to go one layer below the surface. I step out of the plane less daunted by the fifteen-hour trek and the eight-hour time difference. As I step out of the plane, I feel more prepared for the light out here, more direct and golden than anything I had seen before in my life a year and a half ago. This time when the sign “Welcome” in Hebrew stands before me between two ancient stellas painted on the wall, I lift my camera to meet it.

I feel less disoriented knowing on the other side of customs is my secret weapon, Aviva, one of the friends I made from my first trip here to present at two Techcamps, one in Tel Aviv and the other in Ramallah, back to back. TechCamp is a program under the U.S. State Department’s Civil Society 2.0 initiative to bring together the technology community to assist civil society organizations across the globe by harnessing the latest information and communications technology to find solutions.

It was my crash course into Techcamps and how they were organized and put on, but I had no idea what it would take to understand the model and then take it back to Guatemala City with me to coordinate our own do-it-yourself version. Six TechCamps later I find myself at the beginning, knowing now what I didn’t know then.

Outside, Aviva is waiting for me. She has lived on a Kibbutz for forty years and she’s promised to swoop me up and take me there from the airport. I have only to make it through customs. I show my passport and letter from the U.S. Consulate stating my purpose in Israel, my time here for ten days and my work as a TechTrainer in Ramallah. I get a small identification card which is stamped with my date and time of entry and then I move towards the baggage claim.

I present my documents to two women customs officials. One of them pores through my passport.

“You are from Guatemala?” She asks. Yes, I tell her, that is where I was born. She nods.

“I have been to your country, to Tikal, Antigua and Semuc Champey,” she continues. “It is very beautiful.”

“Yes, it is,” I tell her. “As is yours.” I expected to get my passport back, but instead she calls over another customs woman. They both look over my passport and call on a cellphone. Then I am told to pick up my bag and follow them. They keep my passport in hand so I rush back with my bag and follow them to a small room at the back of the airport where a few other passengers are having their bags and documents thoroughly screened. I get in line and await my turn patiently.

“Come over here,” one of the custom folks tells me, motioning me with his hand. He points to the zipper on my bag. “Open it.” I nod. I am told to unwrap a few gifts I brought, maple syrup, Texas barbeque sauce, buckwheat pancake mix.

“What is this?” He asks me. Gifts, I tell him. He removes his latex gloves and instructs me to zip the suitcase up again. Then the questions.

Why Ramallah they ask? I tell them it is for a conference and that I’m teaching storytelling, tools and other skills. Who brought you here? The U.S. Consulate. Why? Because I am a TechTrainer. A what? I teach workshops on storytelling and journalism. In Ramallah? Yes. What kind of stories? The stories that impact them in their lives. Anything? Preferably true, I tell them, otherwise that is gossip. I smile. There is an uncomfortable silence. Each of them looks straight at me. I smile back. They bend in to whisper to one another in Hebrew. I wait and keep an eye on my documents. My passport is passed on to the woman who escorted me here. She waves me over with a faint smile and leads me through different security checks. Stamp, unzip, screen, walk through body screen, zip up, stamp, staple, walk away.

“You are good now,” she tells me and hands me back my passport. “Have a good visit in Israel.”

I walk out into now a small group of people awaiting the stragglers from this flight. Aviva waves to me from the right side of the room and I walk towards her, my legs suddenly weary and my eyes blinded by the afternoon sunlight behind her. I thought I was ready.

At the Kibbutz tucked between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, there is only the sound of crickets and the olive trees blowing in the breeze pushing across the cut dry meadows. Families stroll lazily across playgrounds and perfectly planned communal spaces. In Aviva’s house friends gather, there is talk that I work with the C.I.A. I tell them I am too old to work for the them. It’s true! The cut-off year is 35 and I am 36 now. There is laughter, we eat rice cakes, cheese, grapes, we laugh, the fourteen-year old dogs snore in the corner of the room. The windows are open and the fan blow a small breeze above us. Later in the evening we walk to a neighbor’s house, have soup, tell stories, crack hazelnuts and share pictures from different trips. Neighbors ask my why teach people storytelling and journalism? I teach authorship, I tell them, and the tools for people to narrate their own lives and get the information they need to impact their everyday existence. Around the table I get pensive nods. I hope for approval of this sleep talking conversation I’ve realized I’m having as my eyelids get heavier.

More presents from travels are exchanged, me with my pancake mix and Texas barbeque sauce, and others with rich cheese cake and smoked cheese from Jordan. The neighbors thirteen-year old dog limps across the porch and looks off into the twilight silhouette of trees surrounding us.

I can see how forty years of one’s life could easily slip away quietly here.

Aviva looks in my direction across the table. Tomorrow, she reminds me, we drive to The Dead Sea.

From Jerusalem I bring back an old manual typewriter in a half torn case that cracks open the leather spine during all the security checks. Random people stare at it with familiarity or confusion, the security guards click on the keys and laugh with each other in Hebrew. Then I trek it across Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Madrid and then back to Guatemala feeling the weight of this commitment. Once the machine almost falls on my head from the overhead compartment as I board my plane from Madrid to Guatemala.

When I show it to my new friend Kiki she doesn’t know what to make of it, she turns it around and calls it the “typing machine”. I tell her it’s my story machine, beneath its heavy keys lies my novel. With the machine and my words I I will pivot towards Ma’ayan Alexander, another writer who gave me this machine – hers in Hebrew, mine in English. But both of us vowing to write our stories and what’s inside us from across the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, two magnets of intention forcing us to create, to weave narratives one heavy key at a time with no “delete” button. We will chisel into stone. But most importantly:  I vow to write, we vow to write, the world vows with us and leans in to our stories.

Off of Allendale Street in Tel Aviv, I come searching for more ribbon.  Isaac, the owner of the store, knows the machine well, an old sturdy friend he calls it. He  tells me the catridges are no longer in the machine’s original red and black, but he’s got plenty of black. I ask him why they don’t make it in the original catridges and he laughs. “Where are you from?” He asks. I tell him Guatemala, via the United States, twenty hours away by plane. He pauses and stares at me waiting for a good story, but as I turn the new black cartridge in my hand, I get restless.

More and more these moments start to feel like a fragile egg I hold carefully in my hand where I have to pay very close attention to the cupping of the hand and the way I care for it as I move through the world or it moves through me.

All of my trip through Israel feels this way, an innate interwoven sacredness to interactions with people, with the religious history just beneath or on the surface, the politics of a present State and a future State, the diversity of the young State of Israel formed in 1948 by so many Jews taking refuge. And then there’s always the general pushy familial informality of Israelis.  You have to think fast and think on your feet. There’s no room for ruminating, weighing out options, finding options, there is just well-grounded quick decision-making based on a local knowledge and history shared by everyone.

To learn the city, I ride the buses. The 31, the 18, the 161 through Jaffa and parts of Tel Aviv that later people stare at me in confusion wondering how I ended up there. I learn quickly that Tel Aviv is to play and Jerusalem is to pray.  Later on, in Ramallah, I feel the heaviness of the occupation and the unhappiness that stems from it.

The Evolving Internet: Driving Forces, Uncertainties and Four Scenarios to 2025
with co-authors Enrique Rueda-Sabader, Cisco Systems; Don Derosby, Monitor GBN

Monday, October 25th, 4:00pm

South Hall, room 202

What will the Internet be like in 2025?

How much bigger will it have grown from today’s 2 billion users and $3 trillion market?

Will it have achieved its full potential to connect the world’s entire population in ways that advance global prosperity, business productivity, education and social interaction?

Or will it be something less?

Cisco and the Monitor Group’s Global Business Network, the world leader in scenario planning, have published “The Evolving Internet,” a report examining the driving forces and uncertainties that will — in whatever combination — shape the path of the Internet over the next 15 years.

In four scenarios — the result of more than a year’s worth of research, data collection and interviews — different potential pathways are described and detailed. The scenarios suggest how a range of critical factors might play out, such as net neutrality policies, infrastructure investments, consumer response to new pricing models, and technology adoption.

One scenario describes a familiar roadmap in which the Internet continues on its trajectory of unbridled expansion and product and service innovation. The other three challenge that future, and in the process illuminate various risks and opportunities that lie ahead for both business leaders and policy makers.

Notes Enrique Rueda-Sabater, report co-author and Cisco’s director of strategy and economics for emerging markets, “The next 2 or 3 billion Internet users will be mostly in emerging markets and very different from the first 2 billion; global business models and national policies will fail if they are based on old expectations of behavior, preferences, and success.”

Adds GBN cofounder and Monitor Partner Peter Schwartz, a major contributor to the work, “We can’t predict the future, but we do know that the Internet-related choices being made in 2010 will have long-term consequences — intended and unintended. We hope these scenarios will foster a deeper strategic conversation in and across the technology and policy communities about the impact of today’s decisions tomorrow.”

An interdisciplinary team led by Cisco and GBN have examined the driving forces and uncertainties that will shape the Internet — and the $3 trillion market (… and counting) it enables — from now through 2025. Their findings culminate in four illustrative scenarios, designed to help decision-makers in both technology companies and government understand, anticipate, and manage key changes, risks, and opportunities so that the Internet’s potential to create economic and social value can be realized globally.

The report’s illustrative sets of implications are indicative of how the scenarios can help leaders spot opportunities and make wiser decisions about tomorrow, today. The complete report may be found at www.monitor.com and http://newsroom.cisco.com.

The Evolving Internet: Driving Forces, Uncertainties and Four Scenarios to 2025
with co-authors Enrique Rueda-Sabader, Cisco Systems; Don Derosby, Monitor GBN

Monday, October 25th, 4:00pm

South Hall, room 202

What will the Internet be like in 2025?

How much bigger will it have grown from today’s 2 billion users and $3 trillion market?

Will it have achieved its full potential to connect the world’s entire population in ways that advance global prosperity, business productivity, education and social interaction?

Or will it be something less?

Cisco and the Monitor Group’s Global Business Network, the world leader in scenario planning, have published “The Evolving Internet,” a report examining the driving forces and uncertainties that will — in whatever combination — shape the path of the Internet over the next 15 years.

In four scenarios — the result of more than a year’s worth of research, data collection and interviews — different potential pathways are described and detailed. The scenarios suggest how a range of critical factors might play out, such as net neutrality policies, infrastructure investments, consumer response to new pricing models, and technology adoption.

One scenario describes a familiar roadmap in which the Internet continues on its trajectory of unbridled expansion and product and service innovation. The other three challenge that future, and in the process illuminate various risks and opportunities that lie ahead for both business leaders and policy makers.

Notes Enrique Rueda-Sabater, report co-author and Cisco’s director of strategy and economics for emerging markets, “The next 2 or 3 billion Internet users will be mostly in emerging markets and very different from the first 2 billion; global business models and national policies will fail if they are based on old expectations of behavior, preferences, and success.”

Adds GBN cofounder and Monitor Partner Peter Schwartz, a major contributor to the work, “We can’t predict the future, but we do know that the Internet-related choices being made in 2010 will have long-term consequences — intended and unintended. We hope these scenarios will foster a deeper strategic conversation in and across the technology and policy communities about the impact of today’s decisions tomorrow.”

An interdisciplinary team led by Cisco and GBN have examined the driving forces and uncertainties that will shape the Internet — and the $3 trillion market (… and counting) it enables — from now through 2025. Their findings culminate in four illustrative scenarios, designed to help decision-makers in both technology companies and government understand, anticipate, and manage key changes, risks, and opportunities so that the Internet’s potential to create economic and social value can be realized globally.

The report’s illustrative sets of implications are indicative of how the scenarios can help leaders spot opportunities and make wiser decisions about tomorrow, today. The complete report may be found at www.monitor.com and http://newsroom.cisco.com.

Liveblog of Patch Comes to Berkeley

When: Tuesday, October 19, 12:00 PM

Where: North Gate Hall Library

A panel of five UC Berkeley J-School grads will talk about their experiences launching local community news sites in the Bay Area for AOL’s Patch. Executives from Patch also will discuss opportunities for jobs, internships and freelancing at sites Patch is starting all over the country.

Like young women leaders today, Jane Addams — the first American woman to earn the Nobel Peace Prize– struggled to grow purposefully, collaboratively, and with integrity. Louise (Lucy) W. Knight, the author of the just-published Jane Addams: Spirit in Action, will discuss how Addams found mentors and mentored others and the kind of a consensus-building leader she became. Knight will also share Addams’s theory of leadership, which included the power of leading by example and the need to cooperate, not dominate. This interactive talk will offer women working in non-profit and for-profit companies in the Bay Area both some remarkable history and insights into modern day work and life dilemmas.

Location:
Tech Soup
525 Brannan Street, Suite 300
San Francisco, CA Map

Date and Time:
Monday, Oct 18, 2010
06:00 PM – 08:00 PM Pacific

Like young women leaders today, Jane Addams — the first American woman to earn the Nobel Peace Prize– struggled to grow purposefully, collaboratively, and with integrity. Louise (Lucy) W. Knight, the author of the just-published Jane Addams: Spirit in Action, will discuss how Addams found mentors and mentored others and the kind of a consensus-building leader she became. Knight will also share Addams’s theory of leadership, which included the power of leading by example and the need to cooperate, not dominate. This interactive talk will offer women working in non-profit and for-profit companies in the Bay Area both some remarkable history and insights into modern day work and life dilemmas.

Location:
Tech Soup
525 Brannan Street, Suite 300
San Francisco, CA Map

Date and Time:
Monday, Oct 18, 2010
06:00 PM – 08:00 PM Pacific

“Social Entrepreneurship in Developing Nations: A View from the Field”
David Green, Schwab Fellow of the World Economic Forum

4:00 p.m., Monday, October 18
B100 Blum Hall UC Berkeley
http://events.berkeley.edu/index.php/calendar/sn/citris.html?event_ID=36082

Bio:
David Green is a MacArthur Fellow, an Ashoka Fellow and is recognized by Schwab Foundation as a leading social entrepreneur. He helped establish Aurolab (India), to produce affordable intraocular lenses (now has 8% of the global market share) and suture. He has also helped develop high-volume, quality eye care programs that are affordable to the poor and self-sustaining from user fees, including Aravind Eye Hospital in India, which performs 300,000 surgeries per year. Within this paradigm of ‘humanizing capitalism”, he now works as an Ashoka VP to create social investing instruments to support sustainable social enterprises (in eye care and solar energy). He also helped create Conversion Sound, a social enterprise to make affordable hearing devices with a novel fitting; and Quantum Catch, to make optical products affordable.

I wanted to pass this one for people interested in going to Unity:

NEED SOME HELP TO ATTEND UNITY ’08? CHECK THIS OUT!

The National Association of Hispanic Journalists will offer financial assistance in the form of convention registration and/or air transportation to a limited group of NAHJ members to attend the UNITY ’08 Convention in Chicago, July 23-27, 2008. All financial aid requests will be considered on the basis of financial need, with a priority given to journalists laid off during the past 14 months and to members who work in Spanish-language media.

For more information about NAHJ’s Financial Assistance for UNITY ‘08, visit:  http://www.nahj.org/events/2008/convention/UNITY%20convention%20assistance.shtml

All financial assistance requests must be received via email by 4 p.m. EDT on Monday, June 2, 2008. Selections will be made and announced by June 6.

There are only 61 days until the UNITY ’08 Convention! The pre-registration deadline is Friday, June 13, 2008. For more information on the UNITY Convention schedule, programming and NAHJ’s special events at the convention, go to http://www.nahj.org/Events/2008/convention/special_events.shtml

If you are looking to save money on lodging by getting a roommate, look for one in the UNITY 2008 group on Facebook. Go to facebook.com, search for the “UNITY 2008” group, and go to the Discussion Board topic “Who is looking for a roommate?” If you’re not a member of Facebook, just sign up quickly. All you need to do is type in your email address and create a password. Then you’ll have access to all the fun stuff on the UNITY 2008 group, which is growing every day.

With all the topical discussions, essential skills and multimedia training, presidential candidates forums, tremendous job-seeking and networking opportunities, and the induction of high-profile journalists and association founders to the NAHJ Hall of Fame, UNITY ’08 is a convention you can’t miss. Be sure to join some 10,000 journalists and friends in Chicago this summer as we stand together to defend the need for diversity in news media in this 21st century!

Looking forward to Peter Brantley posting up the keynotes from their conference in Minneapolis.

He leaves me with this tease: “The keynotes were both stunning; I worked with my friend Peter Kaufman
of intelligent tv and twin cities public tv to get them taped; eventually we
get them edited (in may) and release them.” Eventually Peter! For now check out his blog.

2.30pm: Covering the Digital Campaign
4.30pm: Reception (All alumni invited, whether attending the conference or not)
(The 12.30pm lunch has been canceled)

Covering the Digital Campaign
When: April 12, 2008, 2:30 pm — 4:30 pm
Where: North Gate Library, Hearst at Euclid Avenue, Berkeley
Reception: 4:30 pm, North Gate Hall, Courtyard/Library
Tickets: This is a free event.
If you’ve been out on the trail this campaign season or just tracking
election 2008 via YouTube and your favorite blog, please join our panel of political strategists and political reporters for a round-table discussion on the digital campaign.

Matthew Dowd – is a founding partner of ViaNovo, an international communications and brand positioning firm. He was the chief strategist for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2006 and for
President George W. Bush in 2004. His innovative approach on the 2004campaign led the bi-partisan American Association of Political Consultants to name him Pollster of the Year. In December 2007, he was introduced on ABC’s Good Morning America as its new political contributor. He also appears on the same network’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos. He has been a visiting professor since the Spring of 2005 at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin. The course he teaches is called “The Modern American Political Campaign.” In 2006, Dowd, along with journalist Ron Fournier and former Clinton White House advisor Douglas B. Sosnik wrote “Applebee’s America: How Successful Political, Business, and Religious Leaders Connect With the New American Community.”

Terisa Estacio is an investigative reporter for KRON-TV. She
previously worked as a correspondent for CBS’s Newspath traveling the nation to all breaking news events. Terisa worked as a White House correspondent for Tribune Broadcasting during President Clinton’s first term. She was later on the scene for much of the breaking news surrounding the 2000 Presidential race between President Bush and then Candidate Al Gore. In more than two decades as a journalist, Terisa has worked for television stations in Los Angeles, Houston, Texas, Sacramento, Reno and Eureka. Now settled in the Bay Area, Terisa covers a wide range of topics for KRON-TV, with an emphasis on crime, the courts and top investigative stories of the day.

Josh Harkinson is a staff writer at Mother Jones Magazine, where he covers a variety of beats, including online politics. He was a primary contributor to the magazine’s July/August Politics 2.0
package, which looked at how technology is changing political discourse and campaigning. His January/February feature focused on the role of techies in the insurgent presidential campaign of Rep. Ron Paul. He also contributes stories to the magazine’s website and blog. Harkinson graduated from the Berkeley J-School in 2002 and came
to Mother Jones from the Houston Press, the Texas alt-weekly. His upcoming feature in the magazine’s May/June issue, “Tar Wars,” looks at the politics of the Canadian tar sands.

Ben Tulchin is Vice President of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research and Director of the firm’s California office. Tulchin has provided research and consulting services to a wide range of clients across the country, including candidates for elected office, ballot measures, labor unions, non-profits, corporations, and foundations. Tulchin serves as a senior analyst for candidate campaigns. Some of his clients have included DNC Chairman and former presidential candidate Howard Dean, former California Governor Gray Davis, U.S. Senators Patty Murray and Harry Reid, among many others. His latest research, presented in March at the American Association of Political
Consultants conference, is a study of the impact of cable television
on candidate campaigns.

Discussion Moderator Scott Lindlaw has spent 16 years covering politics, policy and government for the Associated Press. That’s included two statehouse assignments and four years as a White House correspondent, spanning the first term of George W. Bush.Lindlaw received his MJ at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism in 1992 Today he is based at AP San Francisco, where he specializes in investigative projects with an emphasis on the military and national security.