It's 7am here in Seattle, on the morning of the second full day of the CTCNet conference. The first day was busy and engaging; nearly 600 people from the US and abroad are here, eagerly talking about the telecenter movement in all its various forms. Yesterday, during the opening session, Paul Lamb of Street Tech gave a very entertaining presentation on what the community technology movement isn't really a movement yet, and what steps we could all take to create that kind of well-organized, creative momentum. Later, I co-hosted a session on online communities with Tony Streit (check out my previous blog entry for a brief description). The day was capped off with a road trip to the Seattle Center, where the conference organizers hosted a reception for all the attendees, many of whom scattered to the winds afterwards to take in the sights and sounds of downtown Seattle for a few hours.
Today will likely be a very interesting day as well. While I no longer have any official sessions in which to participate, I still have three big activities on my plate. First, during the "birds of a feather" sessions this afternoon, I'm co-hosting a forum on the World Summit on the Information Society with Amali DaSilva-Mitchell. Immediately following that, my organization is hosting a wine and cheese reception for the release of our new E-Government for All report -- more on that later. And tomorrow morning, I'll be organizing a virtual chat between North American and European civil society representatives to discuss the upcoming WSIS planning meeting that will take place in Tunisia the week of June 24.
Speaking of which, I've still got a lot of exciting travel plans coming up. I'll be going to Tunisia for the WSIS meeting, so I'll post blogs updating everyong on how things are going there, plus hopefully a bit of personal adventures over the weekend while I have some free time in Tunis. Then, after the July 4 holiday weekend, I'm off to the tiny island of Mauritius, east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean, for an ICT stakeholders forum hosted by the the British Commonwealth Business Council. I'm very excited about going to Mauritius -- an island reminiscent of Maui populated by Indians who speak French Creole -- it should be a wonderful cultural experience.
Lastly, I'm working on a photo gallery for my recent trip to Scandinavia. Hopefully I'll get it done on my flight back home to Boston, assuming my Mac's batteries don't conk out on me too quickly.... -andy
Posted by acarvin at June 12, 2004 10:31 AM | TrackBack