Wohooo

Dobih pre par dana informaciju da će Share Conference biti i ove godine i to 26-28. aprila. Sad videh da i na sajtu stoji taj datum.

Pisao sam opširno utiske i izveštaj sa prošle konferencije, pa se podsetite, ali ukratko se najiskrenije radujem ovoj konferenciji. Prošlogodišnja je bila baš sjajna – potpuno drugačija od svih na kojima sam bio, odličan spoj zabave, znanja, druženja i skup najneverovatnijih vrsta ljudi na jednom mestu.
Usudiću se čak da kažem da je model konferencije uticao i na dosta drugih konferencija koje su se desile u 2011, i to pozitivno. Odjednom, predavači nisu više samo iz regiona (ne kažem da iz regiona nema dobrih predavača, naprotiv), već su sa svih krajeva sveta. Neka od imena koja smo imali prilike da vidimo i čujemo mogla su sama da prave konferenciju oko svog dolaska. Šer je pomerio standarde, to valjda hoću da kažem.

Sada, skoro godinu dana kasnije, jedva čekam da saznam koga su organizatori uspeli da dovuku ove godine. Verujem da su bili na slatkim mukama kako bi napravili bar približno kvalitetan program, jer očekivanja su ogromna (no pressure ), a mnogo toga se desilo u 2011. godini po pitanju aktivizma (verujem da nije potrebno objašnjavati koji deo Šera mi je najzanimljiviji) – ACTA, PIPA, SOPA, Anonymous-i, Occupy Wallstreet, whistleblowers, Assange, Arapsko proleće, Ushahidi, ludi Šveđani koji su file-sharing registrovali kao religiju… Činjenica je da države i uopšte zakonodavci postaju sve agresivniji pod pritiskom velikih korporacija i uopšte željom da vladaju na način od pre 50 godina, a da sa druge strane ljudi postaju sve obavešteniji i traže sve veću transparentnost i države i biznisa. Evolucija i borba protiv promena kojoj tradicionalno teže državni službenici. I dok neki hrle ka kapitalizmu (ili islamizmu u nekim zemljama), negde drugo pokušavaju da kapitalizam promene, prevaziđu ili bar prilagode i obuzdaju. Društveni mediji su postali mainstream, nisu više zezalica ili alat plebsa za borbu protiv zlih vladara. I političari i biznismeni sve češće pokušavaju da iskoriste moć ovih medija da kreiraju promene – najčešće je, doduše, u pitanju kreiranje neke nove istine, ili pokušaj da se opravda istorija…

No, šta je – tu je. O svemu ovome će se razgovarati na Share Conference 2012 – možda ne u glavnom programu (pojma nemam kako će agenda izgledati), ali ako bude slična prošlogodišnjoj, onda ćemo nadugačko i naširoko pričati o ovim temama i na predavanjima i tokom pauza. I tome se jako radujem, jer nemamo mnogo prilike da pričamo uživo o ovim temama. Nekako se svi pogubimo u svojim nišama ili pak u dnevnopolitičkim temama i preživljavanju, da ne stignemo da se dotaknemo ovih krupnijih tema i često uzimamo zdravo za gotovo ono što nam se servira (bilo da je to novi zakon, ili pak borba protiv nekog zakona, bilo da je to EU ili borba protiv EU). Ako dodam da će izbori u Srbiji biti tu iza ćoška u vreme konferencije – biće još zanimljivije

Bilo bi sjajno da i među učesnicima (a ne samo predavačima) bude stranaca, verujem da bi to donelo novi kvalitet celoj priči. Ako ništa drugo, pozivam ovim putem barem drugare iz regiona da dođu – nije skupo doći u Beograd, a zabavno je sigurno (prošlogodišnji “noćni program” je takođe bio vrhunski)

Vidimo se uskoro!

*Update: Program konferencije je objavljen, pravac http://www.shareconference.net/rs/program

Ever since I started thinking about and discovering the idea of Social Entrepreneurship and Business, I realized just how much the system we live in needs to be reinvented. How much we all need to change.

Corporate Social Responsibility is not enough anymore. Businesses need to reinvent themselves and get back to pro-customer, pro-user, instead of pro-shareholder.

Of course, when I say so, it’s a bunch of crap coming from an idealist, but when Harvard Business School professors discuss the issue and write a book “Capitalism at Risk: Rethinking the Role of Business“, then I can only say that we might just be closer to the end of capitalism then we thought.

Check out this short interview with the authors of the book:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1Et7s6ALRw

What do you think? What’s coming after capitalism?

Remember my post from a couple of months ago? In short, there was an international initiative to create a unique symbol of human rights, as there wasn’t one so far.

4 months later, 15000 logos were submitted to humanrightslogo.org, and 10 of them made it to the finale. People from more then 190 countries voted and finally a winner was announced: Predrag Stakic of Serbia with his amazing work:

Predrag’s idea, titled “Free as a man”, was to create a symbol that is powerful, simple and touches upon the core of the human rights idea. Most importantly, it is extremely easy to draw, no skills are needed at all!

Congratulations to the author, and looking forward to see the wings of human rights being spread all over the world.

Symbols are all around us.
Those of love and peace, as well as those of communists and nazis.
Those of various faiths, as well as those of astrological signs.

If we look at this historically, all these symbols show up when something big is happening and we, as people at this planet, need to brand this initiative or behavior, in order to preserve it from forgetting, or to ensure that we remember it.

That’s how we easily connect heart with love, cross with Christians, swastika with nazis (even if the symbol is much older then nazis). That’s how recycling got it’s symbol lately.

But what about Human Rights?

I honestly never thought about it… This topic is all around us for the last 2 decades (if not longer) and it is one of the most important and fundamental issues of the world today, but only symbols I can think of are the events of violations of human rights and someone’s struggle.
I guess I never thought that we are in the middle of a process of resolving this issue once for ever, until this initiative to create a logo for human rights was brought to my eyes by Milos Djajic (Serbian blogger, his blog in Serbian here).

More information about the initiative and its creative challenge to design the logo can be found at http://humanrightslogo.net/. You can also find current submissions there (some of them are pretty cool).
The challenge is until July 31st, 2011, so make sure you send in your ideas in time.

M.I.T. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) “…is devoted to the advancement of knowledge and education of students in areas that contribute to or prosper in an environment of science and technology.”

That’s their tagline. So, when they name Joi Ito as a  new director of their Media Lab (I wrote about them when Chris Csikszentmihalyi spoke at the Share Conference in Belgrade), it doesn’t sound as a big deal. I mean, this is the guy they refer to in the their press release as: “an influential thinker, speaker, and seed investor driving the international development of the Internet, Ito is widely recognized as one of the world’s foremost writers on innovation, global technology policy, and the role of the Internet in transforming society in substantial and positive ways. Through his leadership role in key Internet organizations such as ICANN and Creative Commons, his venture funding, and his advocacy of Internet freedom, he continues to expand his influence worldwide”. And this is also a guy that is an investor in project such are Flickr, Last.fm and Twitter.

However, what struck me was that Joi Ito attended, but never graduated from College!

How cool is that? One of the top Universities, one of those that other Universities all over the world look up to for ideas and inspiration, does something really unusual and unorthodox – makes Joi a Head of the institution that is guilty for technologies behind Google Street View, E-ink (used in Kindle and other book readers), 100$ laptop, and Head of guys that designed all the cool ideas in Minority Report movie, for example. Ha!

Back to the topic – even if this wasn’t MIT, even if it was some small college in Serbia, it would still be a huge thing for the whole education system worldwide. If you’re my regular reader, you know what I think about Education systems and its incorporation in today’s business, and how I support Ken Robinson and his ideas about paradigm shifts in education, and also Marcus Orlovsky and his ideas of the school of the future. Having that in mind, can you imagine how excited I was to learn that someone is actually actively changing the paradigms?

This is a sign that someone out there actually uses common sense and cares about the essence instead of the form.

And this is a GIANT step forward, no matter how small it looks like.

I hope other Universities will look up to MIT and realize that learning is no more about diplomas, but about passion to learn and access to knowledge. I also hope that businesses will understand that people with diplomas are not even potentially better then those without, unless diploma comes from institutions that is about knowledge and not grading. Whole system today is based on the grading made by Universities of the past, and the sooner we realize that, the better.

And who knows, perhaps soon enough we will be reading about some cool guy being welcomed as a Head of some institution within some of the Serbian Universities with similar words used when Joi was welcomed:

“In the past 25 years, the Lab helped to create a digital revolution — a revolution that is now over. We are a digital culture. Today, the ‘media’ in Media Lab include the widest range of innovations, from brain sciences to the arts. Their impact will be global, social, economic and political — Joi’s world.”

Note: some of the information used from NY Times, Joi’s blog and MIT press release.

Formal education sucks.

I said it before and am gonna keep repeating in until someone proves me wrong. To be clear, I’m talking about business and technical studies here, so not medicine, pharmacy and alike.

Why do I say this? Well, you see, I’m in business for more then 10 years already, started in business, moved to the government, then NGOs and finally back to business again (see my About me page). In all of these jobs a University degree was required, and I was “an exception that proves the rule”. And still am, actually.

Now, not that I’m too smart or anything, but thing is that in all of these jobs, University degree is either not needed because the job is not too complicated, or the University degree itself is completely irrelevant. Of course, I’m not saying that these jobs don’t require knowledge and skills, but am saying, loud and clear, that this knowledge does not require University. For some of it because it would be stupid that we learn such things there and for some because the formal education system is lagging at least 20 years behind the business. Everything I learned I did either by myself, or on specific courses, and mostly experiential. Needles to say, most of this knowledge I acquired was free of charge or cheap. Sure, there are smart things to hear at Universities too, and smart and inventive lecturers. Am not even gonna go into evaluating the importance of student life and parties etc.

But is it worth the investment? Does it provide what it promises?

No.

And then I asked myself many times why is this happening and how is it possible that existing Education system can be so slow? I mean, education system used to be a backbone of development worldwide, and smartest of them used to be gathered around Universities. And today, we hire you and then teach you your job during induction days and through learning activities of all sorts, but still we require a diploma of any kind.
I argued many times in the places I worked and work today – are we looking for and hiring people that will add value to the company or people that fulfill most of the criteria given by the job catalogue? Usually managers either tell me that “it has to be done because of the procedure” or “blah, it’s a stupid copy-paste mistake in the job advertisement”. The same people I argued with told me that they understand that University system is lagging behind and does not give us people with skills and knowledge we need. And You see, they still require the same!? Freakin’ Lemmings!

I urge you, people, please stop doing this!

These “mistakes” and stupid procedures are supporting the system that doesn’t do any good to us or our development. If there is no school for Human Resources professionals, then don’t require random diplomas (in our case it’s Economy, Organizational Sciences, Psychology and similar) just to fulfill the procedure. This is plainly stupid for many reasons:

• you’re discouraging some of the great talents to apply, because they “don’t fit within the criteria”,
• you’re encouraging the system that says – Uni diploma is a piece of paper that you need to fulfill the criteria and nothing else,
• you’re sending a message that you are a Lemming, either because you don’t understand the issue, or you don’t care or you are just lazy to try to change anything.
• by being a Lemming, you don’t have the right to blame your workforce for bad results. It is your fault!

What can you do, though?

• If you are a manager: require talent, knowledge, skills, stuff that really matters – not Uni diploma
• If you are a manager: promote learning in your company, not education and training. Don’t know the difference? Google it!
• If you are a lecturer or anyone in academic sector: don’t limit your students with formal education. Encourage them to open their minds and look outside of their books. Promote tools for learning, websites that matter, organize and promote discussions around topics that are interesting.
• If you are a decision maker within the government: relax the freakin’ system and lead the true reform of the system. The thing that Serbia (and other developing countries) is so small, poor and behind the West is a chance for us, not the problem. Technology is cheap and can only empower knowledge sharing and development!
• Whoever you are, promote tools like social networks, blogs, or any knowledge sharing and learning tools there are. Check out, for example, skillshare.com. Below is their promo video – Let’s start a learning revolution. It’s meant for US market, but it’s pretty much the same everywhere:

Let’s Start a Learning Revolution from Skillshare on Vimeo.

Also, check out the ideas and plans of the World Bank, which is rolling out their new Education strategy these days. Dragana Markovic wrote about it on her blog, check her post here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWv72ZQRnY4

To conclude:

Don’t be a Lemming!

Empower learning and knowledge, not procedures and rules!

Do something!

What an extraordinary experience!

And I’m not saying experience just like that… This was simply all but a usual conference. It’s so different (to anything happened so far in Belgrade) that I continuously struggled to explain people where the hell I am and what kind of a gathering that is. Even now, after the conference, I had to go to their website – www.shareconference.net – in order to find a proper description

“…is a unique educational platform that represents new forms of social activism, and promotes internet, new media and music related contents, a feat done for the first time in the region.”

So, take a bunch of social and internet activists and media artists, put them in a fantastic new setting of recently renovated Dom Omladine (Youth Center), organize free WiFi, get connected with the internet community to create a hype around it, create a fantastic night program throughout the conference and add a thing or two in the halls to make the atmosphere relaxed and enjoyable, and there you go – Share Conference has begun its, we hope, long and prosperous life in our capital.

The whole program of the conference can be seen on their home page, along with the short biographies of speakers and explanations of almost all sessions, so I won’t go into detailed explanation of all of them, but I’d like to point out a few memorable ones. Memorable for me, that is…

Day 1&3: ImprovEverywhere – Causing a scene

Brian Fountain i Robyn Sklaren shared a story about all the famous videos and activities most of us already knew about (Frozen Grand Central, Grocery Store Musical, Best Buy etc), but now with an extra flavor – background stories, anecdotes, results…

All in all, a hilarious presentation that culminated 2 days later when they organized one of their activities with all of us in downtown Belgrade!
We gathered in front of Hotel Moscow where we were instructed briefly to split into 3 groups and get into 3 positions downtown respectively. The idea was to create a Mobile Club downtown, with all the possible things one awesome club usually has – walls, great people, music, light show, queue in front, security in dark suits and dark sunglasses, foursquare spot , and of course a fantastic atmosphere. And what a party it was! Before the videos are out by the organizers, check out a couple of photos here:

Photos credits: ShareConference on Flickr

Day 1: Face2Facebook - Paolo Cirio & Alessandro Ludovico

Now these 2 guys are completely nuts! They followed the same path Facebook had when being developed – they downloaded 1 million (yes, one and six zeros) photos from cca 250.000 Facebook profiles, ran a special face recognition algorithm to divide faces into various groups (by facial expressions) and then built a dating website around these photos.  If you’ve seen The Social Network movie, you probably know that Zuckerberg did pretty much the same when he built FaceMash.

The theory behind this idea is that Facebook already plays a role on the thin line between a social network and a dating website, because if you look closely into

what kind of data are we asked for and how technology within Facebook is directed into making it easy for us to share photos, statuses and communication in general about our relationships, then it’s easy to draw a conclusion that one of the main things Facebook is being used for is to be a platform to build relationships.

Website they built  - www.lovelyfaces.com – did not last long (nor was it supposed to), and they are still fighting legal battle with Facebook (and their accounts were banned for good ), but nevertheless they are very happy about the outcomes of the project. Along with other initiatives at that time, they succeeded to force Facebook to change their claim over users data, which is a huge success.

During the Q&A session, they didn’t want to reveal future plans, as they are not sure whether they want new legal battles before they finish with current ones

Day 2: The Copyfight – Peter Sunde (PirateBay & Flattr)

I have to admit – when I checked out the program of the conference for the first time, I did not recognize Peter’s name. Never heard of Flattr before neither. But then, just before his lecture, I realized that it is actually Peter Sunde, one of the founders of ThePirateBay.org, which is, in a way, guilty for almost 60% of today’s internet traffic, as it played a crucial role in popularizing torrents which are today the most popular peer2peer way of sharing files on the internet.

Peter told us about the history of PirateBay, about their legal fights with providers, courts, governments, about how they tried to buy Sealand and were followed by private investigators (stupid ones, but nevertheless), even how Belgrade played a role in the whole story when famous PirateBay bus was hidden in Belgrade during the trials etc.

Don’t know the age span of the participants, but I’m sure that I was not the only one thoroughly enjoying this fantastic story and smiling stupidly as a sign of being happy that I live in this time and that I was a part of the whole story around PirateBay, at least as a simple user of their revolutionary website. My Serbian readers will understand what I’m trying to say if I compare this smile with the one that only those who were old enough to see and actually enjoy the 3 point shots of Djordjevic with Partizan and Serbia can have.

Peter also shared with us that they are not putting almost any effort in maintaining the website (hence the prehistoric

al design , and that they would probably shut it down if the server broke today. They are basically keeping it alive because it’s still in top50 sites worldwide (!!!) and people simply use it.

A part of Pirate Bay, he is mostly into developing Flattr.com these days. It’s a social micro-payment/micro-donation system that allows users to put a monthly amount/credit on flattr.com and then user “flattr this” button (similar to FB Like or Google +1). In the end of the month, the credited amount is donated to the flattered websites per flattr-ing ratio. The idea is that they make donations as direct as possible, without expensive middle-men etc. It’s a great project, and I would love to see it working in Serbia soon.

Day 3: Technologies of Empathy – MIT Media Lab - Chris Csikszentmihalyi

That’s what I call a special guy! He is a director of MIT Center for Future Civic Media, which develops new technologies and techniques to strengthen local communities. Pretty cool, huh? I mean, just mentioning MIT was enough, right? But that’s not the only thing he is special for. Check out his style on this photo and video and you’ll understand why we all tweeted frantically about him for the first 10 minutes of his lecture

Jokes aside, he was awesome. He spoke honestly about projects they are trying to do to re-balance power between citizens on one and corporations and political factors on the other side. He reminded us that MIT became so big and important because it is one of the biggest defense contractors of the US Army. He also reminded us that most of their work was inspired by the fact that during the Bush rule, government did not share much information about it’s activities, and yet wanted to have and control the data about everyone and everybody. We’re talking about pre-Web2.0 time, of course. Now, Chris argued that government did not ask us whether they can use that info, so what would happen if we just took the info from the government and used it in any way we can think of?

This way of thinking inspired many activities and serviced in the years to come, including Txt2Mob which was a java applet that helped sending SMSs to many recipients via foreign countries’ servers, and all because government instructed phone companies to shut down services protesters in the US used to organize them

selves. There’s apparently a rumor that the source-code of this service was used when Twitter was being developed. How cool is that?

Chris mentioned many more services and you can explore them at their website, but the one that I loved the most is SourceMap which runs under a motto - “We believe that people have the right to know where things come from and what they are made of”. It’s basically a system that allows you to map literally anything in a structured and organized way. You can also browse many maps that are already in the system, and that are really detailed. I believe that no-one in the room felt completely comfortable after Chris has shown us a video of where and how certain materials that exist in all our smartphones are made. Check out this intro video:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g30laGwoYTU

All in all – a great lecture. He definitely marked the day with showing off all the amazing work they do at MIT Media Lab and certainly left many of us drooling and dreaming about being part of it.

Day 3: Deconstructing the role of social media in Tunisian Revolution – Global Voices – Sami Ben Gharbia

Sami is Tunisian, but lives in exile in the Netherlands where he works as Advocacy director at Global Voices, which “seeks to build a global anti-censorship network of bloggers and online activists dedicated to protecting freedom of expression and free access to information online.”

He got one of the longest applauses on this year’s conference and for a reason – he deconstructed, step by step and in details the whole story – what, when, how and why it happened. It’s really not easy to explain the whole story in a few sentences, and for that you’ll have to wait for the organizers to upload all lectures (yes, they promised to do so shortly after the conference), but let me just tell you that it was proven that Facebook is good to start the revolution, but Twitter is the one that really brings it to another level (Facebook is a closed platform, you need to be registered and also friends with people or a member of groups if you wanna see news, while twitter is a completely open platform).

Also, it was all about strategy, not tools. Sami presented the 3-way ecosystem, where Facebook, Twitter and other tools is just one part, while 2 others are organizations supporting these kind of activities (human rights, big NGOs etc), and classic media, such are big media networks (CNN, Al Jazeera, BBC etc). As Milos Djajic nicely put it today – it’s about finding a way to get published in influential media. So it’s not just about organizing protests, it’s about creating a hype around it, so that people and organizations get interested continuously. I mean, if 30.000 people protests against Gadaffi and no-one know about it – technically Gadaffi can kill these 30.000 people in a matter of hours probably. But if the eyes of international community are at Libya, then it’s not that easy anymore.
And it helps when government makes stupid steps, like trying to censor internet and specific tools like facebook or posterous, which only brought more people on these platforms.

And this strategy is different in all places – i.e. Facebook and Twitter revolutions were good for Tunisia, but are unlikely to work in Gaza, where internet connection is not so good.

We all followed the situation in Tunisia, but when someone puts it in such a cool presentation and explains why something happened in certain moments, then you realize it’s pretty much modernized version of what Otpor (Resistance) did in Serbia while fighting against Milosevic. As someone putt it nicely – if we had social media back in the nineties, Milosevic would be gone by Dayton Peace Agreement (1995 – Peace in Bosnia).

A really great lecture it was. Too bad that organizers could not set up a video link with Dalia Ziada – an Egyptian blogger and human rights activist, would be cool to hear Egyptian part of the story too…

Conclusion

To conclude, there were more really cool lectures, some I visited and enjoyed (News Analysis, Visualization and Summarization by Institut Jozef Stefan, or Belgrade, beyond an image of a party city by Viktor Markovic from Belgraded.com, Istinomer (Truthmeter)) and some I unfortunately missed (Crisis mapping in Action by Jaroslav Valych, or What makes a movement by Sam Graham Felsen).

And I’ll just say once again how great and inspiring this experience was, that I’m happy that Belgrade and Serbia were hosting such a fantastic conference and that I’m really hoping it will become a tradition.

Sir Robinson is one of my favorite characters of all time, as he expresses eloquently everything I stand for in terms of education and how it should look like.

First time I got to know about him was his TED talk:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY

And then recently I saw his latest work – the most explicite and eloquent explanation of why our education systems need to be changed, and moreover why we need to completely change our way of thinking. Err, they need to change the way of thinking. I always thought differently.

Why?

Being an undergraduate for ages already and trying to get a diploma in the archaic education system of Serbia (the rest of world is not much better, to be fair), so that I can finally be accepted and taken seriously when the bosses plan salary budgets, I’m often pissed off because the very system I’m forced to follow has never thought me anything I know today, nor has given me tools that I’m using in everyday life or work. Almost everything I know I learned through experience and non-formal learning, mostly while volunteering in AIESEC, and also by working with some fantastic people in my 10 years of working experience. University? Not really.. I mean, how can it help me when I have to, for example, learn what the hard drive is made of (IT Management Subject). Who the hell cares? etc etc…

And what happens when I ask why the hell do I need a University diploma to do my job, to get a promotion or simply a salary raise? I get one of 2 possible answers:

1. “You don’t have the proof to have the knowledge to do the job.” (note: there is no University in Serbia that teaches you what I do – People Development, Social Responsibility, Social Entrepreneurship)

2. “It’s the procedure, we can’t do anything about it.” (of course you can, you just don’t want to – you want me to suffer just like you did)

3. “I know you are good and deserve a raise/promotion, but you know, it wouldn’t be fair to others and people will talk/ask questions.” (very common and shows just how stupid we are – it’s not important to keep me satisfied and productive, but what people will say)

I’m sure I’m not alone in this. This happens to many people around the globe every day. And worst thing is – our bosses often “don’t understand” (to say the least) why we don’t want to accept these conditions and are changing jobs, or they simply mark us as “damn Generation Y” – as if that is a bad thing. Let’s face it: we are slaves of the stupid system with wrong values and we are expected to “fit in”.

Now, spare 10 more minutes and watch what Sir Ken Robinson has to say:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

What do you think about it? Are you facing similar issues? What would you do if you had your own company?

This is an attack on freedom!

Julian Assange and Wikileaks are giving us freedom from all the dirty secrets this disgusting world today has been built upon. It’s like a breath of fresh air in this rotten environment.

Arresting him on claims of sexual assault was an obvious choice. It’s the best way to prevent many people to write in his support, as many will stay cautious until the trial is over. It is also a very good way to tell people that supporting him means supporting a rapist etc.

Bullshit!

I’m supporting Julian Assange and Wikileaks more then ever!

These leaks are, in my humble opinion, a beginning and a first step toward redefining the world as we know it.
Does anyone really believe that this will be the only big leak? Or that Julian is the only one out there? Does anyone believe that telling youngsters in the US that discussing Wikileaks and supporting Assange is jeopardizing their chances to get a job in the US Government will prevent them from reading?

Nope.

Wikileaks is just a very good form of all of us sending a message to the world leaders that we are sick of their secrets. We are sick of their dirty games. We are sick of the inequality in the world.

We want freedom!

Exactly one year ago I wrote a post Serbia.hope about the image of Serbia in the world and an initiative of a group of bloggers, twitter peeps and other enthusiasts to do something to change how Serbia looks like to foreigners.

This group met on a Tweetup in Belgrade and several people volunteered to start working on the project, some offered logistical help, hosting etc. The idea was to create a platform where people that visited Serbia would write about their experiences and invite others to come and see for themselves. Sure, this should be done by a National Tourist Organization, but they wouldn’t even start thinking about it if there wasn’t a big budget behind it.

Now, one year later, this great group of people came up with the best looking website of this kind I’ve seen in ages.

You can find the website at www.enterserbia.com. Viktor from Belgraded.com gave a pretty good description of what it exactly is:

EnterSerbia is a nonprofit, ad-free, user-submitted article, photo and video database for all your Serbia-related stories. Stories written mostly by visitors who found the country to be not all that bad. In fact, most of them found it to be surprisingly good.

If you are a regular at my blog, then there is a good chance that this platform is for you – either to enjoy nice stories from Serbia or to share your own story from Serbia or from your experience with Serbs.

I’m inviting you to click here and start sharing.

Kraljevo

The other initiative I wanted to present here is also made possible by a group of web enthusiasts from Serbia. If you missed news from CEE these days – there was a quite a strong earthquake in Serbia recently with an epicenter near city of Kraljevo in Central Serbia.

Local and National Governments started the standard procedures for these types of crisis and the TV news were pretty much the same – everything will be all right, we are doing all we can etc etc.

But, unlike earlier, people are not easy to fool in times of twitter and other real time communication channels. In a matter of minutes after the earthquake we knew where the epicenter is and in matter of hours we had so much information shared via twitter that watching TV felt like watching last month news.

Right away, some people went to Kraljevo to volunteer and sent info that there is no serious organization whatsoever in the city and something needs to be done.

Again, a couple of great enthusiasts thought that waiting for the government to do something is like “Waiting for Godot” and in just a couple of days they built www.jazakraljevo.rs (Me for Kraljevo). The website is built on Ushahidi platform which “allows anyone to gather distributed data via SMS, email or web and visualize it on a map or timeline”.

The website is already recognized as unofficial Crisis HQ as it offers an easy way to submit data about each and every house/building affected and offers a clear image of what needs to be done to the wider public. All information submitted is, of course, been checked and confirmed by an official crisis HQ in Kraljevo.

This crisis has brought up another great online initiative and I really hope it works out. Website Saglasni.rs (Eng. Agreed) is made upon an idea that all cities in Serbia give 50% of their New Years Eve celebrations budget to Kraljevo. As simple as that.
In times of great crisis, we have to show solidarity and rebuild the country as soon as possible. I honestly don’t know anyone that doesn’t agree with this initiative. Let’s just hope that Mayors and Local Governments will think the same.

If you are from Serbia and agree with this idea, please send this website to your Mayor and ask him/her kindly to act upon it. As soon as the first one is “Saglasan”, am sure many will follow.

Conclusion

To cut the story short – we, the internet community in Serbia, are becoming increasingly visible and, dare I say, influential within the wider public.

And it is not because we are many, it is because we matured and started using all these communication channels and tools laying around in a very effective way. Just look how these initiatives are brought together… I mean, anyone can build a blog or website about “Beautiful Serbia” and put on it several hundreds of pictures found via Google and expect miracles. Or anyone can write a blogpost or whine on news websites about the importance of solidarity and how the Government is not doing enough.
But, to put together these initiatives that are very down to earth and offer concrete actions and results – now that’s new and refreshing for Serbia. Sure, we always had these great people having great initiatives, but those have never been put in practice in such an efficient and easy to use way. These are all simple ideas, packed in a nice outfit and presented in a way easy to understand and with clear action steps.

Awesome, simply awesome.

It makes me happy that even with a huge brain drain, Serbia still has these great people.
It makes me happy that they are not suffering from apathy, like most people in our country do.
It makes me not just happy, but privileged to know them personally and learn from them.