HackDemocracy is happy to welcome a couple of members from the Indignados movement, who will talk about the movement’s use of technology for coordinating around the world, will share theirpersonal perspective on e-democracy and give us some insights into the tensions that can arise between legitimacy and efficiency, when online and offline activism converge.

The meetup will take place next Tuesday, 29th of November. And as always, the meetup is kindly hosted by Betagroup Coworking Brussels & ICAB Business & Technology Incubator.

Register here: http://www.meetup.com/HackDemocracy/events/42047412/

HackDemocracy, in collaboration with Hacks/Hackers, is happy to invite you to its first post-summer meetup. The meetup will take place on Wednesday September 28th at 6.30PM at BetaGroup Coworking, and will center around Citizen Media.

We will be joined by recently-launched FairObserver.com, by the Central Asian citizen-journalism network  NewEurasia.Net, and finally, by  DeWereldMorgen.Be, a citizen-powered news website based out of Brussels.

Register here: http://www.meetup.com/HackDemocracy/events/30570691/

Our speakers on the evening:

Fabian Neuen (@myfairobserver) from FairObserver.Com
FairObserver.Com is an online multimedia journal launched by a team based in Washington DC and Munich with contributors from around the world. Their goal is to capture perspectives across disciplines and countries, engage the emerging economies and create a framework through which to contextualize and analyze important global trends. Fabian will talk to us through the three issues FairObserver has set its eyes on solving: one, there is too little analysis of news coverage in a world awash with information; two, the little analysis that exists is invariably ethnocentric and partisan; and three, analysis that exists is often without context.

Christopher Schwartz (@schwartztronica) from NewEurAsia.Net
NewEurAsia.Net is post-Soviet Central Asia’s largest citizen-journalism network, as well as the organization behind the book, “CyberChaikhana: Digital Conversations from Central Asia”, a contemporary history of the region written partially with crowdsourcing methods. Chris will talk us through the state of “traditional” media in the region, and how the issues covered by NewEurAsia differ from those covered by traditional media. And then move onto what kind of impact these new forms of coverage has had.

Han Soete (@HanSoete) from DeWereldMorgen.Be
DeWereldMorgen.Be is a Brussels-based citizen-media. Han will take us back to the beginnings of DWM in 2001, when there were few other ways for users to submit content. He’ll move on to explaining how things have changed for indymedia in the era of YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.

Register here: http://www.meetup.com/HackDemocracy/events/30570691/

As always, many thanks to BetaGroup Coworking for hosting us.

HackDemocracy Brussels is very happy to invite you to its next meetup, which will focus on Citizen Platforms for Political Accountability and will take place on Thursday June 16th from 6.30PM. The meetup will also an opportunity to introduce you to the recently announced G1000 Citizens Summit, which HackDemocracy helped launch. It will be the first large-scale experiment for deliberative democracy in Belgium.

Register here: http://www.meetup.com/HackDemocracy/events/20657281/

Two interesting initiatives will be presented. One at a European level, and one at a very local level.

Malte Woydt will talk to you about Démocratie Schaerbeekoise (www.demoscha.be ), a citizen observatory which aims to improve information, citizen participation and the democratic character in local politics in Schaerbeek, Brussels.

Next, Laurent Peuch will introduce you to Memopol, a toolbox designed to help citizens reach members of European Parliament (MEPs), and track their voting records.

Joins us to learn more about these two great initiatives, and discuss what citizens can do and what apps we could build to increase political accountability in local and global politics.

The meetup will also be an opportunity to introduce you to the recently launched G1000 Citizens Summit and an  API for European Union legislation.

Register here: http://www.meetup.com/HackDemocracy/events/20657281/

As usual, many thanks to BetaGroup Coworking for hosting us.

• We’re very happy to invite you to a special “Open Government Data” meetup with a panel of great speakers. Save the date: 28th April, 6.30PM.

  Join us to find out about the different open data initiatives in Belgium and to start thinking about the great apps you can come up with using the data.

  More info on speakers and topics will be posted soon.

  As always, many thanks to Betagroup Coworking Brussels for hosting the event.

Looking for developers to help me to create  Ireport Social Game and mobilize capacity of young people from emerging democracies in citizen reporting. Let’s create a fun platform, with non-entertaining goal, which will teach young people how to report and how to use social networks for a meaningful social impact.

I am a journalist from Armenia, currently Knight Fellow at Stanford.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikP2DnYdc6A

http://knight.stanford.edu/fellows/2011/muradyan/

Drop me a line  at sedamur@gmail.com or sedam@stanford.edu if you want to hear more about the project. 

Thanks in advance,

Seda

I am looking for developers who are interested in working with Apps on language/keyboard issues. 

The problem:  Mobile phone devices don’t allow Armenians, (who have a unique Alphabet with unique characters/letters) to use their mobile phones for text messaging, for generating a textual content for the web in Armenian, simply, because there is no physical or virtual keyboard with Armenian Alphabet.

Armenia is a developing, former soviet country in the South Caucasus. Armenians aren’t able to type in their native language and alphabet on their smart phones or on other mobile devices because of the technological barrier. There is no Ipone or Ipad or Android keyboard with the Armenian Alphabet. There are no applications that have a virtual Armenian keyboard either.  

The Idea is to create an Iphone/Ipad and Android App that will have a virtual Armenian keyboard, an app, that will allow Armenian mobile phone users to type in Armenian, to send texts in Armenian,  and disseminate the textual content through social networks.  It will popularize the use of  iphones and ipads, it will have a direct impact on the participation of Armenians in content creation for social media by using  mobile devices. In 2012 and 2013 we will have elections in Armenia. It is important to solve this technical issue before elections. We will help Armenian Iphone, Ipad, Android users to use effectively their mobile devices in election reporting, and in any other reporting in general. Thank you in advance !

Seda Muradyan

email: sedam@stanford.edu

sedamur@gmail.com 

(submitted by Adewole Akinwale - you can also submit your post onhttp://HackDemocracy.org/submit)

Nigeria is one of the most populous nations in the world; endowed in Natural resource, the main cause of subversion and remote control by better organized polities, but whose fortunes are not very different from those in the ARAB world.

With the existence of high mobile phone density but poor internet penetration, how does HackDemocracy assist in the spontaneous reform of the Nigerian society.