Janet Haven

The South East Asia Press Alliance (SEAPA) and the Philippines Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) have been holiding a meeting this week in Manilla on how new technologies assist free expression, both of the press and of individuals. Free Expression in Asian Cyberspace: A Conference of Asian Bloggers, Podcasters and Online Media is being chronicled on a number of blogs, including the conference's own where Alecks Pabico of PCIJ is keeping track of what's going on, and on Ethan Zuckerman's. Ethan and Nart Villeneuve of the Citizen Lab in Toronto are giving a day-long talk today on beating blocking, filtering, and monitoring in cyberspace, a topic that deserves far more attention than it gets given the efforts repressive governments are making around the world to interfere with their citizens' access to online information.

One of the many great things about this conference is that it's run by a bunch of people who are familiar -- even comfortable -- with new technologies like blogging, podcasting, posting video, etc. The blog mentioned above provides a window into the conference in nearly real time -- not just "what happened?" as reported by Alecks and other blogger, but straightforwardly: you're there. You can listen to most of the presentations and watch many of them, follow links to the bloggers who are covering the event live, read background materials on the issue. I'm hoping that most of the presenters, like Ethan and Nart, will be posting their slide decks under a Creative Commons license here and elsewhere in the near future.

I've recently talked with several other groups planning networking meetings about using communications technologies at their meetings -- what can the technology do to help connect the participants after the event, as well as make the proceedings more transparent for those who couldn't attend? The SEAPA/PCIJ conference is a good example to work from. I'm extremely sorry that I couldn't make it to this one, but in terms of following the content of the discussions, I haven't missed much.