1st Arab Youth Forum : Conclusion…
After months of preparation, ambitions, planning, we finally met! We were some bloggers (not the best known, neither the most popular, nor the trouble makers), 8 bloggers from Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt, Palestine and Yemen, bloggers like you can find hundreds of thousands on the web… Normal people, “sans chichis” like the french say… we discussed blogging related issues, like freedom of expression, things bloggers blog about, the aims and objectives of creating a network for arab youth bloggers, the philosophy, blogging ethics, some technical sides…etc…
We were not the biggest group in the forum, but we certainly were the most hard working, organized and efficient… we prepared our work months in advance, tried to represent the biggest slice of bloggers possible, and i think we succeeded in lobbying and gaining potential partners, funders, in changing some people’s opinions about bloggers and blogging (they thought we’re all political opposer) and in gaining respect and interest (Mrs Nancy Bakine the joint secretary general of the LAS -very youth minded- left the other groups and joined us (the smallest group) and took part in the discussion).
After this forum i see that establishing such a network is more than needed, to cooperate in blogging campaigns and know better the arab blogosphere and make its voice more wide spread.
The forum itself was a valuable initiative : the networking objective was 1000% accomplished, the organizers allowed some of the best and most promising young people of the region to meet and exchange knowledge, experiences, hints,…
It’s true that the organization was a little “random” but the rest was a pure success.
Mohammed Ezzeldine from egypt (http://baitelezz.blogspot.com/) and Amira Souilem from tunisia (http://amirasouilem.blogspot.com/) blogged on a daily basis and i really advice you to visit their blogs to have a better idea about the forum from inside.
