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My Presentation at FOSST 2010 in Riyadh - Saudi Arabia

Mon, 10 May 2010 20:50:41 -0700

My presentation at the International Workshop on Free/Open Source Software Technologies

MeedanMemory Now Available on Worldwide Lexicon

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 20:38:21 -0800

Meedan's open access translation memory, MeedanMemory, is now available through the Worldwide Lexicon project.

Worldwide Lexicon (WWL) is an open source, distributed, cloud-based translation management application that facilitates translation of online content and management of massive distributed translation memories.

Social Arab Web 2.0 in Beirut

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:43:24 -0800

The Social Arab Web 2.0 event will be held in Beirut, Lebanon from 7-12 December.

A great group of bloggers and new media enthusiasts from all over the Arab world will gather for a week to exchange knowledge, share experiences and learn from each other about the emerging trends in new media and the social web, focusing primarily on relevance to the Arab region and the Arabic language.

During the event, I will be talking about how we have been working at Meedan to break the language barrier for access to knowledge and access to each other, and how the tools we have been developing can serve bloggers and social media professionals in the Arab region. You can check the event's program on the event's website.

Meedan Releases the World’s First Open Access Arabic/English Translation Memory

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:57:59 -0800

Today, Meedan, is releasing the first publicly available open licensed Arabic/English Translation Memory (TM). This release comes as a part of Meedan’s ongoing commitment to improving the state of Arabic language machine processing research and supporting translators and machine translation researchers.

The new translation memory, called MeedanMemory, contains around one million words in aligned Arabic and English sentence pairs. It constitutes an invaluable resource for translation professionals, Arabic linguistic researchers, academics and volunteer communities, and is the first translation memory of such size and sophistication to be released under an open access license.

Meedan at Toronto Open Source Showcase for Nonprofits

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 14:37:48 -0700

(Published on blog.meedan.net)

Meedan will be showcasing its Arabic/English cross-language social networking platform at the Toronto Open Source Showcase for Nonprofits on Monday 26 October 2009 at the Center for Social Innovation at 215 Spadina Ave., Toronto, ON M5T 2C7.

Join us for a lively discussion about how Meedan is bridging social networks between the East and the West, and to experience first-hand the exciting features of Meedan's platform: beta.meedan.net

Meedan at the Internet Governance Forum

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 10:18:32 -0700

(Published on blog.meedan.net)

Meedan is organizing a workshop at the Internet Governance Forum 2009.

The Internet Governance Forum is an initiative by instituted by United Nations to support the secretary general in carrying out the mandate from the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). Its fourth annual meeting will be held this year in Sharm El Shiekh, Egypt from 15-18 November 2009.
Under the title: “Internet Governance – Creating Opportunities for all”, this year’s event will tackle the following topics on its agenda:

Intellectual Property Rights and Development workshop at the Library of Alexandria

Sun, 23 Aug 2009 19:06:06 -0700

I will be talking at the Intellectual Property Rights and Development workshop at the Library of Alexandria from 27 - 28 September 2009.

The workshop aims to give basic information about intellectual property, focusing on the latest topics on access to health and medicine in relation to intellectual property rights.

The workshop will cover the following topics:

An introduction to intellectual property laws, and their impact on social and economic development
Definitions, and topics covers by IPRs
International treaties on IPR: Berne, Paris, TRIPS, and the international organizations involved: WIPO, WHO, WTO..
IPR as a tool for development, and flexibilities for developing countries
Access to health and medicine in relation to IPR
Latest international negotiations in Geneva and other international fora on Intellectual Property related issues

Copyright Protection in the Digital Age workshop at the Library of Alexandria

Sun, 23 Aug 2009 18:57:49 -0700

I will be talking at the Copyright Protection in the Digital Age workshop at the Library of Alexandria from 29 September - 1 October 2009 in Alexandria, Egypt

This workshop will focus on copyright issues and the new tools to access and disseminate knowledge in the Arab countries.

The workshop will cover the following topics:

An introduction to copyright laws, definitions, international treaties and works protected by copyright
The World Intellectual Property Organization and its Development Agenda proposed by developing countries in 2004
New tools to access and disseminate knowledge: Creative Commons licenses, Free and Open Source Software and open access
Creative Commons licenses in the Arab world
Licensing in the digital age
The protection of software and databases

Explaining the Digital Divide

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 20:10:23 -0700

In this study, presented today at the The International Association for Media and Communication Research – IAMCR conference in Mexico City, we explore the impact of public policy initiatives on e-government capacity and reach worldwide. We conducted this cross-national study on 175 countries to examine the following hypotheses:

National policy initiatives to promote information and communication technologies (ICTs) increase a nation’s capacity for e-government, and increase a nation’s diffusion of ICTs.
Nations that have a national telecommunications regulatory authority and have competition to provide basic telecommunication services and have competition to provide mobile services and encourage financial investment in ICTs are the most likely to have increased e-government capacity, and most likely to have wider diffusion of ICTs.

Twitter

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 07:24:15 -0700

Free Culture Research Workshop 2009

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 09:40:11 -0700

The Free Culture Research Workshop 2009 http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/node/5486 is looking for scholars working on:

Studies on the use and growth of open/free licensing models
Critical analyses of the role of Creative Commons or similar models in promoting a Free Culture
Building innovative technical, legal, organizational, or business solutions and interfaces between the sharing economy and the commercial economy
Modeling incentives, innovation and community dynamics in open collaborative peer production and in related social networks
Economic models for the sustainability of commons-based production
Successes and failures of open licensing
Analyses of policies, court rulings or industry moves that influence the future of Free Culture
Regional studies of Free Culture with global lessons/implications
Lessons from implementations of open/free licensing and distribution models for specific communities
Definitions of openness and freedom for different media types, users and communities
Broader sociopolitical, legal and cultural implications of
Free Culture initiatives and peer production practices
Free Culture, Memory Institutions and the broader Public Sector
Open Science/ Research/ Education
Cooperation theory and practice, dynamics of cooperation and competition
Methodological approaches for studying the characteristics, history, impact or growth of Free Culture

It is tremendously exciting to see the commons attracting this research interest. The workshop will be held October 23 at Harvard. Submissions are due August 9. http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/node/5486

mLife Events : A Platform for Socially Responsible Organizations in Mobile Value Chain

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 15:43:30 -0700

Call for Practice Sessions: talks, posters, demos, tutorials, and exhibitions

Practice sessions aim to cover real world applications, experiences or current developments related to topics of mLife conferences. Public or private sector professionals are invited to submit a ‘one A4 page proposal’ for talks, posters, demos, tutorials, and exhibitions.

All Submissions via: http://m4life.org/openconf/openconf.php

Full call for practice sessions

Call for Papers: The Politics of Open Source

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 21:00:06 -0700

Call for papers: JITP-2010
http://www.umass.edu/jitp/files/2010_cfp.pdf
May 6-7, 2010 - Amherst, Massachusetts

Full Paper Submission Due Date: January 10, 2010

Approach

Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FOSS) has made significant advances, both technically and organizationally, since its emergence in the mid-1980s. Over the last decade, it has moved from a software development approach involving mostly volunteers to a more complex ecology where firms, nonprofit organizations, government agencies and volunteers may be involved. Moreover, the production paradigm continues to expand to other areas of digital content (e.g., Creative Commons, Wikipedia, Connexions, etc.). In this conference we use the phrase open source to capture this broader phenomenon. The Program Committee encourages disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches to the study of open source, broadly defined. Politics in the conference title, can have many interpretations. Political issues closely tied to the free and open source software movement(s) include: national government policies related to the adoption of open source technologies or questions related to interoperability and open standards, software patents, vendor lock-in, and copyright. These are central themes we expect may be discussed in this forum. In this context, we welcome international submissions since differences in the political perspective appear in international contexts. However, topics related to how the concept of openness has led to various interpretations, adaptations, and applications of open source in other domains, and political issues that surround these broader innovations, are also welcome. Specific topics might include, but are not limited to:

Meedan at the Arab Media Centre in the University of Westminster

Sun, 08 Mar 2009 21:17:25 -0700

My presentation at the Arab Media Centre in the University of Westminster, London

"Arabic-English Media Sharing on the Internet": Lecture at the University of Westminster

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 10:35:25 -0800