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thank you very much for your attendance and your contributions to our International Virtual Conference "Internet-Enabling-Freedom". With your active participation you have helped us to make it a very successful event. More than 350 participants from all over the world have attended this conference - this made the conference the most visited online seminar in the Virtuelle Akademie ever. In 28 videostatements experts from all over the world have presented their view on the influence of the internet on democratic structures.

If you liked Online Conference please register for our next one, about
"Free Markets and Sustainability" starting on November 3rd.
So please register now

All the best for you
Yours

Joachim Schulte
Head of division
Virtuelle Akademie
Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom

Today (Sunday 24h GMT) we are going to close our conference "Internet:Enabling:Freedom". All our discussion forums are closed by then. However, we‘ll leave open the deposited conference-documents for a while – including the foum entries. The Conference Documentation (Draft) is deposited in the WIKI.

Before we say Goodbye

Before we say Goodbye I want to submit my kindest regards. It was a pleasure meeting you, really. Though, I admit, it was hard work.
My kindest regards go to the FNF with the chairman of our foundation Dr. Wolfgang Gerhardt on the headmost, to our speakers, to our technical staff in the back-office and - of course - to you. You, yes you, did a great work with all your contributions. I do think that this Conference is proof that we – as Liberals – can built a global community regardless what colour, ethnicity, religion or nation. Each individual is unique. But everybody of us can rally for her/his freedom by connecting to other persons. The Internet is a great tool for that. A tool? No it is an entire tool-box. Feel free to make use of it. It makes the planet really global and it is the right answer to a world that has become global. It seems that it this more than a tool. Probably it is a personal disposition to meet the real world, to address the issues that matter to us and to connect to people –wherever they are – in order to find a solution. The fundament of all this is the freedom to speak out and – of course – the respect for personal integrity. Let us build on that. We had fights – sure! But, we had fights over values of our own. That counts in my opinion. Rallying for self-determination, for self-regulation and - of course - for self-restraint is not the tiniest thing. Instead, it gives us confidence into the right cause, dare I add - into the cause of Liberalism? I'd be pleased to meet you next time – right around the corner in the village.

I say Goodbye to all of you.

However, our next International Online Conference "Free Markets and Sustainability“ starting on 3rd. November is open for registration.

 So please register now

The FNF is always a great place to meet.

In the meantime you can meet the end of the Internet in the Internet

Bye-Bye, Werner Brockjan, (Conference-Moderator)

Before we say "Goodbye" tomorrow we have the great pleasure and the great honor to have NERIC ACOSTA here with us. He is our last speaker in our „International Conference: Internet:Enabling:Freedom“.
Neric Acosta is Secretary-General of the Liberal Party of the Philippines and the Council of Asian Liberals and Democrats (CALD). He was a member of the Philippine House of Representatives 1998 up to 2007

In his closing remarks he stresses (among other things) one very important point for us Liberals: „Building and strengthening the institutions of a democratic infrastructure in order to promote human rights, the rule of law and to safeguard civil rights.“ He continued in saying that the Internet is of great support for this issue because „when we speak about the Internet and when we speak about Liberal Democracies then we really speak about ideas and information. Information we spread and share. He referenced some„Best Pratices“ we saw already during our conference – practices that make use and maximize the potential of the new technologies to bind together people into social-networks or political networks for a shared goal. Neric Acosta said: „The Internet is a great tool to become engaged, to activate citizens, to influence people in their choice-making, to let them make wiser use of their votes...because they have more access to issues that really matter to them.“
And again he brought up the paramount issue for us Liberals: to buttress the institutions that gurantee the rule of law, the protection of human rights along with civil rights. This is the responsibility of us all.“
Please listen to this great speech from Neric Acosta from the Philippines:

The moderators are busy to draft the seminar documentation with the conference results. They are available tomorrow on our last day.

Hu Jia. It was a day to celebrate and a day stay on alert. Hu Jia, the young human-rights activist from China was awarded the prestigious Sakharov Prize of the European Parliament. Hu is still in chinese custody without medical treatment. His wife Zeng Jinyan and 11 month old daughter are under house-arrest. The civil rights campaigner was jailed in April for 3 1/2 years for „inciting subversion“, after testifying to European lawmakers in November 2007 about rights violations in China. Hu is one of China's best-known environmental and human rights activists. Hu is a prisoner of conscience.
The Internet – mainly through its blogging-feature – has helped Hu very much to stay present in the international public. The President of the Parliament said: "By awarding the Sakharov Prize to Hu Jia, the European Parliament firmly and resolutely acknowledges the daily struggle for freedom of all Chinese human rights defenders."



Today we’ve added the still missing features of Track 3 „On Censorship & Ethical Standards“.

Professor Cherian George. Yesterday I had Professor Cherian George from the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore on the telephone. He answered several questions about „Censorship in SE-Asia“ from his post in Singapore. Our interview ended with a very optimistic note about the issue how the internet-community itself can find a self-regulating mechanism (say - moral suasion or ethical standards) to rule the internet. We also spoke about free-speech activists and the hottest issues in the battle between censorship and freedom of speech. It was a great pleasure to speak with him. Listen what he has to say.
Secondly, Robert Hesse spoke about geo-locational filtering. He is program-manager at the Friedrich-Naumann-Foundation.

Leslie Harris (CDT). For our final round in our conference we’ve sent a videographer to the office of Leslie Harris in Washington DC. Leslie Harris is President and Chief Executive Officer of the Center for Democracy & Technlogy. Leslie works to promote democratic values and constitutional liberties in the digital age.

Please keep up your discussion while we, the moderators, prepare for our respective track-summaries and the presentation of conference results.

On Censorship. An important note from the moderator. I had great pain to NOT delete two entries in our discussion-forum made by a person who at great length clipped a statement from the fundamentalist muslim group Hizb-ut-Tahrir and a press-covering of that said organsisation into his message. The writer did not make clear if he was in support of this group or not. Or if he was only giving an example of a thinking that is outright threatening to liberal believes. My request to clarify his position was left unanswered – so far.

I’m still in contact with our directors about this issue and let you know the final out-come.
But I also want to ask you as participants what you think about this case? Please make your entries and put your comments into here.

My personal view is the following: freedom of speech is the pre-eminent right of every citizen to speak out against any government. That’s the historical root and I do think that we must herd this achievement. Censorship has its roots in power. In a power that wants to keep its secrets and a power that wants to stay unasked. From a democratic government we want the protection of our civil rights and not infringement. Government should stay away from things we – the people – can resolve ourselves. But we also empower democratic government to act when action is needed in order to safegurad civil society – when this order of our civil life comes under a deathspell.

I open a discussion-thread „Censorship needed here?“ where you can hand in your opinion about the above mentioned case in question. Please make your contributions. Do we have to pull the trigger here?

Update of Conference as of yesterday:
Facebook and the networking community enjoys many entries – so far.
It tells me that establishing a trustworthy globally networking community is of utmost importance for you. Something liberals should consider.

2 much dependence on internet - reduce the analytical thinking?
Many concerns are voiced in this thread. May I direct you to Jaron Lanier („The Prodigy“ in the realm of virtuality) who recently penned a pamphlet against what he called „Digital Maoism“? I think he gives fodder to this lively debate

Today we feature Johannes Vogel, Chairman of Young Liberals of Germany. He makes a strong case in defence for the freedom of speech. He advocates that we should not easily give in to those who sail under the flag of security concerns and that of moral tidiness in order to restrict the freedom to speak out. Listen what Johannes has to say.

It’s a day to mourn for me and Maria-Christina Nimmerfroh. Our friend and founder of the Virtual Academy, LUDWIG FISCHER, died 3 years ago on this day while he was on holidays. He was only 47 and left behind his loving wife and his young, then ten-year old bright daughter Janne. We remember him.

What’s on today in Censorship & Ethical Standards?
How can we leave the Internet open? How can we protect the benefits of the Internet and avoid and even battle censorship? How can we take action on our side to produce commandments to rule the Internet? It’s obvious that there are many out there who want to exploit the community of globally connected people for their ill-intented purposes – be it speech of hatred, pornography, child-abuse, promoting war and clash of cultures. The list is endless. So, what can we –the people – do on this issue. Can we employ „moral suasion“ as a weak force though effective when it reaches a critical mass and when it is exercised by millions of us?

We are awaiting a contribution from our asian colleagues and hope that it arrives us over the day.

What’s about geo-locational filtering. Yesterday you saw the statement of one high-official from Germany. Jürgen Büssow. Today I want to bring to your attention what the giant GOOGLE (video) has to say about this issue – especially when it comes to China. For China see also this report (21 min)

What’s on Today in Political Campaigns Online?
Maria-Christina will add a feature about myOB = myObama-Barack.

Please notice that this video is biased in that it is made by the Obama team.

Please, take also attention to her further readings and material that she has put into the respective box. One is about „Dos and Don'ts of Online Political Campaign Marketing“ , another about „Campaign 2008: Targeting Young Voters; what a basket of internet-media and activity can achieve“. (Its a ppt) Many more good advices are found in this box. So have look.

We are still collecting „Best Practices“ in both tracks. Sure, in the track about censorship we als collect „Worst Practices“. Please make your entries and share with us your knowledge about your experience. Use either the respective discussion-forums or the WIKI.

All systems are back to normal and on go. We regret our software problems

Today we go into our 2nd day of our disussion about „Censorship & Ethical Standards“ in Track 3 and about „Political Campaigns Online in Track 4.

What’s on in Track 3 „Censorship & Ethical Standards“?We’ll feature JÜRGEN BÜSSOW from Germany who – as District President – was already pioneering on content-filtering back in 2001. He speaks about the „Whys“ and „Hows“ of his taking action. For many „free-speech-activists“ BÜSSOW was the man who gave their battle for free-speech a face on the opposing site – that of state-authorities. It might be noteworthy that Germany is not free of censorship but that it enjoys a relatively uncensored public. So, listen what JÜRGEN BÜSSOW told us in an interview.

I've added new papers about "Censorship in the Anglosphere" and "Intergovernmental rulings of the Internet" to the further-readings-box.

What’s on in Track 4 „Political Campaigns online“? The CEO of the German Liberal Party (FDP) JÜRGEN BEERFELTZ details how he runs political campaigns online. And from Malaysia comes PREMESH CHANDRAN to us. He is the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Malaysiakini.com, an independent news media organisation in Malaysia. He gives us a case study of campaigns.

We do hope that these inputs contain suggestions for a lively discussion among you in the respective discussion-forums.

So, please make your contributions. You are free to open new topics or replying to existing ones.

Doors are open for the second round. Please listen/view to the first statements and make your comments about:

• Censorship and Ethical Standards
• Political Campaigns Online

Today, Monday 20th October, we have the moderators‘ introductionary notes about Censorship and Political Campaigns. One from Werner Brockjan and one from Maria-Christina Nimmerfroh.

Censorship: Vint Cerf (Vice-President of Google and Chief Internet-Evangelist of said company) speaks about „moral persuasion“ and the necessity of an international agreement about acceptable conduct. How to reach a global framework or a „law of the net“ analog to the „law of the seas“? In Addition we clipped an interview with him where he speaks about his company’s subjection to national lawmakers. We expect a very controversial debate. Please hand in your knowledge and experience with censorship in your country and how you go against restrictions to speak out. That could sum up to collection of „Worst Practices“ and „Best Practices“. Over the week we’ll add additional information about this topic. Under the menu-entry „Censorship – Further Readings“ I have added already two papers: one from the UNESCO about „Ethical Standards“ and three country-studies about Censorship in Singapore, Burma and Iran.

Political Campaigns online: Maria-Christina Nimmerfroh (Frankfurt/Germany) will host this track and gives a short introduction. She will add more features over the day and will notify you accordingly.

Now it’s your turn. The discussion is open.

Beginning tomorrow (20th October) we set out for the 2nd week of our program. Track 3 about „Internet Censorship & Ethical Standards“ and Track 4 about „Political Campaigns Online“ are on our schedule. Please open „Our Agenda“ to see the program which is crammed full of entries.

As of today we have more than 300 persons who have registered with us. Thank you. Thank you also for the lively debate and the many contributions so far. We do hope (and we think it can be expected because of the topics we have choosen) that this week will see many controversies. We have many prominent persons speaking too us: from Vint Cerf to Roby Alampay, from Leslie Harris to Jürgen Büssow, from Pramesh Chandran to Hans-Jürgen Beerfeltz and from Gerhart Baum to Neric Acosta.

The summaries of  Track 1 „Chances of Technology“ and of  Track 2 „Blogs: The One Man Show“ are deposited in our WIKI-Box.

One last question: those who haven’t done so already can edit their „profile“ in the participants-list and can add a photo of yours and a short personal statement.

This conference is also about „Best Practices“. Please hand in your knowledge of such initiatives using the WIKI in order to make your comments. As an example have added already two: one about iVoting in Estonia and one about the Barefoot College in India and some other countries.

Stay tuned. Track 3 and Track 4 goes online tomorrow 20th October.

Is this the proper place and time to speak of philosophy? Is there an intellectual concept, an intellectual image that can comprehend and picture the thinking (though unconscious) in our doing, in our activities when we collaborate, cooperate, connect, spread and proliferate even the tiniest sets of information, ideas and stimuli?

Since very long I was fascinated by the concept of rhizomatic-thinking. Actually, the Rhizome was introduced into Philosophy by Gilles Deleuze ( 1925-1995) and Felix Guattari (1930 - 1992) – both are french. The latter was a psychotherapist, the former a very influential thinker.

Everybody knows Rhizomes in the realm of botany. And many consider them a plague – when gardening. But the Rhizome seems to be a very fertile and a provocative concept in the field of „virtuality“ and that of social networking. The botanical Rhizome is a horizontal stem of a plant that is usually found underground, often sending out roots and shoots from its nodes. Sounds familiar to networking people - right?

Lines of flight – Negotiated Knowledge - Mutualism
Ideas are dynamic events or ‘lines of flight’ which take us into an endlessly bifurcating system. The term Rhizome (or lateral, multi-forked root system) suggests the nomadic movement of thought by the intensities of a self in process. Arborescence, on the other hand, describes hierarchical systems of thought. Deleuze and Guattari used the term "Rhizome" to describe theory and research that allows for multiple, non-hierarchical entry and exit points in data representation and interpretation.They opposed the concept of the Rhizom to an arborescent conception of knowledge, which worked with dualist categories (good-bad) and binary choices (positive-negative). A rhizome works with horizontal and trans-species connections (a horse plus a knight is a war-machine), while an arborescent model works with vertical and linear connections.
And in politics? The Rhizome abhorrs the top-down approach, the hierarchy and always counts on other probabilities.

In a rhizomatic model, knowledge is negotiated, and the learning experience is a social as well as a personal knowledge creation process with mutable goals and constantly negotiated premises.
Isn’t it that what we are doing here in our conference? read on my dear

As we are going slowly into the week-end we want to keep you up-dated about todays steps and our work for the next days.

In our Track 1 „Chances of Technology“ we want to collect Best Practices in eDemocracy from around the world. So, please send in examples from your country or region. It does not matter if these are of national, regional or communal scale. Please open the WIKI and make your entries. I have made already one entry about the electronic polls in Estonia. There are tons of "Best Practices" from all over the world documented on this site. DoWire

Our Track 2 „Blogs: The One Man Show“ goes one step further and will feature Markus Beckedahl from newthinking communications with his words about „Basic Patterns of Blogs in the Political Arena“.

Over the day we will add further readings to both of our tracks. So stay tuned.

The discussion about blogging is starting to fly in our forum. I highlighted some of the discussions in my latest blog entry. You can also check out some best practices now: Ariana Huffington and Rocky Bru talk about their experiences.

PS: After some software-trouble all of you are now able to work with our Conference Wiki. Please try out the risk-free working in the Sandbox or add your ideas for our upcoming Conference Documentation.

You have certainly noticed already a new feature in our menu: the Wiki. We introduced that in order to give you a tool where we con produce a conference-dokument. It allows for cooperation, collaboration and working together. It goes beyond discussion. In that sense we could produce a memorandum, a manifest or else. It seems to me that Wikis are about a certain philosophy of writing and authorship: we give up on individual authorship, we are writing in a „many-handed“ mode, the author is the multitude of the community and everybody bears responsibility for the whole. We, the moderators, invite you to try it out. Over the day we’ll make our first entries. The tool in itself is easy to handle. So, don’t worry to write, to correct and to add.

We had some problems yesterday with our software. The video of Abe Olandres, a famous blogger from the Philippines, is online now. Please have a look. Christian Heise from e-demokratie.org and e-politik.de here in Berlin had a conversation with Tobias Escher from the Oxford Internet Institute about technologies for eGovernment, eDemocracy, eAdminsitration and eVote. It’s online now.

Over the day we’ll have more video-clips available: that from Ariana Huffington (Huffington Post) and that from Rocky Bru who is a famous blogger and highly respected journalist in Malaysia.

I was sorry that I had to delete a third account from the participants-list because of bad behaviour: trolling, fabricating false statements and insulting.

The conference is very busy so far and enjoys good traffic. Thank you.

Today we go into our working sessions. We labeled them „Tracks“ . During this week the following tracks are open:

• Chances (Opportunities) of Technology
• Blogs: The One Man Show

You are free to work in both tracks or just in one. It’s your choice. More details are given under the respective entry.

Please notice that I share modertion now with Carl Philipp Burkert (former head of the Virtual Academy). He will oversee the „blog-thing“ while I myself will concentrate on „chances of technology.“ Each track will start with a short indroduction (video) by the moderator. Please feel free to discuss the topics in the respective discussions forum.

A short summary of your conference-expectations can be found here.

This morning I've promised you some findings on how Internet and Democracy are interrelated.

1. Is Internet penetration linked to democracy?

It’s no guesswork say Michael L. Best and Keegan W. Wade from Georgia Tech /Atlanta.
In their study „The Internet and Democracy: Global Catalyst or Democratic Dud?“ they have these findings:

• „In this study we explore the global effect of the Internet on democracy over the period of 1992 to 2002 by observing the relationships between measures related to democracy and Internet prevalence. Our results show a significant correlation between Internet penetration (measured as the estimated number of Internet users per 1,000 people) and a common indicator of a nation's level of democratization provided by the Freedom House....“
  

• The latest readings of the Democracy-Index (2006) are published here.
  

The authors go on saying:

• „Indeed, we find that Internet penetration explains more variation in the level of democratic development within a country than does literacy rates and some of the regional categories...“

They argue that we have regulators, i. e. forces that control systems like the Internet.
These are markets, architectures, norms, and laws.
Their conclusion:

• „We argue that a democratic regulator is a force that serves to enhance civil or political liberties. And we argue by example that there are democratic (and, indeed, anti-democratic) regulators which control aspects of cyberspace.“ read on my dear
  

2. Ukrainian Revolution

This report covers the Ukrainian Revolution (Orange Revolution) in 2004 and makes
the point that this Revolution was not as successful as it was without the networking people.
It details the many tools and their combination in order to mobilize people.
Read on my dear

3. People Formerly Known as the Audience

In the aforementioned study is a foot-note that came to my attention.
It quotes Jay Rosen who runs the BLOG PRESSthink GHOST OF DEMOCRACY IN THE MEDIA MACHINE
His piece covers some fundamental differences between old media and new media.

• We, the people, are no longer on the receiving site of media.
• Blogs have given the press to us.
• Podcasting gives radio to us.
• Shooting, editing and distributing video once belonged to you, Big Media.
• You, Big Media, were once (exclusively) the editors of the news.
• A highly centralized media system had connected people “up” to big social agencies and centers of power but not “across” to each other. Now the horizontal flow, citizen-to-citizen, is as real and consequential as the vertical one.
  

The piece (kind of a pamphlet) gives an impression of the architecture of the Internet contrary to old media. Read on my dear

It's day two in our Opening Session

Yesterday we counted already more than 300 registrants. And we are counting. Traffic was very good and the ongoing discussions show a healthy level of disputes. At the end of today I'll try to give you an abstract of topics that seem to have attracted the most attention. If I'm not completely wrong about this then I had the feeling that there was a remarkable difference between those who consider the Internet and its related features (SMS, VoI, RSS, Pods and the likes) as simple tools for promoting ideas and campaigns and those who consider it as a liberal architecture in itself. I was quite surprised that an old text of cyberlibertarian John Perry Barlow (The Economy of Ideas Selling Wine Without Bottles) found such an attention in our audience.

Our schedule for today contains two videos.

One was produced with VINT CERF.
He is Vice-President of GOOGLE and Internet-Evangelist - as he likes to say. This video was made in Cape-Town South-Africa during the "Freedom Exposition". He speaks about the Internet's core political issue. Although he is speaking about Africa his ideas apply to all continents and countries - developed or developing.

Next is the aforementioned JOHN PERRY BARLOW.
In 2004 he gave an interview - after years of silence. The video was produced for the Berkman Centre at Harvard University. The interview certainly will catch your attention.

Does the Internet have a stake in Democracies and in the process of Democratization?
It certainly does say two reports: one is a scientific research and the other is a political report covering the Ukrainian Revolution in 2004. Over the day I'll come back to this and give you more details about this topic.

We got knowledge that Datin Wan Azizah from Malaysia couldn't produce her video-statement. We are sorry and regret that.

I take opportunity to say that we, the moderators, are sitting in Germany which is 1 hour in advance of GMT.
We start our work at 10h GMT and we go to bed at 22h GMT. So, don't be surprised when we are late or early in your time-zone.

Please use the discussion forum to exchange your views about today's topics.

Welcome! We, at the Virtual Academy, we are quite exited that our conference Internet:Enabling:Freedom finally is online as from now. Everybody who is in the online-business and works with online-media knows the flurry as the dead-line draws close and closer. So did we.

The president of our foundation, Dr. Wolfgang Gerhardt, has a message for us all. In his opening remarks he speaks about his view and his expectations reflecting on how the internet can help liberals in their cause for freedom.

We are awaiting a video-message from Datin Wan Azizah from Malaysia today. She is the wife of Anwar Ibrahim, former Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia, who was goaled on trumped-up charges in 1999. Since then Wan Azizah became a symbol of a national reform movement to bring about democratic change and social reform in Malaysia. A five-year political ban imposed on her husband Anwar Ibrahim was lifted on April 14, 2008. Her party, the Parti Keadilan Rakyat, won 31 seats in the malaysian parliament and promotes an agenda with a strong social justice and anti-corruption emphasis.

Please take a look at our welcoming video. It gives a short abstract of the up-coming features and has some hints of how we work together in the next 14 days. We have also a helpfile. So far, more than 150 participants from all continents have registered for this conference. Wow. I haven’t had time to go through all the profiles yet. But I want to remember those who haven’t sent in already theirs to do so ASAP. And please – a photo would be nice.

Throughout our conference we are going to upload more and more written text, videos, audio-files and interesting links. How’s about yours? Send in your comments using the forum, point to interesting sites, upload documents, videos and audios. And please, report from your country about the issues in question.

And now? It’s your turn. What do you expect from our conference? Some words will do when you go here.

Please check-out your respective local time here (converter) or here (map)

Welcome to our new Conference website! Here you will find all the information you need. You might be interested in some General Information and especially in the Conference Agenda. Please check back with this page, we will update it as often as possible. You can also subscribe to this page with your RSS-Reader. You might also be interested in our Facebook Event Page.

From now on until the 13th of October you can register for the Conference. Please keep in mind that this International Virtual Conference is funded and there is no registration fee. So do not hesitate and register now.

Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung für die Freiheit, Karl-Marx-Straße 2, 14482 Potsdam, Germany
Virtuelle Akademie, info@virtuelle-akademie.de

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