forum for debate on the road to media freedom

Last week I spoke at the Eurasian Media Forum in Almaty, Kazakhstan. The conference brings together journalists, business leaders, academics and politicians for two days of discussion ranging from news coverage of global events such as the current economic crisis to the implications of the Obama Presidency on East-West relations.

It’s a pretty far flung place, but one with a fascinating mix of influences – cultural, economic, political, historical, religious. The conference is hosted by none other than the Daughter of the President, so the security bubble it (rightly) exists within also makes it quite different from most of the conferences I’ve been invited to.

I went, at least in part, in the hope that by talking about the tools and techniques of blogging and social media, I could encourage delegates to think about being more open, transparent and direct in their dealings with audiences, consumers and, for the politicians in attendance, the populaces they govern. It was my usual sort of presentation but attendance at my talk was a bit disappointing which I later discovered was because a small scale protest was going on outside the building. Dan Kennedy blogged about that and what happened in the subsequent panel which we both participated in, on his blog Media Nation.

Obviously, I can’t profess to have been aware of the protest at the time I was on stage nor could I, as an outsider, ever expect to fully understand it – Central Asia has cultural and contextual differences that can, without a proper analysis, make it hard for Westerners to fully unpick things. What I can say is that the purpose of the conference – creating a broad forum for debate about media, politics, society and business- made it absolutely worth attending. It’s an even more important debate in this region, where many are still trying to figure out exactly where they fit into a world that has changed dramatically around and within them over the past decade.

2 Comments

  1. Thanks for sharing this experience, very inspiring!
    When I got more spare time (currently finishing my MA Thesis & working for TakingITGLobal and artist8, a Berlin or rather web-based startup – it’s fun though), I’ll start blogging about social media in different countries; I’ve always been interested in cultural differences and when it comes to social media, one can certainly learn a lot about the cultures in question.
    I almost wrote my thesis about it, analyzing social networks for cultural differences, but that would have been to empirical for me ;-)
    Btw: Ole told me that your meeting at the design museum was quite fruitful! Glad to hear that!
    Cheers,
    Stefan

  2. Nice item, Robin, and great meeting you in Almaty. If you had not lent me your phone, this might never have happened:
    http://is.gd/vuWQ
    Thanks again, and perhaps we’ll see each other in Kazakhstan next year as well.

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