Numerous participants from Middle East and North Africa
Civic revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, which two years ago came into the focus of world public, have shown how new technologies can be exploited to cause a major political changes in the society. Last year we also hosted participants from Egypt, but POINT 2.0 Conference will show special attention this year just to region of North Africa and the Middle East. Thus, during the three day conference we will host a number of representatives of civil society organizations in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Israel and Palestine.
This year we will host Esraa Abdel Fattah, a Vice-Chairwomen at the Egyptian Democratic Academy. She is also the founder of “Free Egyptian Woman group” for women political empowerment and is also an active columnist at El- Masrey-Al-Youm newspaper, the most widely spread private owned newspaper, and has her own talk show program on Channel “On TV Life ” which airs every weekend. In 2008 Esraa co-founded the April 6 General Strike in Egypt, a Facebook group to promote a day of civil disobedience calling for workers to stay home in protest against low wages and soaring food prices. After being dubbed the social-networking phenom, “Facebook Girl,” she was detained by Egyptian security and spent two weeks in prison.
As a political activist she played a leading role in the mass protests in Tahrir Square during the 25th January Revolution . Not only was active on the internet, but also on the ground, updating Al Jazeera TV with the latest news related to the opposition.
Esraa was named as “Woman of the year 2011” by Glamour Magazine for her leadership in organizing the historic Tahrir Square movement in Egypt. She was nominated for Nobel Peace Prize in 2011 and named one of Arabian Business Magazine’s 100 most powerful Arab women in 2011 & 2012. Since 2012, Esraa is a co-founder and member of ElDostor Party Steering Committee.
During POINT 2.0 we will also host Ommar Hammam from Egypt. Ommar is a social media enthusiast, worked as a consultant for UNICEF Egypt for their social media strategy. He also blogged short stories with one making its way to publishing in a print book. Ommar was also engaged as a TEDx volunteer who helped TEDxCairo team develop its themes, concepts and speaker lineups. He is also passionate about languages and is currently working as an English language instructor.
Abbas Adel, alson from Egypt, is a part-time social entrepreneur. He is best known as the founder of MorsiMeter.com and Zabatak.com. He works as a Software Engineer for Major Telecom operators in Egypt and is intensly involved in youth and NGOs activities.Abbas is a Award-winner of many national and international competitions.
Khaled H. Attwibi from Libya on POINT 2.0 conference will introduce the work of Libyan Association for Democracy (LAD) which carried out civic education project that aims to promote human rights in Libya, with special emphasis on women’s rights.
Presentation “Parliament in the cloud” will be held by Benny Daon from Tel Aviv, and trough this presentation he will convey the experiences gained during the four years of development Open Knesset/Open Parliament.