FAQ

What is the Arab Bloggers Meeting?
A meeting of bloggers and digital activists from across the Middle East and North Africa.

From January 20-22, we will hold a small, closed group meeting where we’ll share skills, discuss strategies and tactics, and work together on long-term community projects.

On January 23, we will hold a formal conference, open to the public and media, with panels on different subjects related to online advocacy, activism, and Internet policy issues in the MENA region.

When?

The meeting will take place from January 20 through to January 23, 2014.

Where?
The meeting will take place at the Landmark Hotel, located near the center of Amman.

Who is hosting the Meeting?

The AB14 program is jointly organized by Global Voices Advox, 7iber, Social Media Exchange, Al-Monitor and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Our friends at 7iber, a Jordanian media rights group, will be the local host for the meeting. Free Press Unlimited and Tactical Technology Collective are providing programmatic support.

How is the Meeting funded?
This Meeting is funded entirely by philanthropic foundations partners including Heinrich Böll, Hivos, UNESCO, and the Open Society Foundations.

Who is attending the summit?
A simple visual overview of the attendees can be found here.

How are participants chosen?

Closed-session participants are invited by the conference planning committee. Participants are chosen based on criteria including digital activism experience, skills, regional diversity, gender balance, and past attendance. Our participant roster is now full. Unfortunately, we cannot extend additional invitations to closed sessions of AB14. But we hope you'll join us for the public forum!

Why is this a closed meeting?

Many of our attendees are activists and bloggers dealing with politically sensitive issues. In order to work together and share stories, experiences, and skills, we need to create a safe, trusting environment and keep our numbers down.

If I can’t attend in person, how can I be involved?

We hope to do as much online reporting about the meeting as we can. We plan to be doing plenty of blogging, tweeting, live video hangouts, and more throughout the conference so that anyone with an Internet connection can keep up with the meeting. We also plan to share analytical writing, tool kits, guides, and other written training documents that can be useful to a broader audience.

Arab Bloggers Meeting 2011, Tunis. Photo by caribbean free photo via Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Arab Bloggers Meeting 2011, Tunis. Photo by caribbean free photo via Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)