Global Voices Citizen Media Summit 2012: Countdown to Nairobi · Global Voices
Georgia Popplewell

Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Brazil, Cameroon, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Cuba, Denmark, Egypt, Ethiopia, France, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Guatemala, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, Italy, Ivory Coast, Japan, Kenya, Lebanon, Macedonia, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Mali, Mexico, Moldova, Morocco, Mozambique, Netherlands, Nigeria, Pakistan, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Uruguay, USA, Uzbekistan, Venezuela.
Those, in case you were wondering, are the 70-plus countries—and counting—that will be represented at this year's Global Voices Citizen Media Summit.
In 38 days’ time, on July 2, 2012, over 250 people from the four corners of planet Earth will gather in Nairobi, Kenya, for the Global Voices Citizen Media Summit 2012. Moving this number of people across the globe takes some doing, and for us on the planning team, the past few months have been spent figuring out how to get people from cities like Vilnius, Bamako, La Paz, Kolkata and Naypyidaw to Nairobi, booking hotel rooms, sorting out visa applications, and, most of all, designing and refining the Summit format and program. Then refining it again.
Nairobi Skyline, by Mutua Matheka (used with permission)
Highlights of this year's Summit include:
- The announcement of the winners of the Google-supported Breaking Borders Award
- “Digital Media and Disruptive Publics“, a workshop for academics studying citizen media that takes place in parallel with the Global Voices organisational meeting
- Lots of Kenyan bloggers, including winners of the Bloggers’ Association of Kenya‘s recent blog awards, and winners of our own blogging competition
This year's program will include plenary discussions, topic-based breakout groups, open “unconference”-style sessions and hands-on training workshops. We'll be facilitating online, real-time participation and will be capturing, translating, and publishing the knowledge and conversations coming out of the meeting as part of the process.
If you'd like to join us in Nairobi, we've still got room. You can register via the Summit web site. The registration fee is US$75 for participants from outside of Africa, US$50 for residents of Africa outside of Kenya, and KES 2,500 for Kenyan residents.
If you'd like to join us, but can't, we'll be streaming portions of the program live on July 2-3. Also check out blog posts by the Global Voices community and our speakers at the Summit web site and follow us on Twitter and Facebook.
The Global Voices Citizen Media Summit 2012 is made possible by Google, MacArthur Foundation, Open Society Institute, Knight Foundation, Hivos, Adessium Foundation and Yahoo!, with support from iHub.