Advisory group

The advisory group constitutes highly experienced professionals who have been invited to promote the event, advise on the concept and overall outcomes, connect to the target audience, finally and more importantly, select participants for the camp. We have ensured that the advisory group has adequate representation from Asia, Africa and the Americas. The group consists of members who are well-informed about the profile of participants for the camp, experienced in teaching campaign strategy, aware of information tactics for advocacy and also experienced in working in sensitive environments. Members of the group are:

• A. G. Ravi - directs the Technology department at the Center for Victims of Torture www.cvt.org, with the additional charge to expand the use of Information and Communication Technology by non governmental organizations within the worldwide torture rehabilitation movement. To help promote a more strategic use of information for civic society organizations in all sectors, he has helped create the New Tactics in Human Rights (www.newtactics.org) project's online participatory community for civic minded individuals and organizations, to help them learn, share and build solutions together.
• Alaa Abd El Fattah - From his work with children on using facebook to ridicule their teachers in the arab digital expression camps (http://www.arabdigitalexpression.com), to his work with pro democracy activists on using blogs to mobilize thousands of Egyptians against their government in the Kefaya movement (http://www.harakamasria.org), Alaa just loves helping people use ICTs to stick it to the man. By day he works as a Free/Open Source Software developer, by night he dons his mask and cape and patrols the streets of cairo, jumping from campaign to campaign building websites, providing support and training, looking out for activists in need. He likes to pretend that his work on the Egyptian Blogs Aggregator (http://www.omraneya.net) helped bring in a new era of citizen journalism and usher in a new generation of digital activists, while the rest of the world acts as if his blog (http://www.manalaa.net) is relevant.
• Dale [Chutchai Kongmont] - Chutchai is the Community Arts worker for Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers. He conducts local educational and advocacy campaigns through media, art and technology. He has trained sex workers in using mobile phone cameras to interview and document other sex workers on human rights abuses, and is in the process of creating a pan-Asian network of sex worker activists who work in concert for common campaigns. Currently, he is addressing the damaging impact of various government and WHO-sponsored regulations that bring police monitoring back to sex workers groups in Cambodia and across the region to document the human rights abuses caused by anti-trafficking laws. His video "Caught between the tiger and the crocodile" on the impact of trafficking laws in Cambodia was a key factor leading to APNSW winning the Human Rights Watch Award for International Action on HIV and human rights in 2008. www.sexworkerspresent.blip.tv
• Greg Elin - Chief Data Architect of Sunlight Labs(http://www.sunlightlabs.com/), is a research software developer specializing in databases and interactive technologies and is the creator of Fotonotes, an open-source image annotation technology. Since the early 1990’s, he has helped large and small organizations articulate and prototype new technologies. His more than 15 years experience in New York’s hi-tech community includes experiences with dot.coms and non-profits. He has provided database and technology services for a variety of clients including: New York University, American Institute of Graphic Artists, Computer Horizons, and the National Performance Network. Mr. Elin has also facilitated technology discussions organized by Arts International, Dance Theater Workshop among others. From 1998 to 2002, Mr. Elin worked with New York University's IT organization on enterprise wide data and directory information. His Fotonotes image annotation concept has been adopted for use by Flickr.com, a United States Navy micro-satellite project and others. Mr. Elin holds a Masters from the Tisch School of the Arts’s Interactive Telecommunications Program and a B.A. in Communication from the University of Pennsylvania.
• Harpinder A Collacott - heads up the Communications and Campaigns division of the Meningitis Research Foundation. Previously she worked with the Oak Foundation’s International Human Rights Programme, where she handled the transitional justice, human rights defenders and human rights campaigning portfolio. She has extensive experience in international justice and human rights, working with the Special Court for Sierra Leone as the Prosecutor’s Political Adviser and Special Assistant. In this position she developed and oversaw the political strategy to orchestrate the transfer of key indictee Charles Taylor (former President of Liberia) from Nigeria to Sierra Leone. She subsequently served as a consultant to the Open Society Justice Initiative, authoring a strategy document on state cooperation with international criminal tribunals.
• Marie Trigona - has reported from Argentina for numerous media outlets around the world. A writer, radio producer, and film maker, her work focuses on labour struggles, social movements and human rights in Latin America. Her writing has appeared in publications including Z Magazine and ZNet, NACLA, Monthly Review, Canadian Dimension, The Buenos Aires Herald, Left Turn, Americas Program, Clamor, Venezuela Analysis, Upsidedown World, Dollars and Sense and many others. She collaborates with video and direct action collective Grupo Alavío. She reports for Free Speech Radio News, a daily syndicated radio news program broadcast in the U.S.
• Mary Joyce - is the co-founder of DigiActive.org, an all-volunteer organization dedicated to helping grassroots activists around the world use digital tools to increase their impact. She is currently on hiatus, working as the New Media Operations Manager for Barack Obama's presidential campaign. Previously, she was a master's student at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and a Research Assistant for the Internet and Democracy Project at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, also at Harvard. Mary also works as a consultant in the field of technology and social change.
• Ory Okolloh - is a lawyer, a political activist and a blogger. She is the co-founder of Mzalendo (www.mzalendo.com) a website that tracks the performance of Kenyan Members of Parliament, and the co-founder of Ushahidi (www.ushahidi.com), a website that grew out of the political crisis in Kenya and that maps both incidents of violence and peace efforts. She blogs on Kenyan politics and other issues at www.kenyanpundit.com . She is currently based in Johannesburg, South Africa where she works as a legal consultant for several NGOs and manages her various activism efforts. She is a frequent speaker at conferences including TED Global and Poptech on issues around citizen journalism, the role of technology in Africa, and the role of young people in reshaping the future of Africa. She was a contributor to Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century and is affiliated with the Kenya National Commission for Human Rights.
• Ravi Agarwal - is founder director of Toxics Link (www.toxicslink.org), an Indian environmental NGO working on areas of chemical safety,toxics and waste. Over the past 14 years, Ravi and his group have played a key role, as civil society actors, to help formulate polices and regulations including those relating to bio medical waste, municipal solid waste and hazardous waste, besides implementing several best practice models on the ground. Toxics Link is well known as a key organization in the Global South, and is networked to international and national environmental initiatives, such as IPEN and HCWH, EEB, besides working with several partners both here and abroad including with the academia like the University of Sussex (SPRU). He has been awarded the prestigious Ashoka fellowship, and writes regularly on environmental issues in the media and journals. He is also a well known and accomplished photo-artist, and has published two photo books.
• Rick Bahague - is the Projects Coordinator of the Computer Professionals' Union (CP-Union.Org) in the Philippines. CP-Union has been working to advance information and communications technology to benefit grassroots organizations in the country. He leads the K-Rights Monitoring Project of CP-Union which is the primary tool for human rights documentation in the Philippines. CP-Union is also a convenor of TXTPOWER - the popular group standing against anti-people policies of corporations and government in communications services and consumer rights.
• Sally-Jean Shackleton - is Women’sNet’s Executive Director. Her work in the gender sector started in 1991 with her involvement in an organisation focusing on gender based violence, where she was the Information and Media Manager. Since this time she has worked as a consultant, trainer and materials developer – training court personnel on violence against women, coordinating a manual women women’s rights, and participating in research. She joined Women'sNet in 2001 after working with the organisation to develop a website on women's human rights. Since joining Women'sNet she has developed her knowledge on the use of ICTs for women's empowerment, networking and information sharing.
• Sami Ben Gharbia - is a Tunisian digital activist and blogger now living in the Netherlands who serves as advocacy director of Global Voices (http://advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org/). His personal blog is at فكرة (http://www.kitab.nl/) (which means "idea" in Arabic). Sami is the co-founder of nawaat (http://www.nawaat.org/), a Tunisian collective blog about news and politics, Cybversion (http://censorship.cybversion.org/) a collective blog of documenting censorship in Tunisia. He was also active in the online Yezzi Fock campaign (http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/2005/10/04/tunisian-online-protest-blo...) and the creator of Tunisian Prison Map (http://www.kitab.nl/tunisianprisonersmap/) mashup.
• Seema Nair - has worked in areas of journalism, communication development and action research. At present she is the Programme Officer of ICT /Media as well as Gender, Women and Development in HIVOS, India. Previously she worked at UNESCO coordinating Community Media and ICT projects in Asia.