Personal Democracy Forum: Hope for Us?

A couple of hours ago, @acarvin, aka Andy Carvin, aka 'crowd sorcerer' tweeted this:

Stop whatever you're doing and watch this video of a talk by Jim Gilliam. Trust me.

I trusted him and hit the link.



That's from a conference/gathering called Personal Democracy Forum 2011, happening yesterday and today.

I've been watching other videos. Like this one by Andy Carvin about the late Mo Nabbous, who was killed in Benghazi on March 19 while reporting on the Libyan uprising.

And this one, by Alaa abd el Fattah, Egyptian activist and organizer of the uprising there. (One highlight: at the beginning of his talk, he asks the tech-savvy crowd what tools they thought were most useful at Tahrir Square. 'Twitter'. 'Internet'. 'Facebook'. Nope. 'Rocks.')

And this, one of the keynote presentations by Lawrence Lessig about 'Taken for Granted Ideas'.

There are lots more and I'm about to go back and watch, but I wanted to share.

After more than a month of deep gloom, I feel ridiculously hopeful.