The reverberations of the Greek anti-establishment riots which followed the murder circulated wildly through the social media. Twitter, Facebook and Youtube helped organise solidarity protests in Istanbul, Madrid, Copenhagen, Sofia and so on. The buzztag on Twitter in January was “griots” or Greek riots.

The near-colour revolution in Moldova in April followed the example. The Moldovan Twittertag was #pman. Type #pman in Twitter and you will get a series of liberal anti-communist comments in Romanian. Two months earlier you would have seen calls for a peaceful flashmob gathering with candles in Chisinau’s main square - Piata Marii Adunari Nationale - what pman stands for. Today’s search on this tag yields references to a similar tag for Iran: Enqelab sq. Not surpisingly, radio Free Europe called the Moldovan uprisings a “Twitter revolution.”

Looking back to the most recent colour revolution in Europe: the Ukrainian Oragne revolution, the technological progress is obvious. A Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society study recalls that “By September 2004, Pora [the opposition’s youth movement] had created a series of stable political networks throughout the country, including 150 mobile groups responsible for spreading information and coordinating election monitoring, with 72 regional centers and over 30,000 registered participants. Mobile phones played an important role for this mobile fleet of activists. Pora’s post–election report states, ‘a system of immediate dissemination of information by SMS was put in place and proved to be important.” It took less organisation and time for this spring’s networked protests to happen.

Morozov, however, warns against cyber-optimism in an essay on democracy and the internet. In fact the brutally falsified election results and foreign money flowing to the democratic opposition played a large part in Ukraine. Moldova, on the other hand, is still in a political impasse. Morozov also warns that authoritarian regimes can be equally as effective in using the social media for propaganda, oftentimes very subtly. The internet does not necessarily mean democracy. Access to it does not automatically lead to political awareness and activism. Morozov’s essay has quite a sobering-up effect.

by a stubborn cyber-optimist

During last 2 years former USSR countries faced so-called “BarCamp boom”. Starting from the very first Ukranian BlogCamp in autumn 2007 and until the most recent NevaCamp in St. Petersburg, we all appreciated brand new style of putting new media dreams into real life.

These two years were full of exciting events, people, projects and innovations, which changed us very much. I, personally, during the Kiev BlogCamp in 2007, made my first presentation on a large (relatively) audience, met some people who became my good friends very soon, decided to take part in the BarCamp Baltics 2008 and even developed some ingenious projects for their Innovation Incubator.

Then a first thought of hosting our Belarusian un-conference has appeared. Later it transformed into some small events in Belarus and a huge event at the end of year, as a gift to all Belarusian internet community - ByCamp 2008.

Many people wanted us to continue, and we couldn’t decline. The next Belarusian un-conference will be! But, thinking about what do we are going to achieve, our goals, I started wondering - is BarCamp style suits our needs today? Are there any drawbacks of BarCamp? What do people say? How can we develop it into something more productive?

Suddenly, I came to a conclusion that we cannot host “just another BarCamp” in Belarus. Maybe it seems to me old fashioned, may be too limited, I`m not sure. The only word I have in mind after deciding to change something is “evolution”. Every man should grow personally so do un-conferences should. Asking people who visited BarCamps many times, I always hear about inspiration, parties, contacts, fun, new places, but… People, it’s not the case! Conferences, un-conferences should be visited mostly because one primal reason - knowledge.

We share knowledge, allow others to learn, someone - to teach. Information is the key to everything! Not just any information, but really valuable information, which can be used in everyday`s practice. When I`m visiting 5 different barcamps and see there the same people, or the same topics, or the same approaches to organizing - these T-shirts, stickers, I want to run away from the place. BarCamps are becoming boring. And people feel it. It’s obvious, that for a first-time blogger or Internet freshman events are incredible, but it is only for the first time. BarCamps lose their popularity. And, you know, it is good.

It is good, because “BarCamp crisis” evolved new ways of thinking in an “un-conference way”. And here are some examples:

1. iCamp Russia this year will take place at a ship, which will be traveling across the river Volga. So at least the entrance fee will be somewhere around 300 bucks.

2. BlogCamp Kiev will be a part of the Spot conference and will be free, while the Investor`s Day and a conference will require more serious preparation than just “came and listen”.

3. British people metamorphosed BarCamps into mere practical events, named this new format - “Social Innovation Camp”.

4. Finally, here in Belarus we decided to organize a conference of the Open Space type, which allows us to be much more flexible and creative, host one day as a BarCamp, the second as the practical conference, and the third - as a traditional one, with respective top-level speakers. And all days - in an unformal style!

You can ask me - what the hell, is BarCamp going to die? And my answer is - are you stupid?

Here are some thoughts about when to choose “pure” BarCamp style:

1. When you want it to be a part of something huge (Spot 2009)

2. When it is entirely devoted to one subject (Social Camp Kiev 2008 was for Ukrainian NGO`s mostly)

3. When you want to have some fun (Everybody wants!)

3. When people asking for it and there is a social demand (First BarCamp in every country is usually the best, BarCamp Central Asia, for example)

4. When one of your goals is to teach people public speaking (I`m saying - one of, not the only one)

5. When you want to create a space of public teaching the basics of something (good example - EduCamp Kiev last year).

6. When you want to make money and allow people to make it (iCamp Moscow last and this year).

So, everybody opt for the right way, as always, there are many ways of expressing yourself - whether it will be in Open Space, traditional, BarCamp, meet-up, whatever - format.

Everyone is free to create something - that is the lesson we learned from this incredible 2 years, everyone can do it and everyone must do it!

I`m not sure in everything, but I know one simple thing - we are going to rock!

I met Uladizmir probably around four years ago, as TOL was starting to get involved in new media and had just received a grant to promote blogging in Belarus. Without many contacts in the area, I started to inquire about individuals that might help us with the project, and as luck would have it, I soon found that one of the best and most popular bloggers happened to live in Prague and work over at Radio Free Europe. We met and Uladzimir graciously agreed to get involved, even though we at TOL were mere beginners and he was already quite advanced in his knowledge and experiences. He recruited Ihar and helped us with the initial strategy, but we hadn’t moved very far when news came of a tragic accident in the center of Prague.

If I remember correctly, Uladzimir and his wife were simply walking along a street when a fire engine ran a red light, and then spun out of control in trying to avoid a collision with a tram, hitting the couple. Also if I am remembering correctly, it turned out that there wasn’t even a fire. So sad. I would strongly encourage everyone to check out Ihar’s post (in English), which gives an overview of Uladzimir’s contribution to the Belarusian online world.

Twitter is not just an incidental result of the crazy webmasters` experiment, nor the greatest invention in the art of wasting your time, but the system which appeared right in time, by the society demand. Twitter came into our lives to eliminate the inner contradictions inside the classic style of blogging. With the appearance of “Twitter model” of blogging, traditional blogging systems began to adopt microblogging on their sites in the purpose to survive in quickly changing world.

In the universities we are taught the science of the evolution of open systems. Let me remind you some stages which every system should pass during its lifecycle.

1. The system is born, early prototypes as well as early adopters (as users and creators) appear.

2. The system starts to grow and expand - the number of users increases exponentially.

3. New contradictions appear, which oppose the further growth of the system. The system is well-known to the mass public and respected by the crowd, but the growth of userbase stops.

4. The system begin to loose its loyal users, they are moving to another systems, which are more suitable for their needs.

Now lets imagine that our system in this case it is well known Twitter. Those who follow the trend know that during last 2 years the growth of userbase on different blogging platforms stopped, the world blogosphere tends to stop its expansion.

Its obvious that blogging in its classic meaning is standing now at the 3rd stage - there are lots of blogs, but the overall amount of bloggers is not growing, there are no significant events or inventions in this field.

So, what problems and contradictions oppose the growth of the system?

The main problem here is the limited amount of people who are able, on a regular basis, logically and creatively transmit their thoughts to the form of posts. The point is that meaningless posts become bother the audience, and flooder quickly looses his popularity. Social networks also have a great impact on the classic blogging. Its much more easy for people to change their statuses, upload photos and rate friends then write serious attractive posts. Thats the nature of a man.

And now - some theory again. When the contradictions become crucial for the system, a new system appears. This new system begins its own life and passes through the 4 stages again. And Twitter is exactly this new system.

What next? It`s up to us to decide.

By the way, follow me on Twitter!

Actually I will present old vs. new media, and sure, it is not yet the end of the one. It just should change as has been done by many. Now I see some websites from media that have pretty good design, open source based programming, comments, videos, voices in one place. That’s what I want. But still even these pages don’t t involve many journalists participating. People (even if they write comments for one of the biggest opposition newspaper) are still unanswered by editorial staff.

Hoping to change this year. Now listning to one of my first students - Rita Valiyeva on media and PR. Perfect knowledge of issues. She also serves as PR person for our Barcamps. Success - we have more people than planned.

Still a lot of jobs to do. I am always using this ugly web site to show what we need to change. Pop-up windows, no place to write comments, not even proper e-mail to the editor. But imagine - it is the most read newspaper and news website in Azerbaijan, according to various statistics. Imagine how much more they will get … if they will change.

We’re kicking off with a stellar lineup of contributors from around TOL’s coverage area:

Vojcech Sakłovic is a blogger, translator and online media expert who splits his time between Minsk and London (where he is studying for his MA in media). He is a Belarus contributor to Global Voices Online and does new-media training for journalists in Belarus, the Caucasus and Central Asia.

Yelena Jetpyspayeva is an Almaty-based journalist, consultant and BarCamp enthusiast/organizer. She serves as Russian-language managing editor for the TOL partner project Neweurasia.net, and her own blog, Me. About., covers new-media developments in Central Asia and beyond.

Emin Huseynzade is TOL’s Caucasus project manager. He holds master’s degrees from the Azerbaijan State Economic University and the Georgian Institute of Public Affairs. Emin is a former producer for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and also contributes to TOL’s Steady State Caucasus blog.

Igor Kandyba is a Belarusian blogger, podcaster and Drupal developer from Belarus. He is fascinated with information design, the semantic Web, and using new media tools for social change.

We’ll be adding to the roster as time goes on, and we welcome new voices. If you’re interested in joining in, see the Blog for Us page for details.