Marouen Bloggin' his Life

Few days ago I’ve received on my snail mail inbox a certificate I was expecting for 2 months. As it is written on it, “this certificate is to certify that I’ve successfully completed the following course on Internet Governance Capacity Building Programme”. It’s an online course organized by the DiploFoundation which is based on the Mediterranean Academy of Diplomatic Studies in Malta. You can find all the details about the course which is related the framework of the WSIS Internet Governance debate in this link. What is great is that I started this 4 months course when I was in Mali and I’ve been able to make only the exam in Tunisia (at home hopefully because I cannot imagine myself doing it on a cybercafé there). During these 4 months, I had a weekly homework of reading and commenting texts and online colleagues’ comments related to the different aspects of Internet Governance. I was used to the technical aspects in my engineering studies but discovering the new aspects (called baskets on the course) like legal, economic or development ones was really interesting for me. Especially since I became an ICT4D addicted since the WSIS in Geneva. A research project was also required and a final exam consisting of answering to 2 of 3 questions related not only to the course but also to the discussions we had periodically. Personally I’m very proud of this certificate you can see it here even if I’m not sure that it has a value here in Tunisia since 4 months online course has no equivalent in our academic system.

One of my tasks on the World Summit on the Information Society which will be held in Tunis on the forthcoming November is to promote the World Summit Youth Award. I’m doing this as the WSYA board member like all other WSIS Youth Caucus “very” active members since the Youth Caucus is the main partner. This new competition is the youth version of the World Summit Award which is more famous because it took place during the first phase and its Gala event during Geneva summit days was one of the main events (also b/c the WSA booth was just close to where all the receptions took place so no one can miss it). The WSYA is less famous because it has no national then international levels and has not to have an important team in every country. At my level, I was able to contact some newspaper and Tunisian online information portals to spread the information because the deadline is September 18th, 2005. These links are: Tunishebdo, TunisiaIT, BabNet. I’ll be missing all universities here in Tunisia because the opening date is September 15th or October 1st.

So do you have a cool emerging project on the web? Are you a young designer, web developer, music producer or artist looking for international exposure? Are you passionate about using technology for social change? Enter now and showcase your project to the world!

Few days ago I had the occasion to meet the people working in the reservation centre for WSIS participants and they explained me how it works. It’s a private entity working with the official hosting commission. All the hotels gave them their hosting capacities for the summit period with the prices and with the online reservation platform and the phone contacts the centre is managing all the requests and they are even advising participants according with their budgets and their requests. Participants are able to contact directly the hotels to book rooms but the hotels have to inform the centre to update their database of available rooms. Before meeting the polite girls working in the centre, I was thinking that the platform was just an interface with hotels but I discovered that it’s not right. The centre is even accepting bank transfers for booking. They also explained me that transportation is guaranteed from and for all the hotels working with the centre by the WSIS organizing committee. Personally I think it’s a very good idea to avoid for participants the task of visiting all the websites of all the hotels and calling them to discuss the details of the booking in case they still have any empty rooms. I don’t think that, in the first phase of the summit in December 2003 in Geneva, my friends an me, all members of the Youth Caucus, we were able to book rooms in hostels without the help of our friend Alex who was based there.

Relevant article : L’hôtellerie tunisienne et le SMSI

I think that my blog is very upset. I forgot to feed it for a long period. Exactly since I came back from Mali. As I explained during the two last Tunisian bloggers meetups, I felt myself not able to write posts. There in Mali, I was able to write only at work, and it wasn’t easy for me to use their very low bandwidth dialup connection to blog. And the fast of not having al the time a laptop computer at home made the situation harder. The few times I was able to do it were when one of my housemates was able to bring a laptop to be able to watch some Malian fake DVDs (because it’s commonly called DVD but in fact it was a VCD). And when I came back to Tunis, having a permanent ADSL connection at home was not enough to solve my problem. I must also confess that I was missing also the time to do it since I’ve been very busy with a lot of projects and activities and I had a lot to write but each time I feel tired and I postpone it to the day after … and I lose after the wish to do it.

Since I promised my friends bloggers to “keep blogging” (if not they will not accept me anymore in the bloggers meetups if I’m not a blogger ) , I’ll try to maintain at least the rhythm of one post per week if it’s not more.