Blog moving…again!;)

Please note: this blog has been moved to sylwiapresley.com!

Thank you!

Join Sting’s Iranian appeal at Amnesty International!

Please support by clicking through the pic above, or simply here..

If you want to see some real reactions, here is a very recent Global Voices post about the current events in Iran (please note: some potentially disturbing visuals there!).

THANK YOU in advance for your support!

Hug from a friend from Italy:)

Twixtmas Day 2

This one is harder…and it’s just the second day. So to move away from egocentric meditating, I:

- resolved a conflict during out family reunion (which as it is is a success of the month, not the day) leaving everyone happy when going to beds;

-brought together two lovely work mates to meet for a glass of wine;

-made a coffee for someone who had to spend 30 min in cold outside;

-introduced my dad to someone he could talk to about matters that really interest him..

I think I am ready for the next challenge:)

Twixtmas Day 1 – Do something selfish

So, I started Twixtmas path and I must say I like the first bit. It actually matches the idea of re-thinking life towards the end of the year and does put me in the right mood. So today I:

-watched tv – enjoyed late night watching comedy shows;

-started meditating and planned my meditation area in the new flat;

-planned furniture for work from home (well, and some other cool stuff:));

-bought webhosting and spent rest of the evening browsing through WP themes to find one matching my ideas for next level of this blog (chatting to a friend, whos opinion on web design I really cherish).

Uff, first bit was easy, and pleasant, I must say!:)

Thinking about joining Twixtmas

Just read on Fundraising.co.uk about Twixtmas and thinking about joining it. From December 27th to the 31st there are several things we can do to use the free time for a good cause. First day is for us, second for others, third for our friends, fourth for the Earth, fifth for our future – it all seems like a good schedule for meditation of where we are, where we can and should be in 2010. Shall we? Any one fancy joining me in using those…

(I think it’s a brilliant idea, but there is one, obvious bit missing – what has this whole idea to do with Twitter? I am assuming I should tweet my commitments with #twixmas hashtag, but I am not sure – we could do with instructions on the site, or is it there and I missed it?)

Merry Christmas!

And to all my Global Voices friends:

Media Camp London 3 – write up

Image with CC by Benjamin Ellis

This one is rather a late one, as I have already seen @BenjaminEllis, @Yvonne_PLM and @pcmcreative posting materials from it, whereas I spent my days on sleeping for 14 hrs (not done since Dawid was born:P) and recovering after two weeks of commuting to London:( So here is a quick write up of last Thursday’s event.

Media Camp London 3 was my second event organised by @audio/ Social Media Mafia and once again I spent the day with very inspiring people.

After morning coffee with @Rubyxxcube (so happy we finally met) and warm up session on networking with @jobucks during which I met two Polish boys from Imre (very switched on when it comes to SEO – promised support on that:)), I listened to Jamie Riddell presenting his session on “Setting up a Business with No Investment and Succeeding”. As I am very interested in the process of setting up new businesses – not for me, but in the processes related to it – I was fortunate to see few issues a new company might face and might have to be prepared for. I think I agree with most points, although I did make it clear that in my opinion there will always be place for many social media agencies – no need to panic, let’s just let them all do the good job:)

Benjamin Ellis, whom I was very happy to see again, once again spoke very inspiring thoughts – this time on management of creative people. You can see exact analysis of his ideas in his blog post and the slides below:

After lunch portion of Oxford gossip with @oxcom (thank you for sponsoring:)) and @ianwilliams, I presented my bit of social media ethics focussing on:

1. pointing out how much of our daily decision making is related to ethical questions;

2. encouraging event attendees to join the discussion, as I believe the abstract idea of social media ethics can only be grasped by questioning our values, freedoms and behaviours.

I am very happy to see that 40 min I left for discussion seemed not to be enough, and I hope at least one person went home with this concept! For the life streaming recording made by @pcmcreative (which I am extremely grateful for!!!) I will send you to her Qik account here, but here are the slides:

After this one, I joined @pcmcreative’s session on Amb:IT:ion project. I must say I am very impressed with the project and I really hope I can get involved in it more – at least on the networking level! If you are social media savy and would like to support art communities, joining their network is a must, so do it now!:) (and me in the meantime I will try to get hold of the slides;)

This filled me up with ideas enough to have a chat with @oxcom on the way back to Oxford.

Here are the photos for the event!

Thank you very much to Chris Hambly for organising and to all the sponsors for making it possible!:)

I really hope to see another one, and all of you there:) Come over and share your ideas!

Global Voices – 5 years of great work, one year which changed my life forever!

Global Voices is celebrating its 5th year and I really cannot describe how much it means to me…

I think I managed to describe quite well the feeling of community Global Voices is when I got back from Cairo – maybe because while sitting on the plane I had time to think it over, I was inspired by people I just met and I had plenty of time to put it down on paper.

It’s December, it’s almost Christmas time here, in the UK and I am spending my time off work meditating last year in preparations for new one, which will bring new commitments and rather conscious shift in my career, as well as private life. I am spending my evenings with family, sipping hot tea, glancing at cold winder nights through the windows of my little flat all the time thinking: what has changed me so much!

No matter how hard I try to deny it, all my recent small, but crucial successes resulted from the shift in my perception of reality and my own self, and majority of those positive changes comes from working for and with Global Voices.  You see we all have jobs, and if we are lucky our jobs not only provide us with means to live but also with satisfaction and development of our skills. Sometimes we tend to think that our free time should be committed to less serious actions, but I belong to those, who prefer to invest in their free time to learn more and to contribute to the communities. Hence why Global Voices has been a great learning curve for me – maybe not as such in writing or social media, but in values and in networking with people who share those values. By working together for no money at all, we build a community of dedicated, self-motivated individuals. None of us expects magic, however now and then something nice happens: one of us has a baby, gets married, travels to our part of the world and we get to meet! We share those moments and I am sure that others will agree: we cherish them as great memories!

For me personally all GV meet ups this year (Cairo, Amsterdam, London, Oxford, Skopje) reinforced in me pursuit of happiness. It’s exactly what I wrote: the inner need to achieve happier life, find my place in the world, with the type of people I respect and learn from – every single day!

Some of this years stories grabbed my attention and stayed at the back of my head: Gaza and Iranian election were great stories to see from a completely different angle – not only from the on-line coverage, but also from discussions and great support of the team on the mailing list. Recent Climate Change conference in Copenhagen took up majority of my attention in the fourth quarter of the year, as I strongly feel about this issue myself, and I am glad GVers were present there. Violence against women remains an issue I feel strongly about, not only due to my own experiences, but simply because of the scale of the problem globally and in the UK.

There is more work to come. There will be more intense, interesting, in depth reports on all current issues but also interesting articles about parts of the world I am not familiar with, and maybe do not hear about in the mainstream media. I am sure Global Voices will open my eyes to many more challenges, but for now I am trying to think back and measure how it affected my own life so far. And I must admit that one thing, something entirely unexpected has happened: it changed the way I see myself today! I clarified many questions about my own life and pushed me to act and improve the way I live.

You see, I am a geekette, but I do have few very traditional habits – like writing a journal. I have also two notebooks: one dedicated to write down all my ideas – regardless of the fact, that some of those might be crazy and unrealistic, another one is my dream book where I put dates against things I want to do in my life – at least once;)) This year many of my ideas and one of main dreams (my childhood dream actually!) became reality! I am not sure if I would be able to achieve it all without the inspiration of voices from Global Voices team.

One of my dreams for next year is for this project to grow in number and strength of the voice! And me, with my little life in full bloom of its renaissance, I hope I can contribute to the fulfilment of this dream myself;)

Hugs to all GVers on our 5th Birthday!

(btw, here and here you can find out what other GVers think of this anniversary;))

Waiting to open the presents:)

GV Post – Poland: ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ Sign Stolen from Auschwitz

Image by Tulio Bertorini, taken from Wikipedia.

Last Friday morning the sign ‘Arbeit Macht Frei‘ (‘Work Sets You Free’) was stolen from the gate of former Nazi death camp in Auschwitz, near Krakow. It was originally made [PL] by Polish prisoners of the camp led by Jan Liwacz and is considered one of the most significant symbols of the camp and artifacts of the museum. Its disappearance caused many speculations [PL], but also serious reactions from the Polish government, museum authorities, Jewish organisations and the public online.

On a forum thread dedicated to this issue, user Lestat is saying [PL]:

Now they will have an image of a Pole. They got caught by winter, so they are ready, for a bottle of wine, to sell for scrap the sign which is not only their cultural heritage, but also a symbol of suffering and horrible death.

Mishel is responding, stressing the seriousness of this act [PL]:

Who would have thought that one could steal from such a horrid place, where so many have been murdered. When I see Auschwitz camp, it gives me shivers… Those who stole it must be insane.

Kazimierz Maciejewski, on his blog, links this act to the recent discussions around Catholic crosses in public spaces, comparing the amount of conversations on both topics [PL]:

As we speak, we are witnessing the discussion about banning of symbols from places where the young generation of citizens is educated. Only a few expressed their opinions in favor of banning the cross.

MarkD, whose grandmother was murdered in Auschwitz, in his blog post presents a different opinion [PL]:

This sign is for me 1,000 times less important than the train track stolen by the poor, who this way wanted to secure their basic existence and caused pneumonia of the old man who got a cold while sitting and waiting for the tracks to be fixed.

Today the police informed the public that five people have been arrested as the result of an investigation. The sign has been recovered, but it was found cut into three pieces. The police spokesman, when referring to the motives of the theft, mentioned this:

All leads are being examined, and we are also checking whether the motive was anti-Semitic […]

Later on, it was implied that financial gains from possession of the artifact were more likely to be a possible cause of the theft.

It is unclear how exactly the money would have been made, however. Two days ago, the Polish equivalent of Digg published a link to a site featuring copies of the sign available for sale to support the museum :

Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum is under financial crisis and needs support. We’ve come up with the idea of producing replicas of the sign that was stolen from the main entrance gates in order to help aid long-term preservation of the historical site.

Twenty percent of all proceeds will be donated to Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum in Oświęcim, Poland.

Kajetan8 is commenting on this link [PL]:

It’s strange how quickly they prepared those copies. They say that if the one to blame is unknown, in 90% of the cases it is the person who gains the most, that’s the one who did it.

This post has been originally written for and posted at Global Voices Online, here.

Google Christmas Wishes for Global Voices

Google has included Global Voices in their Christmas Wishes this year! Well done, Global Voices;)

Twestival update

Tweet of the day…

Stay tuned;)

What Matters Now…

Oh, how many times have I asked myself this question in recent months! And today @ernestopriego asked me during lunch – how come I post so much!

Well, funnily enough I am still convinnced I do not post enough. Even though my friends tell me off for being too hard on myself, I remain stubborn that I should be doing more. I think I could do more, but I need time off – off web, off work, off creation – simply time to sit down, enjoy the music and the lovely view from my living room on the garden and wandering clouds. There is nothing more beautiful than watching the sunset from my sofa with a little boy cuddled in my arms, cheek to cheek!

Only then can I go back to the great, common, more and more open minded and supportive on-line community and read another good piece of modern philosophy! (Click through and download the free copy of e-book published by Seth Godin and his friends.)

It’s time for real-time – as Le Web proves it – and it’s time to make things happen, so stay inspiring!

Iab Social Media Research October 22nd 2010

I like those stats -  I am glad this is the result, but I would like to know what my fellow bloggers think;)

Missing Skopje…

From My Journal: December

Image via Wikipedia

Slowly finishing my first week of work in London I finally regain my inner balance.
It has been a very eventful two weeks promising event more eventful year 2010. As @ProActivePaul yesterday, I am making my plans all the time, my brain cannot stop…work, college, my son’s school, new home, new challenges related to social media, Global Voices Summit, old friends back in my life…

And in the meantime the world leaders are meeting in Copenhagen to decide about the future of the place we live in. I had a nightmare today: I was only in my 40’s, watching TV with my teenager son. They were showing European continent increasingly vanishing from the map of the world and I was just waiting for my son to question me: was there a time when this could have been prevented?
I find it difficult to be happy about a new mini can of Lucosade/Red Bull, and I find it rather foolish that the locals actually find it cute. Even though I work in marketing and my job is to create demand, I wish I had means to create demand for drink in a glass bottle – which could be equally ‘cute’.
Please do not get me wrong – I am to be blamed, as the closer I look at my life the more I see that there are few minor changes in my lifestyle I’m not willing to make due to pure laziness or ignorance.

All this, including my recent dreams, comes together with the final stage of re-evaluation of my standards. I have spent 6 months on searching for cracks in my own system and I have managed to find the gaps but also to achieve the point when while I speak foolish, I actually feel bad;)
It is easy to judge others, but do we actually see out own incoherences? OK, I had quite shocking experiences in my close environment on the level of ethics and morality, however this is not an excuse to get off our own track.
As one of my colleagues put it the other day: ‘It was down, then up, then really down and now it will smoothly increasingly grow upwards.’ Life.

I am able to go back to my proper spiritual state too. I started meditating again, practising AIKIDO. Going back to Japanese zen stories helps me to see things objectively.
I have decided to become vegetarian, partially from philosophical, partially from dietary reasons. I appreciate proper food, sleep, move and nature.
(Mind you, I bet it’s all a backlash of working in the capital)

I see clearly people who support me. I see clearly people who misjudge me. I see clearly people who are insecure and lack integrity, and I decide to keep them as far away from my life as possible (funny how we actually do build little walls of glass for some, just to protect what we believe in…)

I see clearly the paths I sometimes wrongly take – people I should not surround myself with; productions I should not waste my time on, crucial answers my friends are still waiting for but where required decisions became hard to take.

It’s my last weekend for myself, last one to justify the word ‘resting’. Next week I am switching to the mood of woman fully aware of what needs doing, where and when.

For last 6 months I was very serious. Now I only smile, ready to focus on those who need my skills to improve on their lives. Just on time, as I am back in London and can see some of good old friends again, more often. Do join some of us at Media Camp London 3 next Thursday!;) Really hope to see you there!

I Media, Skopje, Macedonia

The reason why I travelled to Skopje was a very kind invitation from GVers – @ieli and @razvigor (working on a daily basis for Metamorphosis Foundation) to I Media conference dedicated to discussion around state of traditional and new media in Macedonia. First day was based on panel discussions, whereas second gave all attendees a chance to actually discuss the state, challenges and future of media in the region.
To cut the story short I will only share my own observations and learnings, as you can find the rest on their site here. I do apologise if I am wrong at any point – do correct me. I only had one day to come to those initial conclusions.
First of all I am honoured that I witnessed the times when Macedonian media is just at the verge of social media revolution in a very unique way: opening itself to the global arena, sharing regional developments and passion for spoken/written word. I saw a country where old media sees the revolution coming, is weary of full usage of  the new tools as – sadly for some – they will advocate freedom of speech. I do not think that (mentioned by a local worker of press industry) manipulated photos posted in newspapers will be accepted without comments for long. I do not think ladies like @Arheoblog will need to face potential difficulties with their brave initiatives to disclose unlawful behaviours, this without network of strong, supportive voices from her community and from outside of it. I do not think global, English speaking social media will appear distant and slightly patronising for long. As soon as the regional voices, organisations, NGO’s and other initiatives enter the space with strong commitment to make a change – and realise the true power of social media -we will all see the big shift some are so scared off, and others impatiently await.

From the discussions during the conference my first impression was that the is a strong feeling of passiveness – for instance why would a young generation of users expect Wikipedia to come up with ideas on how to improve the content of the site it this particular project is based on open, public contributions and almost per definition is there to take ownership of it?
I felt it was crucial to remind everyone the main characteristics of social media there and then, and luckily I had a second during the open discussion on the second day of the event:

• Social media is open and transparent – there is no space for pretending to be who you are not.
• Social media requires you to be genuine, thus gives you power to use or misuse the potential of building trusted voices and brands – you can easily, for free show the local and global community who you are, what you do, what are the things you are passionate about and what are our opinions. As NGO you have a great potential to introduce your work, and if you link it to activities for your cause you can  promote the transparency of your spendings. You can join the discussion, you can listen to the needs or your target audience and establish a dialogue with your audiences.
• Social media is social – you build personal, hopefully long term relationships with people representing themselves, but also organisations and brands, so you can use it for networking, informing, searching information, or co-operation.
• Social media is about contributing and sharing – you need to put a side the financial motivation here, because this community is build on social capital; you are almost expected to share openly and to contribute meaningfully to the discussion. Take a test: take 10 bits of information you own and put it on paper – look at the list and decide which one can you give away easily? Which one would be the second? Can you give away the 5th one without any expectations to gain smth back? Can you give away the 10th, the most unique and valuable idea of yours? Why not? Yes? Why would you do it? Why would you not mind to do it? Why would you loose on sharing it? Once you get used to the idea of giving away the 10th idea you are just about there to join this community;) You will also be expected to cooperate – to comment on others blogs with valuable opinions, to add content and to commit your skills to projects where those can be needed. Why? Because if you do so, you will become a respected personality and trusted voice – and when it is you who needs help, you can count on the rest of us!
• Social media is free but might need a financial injection – when it comes to NGO’s in social media I totally understand that we are tempted to think of grants and donations, however vast amount of social media branding, communication and cooperation can be done for free. Actually if you use free tools, those tend to be used by large communities and are enhanced with more and more networking options. This should b enough for a start. Once you have your on-line presence and community you can use it for projects which do involve financial investment to enhance your brand and activities (events, self-hosted platforms or simply fees for maintaining your presences). But when you’re at this stage you should have a clear idea of how much money you need because you are using the tools already and know which bit of your project needs further development so it should be easier to put a proposal together and pitch for money as well as predict results, measure risks.
• Social media is not a monster – I am preaching about social media because yes, I do believe it’s extremely powerful world with very appealing mechanisms and so far the most supportive, creativity and achievement focussed communities I have seen. But please do not forget there is always a human being at the end of the line. It

So learn to listen, talk, share, contribute and co-operate. Join global arena (not because it’s better, but because it is there to listen and contribute to your great ideas too!). Do it openly. Be brave in your honesty and goals. And do not forget: social media is tools to empower us, at the end of the day it’s always about people – incorporate this virtual reality in to your every day life and use both wisely.

I really trust the ambitious bloggers from Macedonia are gradually heading towards those realisations and with their initiatives will change the face of local traditional media and support their NGO’s in their wonderful work. Mind me – some of the local bloggers are now aware of the fact IT IS ALREADY HAPPENING THERE;)

Thank you for the invitation!

Update: here is an article on the conference from Macedonian press (here in Macedonian).

I gotta Feeling – realy nice viral

Would you not like to be a part of a project like this one? Just have a look!:) I love it!

From My Journal: Re-Evaluating…life?:/