Online Revolution in the Making? Blogging Comes of Age in Armenia

ArmeniaNow has published my article based around the recent BarCamp held in Tbilisi and attended by bloggers, journalists and new media specialists from the Caucasus, Central Asia and Eastern Europe. The article also examines the emergence of blogging as a tool for change.

The idea of over a hundred people from the Caucasus, Central Asia and Eastern Europe gathering at an open air event held in the grounds of an ethnographical museum in the capital of the Republic of Georgia with no fixed agenda might at first sound like a recipe for disaster, but the concept of BarCamps is fast becoming popular the world over. An international network of participant-generated conferences – or “unconferences” usually focusing on the Internet and New Media – had come to the Caucasus.

The first ever BarCamp was held in Palo Alto, California, three years ago and over 30 have since been held worldwide. The Tbilisi event staged on 7-8 June was the first in the Caucasus and Azerbaijan will be staging its own at the end of August. Elsewhere in the former Soviet space, BarCamps have been held in the Baltic Republics, Ukraine and Belarus while Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia will hold their own later this year.

The BarCamp in Tbilisi was followed by a two-day workshop funded by the Open Society Institute (OSI) and the National Endowment for Democracy on new media and blogging. The training by the Prague-based Transitions Online for participants from Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia is part of the online publication’s continued interest in promoting blogging in the Caucasus and Central Asia.

The full article is available in English, Armenian and Russian.