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May 01
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Speaker Spotlight: Heather Leson, Ushahidi

By mesh12

The Web has become an increasingly powerful tool for political, community and social activism, driving national movements such as the Arab Spring movement, and grassroots activity.

One of the most interesting organizations involved in supporting, encouraging and enabling political and community activism is Ushahidi, a non-profit tech company that specializes in developing free and open source software for information collection, visualization and interactive mapping.

Ushahidi was originally launched as a Web site that helped to map reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election fallout at the beginning of 2008. The Website, which now has more than 45,000 users in Kenya, made it clear there was a need for a platform that could help other people around the world.

At mesh on May 23, we’re excited to have Heather Leson, Ushahidi’s Director of Community Engagement, doing a presentation on how mapping stories is an important tool to connect citizen data and open data to create maps for election monitoring, crisis/emergency response, civil society actions and social protest. Heather will talk about how mapping stories should be also be embraced in Canada.

Tickets for mesh, which happens on May 23 and 24 at the Allstream Centre, can be purchased here – regular tickets are $679, while student tickets are $99.

Apr 30
Love0

Meeting up Before mesh ’12

By mesh12

With mesh ’12 just over three weeks away, we’re hosting a meetup on May 2 (this coming Wednesday) to share a few refreshments, food and good conversation. Here are the details:

Where: Reposado Bar & Lounge, 136 Ossington Ave.
Time: 7  p.m. to 10 p.m.
Who: Anyone interested in talking about what’s happening online.

Apr 24
Love0

Unveiling the mesh Startup Scholarship

By mesh12

When we launched mesh in 2006 (which seems like a long time ago!), one of the things we wanted to achieve was creating a place where everyone could gather to talk about the amazing things happening online. This included the fledgling startup community, which just started to gather steam, buoyed by events such as DemoCamp.

Over the years, however, we’ve had fewer startups involved with mesh that we’d liked or wanted, so we’re excited about going back to our roots with something new called the mesh conference scholarship: A Hosted Startup Program.

It’s an opportunity for startups to attend mesh to expand their connections, share ideas and be inspired, and a chance for us to give back to the community that has supported us.

So, here’s how it works.

Sponsored by Ernst & Young and Microsoft BizSpark, startup entrepreneurs will receive a free ticket to mesh (worth $679). In return, all they need to do is have three 15-minute appointments with participating sponsors and suppliers over the two days of mesh.

So who should apply? If you’re a startup entrepreneur actively involved in the community, tell us about your startup and explain why you should be at mesh. You can apply to participate here.

Once the application process closes on May 9, hosted startups will be hand-picked, recommended and qualified by mesh. Then, vetted and invited hosted startup scholars will be asked to participate in the program free of charge.

For more details, including the qualifying criteria, visit the program’s information page.

Tickets for mesh are now on sale for $679, while a handful of student tickets can be purchased for $99 each.

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