civic engagement

“The problem is we don’t have a civil society, not really. We’re 20 billion neurons without synapses…which means only one neuron, not a brain."  – activist attending the Restart Romania gala

As mentioned in a previous post, it was a big inspiration for us when 200,000 people got out to clean-up Romania last year, as was the later harnessing of the web for the Arab Spring.  We were not seeking an Eastern European Spring but what North Africa managed through

The finalists in Restart Romania  represent small business owners ‘looking to do more,’ journalists, programmers and long-time activists.  Their diverse backgrounds offer insight into broad discontent with the status quo and led to productive discussions about the role of non-traditional leaders an

Since 2009 we have watched Romania adopt and experiment with social media for social change while building a network of techie friends.  As we began testing various models to get these programmers engaging with the world-beyond-code, we found a group of (mostly) young Romanians trained to think about solving problems, knowledgeable of a wide range of tool sets and just as passionate about