I have returned from London and I feel energized and inspired by all the excellent people I have met at the Global Voices 2005 summit. Of course Rebecca and Ethan did a marvelous job in running the whole thing, a BIG thanks to both of them and everyone who helped them (I can only call by name Catherine Bracy: a BIG thanks to you too Catherine!!!).

There has been interesting discussions about the past, present and more importantly about the future of this excellent initiative. A project that thanks to the most excellent work of the founders starting to mature enough to survive almost alone on the work of the volunteer based organization (without the day-to-day extensive involvement of Rebecca and Ethan of what I do remember even from earlier 2005 when humble me was still at the Berkman Center with them).

I would also like to point to some of the great bloggers I met there not giving a complete list, rather choosing a few based on my subjective opinion and trying to show the diversity that was present. And I apologize from those who I do not mention here, but I urge every reader to go to the participant list and Global Voices and watch the movement of all the other brilliant bloggers too from all around the World.

So I would like to especially thank:
- to Sokari Ekine for sharing her most wise opinion on Africa, Europe and how these two world area like and apart,
- to Mohamed Marwen Meddah for giving me a better understating of the Arabic World,
- to Jeff Ooi for transporting me to Malaysia via our interesting conversation during the Friday dinner
- and again all the other great people whom I met, talked to and really inspired by!
I’m looking forward to continue reading your stories and meeting you online and offline in the future.

[Links as you probably realized are all pointing to the GV 2005 coverage articles of their blogs, but please look at the rest of their most interesting peaces of articles too!]

Beside learning so much about the planet we are living on, I have also understood something fundamentally important about my own mission. Earlier I already wrote about what people advised me to write about on Hungarian Accent. That is because I have asked people to tell what they would be interested to reading about Hungary. And people regularly asks me what I think are the most interesting of my post they should be aware of. Now what I realized is that none of these questions really makes sense to ask. If the readers could tell me what they are most interested in, that would mean they know everything special about Hungary, which is a very strange premise to assume. Also I should not and cannot decide what is interesting to whom, deciding it is a step the reader has to take, my role is to inform and speak to my best. Now all this might seem trivial to you, but you should also take into consideration the fact that I’m not a professional journalist, nor a writer. I’m your average guy who would like to believe that even though – fortunately – there is no revolution or disaster in Hungary currently (which happenings main stream media usually picks up and discuss), there are still pieces, themes and stories from my country that should be given a chance to be discovered by the English speaking netizens. So I’m officially free of my previous frustrations of trying to show things that I would think are the most interesting and rather really talk about just what is happening here. Simple as that.

If you are interested in detail about the content of the discussions of the Summit (and you should be), I would encourage you to go and visit the official blog and summit pages.

(The referenced blogs are in English)

Tags:
GV2005
Global Voices