| 13 July 2010
Matt Harrison, founder and president of the Prometheus Institute, was invited by Polish ambassador Robert Kupiecki to participate in the High Level Democracy Meeting in Krakow, Poland and speak at the "New Technologies for Democracy" panel at the event. On the panel, Matt joined moderator Teymoor Nabili from Al-Jazeera, Egyptian blogger and activist Wael Abbas, Yemenese journalist and activist Walid Al-Saqaf, Chris Spence (the Chief Technology Officer at the National Democratic Institute), and Susan Pointer, Director of Public Policy & Government Relations at Google, to discuss how technology could best facilitate democratization in developed and developing countries.
All of the panelists recognized the incredibly powerful role that technology played in facilitating economic and social development, and sought to provide practical proposals and ideas to help it facilitate political development as well. Matt shared the Prometheus Institute's work, specifically the DIY Democracy civic engagement platform, and how it helped to facilitate self-government and democratic responsiveness. Matt added that Prometheus was willing to work with any country to bring mobile social civic engagement technology to the people, and that if properly implemented in an emerging democracy, such innovations could spur political, economic, and social evolution on a historically unprecedented scale that could even overtake the United States.
Later in the conference, Harrison joined the Atlantic Council of the United States and the Young Diplomats for Democracy for a panel entitled "Revolutionizing Democracy Promotion through Technology and New Media". Led by moderator Aron Mir Haschemi from the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Matt joined Lukasz Szozda, winner of USAID's Democracy Video Challenge, and Iryna Vidanova, founder of innovative Belarussian multimedia magazine 34mag, to discuss various new media projects and their successes. Through the presentation and the lively discussion during the Q&A, many exciting new ideas for civic engagement promotion were discussed.
Matt would like to thank the organizers for an incredible experience in Krakow, and looks forward to working with the many impressive individuals he met during the conference. The Prometheus Institute looks forward to the opportunity to work with groups anywhere in the world to help increase democratic responsiveness, government transparency, and civic education.
