Thoughts from #pdf11 – Random Highlights
For those that don’t already know. I was lucky enough to attend the 2011 Personal Democracy Forum after winning one of the 2011 Google Fellowships. After meeting amazing people and learning a ton, I am collecting my (admittedly scattered) thoughts on the conference into a series of posts.
All of my previous blog posts on PdF have tried to capture what I felt were the major themes of the conference. However, there were a number of talks that didn’t fit into those frameworks that were still worth watching. They were random, they were inspiring, and they were delightful.
Omoyele Sowore runs Sahara Reporters out of his basement in New Jersey. From thousands of miles away, he is working to uncover corruption and helped bring down the President of Nigeria. He also had a killer story about being smuggled into the country in style.
I didn’t recognize his name in the program, but when Dan Sinker walked onstage I freaked out. Dan created the Twitter account turned internet epic @mayoremanuel, which became a sensation during last year’s Chicago Mayoral election. Dan’s talk, about what inspired the account, how he worked on it, and what happened after he was outed, was great. He was also the only person at the conference had my picture taken with.
The most notorious talk of the conference came completely out of left field. I followed Jim Gilliam on Twitter because of some random app he created, but didn’t really know much about him. Now, his talk, “The Internet is my Religion”, has been tweeted, blogged, and even featured on oprah.com. If possible without alienating the few readers I do have, I would link to it every day. This footage doesn’t do justice to the thunderous applause that interrupted Jim or to the fact that almost everyone in the room was crying by the end.