Reflecting: YLVP 2009 - Stage one: Sweden

Three weeks.
33 young Arab and Swedish opinion leaders.
Different locations around Stockholm.
Reality TV style.
Goal: Change the world.
Tool: Social Media.

The whole group (except for mark, who suspiciously disappeared).
Photo taken by Jonny von Wallström.

It all started with a presentation about Sweden's image in the Middle East and North Africa (read about it here). Apparently, Sweden is losing business in the MENA region against competition, typically in the form of big nations with long history of trade with the MENA region.

Not only that, there are still many cultural stereotypes about Swedes: they have lots of sex then they jump off a bridge and suicide because they aren't challenged with any problems. Kind of like saying all Arabs are terrorists who drink oil and eat sand, live in tents and under camels.

Yep, ladies and gents, we still know squat about each other.

Participants Olof Jönsson, Alexandra Sandels (Sweden) and Yousef Al Ghalban (Gaza) after a sauna session, drinking beer on the balcony, and going over a myriad of photographs of recent Israeli massacres in Gaza.

To this extent, the Swedish institute arranged for an opinion building program, entitled "Young Leaders Visitors Program" targetting opinion builders in the MENA and Sweden, to work on their skills within social media, intercultural group work, leadership... etc. The course started in a very relaxed spa hotel in Grisslehamn, about an hours' drive north of Stockholm, right on the Baltic sea.

The idea was simple: work our brains out trying to find creative solutions in very stressful schedules. It turned out we were not creative enough: we were tasked with finding impossible things that could happen, we mentioned living underwater, living on mars, world peace, etc, and it turns out that 80% of our choices were predicted by our creativity lecturer.

To think outside the box is not an easy thing - we are all indoctrinated to think within a larger box, perhaps, through education, history, values, etc. Making the impossible become possible requires a lot of digging deep within on the constraints in our own conscious. I gathered my own need to break free, inside out.

Lots of salmon is always guaranteed at dinner time.

We were tasked to find a rope outdoors while blind folded, and shape a square out of it. We did, Arab democracy style - screaming and shouting at one another - a microcosm of blinded Arab liberals who lose their temper whenever cornered with a new challenge - I am politically incorrect, and I consciously choose to be so. However, we made a perfect square, thanks to a couple of people who took initiative silently and thought effectively.

Then there was the whole deal with social media, piracy (coincidentally, the Swedish pirate party was voted into the European Parliament while we took part in the program), and if I may, virtual intelligence.

Here are my notes from Mark's lecture:

• Social media is like language - you can't learn it unless you use it with people who use that language.
• Taking what is published on one medium to another doesn't work, you have to develop material that suits each medium.
• Newspapers are no longer the voice of the people, people have gotten their own voice.
• Journalism education should stop looking into how things were done, and try to see more into how things should be done. Educators should be working in the industry.
• Changes will look like they are illogical and messy, maybe even chaotic, because they introduced untested ideas and a package of conflict until everything is fine tuned.
• Digitalization is as revolutionary as industrialization. The real shift is in the way we think and relate, not really in the technical aspects. (the disrputive aspects of new media).
• The future is already here but it is unequally distributed, due to the different speeds of broadband and internet penetration percentages around the world.
• Quality of media is not affected by platform: a theater review on a news paper is no less or more quality than on its website... however the internet gives more possibilities for intercommunicaition... but does that makes it a better quality?
• "Digital changes everything" it is not about the tools - Digital media will fuck you up, it is disruptive media that will cause you soon worry.
• Influence modules... Generation y tends to rely on their network of friends and their recommendations not traditional ads or propaganda... because they are immersed in media, both online and offline, we are marketed to left and right .. but we rely to our friends....
• People used to trust companies more than governments but even that is changing...
• Website : go to a place where people are is better than where they are not!
• You do not trust an organization - you trust the people of the organization...

Then again, you can find more on my related twitter feed (filed under #YLVP). More details about people's trust in media, government, corporations can be found in this study (thanks mark!)

The ladies are listening, attentively.

There was also the group work, and psychologically analyzing one's attitudes and attributes as an individual and participant of a group. Åsa Silfverberg and Roger Sjögren at Hyper Island were in charge of the pedagogy of this program. We learned through different lectures, seminars, reflections and hands on group work training that we are all in need to build trust amongst ourselves in order to achieve anything (think Israel-Palestinian peace negotiations, they never really left off the ground, or did they?).

Dependency and Inclusion, counter dependency and fight, trust and structure, performance and productivity and termination: the stages of successful group work as presented by Åsa.

Åsa and Roger and their white boards and beautiful smiles.

For my part, I was just as interested in the learning methodolgy as with the content or the networking possibilities. Thanks to the open facilitation method of our "mentors" we've learned, even as Arabs who usually agree to disagree, to reach consensus to reach consensus (Swedish style) through talking things out, dropping our guards, and just letting go and reflecting on each stage of group work at a time. I think I will use some of these methods in any future lectures about Social Media in MENA (which I usually give at various Swedish universities for international journalism students).

The beautiful Amahl, formerly owner of the blog EuroArabe, and one of the bravest persons I've had the honor to meet in my life.

Life went on after Grisslehamn. We met again at Hyper Island in Stockholm for a series of lectures on creativity, social media and leadership. One highlight of this work was the Strength Deployment Inventory (SDI) workshop by Jarl Silfverberg - where we placed ourselves in three different colored positions, each according to their characteristics - in result, it turns out I am the Assertive-Nuturing type. (Look at graph here).

Then there was the group projects: our groups came up with brilliant ideas - NGO-volutneer network, a networks for alternative arab artists, a human right abuses geographical alarm clock, a trusted funding umbrella for small ngos, etc, etc. Lots of linkages were created between Swedish organizations and different group, mine mainly with Subtopia and Freemuse (where I will soon be publishing an article about the Jordanian metal scene and censorship in the 1990s).

There's all that, and there's the lovely YLVPers.

Artists, journalists, bloggers, activists, social workers etc. This course would have meant noll without our inputs, our conflicts, our "coming outs," and our reflections (the extracurricular ones, usually after a few stiff drinks). There's the blood, there's the swet, there are the tears, the hugs, the fights and all that beer. I shall not report here about what you said or did, but I will say, you've changed me for ever and renewed hope within my heart that Arabs are on the right track towards a new renaissance where open minds will take us into a brighter future.

Good job, will miss you all, and see you in Paris next november for stage 2.

And to end on a thought stimulating note, I bring you heavy weight Egyptian blogger Wael Abbas (YLVP 2008) talking about European rhetoric on democracy in the Middle East (during the opening session of YLVP 2009). Beside him is the Swedish trade minister (center-right government).