Hellkonferansen – Mohamed Ibrahim

The Egyptian revolution was not a Facebook-revolution. The revolution was created on the streets of Egypt. But Facebook was a very important tool, said Mohamed Ibrahim on Hellkonferansen this weekend. Hellkonferansen is a yearly conference for norwegian journalists, and Mohamed Ibrahim was invited to talk about how social media can have exposive political force. Since social media like Facebook and Twitter was used to accelerate the Egyptian revolution.

In many ways it all started with the Facebook-page We are all Khaled Said. The arab version of this page was founded In 2010 by Wael Ghonim, in memory of Khaled Said, a young Egyptian who was tortured to death by police in Alexandria. Wael Ghonim used this page in moving and integrating the anti-government protests of the 25th of Jan revolution. Today this page have 1.9 million members.

Mohamed Ibrahim, who is a Microsoft-employee in London, is administrating the english version and told about how the cooperation with Ghonim came about, and how they for a long time did not even know each others names.

After av very interesting lecture mister Ibrahim told how the TV-cameras and video’s saved the lives of protestors in Egypt, and he asked the journalists to take the side of the weaker party in their work: -You have a responsibility because it can save lives.

The identity cards confiscated from participant of the infamous  The Battle of the camel in Cairos Tahrir Square showed they were not ordinary camel and horse riders, but belonging to the police and members of Mubaraks party.

Here is a link to some more photos from Hellkonferansen. I also have a collection of photo-galleries from Egypt, but not from protests and conflicts during the revolution. Or visit all my photo-gallery.

And by the way, Hell is just a normal name of a place in Norway, and I usually go to Hell more than once a week. 😉