LGEO Research is a Google Fellow in Barcelona!

First of all, I’d like to apologize for the lack of original content recently. Been trying hard to strike a balance between studies, attending conferences, keeping up with external demands, and also constantly in a battle to gain some sense of personal growth!

Anyways, I thought I’d drop a post to inform what I’ll be up to this week. I’ll be mostly in Europe, firstly Sweden then followed by Barcelona. I’ve never been to Sweden before, so that will be quite exciting! I have been to Barcelona before on a holiday and it was amazing.

So I’m so grateful to have another opportunity to go again 🙂 So you might be wondering what I’ll be doing there. Well for those who are following me on Twitter, you might already know, but for LGEO Research blog readers, just to let you in on things… here’s what I’ll be doing in Sweden and Barcelona.

City of Malmo, Sweden

I’m actually just waiting to fly off to Sweden today. I’ll be attending the pre-conference for the EU 5th Ministerial eGovernment conference on “eGovernment Research and Innovation: Empowering Citizens through Government Services across Sectors and Borders“.

You can find information about the pre-conference here.  To find out the programme for this pre-conferernce, click here.

I’ve been kindly invited by the Swedish Government and Public-i to present in one of the parallel sessions. You can find the information here and speakers’ info here. The main conference hashtag is #egov2009. I will update on the pre-conference hashtag on twitter. My slides aren’t quite ready yet, so I will upload it later! Sorry! Here is some information provided for the session about me.

Ms. Liz Azyan, Doctoral Researcher – PhD, Royal Holloway, University of London.
Social media has made a great difference on how we are now using the web to communicate with each other. It is changing the way we accumulate, disseminate and gather information that shapes our thoughts, goals and way of life. It?s also changed the way the media works and how we or who broadcasts. Governments around the world can no longer ignore social media?s presence on the web, as the potential can greatly improve service deliveries as well as their relationships with their citizens. Liz presentation will feature examples of the use of social media in society and governments, its challenges and an overview on how you can spot the potential of social media in your organization.

Barcelona

My trip to Barcelona is also a very special trip for me because I’ll be attending the “Personal Democracy Forum Europe 2009” as  Google Fellow. Only 20 people were chosen to be apart of the Google Fellowship for this conference and I am truly honoured to have gotten this golden opportunity!!!

Apart of this Google Fellowship, I get free entrance to the full 2-day conference and free accommodation plus a chance to meet some top Google executives over lunch! Can’t wait 🙂

I’ll also be sponsored by Jadu, who has kindly offered to pay my flight tickets to Barcelona. Thanks so much to Jadu for their kind continuous support! 🙂

The final decision was announced on Tech President and the main Personal Democracy Forum Europe 2009.

You can find out more about this conference here.

I’ll also be in Brighton, Barnsley, and Leeds at some point this month, so be sure to look out for me 😉

I hope you’ll join me on Twitter while I’m in Sweden and Barcelona!