Queen Rania Al Abdullah of Jordan is using a YouTube channel to engage in cross cultural dialog. Her first challenge is to break down stereotypes about the Arab world by calling on people to submit their own to her, which she will then answer.

“I want people to know the real Arab world. To see it unedited, unscripted and unfiltered. To see the personal side of my region. To know the places, and faces, and rituals, and culture that shape the part of the world I call home.”

I love seeing social media used for positive change, and I can’t think of a better one than more dialog between Westerners and Arabs. We have so much to learn about each other. It would be great to see someone do the flip side for the Arab world.

I remember passing a TV in Tanzania and cringing because it was just one gangster rap video after another. Violence, misogyny, crass materialism and drugs on repeat - just change up the guy getting the close ups every 4 minutes. It was disheartening to hear that those videos were the primary cultural lens on through which many people in Africa saw us. No wonder so many thought so poorly of us, or came to our side of the world and struggled to fit into our social norms.

It’s great that so many people all over the world now have satellite TV, but often it’s hard to cut through the noise and get a clear picture of what life is really like where those signals come from. And the internet is just a network of cables until we use it for good like Queen Rania is doing. Here’s hoping more people that want to change the world start adopting these tools that have so much potential.

In November I spoke at nextMEDIA: Monetizing Digital Media. I got some major props for my talk, and a lot of people who heard about it have asked me to write it all down and share it online for everyone. I’m still working on that, taking my time because I want to do the subject justice. In the meantime here is my 20 minute talk edited down to 7 minutes. I hope you enjoy it! Please feel free to post any questions in the comments and I’ll be happy to answer them.

If you’d like me to speak at your organization, please drop me a line.

A little late notice, I’ll be speaking tomorrow at nextMEDIA: Monetizing Digital Media about guerilla marketing tactics for online publishers.

This is my first time speaking at a conference that I didn’t help organize (like Blogs and Dogs) or one of the audience driven “unconferences” like a Barcamp, Democamp or Casecamp. Thanks to Mark Greenspan for inviting me to come, I really wanted to be at his last conference in Banff. A few of my friends did too and they even made a video about missing me - those crazy cats

If I get any audio or video of the presentation, I’ll share it here later.