Tienchi Martin-Liao
Tienchi Martin-Liao is an author and columnist from Taiwan. She taught for many years in Germany at Ruhr University in Bochum and led the The Richard Wilhelm Translation Centre and published a series of Chinese literature in translation. She also lived in Washington DC and worked on the Black Series, a biographical series on Chinese political prisoners, as well as other human rights issues. She has lived in Cologne, Germany, since 2010 and is currently a member of the city’s Academy of the Arts of the World.
Site: Tienchi Martin-Liao
Oksana Romaniuk is a representative of Reporters Without Borders in Ukraine and heads the Kyiv Institute for Mass Information, a non-governmental organization. Protecting freedom of expression and improving citizens’ right to information have long been the focus of her work. The media expert and journalist has been involved in a number of projects dealing with journalistic standards, citizen engagement and digital security.
Alissa Wahid is a trained family psychologist with extensive experience in community development and social movements. She has served as volunteer and professional in several civil society organization since 1990. Wahid is now then national coordinator of the GUSDURian Network Indonesia. The network comprises of more than 100 local communities and thousands of individuals in Indonesia and several cities around the world. As the head of this vast network, Wahid is involved in and supervises many kinds of social change programs. Her passion is to support the next generations of social leaders and to serve society.
Erkan Saka is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication Design and Management at Istanbul’s Bilgi University. He teaches New Media Cultures and Cyber-Anthropology. He earned BA and MA degrees in the Sociology Department of Boğaziçi University, Istanbul. He received his Ph.D. in the Anthropology Department of Rice University (Houston, USA). He has been a political blogger since June 2004. He is a co-coordinator of a Citizen Journalism Training Program at Bilgi Eğitim and he coordinates and presents the TV show 
Florian Ngimbis is a Cameroonian blogger. His blog, one of the most popular in French-speaking Africa, has gained so much popularity lately due to his acerbic chronicles representing his daily life through the denunciation of a regime that to him has lasted too long (30 years) in addition to being a failure to the people. A Cultural animator, librarian, archivist, social media manager, he is also president of the Collective of Cameroonian Bloggers, which has taken on the struggle of facilitating faster and cheaper Internet access in Cameroon.
Alê (Alexandre) Youssef of Brazil moderate the “Navegador” (Browser) program at Globonews. He is also contributes to the “Esquenta” program on TV Globo as well as a columnist at “Trip” and a partner and curator at Studio RJ. A lawyer, Youssef was a special consultant for Brazilian Justice Minister José Carlos Dias from 1999 to 2000 and youth coordinator for the Sao Paulo city administration from 2001 to 2004. In 2005, he was among the founders of the multicultural site “Overmundo,” Brazil’s first website completely based on user-generated content. The site won the 2007 Golden Nica – the leading prize for electronic art – at the Ars Electronica Festival in Austria. Between 2005 and 2013 he founded and led the Studio SP art venue, which has become an important platform for contemporary Brazilian music.
Renata Avila is a Guatemalan human rights and intellectual property lawyer, and an advocate for freedom of expression, privacy, access to information and indigenous rights. She worked with Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Rigoberta Menchu Tum on the Universal Jurisdiction Genocide case in Guatemala. Renata is a member of Creative Commons Board of Directors and a member of the Web Index Science Council. She is currently leading the “Web We Want” campaign, which aims to create a positive, human rights agenda for Internet users.
Falk Steiner has grown up with digital equipment and is currently working as a correspondent for Germany’s national radio broadcasters Deutschlandfunk and Deutschlandradio Kultur covering mainly Internet policy related issues in the German capital. Before that, he worked as a freelance journalist and consultant for newspapers and magazines, organized conferences and in 2010 co-founded the German digital issues NGO Digitale Gesellschaft.
Alena Popova is a journalist, blogger, Internet-businesswoman and citizen activist who spends much of her time engaged in increasing citizen involvement, open government, transparency, and public supervision of politics. Popova was a member of the organizing committee for the citizens’ initiative “For Free Elections,” which organized the independent observation of Russian parliamentary elections in 2011 and the presidential vote in 2012. In 2012, she started a foundation to support online initiatives of public relevance.
Georgia Popplewell is a writer and media producer from Trinidad and Tobago. She has worked in independent media in the Caribbean and elsewhere since 1989 and has written extensively on culture, music, film and sport. In 2005, she started Caribbean Free Radio, the Caribbean’s first podcast.
Christian Mihr has led the German sector of Reporters Without Borders since 2012. He is also involved in fighting Internet censorship and promoting net neutrality. Previously, he has worked in a number of roles dealing with international media and internet policy as well as freedom of information and the challenges of an European public.
Tarek Amr is an Egyptian blogger who has been writing his blog since 2005. He joined Global Voices in 2007 and has observed and analyzed the actions and reactions of bloggers and citizen journalists to the events happening in his country and occasionally in other Arab countries as well. Tarek regularly speaks at social media conferences and workshops. Most recently he participated at the Third Arab Blogger Meeting in Tunisia. He’s also interested in photography, computer networks and software development.
Known as Kamangir (archer) online, Iranian blogger Arash Abadpour started blogging back in 2004, first in English but now mainly in Persian. Now living in Toronto, Canada, Arash writes about the Persian blogosphere and regularly provides commentary and analysis for international media outlets. Statistics show that his blogmis among the top 20 most-read Persian blogs. Arash has earned a doctorate in electrical and computer engineering.
