Joseph Assi was born in a Christian refugee camp in Lebanon and spent his entire life there until he was chosen to be a cast member of the second season of “On the Road in America,” a documentary-reality TV series about four young Middle Easterners traveling across the U.S. by RV. (On the Road in America, Season II, will air next year.)

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Colleen Graffy has an article, The Rise of Public Diplomacy 2.0, in the Fall issue of The Journal of International Security Affairs. Graffy is a professor at Pepperdine University’s law school and director of global programs. She recently served as the first deputy assistant secretary for Public Diplomacy to be appointed to the State Department, serving in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs. According to her Pepperdine bio, “Professor Graffy was the first high level US government official to actively advance ‘Public Diplomacy 2.0’ using Twitter and other social media platforms to further U.S. communications.”

Traditionally, the State Department has been risk averse when it comes to getting its message out, Graffy says, with off-the-record, print-centric roundtables the primary means that U.S. embassies used to communicate. But audiences in those countries were increasingly shaping their views from watching television and listening to radio.

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iDiplomacy was twittering from the 140 Characters Conference yesterday. Appropriately enough for a Twitter conference most of the talks were very brief – ranging from 10 to 20 minutes for individuals and up to 50 minutes for a panel discussion on “The Democratization of Information” — a perfect length for the sometimes attention-challenged microblogging crowd.

David Saranga (@davidsaranga), former consul for media and public affairs at the Israeli Consulate in New York, spoke about how they had hosted the first ever governmental press conference last December on Twitter when fighting in Gaza was occurring. The press conference, covered by mainstream media worldwide including the New York Times and the blogosphere, consisted of four people on laptops. The New York Times printed some of the questions they took, which they answered in Twitter shorthand:

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iDiplomacy will be covering the 140 Character Conference from the Kodak Theater in Los Angeles today. You can follow us at @iDiplomacy and you can read other tweets about the conference by searching for the “#140conf” hashtag. Jeff Keni Pulver (@JeffPulver), creator of the #140conf, previously held an event in New York City and will be bringing the conference to London on Nov. 10-11.

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Elan, a magazine on global Muslim youth culture, has compiled a Top 10 list for best Twitter accounts that Muslims should follow. According to Farrah Hamid, Queen Rania of Jordan is tops on his list, with over 950,000 followers and daily tweets. Her recent tweets include her state visit to Rome, Hillary Clinton’s support for global education (#1GOAL) and mini-movie reviews of District 9 and The Men Who Stare at Goats.

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James Fowler, co-author of Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives, will be one of the presenters at the iDiplomacy symposium. Fowler, a political science professor at UC San Diego, along with co-author Nicholas Christakis, was named “most original thinker of the year” in 2008 on the McLaughlin Group. Their research on social networks was featured in Time’s Year in Medicine in 2007 and 2008 and in Harvard Business Review’s Breakthrough Ideas. He also was named one of the Nifty Fifty “most inspiring” scientists by the San Diego Science Festival.

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Some additional participants to announce, with bios available under “about iDiplomacy.” The latest round draws from journalism, think tanks, diplomacy, hacking, strategy and design. They are: Matt Armstrong, Justin Carroll, Loren Jenkins, Josh Klein, Arturo Munoz and Leon G. Shahabian.

The name “Matt Harding” probably doesn’t ring any bells but there’s a good chance that you’ve seen him dancing. He’s not one of the professionals on “Dancing with the Stars” nor has he been on “So You Think You Can Dance.” Implicit in the title of the latter television show is that the contestants think that they can dance well. Matt makes no such claim.

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Check out our new Resources section. It includes includes information for those unfamiliar with public diplomacy as well as those with a working knowledge who want to learn more about how the social media landscape and culture are changing. It includes links to government resources, cool videos, academia, organizations promoting public diplomacy, other public diplomacy-related events and interesting blogs.

iDiplomacy is now on Twitter! Follow us at @iDiplomacy.

CBS has an interview with Jared Cohen, the 27-year-old who works for the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff who was responsible for Twitter delaying its scheduled maintenance during the Iran protests.

According to the New York Times, Cohen:

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