Over $2 million has been raised through mobile phone giving for earthquake aid in Haiti, according to the New York Times Lede blog. Awareness of the different ways to donate — text “Haiti” to 90999 to donate $10 to the Red Cross or “YELE” to 501501 donate $5 to Haitian-born musician Wyclef Jean’s charity — has been helped by word-of-mouth publicizing on Facebook and Twitter:
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Brookings Fellow Cynthia Schneider has a great TED talk about how popular television shows like Afghan Idol and Poet of the Millions, which is broadcast throughout the Arab world, are changing tribal societies.  These merit-based competitions, with equal access to everyone and the winner selected via SMS voting, are reaching incredibly deep into society. People of all ages go to great lengths to watch the shows in private and public places, and become so engaged that they campaign for their favorite candidate.
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Jerome Gary led a brainstorming session on some of the issues for the 2010 iDiplomacy conference to discuss items such as who should sponsor it, who will attend, the agenda, location, etc. The conference will be held in Washington D.C., next year with exact date and venue still to be determined. Attendees later split up into four groups to discuss different elements of the larger conference, such as the legislative agenda, what mediums should be used, and who should be attending.

Some of the issues discussed included:
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On Nov. 11 the groups reconvened after a breakout session to present their ideas for public diplomacy initiatives (mostly with a social media angle).

Group 1 presented an extensive list of suggestions:
1.) A series of video shorts called “My America is” or have a touring film festival about “my America is”. This can include particular ethnic groups and immigrants talking about their experiences.
2.) Encourage local community voting to select local development projects, whether it’s a public art center or sports center. This will give local development projects more of a feeling of local buy-in, rather than Americans coming in to push something on the local community.
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Bono, the lead singer of U2, has a guest editorial in the New York Times today defending the Nobel Committee’s decision to award the Peace Prize to President Obama. It might seem odd to have a rock star comment on whether Obama deserves the prize, except it’s Bono, who has used his celebrity to raise public awareness and gain audiences with political leaders around the world in order to advocate for his main causes of Africa and the AIDS pandemic.

Bono makes particular note of Obama’s goal of eradicating extreme poverty. Bono believes that goal, along with the president’s work on nuclear proliferation, climate change, Middle East relations and domestic issues like job creation and health care, constitute “rebranding in action.” Here is an excerpt:

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