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The summit started with the keynote speeches of the Global Voices founders – Ethan Zuckermann and Rebecca MacKinnon . After the brief introduction, they presented the idea from which Global Voices was born.

The first day of the summit was dedicated to censorship, which is very common in some parts of the world. Speakers from all over the world were presenting their problems and the methods that they are using for publishing their story online. Many of them are using SMS, Twitter and other services in order to get their message across. One of the sessions during the first day was dedicated exactly to the tools used for avoiding censorship, out of which “Tor” was highlighted as the most adequate.

The second summit day was dedicated to other Global Voices projects such as Rising Voices and Lingua. At the very beginning of the first day, a short video for all the current Rising Voices projects was displayed and the audience had the chance to get familiar with the activities. There were speakers for most of these projects, who were presenting their activities in detail. It was interesting to hear how the developing democracies are now using the new technologies to report on the elections in their countries. There was a presentation about how the growth of blogging, social networking and micro-blogging services, such as Facebook and Twitter, video and photo sharing websites, as well as YouTube and Flicker, and the spread of mobile technology provides an opportunity for the common citizens to participate in the democratic process in countries like Iran, Kenia, Armenia and Venezuela.

At the end of the second day, Lingua - the successful “subsidiary” of Global Voices had its own session as well. The Metamorphosis Foundation is also participating in the Lingua project, as an initiator of the Macedonian and Albanian Lingua websites. During this session, the Macedonian, Albanian and Hindu language were once again presented as new members of the Lingua family, and the official inclusion of Italian language was also announced. The panellists presented the need for translation of Global Voices contents into various languages in order to bring it closer to a wider audience, and briefly presented the tools used by the Lingua translators.

The last session of the summit was dedicated to the bloggers who are not writing about politics, but everyday life. Panellists discussed about how can blogs fill the gap with new, creative fashions when the traditional media are not able to report, for instance – in cases of natural disasters or political crises.

The new scholarship beneficiaries from the Rising Voices project were selected at the end of the Summit and gratitude was expressed to all the sponsors and friends of Global Voices, as well as to all the volunteers and participants.