Hello wonderful kickstarter backers! 

First, thanks to your solid efforts we’ve reached our 10K funding mark! Congratulations everyone!

I am here reporting to you from the beautiful Beirut city in Lebanon, the first stop on my way to Baghdad. The world has its eyes on the violence in the region, but all I see here is wonderful people trying to do wonderful things and I want to share that with you!

I met up with the incredible Bassam, one of the founders of the new Lamba Labs Beirut Hackerspace, at a cafe with 8 other interested people. We even had a special appearance from Karin, a founder of Metalab in Vienna! It was amazing to see the discussion go from organization of spaces to dance outfits that sequence music to logo development. I am so glad to be here helping organize and facilitate the deployment of their space this month!

While in Beirut I’ve been on a hunt to collect some stories for Rawaya Wa Badaya, GEMSI’s story challenge! I had the great luck to attend a #TEDxBeirutSalon with the topic “Every Day Heroes”! We heard some incredible stories of hugs, car accidents, death, and random acts of kindness. It was an uplifting way to spend my evening and we found four new stories for Rawaya Wa Bidaya that we can use and two new comic book artists! Amazing!

If you’re interested… watch this talk by Yorgui Teyrouz! It’s wonderful to see that TEDx teams around the world from Cairo, to Beirut, and soon in Baghdad, are such wonderful supporters of communities that inspire and support each other. TEDx teams and their events have been the perfect place to start looking for the right attitudes for a sustainable and grassroots run hackerspace!

 

TEDxBeirut – Yorgui Teyrouz – Transforming a Tragedy