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World Urban Forum: World Urban Cafe Setup


About this event: World Urban Forum, Third Session
Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

The TIG Team arrived here in beautiful Vancouver on Friday with 15 bags full of exhibits, materials, and assorted fun. On Saturday Jarra and Franziska led workshops at the World Urban Youth Forum, and Jen, Sarah, and I spent most of the day setting up the World Urban Cafe (youth pavillion space) in the Exhibit Hall! The World Urban Forum opens tomorrow with a video welcome from Kofi Annan and a keynote from Stephen Harper.

In this Video blog below (requires Quicktime), Jennifer Corriero and Sarah Richardson give a tour of the tidy beautiful space, the calm before the storm...





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AIDS 2006 Conference Youth Site Launch!


About this event: AIDS 2006 – XVI International AIDS Conference
Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

I'm excited about the AIDS conference coming to Toronto this summer - tens of thousands of delegates and many youth from around the world meeting to work towards addressing the spread of and issues surrounding HIV/AIDS.

As a member of the Toronto Youth Force (a coalition of youth groups supporting youth activities at the summit), we have been hard at work building the Youth web site for the summit, which launches this week in English, and soon after in Spanish and French. You can have a sneak peek here - and let me know what you think. When complete, it will fully integrate with the TIG Events system for blogs, photos, attendee list, and much more!

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The Road to the Kram Palexpo


About this event: World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Phase Two
Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

I was crouched down in the back of a tractor, one hand holding onto the side of the flat-bed trailer being pulled behind it, clutching bags with the other hand. As the tractor sped quickly towards the Kram, it was stopped at a police check-point, where we were yelled at to get off and take our bags. I couldn't make out too much of what one of the security guys was saying, but it seemed to be in the order of "This is not a taxi or a bus!"

But why wasn't I on a bus? After picking up the final bags from Hugh and Luke upon their arrive, Mhamed really wanted to take them to the expo: at 2 AM. He convinced me pretty easily since it meant I wouldn't have to lug them via bus in the morning, and we headed to the security checkpoint at the Parking spot. After about 20 minutes of negotiation, they told us a bus would come to pick us up. You see, the closest you can get is about 2 KM to the Kram Centre -- then you have to park your car or disembark from your taxi, and take a shuttle bus with your things to the Kram.

It got to about 2:45, and I was getting tired of playing the "is that a bus coming towards us from a distance?" game with Mhamad, and joking about walking to Kram with our bags. Mhamad went back to speak to them, and came back and told me we were walking. Seeing a police SUV at the checkpoint, I thought this was a joke of course, and loaded up the bags to walk over.

But we walked past them. And kept going... after about 1 KM, a tractor carrying cleaners came by us headed to Kram, and Mhamad managed to convince them to give us a ride. Although the attempt was quickly thwarted, we did save a good 10 minutes of walking.

Around 3:15 AM, we finally arrived to the ICT4All security check, and after getting 3 rounds of "NO WAY" (I think the arabic translation is about 5 minutes of arguing!) someone senior enough to allow us in finally arrived, and after a quick x-ray, we dropped the things off in the Youth Hub. The president visited to expo this morning, so you can imagine security was tight - checkpoints at every corner, flak-jacketed police with shotgun or rifle in hand crouching in bushes along the way.

But we had made it, and by 4:30 AM I was alseep. Today, the summit begins. And now that I've had time to eat breakfast, and post this blog, I'm headed there -- by bus I hope!

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