Wael Ghonim
The Egyptian revolutionary Wael Ghonim has been announced as the 100th speaker at the forthcoming Dublin Web Summit, which will also feature three new stages focusing on cloud, developer and digital.
Ghonim, a computer engineer, became an international figure after he played an instrumental role in leading a social media campaign during the revolution in Egypt in 2011.
Ghonim anonymously founded a Facebook page called ‘Kullena Khaled Said’, with the page helping to spark Egypt’s grassroots revolution that led to the toppling of the Mubarack regime.
Last year, Ghonim was also nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and was named as one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people.
Since the revolution, Ghonim has gone on to found an NGO that aims to nurture education opportunities for Egyptians through technology.
Politics and social media
“The Egyptian revolution was the first popular revolt that relied heavily on social media for its success. The web is revolutionising how politics is conducted across the world,” said Dublin Web Summit organiser Paddy Cosgrave.
He said that a workshop at the summit, hosted by NationBuilder co-founder Joe Greene, will also look at the future of political communication.
“Joe Greene, co-founder of NationBuilder, will host the workshop and outline how NationBuilder is providing state-of-the-art digital organising technology to political campaigns around the world,” explained Cosgrave.
In terms of start-ups, more than 100 early stage ventures are also set to launch their products or services, exhibit or pitch to investors at the conference.
The event, which will have around 200 speakers, including Kevin Rose of Google Ventures, Flipboard founder Mike McCrue, and Martin Varsavsky, founder of Fon, is expected to attract some 3,000 attendees.
The Dublin Web Summit will take place on 17-18 October at the RDS.
