INSIDE THE EGYPTIAN REVOLUTION

This is revolution 2.0. No one was a hero, no one was a hero, because everyone was a
hero. Everyone have done something. We all use Wikipedia, if you think of the concept
of Wikipedia where everyone is collaborating content, and at the end of the day you've
built the largest encyclopedia in the world. From just an idea that sounded crazy you
have the largest encyclopedia in the world.

And in the Egyptian revolution, the revolution 2.0, everyone has contributed
something: smaller or big. They contributed something to bring us one of the most
inspiring stories in the history of mankind, when it comes to revolutions. It was actually
really inspiring to see all these Egyptians completely changing.

If you look at the scene, Egypt for 30 years have been in a downhill, going into
downhill. Everything was going bad, everything was going wrong, we only ranked high
when it comes to poverty, corruption, lack of freedom of speech, lack of political
activism.

Those were the achievements of our great regime. Yet nothing was happening, and it's
not because people were happy or people were, you know, not frustrated, in fact,
people were extremely frustrated. But the reason why everyone was silent is what I
called the psychological barrier of fear.

Everyone was scared, if you you know, know everyone there were actually a few brave
Egyptians that I have to thank for being so brave going into protests as a couple of 100
getting beaten up and you know at rest but in fact the majority were scared.

Everyone did not want really to get in trouble , a dictator cannot live without the force,
they want to make people live in fear. And that psychological barrier, fear have worked
so for so many years. And here comes the Internet, technology, BlackBerry, SMS, it's
helping all of us to connect platforms like You Tube, Twitter, Facebook were helping us
a lot, because basically gave us the impression that wow I'm not alone, there are a lot
of people who are frustrated, there are lots of people who are frustrated, there were
also people who actually share the same dream, there are lots of people who care
about their freedom.

That they probably have the best life in the world they're living and happiness, they're
living in their villas, they're happy, they don't have problems, but they're still feeling
the pain of the Egyptian.

A lot of us where we're not really happy when we see a video of an Egyptian man
who's eating the trash while others are stealing billions of Egyptian pounds from the
wealth of the country. The Internet have played a great role helping these people to
speak up their minds, to collaborate together to, you know, to start thinking together.
It was an educational campaign. Head Seaed was killed in June 2010. The photo, I still
remember the photo, I still remember every single detail of that photo, the photo is
horrible. He was tortured brutally, tortured to death but then what was the answer of
the regime, you know, he showed on a file. That's, that's, that was their answer, he's
a criminal, he's someone who you know were escaped from all these bad things, but
people did not relate to this people, did not believe this, because of the Internet, the
truth prevailed and everyone knew the truth, and everyone started to think that this
guy can be my brother, he is a middle class guy, his photo is was remembered by all of
us.

A page was created, an anonymous administrator was basically inviting people to join
the page, and there was no plan. We didn't know what are we going to do, I don't
know, in few days tons of thousands of people were there, angry Egyptians, who were
asking the Ministry of Interior affairs, enough, get us, you know, get those who killed
this guy to just bring them to justice. But, of course, they don't listen, it was an
amazing story how everyone started feeling the ownership, everyone was an owner in
this page, people started contributing ideas, in fact, one of the most ridiculous ideas
was hey let's have a silenced and let's get people to go in the street face to see their
back to the street, dressed in black standing up silently for one hour, doing nothing
and then just leaving going back home.

For, for some people that was like wow silent stand and next time it's going to be
vibration, you know, people were making fun of the idea, but when when actually
people went to the street the first time there was thousands of people in Alexandri.

It felt like it was amazing, it was great, because it connected people from the virtual
world bringing them to the real world, sharing the same, the same dream, the same
frustration, the same anger, the same desire to for freedom, and they were doing this
thing but did the regime learn anything not really, they were actually attacking them
they were actually abusing them, despite the fact on how peaceful these guys were
they were not even protesting.

And things have developed until the Tunisian revolution, this whole page was again
done managed by the people, in fact, the anonymous admin job was to collect the
ideas, help people to vote on them, and actually tell them what they are doing.