Yesterday, I attended the "Web 2.0 for Good" conference, organised by Policy Unplugged, in the RSA in London. A broad mixture of around 100 participants, mainly from charities and non-profits, with a few consultants, discussing many aspects of online technology in an Open Space setting: I think 22 conversations in total, ranging from sessions on "Everything you always wanted to know about Web 2.0, but were afraid to ask" and "Building communities" to "Bio-teams and what can we learn from teamwork in nature" and "What will be the 'google' of Web 2.0?".

The conversation led by Dan McQuillan from Amnesty International touched on the negative effects of all our freedom-to-share, such as a delegation of Vietnamese bloggers who managed to smuggle themselves out of the country to a blogger conference where several people happily blogged about "the Vietnamese are here!". (Dan will be presenting at NetSquared next week as well.) The effects of trusting a couple of companies to have all our content, and letting it flow freely, are still to be determined.

In the meantime, Alaa, prominent Egyptian blogger and a friend from the APC network (with a strong focus on internet rights and security), is being detained for another 15 days by Egyptian state security, after his arrest on May 7th in a peaceful protest in support of the judges who refused to certify the flawed elections. You can get a banner to show your support.