Community, Content, Culture, Education, Entrepreneurship
Anastasia Ashman
2024 Progress Report: The Bigger Picture

Wearing my ‘serial founder exploring starting a company’ hat, I advanced my passion project KIP3.

KIP is a seven-year long passion project to tackle the disinformation problem on social media that makes us poor information citizens and polarized neighbors who cannot take collective action in the face of threats like the climate crisis.

2024 Progress Report: The Bigger Picture
Entrepreneurship, Education, Community, Content, Culture, Tools
Anastasia Ashman
Timely Civic Education Project ISO Peers, ...
It’s a Wikipedia + Wordle for Current Affairs to make better citizens and voters…
A comprehensive project that aims to promote trust and transparency in democracy while combating disinformation and corruption.
The deliverables can be used individually or collectively to empower citizens with the knowledge and tools needed to critically evaluate information and build a network of trustworthy sources.
Timely Civic Education Project ISO Peers, Partners, Sponsors

Joining ITUGate as a mentor

Happy to join the global mentors of Istanbul Technical University's International Start-Up Acceleration Program ITUGATE. During their six month stay in San Francisco this year, I'll be mentoring a set of technology-producing companies and entrepreneurs entering the US & international markets.

Read more about ITU ARI Teknokent's program to help companies to enter the US market and to provide access to Silicon Valley. It's based at Galvanize, one of the best startup centers in San Francisco. 

Back at The Berkeley Method of Entrepreneurship Bootcamp!

Great experience mentoring and judging the pitches of student entrepreneurs from around the world at this week's bootcamp on the UC Berkeley campus!

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Here's the director of the program Gigi Wang laying out the goals of the bootcamp.

 

Congratulations to Acuity, the team I mentored and my cojudge Rick Rasmussen and I sent to the finals.

 

Watch the pitch battle here: https://www.facebook.com/UCBerkeleyCET/videos/1232326256848097/

Freedom of the Internet demonstration, TBT

Odd to see this Internet ban memory from my final days as an expat in Istanbul at a time when America is voting to save or kill Net Neutrality tomorrow.

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A photo author, journalist & mid-east politics expert Hugh Pope took of me midway in the march from his Istiklal apartment.

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What Hugh Pope wrote about that day:

Some pictures of demonstrators on Sunday 15 May 2011 calling for reform of Turkey's new conservative internet laws in Istanbul's Istiklal St today - the biggest, loudest and happiest protest I've seen in more than a decade of living in the city center. Some signs were funny too: "Dawkins is a scientist, not a pornographer, you retard!" "Your Internet is being cut according to Islamic regulations" (carried by the two gentlemen in chador-like garb, punning on signs in religious-minded meat shops) "EnSUCKlopedia" (well, roughly), "Censorship for Security is like Sex for Virginity" and "Hands off my porn". 

Unless the government backtracks, a whole new system goes into force on 22 August. Internet providers will be obliged to offer every subscriber four filters of varying severity, and forcing Internet cafes to choose which sites can be accessed in advance. Any attempt to bypass such regulations will be criminal, and all Internet providers will be responsible for enforcement. 

The liberal Radikal newspaper, for instance, compares this coming system to that of China, Iran or Cuba. This appears to be a new turn for Turkey, which has so far been ambivalent on Internet freedom - YouTube was banned for what seemed like years, but even the Prime Minister noted that it was easy to use a proxy server to reach it. But from 22 August even proxies will be banned ... and all this in a country negotiating to join the EU! 

Not only Turks are concerned. Turkey's expat harem's Queen of Social Media, Anastasia Ashman, peeled off the crowds to visit and tweet from our windows overlooking the crowds of tens of thousands (see picture). At the same time, her Internet guru husband Burc managed to get my wi-fi system working properly for the first time in five years. So a big catch-up for me and I hope the demo will turn into a giant step forward for Turkey.

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