Ayman Salah is a digital entrepreneur and an experienced media-business developer. He joined IREX’s Media Development Program in 2007 to help news organizations become more profitable in today’s high-tech, competitive communications environment. He also launched the Middle East News Agency’s SMS news service. As a journalist, he covered technology and gaming.

Knight International Journalism Fellow Salah is connecting journalists with IT experts across the Middle East by starting Hacks/Hackers chapters. Salah has launched the technology journalism group in three countries: Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia. Participants are working to find technological solutions to information bottlenecks.

In Amman, journalists and programmers developed the first mobile citizen journalism reporting app for major Jordanian news outlets. This app enables citizens to quickly send text, photos and video to a server hosted by the independent news site AmmanNet and the daily newspaper Al Ghad. In Egypt, Hacks/Hackers developed a similar app for Al-Masry Al-Youm. The paper plans to use the app to cover the presidential run-off election.

Salah recently helped 7iber, an online youth citizen journalism organization, to hold a two-day social innovation camp that brought together more than 50 journalists, social entrepreneurs, graphic designers, programmers and activists. Participants pitched 12 ideas for mobile and web applications to a team of judges including Salah. Each of the three winners received $2,000 for further development, and at least three of the projects are currently in development.

Session: Session 1 – Online Activism in the Arab World – Between Power, Conflict and Transformation