I’m in Islamabad this week for Innovation Lab Pakistan, a hands on conference organized by Bytes for All Pakistan and Internews that is bringing together journalists, bloggers, civil society leaders, and developers from across Pakistan and Afghanistan to introduce them to and train them on using new technology. The idea behind the Innovation Lab is to showcase digital tools that can amplify the communications and advocacy strategies these leaders are pursuing and give them an opportunity to experiment with the tools.

Based on the pre-conference listserv traffic I saw in the last few days, the group looks to be amazing and fired up. I will focus my presentations on how to leverage maps in communication strategies. Specifically I will present on how the Afghan media advocacy group Nai leveraged the Violence Against Journalists site we launched in Kabul this summer to improve their outreach on the issue, as well as share strategies for designing custom maps in TileMill, our open source map design studio.

I’ll post new maps throughout the week as we play with people’s different data sets. So far Internews Pakistan is pulling together radio coverage shapefiles that we plan to use, and the New America Foundation’s Counterterrorism Strategy Initiative might let us play with some of their drone strike data as well.

To follow the event watch #InnovationLabPk on Twitter, and I’ll be posting updates as well from @ericg.