Nine days after Hosni Mubarak stepped down, Zack and I landed in Egypt. We were there to explore how and what governance structures were emerging in a period of great excitement and uncertainty, and to document voices that we believed were largely missing from popular reporting and analyses. For two weeks, we spoke with as many people as would speak to us. Our conversations were, by turns, inspiring and troubling, encouraging and heartbreaking. We’ve just arrived back in New York and are continuing to process, distill, and make sense of all that we witnessed and heard in Egypt.

We traveled to four locations across the country and spoke with day labourers, factory workers, factory owners, cab drivers, farmers, youth activists, labour organizers, community organizers, NGO officers, government officials, journalists, lawyers, white collar professionals of all stripes, and politicians.

As Egyptians head to the polls for a historic constitutional vote, the world watches and waits to understand just how structural long-term changes to the country’s governance system will be. While mainstream media stories focus on admittedly appealing narratives of technology-enabled change, numerous groups and institutions continue to work outside the spotlight to build a new political structure.

Reboot’s focus is on understanding rapidly changing mechanisms of social interaction, and leveraging them for better societies. As practitioners at the intersection of governance, technology, and social science, we help our clients build effective programs and identify optimal investments that will lead to a better future. Developments in MENA in recent weeks provide many examples of the type of systemic change that is possible. Likewise, these events will prove instructive on the larger patterns of social change we are all observing.

The role of the internet, social media, mobile phones, and other connection technologies in the Egyptian revolution is a trendy topic. For many who have long argued that these tools will help topple autocratic nation-states, recent events in Egypt seemed to offer long-awaited corroboration. To those less certain of the structural importance of such tools, it was easy to cry foul of the media’s role in hyping the techno-utopian storyline.

Both arguments carry weight. Technological tools are indeed being used by those pursuing more participatory governance in Egypt. And many have used them to great impact, perhaps most famously the April 6 Youth Movement and Wael Ghonim, the Google executive who was one of the creators of the ‘We Are All Khaled Said’ Facebook group and accompanying YouTube campaign. Both have been much touted in Western media for galvanizing and connecting a new generation of Egyptian activists. Yet it is also true that technology was only marginally, if at all, used by several factions critical to the revolution. Even mobile phones, while near ubiquitous, were little used in campaigns by the labour movement and the judiciary.

The actions of the Libyan government continue to shock the world. Images of these events are keeping people across the globe glued to their television and computer screens.

This is no less true in Egypt, even as people are busy trying to navigate their own revolutionary process. Walking out of our hotel at 11 p.m., we saw the young night manager glued to YouTube videos of brutal Libyan attacks on protesters.

Likewise, earlier in the day, we saw the mini protest pictured above erupt outside the Arab League building. Angry Cairenes were walking down the street from a once again crowded Tahrir Square, demanding the institution take action against the Libyan government.

“Before, when I had trash, I would just throw it onto the street. I didn’t care, it wasn’t my problem. Nothing around here worked anyway; the system broke long ago. But now, I don’t put my garbage in the street anymore. After February 11, this is my country again. I even pick up other people’s garbage. We are a free country now; it is up to us to decide what we do with it. Egypt is ours to fix, ours to rebuild.”

These remarks were from a Cairene shopkeeper sharing his take on recent events in Egypt as Zack and I sipped steaming cups of red tea in his small, cluttered shop this evening. Two blocks away, in a jubilant Tahrir Square, is where we later took the above photo. There, Egyptians from all walks had gathered to celebrate. Giddy toddlers wrapped in Egyptian flags waddled through the crowds as their parents and grandparents, all with a flag proudly painted on each cheek, looked on.