A Bi-Coastal BBQ Lifestyle

Now that I live in Washington, DC and work for Inveneo, based in San Francisco, CA, I am living a bi-coastal lifestyle. I spend an average of a week every month or so in the Inveneo offices, living at the “Inveneo Hotel” – the home of Mark and Kristin, Inveneo’s co-founders.

Before you cringe at the thought of working all day in the same room as your boss and then spending the evenings with him or her too, I have to say that Inveneo isn’t your standard company.

First, we’re a social enterprise, which means we are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, yet we’re run like a business. We’re out there selling product and hustling for business like any other company. At the same time, we have a strong social mission that permeates everything we do.

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An Announcement from Amy and Wayan

There is a Ziggy on the way! Conceived after our second wedding, Ziggy the zygote is now 13 weeks old.

That means Amy is just starting to show and we’re both just beginning to freak out. Ziggy will one day soon be an actual child – it already has little arms and legs, and sucks it thumb. One day soon, we’ll be actual parents, and of something way more intense than a
Taxi, too.

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June Technology Salon: OLPC in the Field

There is much talk about One Laptop Per Child, Nicholas Negroponte idea of a “$100 laptop” empowering education in the developing world. Yet the focus tends to be on the XO laptop itself, not the overall impact of the program on both technology and education.

For the next Technology Salon on June 3 at 5:30pm, we’ll move pass the headlines and into the field with two special guests:

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Directing Inveneo’s ICIP Program

Back when I was Director of Geekcorps, we focused on developing appropriate technology to increase economic development. In the hot, dusty, off-grid environment of Mali, that meant developing solutions like the Desert PC.

While we only built a few for radio stations, another group, Inveneo, took the appropriate computing idea to the next level. They developed an entire product line of information and communication tools for rural and remote communities in the developing world.

But tools themselves are not enough. Technology is only truly sustainable when they are affordable and can be serviced and supported locally and the lack of qualified in-country ICT professionals is a great hindrance to technology diffusion. At Geekcorps we tried to solve this human capacity by linking international technology volunteers with local professionals for one-on-one training.

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Building Online Communities of Practice

Sitting up here at the presenter table, I feel quite amazing. I am feeling a professional high, and that’s not because the presenter table is raised a few feet above the main floor. We’re still in a basement conference room, even if it’s a rather large room.

I’m all excited because this is a WSIS follow on meeting and the room is full of ICT leaders who are looking forward to my presentation. I’m about to speak on two topics of interest to this crowd: 4P Computing and online communities of practice.

The first topic, 4P Computing, or the rise of a new class of computing devices that are responsive to the performance, power, portability, and price constraints of the developing world, speaks directly to the crowd – they’re all interested in low cost user devices as that’s the stated topic of this session.

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