On Wednesday morning I got the chance to Skype with Mikel Maron and Erica Hagen about Map Kibera, their project to collaboratively map a slum in Nairobi, Kenya. The interview was for Global Voices’ Technology for Transparency Network, a project that I’m unspeakably thrilled to be a part of.

My favorite part of the interview? When Mikel explains how Map Kibera is translating online data into real-world action. A hint: “paper’s cool.”

The full case study went up today, along with a podcast of our chat. Check it out, and make sure to browse through the full list of projects around the world that use online tools to push for civic engagement and government transparency.

Posted in ICT, digital activism, global voices, kenya, technology | Leave a comment

Cliff Stoll (who helped catch a ring of computer hackers/Soviet spies in the 1980s) and Jonathan Zittrain (principle investigator at the OpenNet Initiative) are speaking at Harvard’s Berkman Center tonight. Subject: When Countries Collide Online: Internet Spies, Cyberwar, and Government-sponsored Skullduggery.

I’ll be sequestered in the industrial-sized kitchen of my co-op, chopping vegetables to make stir fry for my 27 roommates, but if you’re free, check out the live webcast at 6pm EST to find out how governments are using the Internet, how far their online spying has gone, and what the legal implications of state sponsored network espionage might be.

Posted in ICT, berkman, international politics, technology | Leave a comment

My biggest frustration with grad school so far has been how difficult it is to bring what’s happening in the real world of ICT and development — mobile phones for health, Ushahidi, debates over what online privacy means for activists — into the classroom. With the exception of a few phenomenal professors, much of the SIPA academic world seems disconnected from the entire field. In my opinion, this is a sad mistake.

Photo from codiceinternet on Flickr.

It’s also why I am so excited about Policy Making in the Digital Age, a conference that The Morningside Post is sponsoring at Columbia in February.

Policy Making in the Digital Age will bring together faculty and students at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs with the wider Columbia and New York City communities to explore trends and future implications in ICT and development, privacy issues, open governance, and humanitarian affairs.

We’re building a fantastic line-up of experts to discuss everything from how new media can help in crisis to the intersection of technology, business and culture in different countries. Know someone you think we should invite? Let us know at editor [at] themorningsidepost.com. Want to come? Mark your calendar for February 27, 2010, and check the conference site in late January for more details.

Posted in ICT, ICT for development, SIPA, digital activism, mobile phones, new york, technology, the morningside post | Leave a comment

I’m at WordCamp NYC today, hopping from session to session of a superbly colorful schedule. I signed up partly to hang out with Jer, who’s presenting twice this afternoon, and partly to learn what WordPress can do for me and for the SIPA academic community.

In that vein, I’m flipping back and forth between the academic and beginning developer tracks. I spent part of this morning at Jeremy Bogg’s session on using WordPress in an academic setting, and I find myself itching to set up a site with Commentpress for a paper I’m co-writing on African media coverage of extractive industries.

Right now I’m sitting in the beginning developer room, listening to Allan Cole attempt to talk about creating child themes without accidentally making his presentation X-rated (so far we’ve covered “choosing a mate” and “child bearing hips”). His talk (and the one before, a general intro to theming by Daisy Olsen) have me reading through The Morningside Post’s template files to see if I can make both the code and the design cleaner.

If that fact that I feel guilty and embarassed about publishing this on Blogger means anything, I think WordCamp’s doing its job. Jackfruity.com, powered by WordPress, coming soon.

Posted in technology, the morningside post, wcnyc | Leave a comment

I finally got a chance to catch up on Google Reader today. Some things you should see:

• Friend a Gorilla
  For one dollar a year, you can friend a gorilla through the Uganda Wildlife Authority.
  “Anyone can be a friend of a gorilla or follow specific gorillas living the forest on Facebook or Twitter for a minimum donation of $1. You will get updates on your gorilla friend(s), including photos, videos, and GPS coordinates, all of which are gathered by actual trackers that visit the gorillas daily.”
• Ethiopia 2010: Here Comes Africa’s Festival of Electoral Fraud
  An overview of recent elections in Nigeria, Kenya and Zimbabwe, looking forward to Ethiopia.
  “The glimmer of hope shimmering in the Ghanaian experiment proves that multiparty democracy can be successfully instituted in Ethiopia and elsewhere in Africa, without bloodshed. Failure to do so may once again force Africans to prudently heed Victor Hugo’s admonition: ‘When dictatorship is fact, revolution becomes a right.’ If it gets to that point, it’s going to be a quagmire too difficult to get out of this time.”
• The 10,000 Hour Initiative
  Jon Gos at Appfrica is starting a program to support young programmers, bloggers and new media enthusiasts.
  “Instead of creating institutions from scratch that require enormous resources and high overhead (rent, security, staff etc) the 10,000 Hour Initiative would identify talented individuals and create co-working and co-learning spaces (dubbed 10K Spaces) for them at existing institutions and businesses. The program would allow youth to interact with other peers as well as trained professionals who could tutor and mentor them, helping them to improve their skills, while exposing them to new technologies, ideas and fields they may not have been aware of.”
• GV Uganda: Bloggers discuss anti-gay bill
  A new bill, currently tabled in the Uganda parliament, will increase penalties for homosexuality and add penalties for spreading information about homosexuality. Terrifying and sad. Haute Haiku covers bloggers’ reactions for Global Voices.
  “Anengiyefa sees that Uganda has just seen hypocrisy of MPs who have unified and are ready to pass a law victimizing homosexuality in the name of morality: this beats the purpose why the system is so anxious to criminalize consensual sex amongst two adults of the same gender and omitting important issues like ethnic violence, tribalism, AIDS, child rape etc.”

Posted in GLBT, ICT for development, africa, global voices, international politics, technology, uganda | Leave a comment