Moved to Blog.PatrickWozny.com

Because of the difficulty in posting from inside Ethiopia I have moved this page to blog.patrickwozny.com. Please visit the site there.

This blog is now based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

I have relocated and am house hunting here. Ethiopia seems like a great place to work and live. The high altitudes of Addis (nearly 8000 feet) remind me of home. The people I have met are almost universally kind and very bright. I have had a longstanding appreciation for their culture(s) and can't wait to see some of the ancient churches and other sites.

The downside, at least if you are reading this, is that Internet connectivity remains quite a challenge for me and most of Ethiopia. I haven't been able to even see this blog, let alone update anything. I will have to let you do you do your own research as to why this might be the case - or how I am managing to update now ;)

The logical step here is to move this blog to an easier to get to spot ... but I haven't quite decided what and where would be the best spot. I am open to suggestions, just leave them in the comments and I should get them by email, even if I can't log in to approve them so that they appear here.

I have migrated a family blog to wozspace.org that seems to working and I am updating ... if this post starts to get too old and stale to believe that I am coming back you might want to check in on me there. I will be back though.

Child Friendliness Study for Africa

This article in the BBC describes a new study assessing the welfare for children in African countries

African child 'well-being' rated

By Emily Buchanan BBC World Affairs Correspondent

Some poor countries have scored well compared to richer ones in a report assessing the treatment of children in African nations.

Poverty is not an excuse to treat children badly - that is the central message of the report.

The independent pan-African advocacy organization, which is based in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, found that some of the poorest countries score surprisingly well.

It is only slightly surprising to me that some poorer countries often do a better job caring for the welfare of their children, because beyond a certain basic level what we are dealing with is simply where the government place their priorities

Obama Biden : A better direction for development

There has just been too much going on in my life over the last several months to keep writing for this blog, and while I haven't exactly considered this a "personal" blog, one's personal life does have a way of intervening now and again. There were some medical issues that we are still dealing with and we moved from Ghana to wandering around the states, to now when we are packing up to move to Ethiopia. So, while I am not yet fully back, I have decided to be a bit more personal in my entries.

So, first up the presidential choice: We have been living in Phoenix, Arizona and have some ties to the state. People here seem to mostly like McCain and generally respect the guy, but aren't all that impressed with him as the best choice for president. We are just a few days from the election as I write this, but local polls show fairly weak support for McCain.

I didn't support Obama in the primary and even Hillary Clinton wasn't my first choice - McCain was almost certainly the best Republican choice - But I quickly made my own mind up watching the Republican Convention. Ugh! What an ugly bunch and so proud of their ignorance.

Less personally for this blog I had in mind evaluating the candidates on their likely approach on Development, foreign aid and assistance. And while I think this is still interesting and both honestly do have some good ideas and significant differences, whomever gets elected won't likely have much luck or resources available to pursue a grand aid agenda or restructuring. Obama however seems the likely victor and while I haven't found much in terms of fully developed policy positions, he still has probably one of the closest personal histories/relationships to foreign aid we have ever seen in a president.

Hillary Clinton, we will miss you!

I am very sad to see her go - Certainly Obama is a much better choice than McCain for most every issue I can think of, and, with regard to global development there is really no contest - I intend to elaborate on this point in the future. However, I still think the country and the world will be missing out on the the unique understanding and perspective Clinton would have brought to the the global agenda for change.

Pentagon scales back AFRICOM ambitions

Opposition in Africa means the new command's headquarters will more likely be in US or Europe.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0516/p03s03-usmi.html

Washington - When Pentagon strategists sought to create a new military command to oversee Africa, they believed they could build one that deemphasized military might and would serve as an exemplar of what so-called US soft power could do around the world.

But in recent months, the Pentagon has had to scale back its ambitious vision to adapt Africa's political terrain, military officials acknowledge, adding they remain committed to the original idea of a military command to promote peace in the region.

OR Check out this editorial by David Ignatious, "Into Africa Without a Map".

(draft) What Happened to Title II Food Aid?

I recently made a visit to the regional Catholic Relief Services (CRS) office here in Ghana for to talk with them about commodities and fair trade, but especially about cocoa and child labor. People who know me gernerally also know that this is a favorite issue of mine, but those who know CRS probably know they market fair trade chocolate
CRS, CARE, Save the Children, Mercy Corps http://www.crs.org/about_us/newsroom/speeches_and_testimony/releases.cfm?ID=38

G8

Germany Conduct Raids Ahead of G-8 Summit - New York Times

900 police officers, searched 40 homes and offices in 6 cities in Germany yesterday, a plan to strictly tighten borders, the greatest security since World War II, a 7.5 mile, $17 million fence of concrete and barbed wire, nine navy ships patrolling, 16,000 local police and 1,100 soldiers guarding the perimeter to a remote resort Heiligendamm and intensive police surveillance to protect members for the three day meeting to discuss aid to Africa and climate change at a 3 day event ...

Hmm? I am glad they are talking and that these issues have somehow forced their way on to the agenda, but given the subject of their discussions, their prior record and failures from the Glenn Eagles meeting, that an unarmed protester was killed by police at the meeting in Italy and so on, you would think that they might want to be slightly more open to viewpoints other than the ones they are already taking into the meeting. From the point of view of an investor, (probably the viewpoint they would be most comfortable with) because after all, this is an investment of public money that pays for all this security, you would want to see some return and results for their 3 day meeting. Why am I so skeptical that this time will be any different?

I am skeptical too of their motives, although not nearly like many of the critics who had their homes and offices invaded and searched. One suspects that given George Bush's refusal until very recently to even acknowledge climate change as real, that the best solutions will likely benefit energy and like interests, and one only has to look as far as the Wolfowitz World Bank scandal to see similar kinds of hypocrisies in development aid. Wolfowitz I think doesn't really see how what he did could be construed as wrong even, and seems perfectly willing to let the already tarnished reputation of the fat cat World Bankers suffer further for his own personal benefit.

Even when they get it nearly right and fund well intentioned projects on HIV/AIDS for example, no one would argue that it isn't a great thing to do, however, you will see construction of hospitals and facilities in poor countries that cannot cope with the basic needs of clean water, mosquito nets and lack adequate hospital facilities for routine or emergency care that would likely save even more lives. The whole context of need might just be harder to grasp behind the specially built walls of concrete, wire, police. They would not have to leave their remote resorts and travel to Africa to understand, however, their extreme fear of those who think differently from their own countries might make it harder to bridge the separation of their thinking from the world's reality.

The Pope, G-8, Wolfowitz and the World Bank

http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0702253.htm From Catholic News Service I saw this article with the Pope discussing the role of wealthy nations with regard to the World's poor.

"Developed countries have a moral obligation to offer concrete help in eliminating poverty in the world, especially in Africa. While the governments of poorer countries have a responsibility to fight corruption and poverty on their home turf, the active involvement of international partners is indispensable."

These comments came from Pope Benedict XVI in a letter to Angela Merkel in advance of the June meeting of the G-8 in Germany. There is link in the right hand column for a consortium of Catholic aid group working around this issue. Developed nations as represented by the G-8 rely on "their" institutions of the World Bank, usually headed by an American, and the International Monetary Fund headed by a European to carry out their responsibilities for Global Development.

Admittedly I have been a little slow in posting recent weeks, so perhaps I have you think I have been dodging my responsibility to development and the poor. Well, I have been extraordinarily busy with work, projects and coursework related to development, and while this hasn't been reflected here, I have added a section on the column to right which displays current headlines for a couple of key words, and I have added a section below that of recently read feeds or articles I thought were noteworthy, but haven't had the time to comment on.

There is plenty in the news and recent developments in the development world that haven't gotten the attention they are due, and I expect to find more time soon to get to some of these... however I think the Wolfowitz and World Bank scandal fact speaks volumes about who those in power believe should benefit from development. There have been some interesting articles, and editorials on corruption and anti-corruption efforts by Wolfowitz at the World Bank, including an interesting take in the Christian Science Monitor recently; We will see how this plays out over the next few weeks, however, time may be growing short - in an AP story I just read that,

"The Independent Evaluation Group asked for Wolfowitz's immediate resignation, saying a continuation of his leadership will lead to irreparable harm to worldwide efforts in poverty reduction and sustainable development."

However Wolfowitz seems to be preparing for a fight. Even if he wins, it is hard to say how his efforts now could help the poor and given his track record from what we know about this scandal and the rest of his public life - I think questions being asked into his motivations and dedication to helping the poor are legitimate given his responsibility and position of trust, but I just don't believe these issues can be explained away. It would take some time and effort to parse these arguments in the various stories and editorials, however I think it would be fruitful to uncover the underlying understanding of how development works and for whom it is expected the benefit should accrue.

(draft) Global Slavery and Cocoa

Some 27 million men, women, and children are in unpaid servitude, the UN says, with an estimated 200,000 of them in the US. Many of you know I have long interest in this topic, particularly over the last several years since I moved to Coted d'Ivoire with particular regard to cocoa and chocolate. I spend a fair amount of time writing about cocoa for my coursework, and always have a draft here that I never seem to actually post.

I have some conflicted feelings about fair trade as I think the movement has about itself, but ultimately I think these debates are healthy. Questions of "how fair," "who benefits most" how we know something is fair, and who decides are always going to be relevant.

Wikipedia on a CD in French, and TV, Phone and Internet Delivered by Bottle

I have quite a few posts kicking around in my head, but I have been actually trying a few different formats and learning the new template structure on blogger. I have just looked in IE7 at this blog and found some issues and things not working or showing up properly and edits to CSS don't do what I would expect - I was quite confused by the switch to their new version, and I have some learning still to do but the clouds are finally starting to clear I think. I mentioned the harmattan in my last post and that is starting to clear too, so I am planning on spending less time on this and a bit more outside.

With all the extra time as shut-in hiding from the dust, one might think I would have had plenty of time to tinker with these, and, burn through some posts... However a bit of work, life and studying keep getting in the way. The city water hasn't been on in more than two weeks, and electricity has been off for two days, and the Internet goes off and on in random fashion. I have the generator cooking with home brew biodiesel and enough tinfoil wrapped around the wifi to make McGyver jealous... still I need a new post to see how it all works. Anybody like the new look? It is just kind of random at the moment, I know, but you get to see it in process. I will likely strip out some code that keep this page from loading well in developing countries and low bandwidth connections (like mine) and clean up a few other mistakes I have left about when I get some time, so we'll all have to live with some design issues for the time being.

But not to be devoid completely of development info I wanted to mention an open source project http://www.moulinwiki.org The project is called moulin, French for windmill done by Geekcorps in Mali, which places nearly half a million French Wikipedia entries, sans photos, onto a single CD and includes a browser with search functions that runs under Windows, Linux or OSX. This means you don't have to have an Internet connection to use Wikipedia and it doesn't really matter what kind of computer you have either. We all speak of the digital divide, but the information divide is more fundamental in that many people lack access to basic sources of information. I think this is a great project and plan to download and test once I find some reliable bandwidth. They have plans to move on to other languages including Chinese very soon. Great Job!

I mentioned my tin foil focused wifi reflector making McGyver jealous, but while I am on the subject of Mali and GeekCorps, I should also mention another project where they are building village sized wireless networks using old plastic water bottles and window screen to deliver telephone, internet, radio and even television - so you actually could see an old episode of McGyver on the bottlenet. Version 2.0 looks more like the classic Pringles sized cantenna made out of can and PVC pipe and it delivers primarily television content. People don't have regular electricity, but villagers have powered about 120 television sets from car batteries already and this gives alternatives and could be used for any manner of educational content

West Africa Consultants' Network

While I still have some work I see on the last post and some more millenniums to define, I thought I'd at least try to welcome in the New Year and get back to this blog before the end of January. Has anyone been following the series in the LA Times on the Gates Foundation and the personal investments by the Gates family? It is a fascinating examination, I hope to post on this soon, but it has already caused some ripples at the Gates Foundation and in the blogosphere, like at Huffington post. (that is the second time I have ever used the word blogosphere and I have to say I find a bit of self-loathing when I think of myself as a blogger)

... but to confirm the stereotype of people who blog as sitting inside alone all day ranting because they don't have a job... uh well almost describes me, but you can could help me in a couple of ways. 1) You could show a little solidarity and relieve me of my isolation by leaving a comment or joining me as a blog contributer/editor here or on our private wiki. 2) You could hire me for a job.

Honestly, I am not actively seeking work given school and various current commitments, but I have pretty much been staying in because of annual weather phenomena where we are treated to huge amounts of dust blown off of the Sahara in winds called the Harmattan. I did venture out to meet a few others who are actively looking for work, even if I am not exactly looking now I will be someday soon. They have put together a network called the West Africa Consultants' Network and a blog as a listing of those doing consulting work. The people I knew already and those I have met are quite talented and although not everyone involved is a development professional I have linked it here to show you the wide range of expertise you find in development workers for some of you who have a hard time imagining exactly where you will fit into development. The network has been quite successful and well received, but the blog is brand new and not yet announced in Ghana, however, I thought you might like a sneak peek until I can get my act together to start posting again.

A Millennium of Development Efforts

(POST IS A DRAFT and in progress) Is a millennium only 15 years and are we just about half way there already? In development terms that is partly true -according to the UN's plan we are almost half way through a 15 year set of goals for global development, but most people would say the job much less than half way to completion.

Millennium Challenge Accounts, The Millennium Project, The Millennium Promise and the Millennium Challenge Corporation ... There are several development efforts that use the word millennium and it can be a little confusing, so I thought a short description of a few of these efforts and their various versions and perspectives might be helpful. The UN has initiated the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), which are the following series of 8 goals to accomplish by 2015:

1) Halving extreme poverty and hunger
2) Achieving universal primary education
3) Achieving gender equality
4) Reducing child mortality by two-thirds
5) Reducing maternal mortality by three-quarters
6) Reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other major diseases
7) Ensuring environmental sustainability
8) Creating a global partnership for development

Is this the best set of goals to have to really improve people's lives? Are these realistically possible? Or you think this list is too modest and they are setting the bar too low?

This is not to be confused with the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) and the Millennium Challenge Accounts (MCA). MCC is essentially a state owned corporation by the United States government to to deliver aid to developing nations and MCA is the the funding mechanism and to determine qualifications for aid. This new model was announced by President Bush in 2002 and fully established in January of 2004, because of the administration's apparent frustration with both the UN's MDG and America's own USAID structures where efforts were somewhat based more on need, rather than a desire to focus on the private sector and those countries who could qualify for aid based on political and economic considerations.

In this new model, aid is provided to those countries that:

• Rule justly;
• Invest in their people;
• Encourage economic freedom.

There are 16 indicators to evaluate if a countries is eligible and in the last 3 years they have signed compacts with 11 countries. (Armenia, Benin, Cape Verde, El Salvador, Georgia, Ghana, Honduras, Madagascar, Mali, Nicaragua and Vanuatu). In Ghana where I live, it was one of the first eligible countries and MCC has begun to open its office and hire staff now for an expected opening early in the new year. The are projected to spend 547 million dollars to reduce poverty through private sector-led agribusiness development.

While globally the start up for MCC has been fairly slow and it seems they are re-inventing the wheel in many aspects - there is plenty of poverty to go around and I don't think the problems are in danger of being solved before MCC gets there. While some might even question the logic of having a government owned tax payer funded corporation trying to help foster private sector business, many at least here in Ghana are excited by the large investment this effort represents. What do you think about these approaches? Do you see the various efforts at odds with one another, or, do you think they are more complimentary? Will a corporation eventually prove to be more nimble and flexible than traditional government agencies, or do you think accountability might suffer?

Irish Catholic Boy

Here is a contribution to what I think is to the betterment of the common good by one of our colleagues, with the help of his band, Seanchaí and the Unity Squad, his family and friends.

"If you're somebody who likes hip-hop, Irish folk and rock, R&B, reggae/ska, protest anthems, and real phone calls to prank radio hosts, you are about to consume a casserole of cultures that will soon make Seanchaí and the Unity Squad a staple on your musical menu."

This song, however, is more of meaty helping of solidarity stew with side of Liberation Theology - That, and besides the references to sister Sandinista, makes me feel their sound on this album shows definite the influences of Joe Strummer and the 80's Clash, and in their commitment to confronting racism, classism and oppression. The whole CD is great, check it out.

The link then to development and even a school of thought in theology are obvious, but I also want to talk about in a future post how You Tube, My Space, Facebook, Meet Up, many services provided by Google, and even Ebay's Skype, which are all for profit companies can be used to benefit the not-for-profits and the nongovernmental organizations. In the meantime take a break and listen to Chris and the band play.

Gender and Development

In this article titled, Gender bias 'increases poverty' the BBC discusses the not too surprising conclusions of a just released report from the UN agency Unicef.

Children of women-headed households eat better food, Unicef says

Inequality at home between men and women leads to poorer health for the children and greater poverty for the family, says a new study.

The report itself, "State of the World's Children 2007 - Women and Children", is available as a PDF file from Unicef directly or the BBC.

In my part of the world, "In Ivory Coast and Ghana, it was discovered that when women's income increased for whatever reason, they spent the extra on more food for the family, whereas an increase in men's income made no significant difference", Unicef said in the BBC coverage.

While in Rome when meeting together as we did discuss this apparent fact of development efforts, and how to not to automatically exclude men in order to help ensure they support efforts focused on women and children who are most in need. However, in some studies men in stable families were shown to be more likely to spend extra income on farm supplies, equipment, or other investments. I am not saying this is the rule, nor am disputing the conclusions of the the report. I picked out the example from two countries where I have lived and worked, because I can see all kinds of evidence from my experience to support their conclusions. This will continue to be an important issue throughout our development careers and our lives, but the critical impact of the outcome of this discussion are the women and children who participate the least and are least empowered to impact the debate. We need to seek an understanding of development that accounts for the underlying complexity of human relationships and family and well as the role of culture and economy.

Professor Marilyn Martone of St John's spoke to us briefly in Rome with regard to Gaudium et Spes , UN reports, and the treatment of women and children. I suspect she will continue this theme in her course with us, but there is no reason we should hold our discussion until then. What do you think is the proper gender balance in development efforts? And how do you decide? How do should we account for cultural and religious differences on this point?

Share, reuse, and remix — legally... And help celebrate a birthday

"Creative Commons provides free tools for authors, artists, and educators to mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry. Our tools change "All Rights Reserved" into "Some Rights Reserved" — as the creator chooses. We are a nonprofit organization. Everything we do — including the software we create — is free."

I am quoting their website, but I think they would approve. While some people have debated the need for additional mechanisms for what is essentially a copyright, this mechanism begins with a bias for the common good. - That creators want their ideas to be used and built upon. I have watched the idea spread, like good ideas should be enabled to do, over the last few years. When I checked in at their website on what rights I had under a document I was reading I found that they and their method of licensing is turning four on December 15th! If you have an interest, and we all do in expanding "the commons" and without even slipping into a discussion of theology, I am going to pass the collection plate for them. Check out their website (click on the logo) but notice they are trying to raise some money for their efforts.

What relevance to development? Well, there is plenty. I was just reading a study on conflict zones and land pressures here in Ghana, and it was published under a "Attribution-Share Alike 2.5" license by Creative Commons. I will save that document for a future post, or for our Wiki, but it is important to note that development is often stifled by the lack of access to good information. Now we not can blame that on the evils of copyright alone, but some development agencies have looked specifically at that problem, and it bring up a great topic for this blog for future posts in terms of "knowledge management," but I have noticed a few development agencies getting over their natural tendencies to compete and keep methods and techniques proprietary, and some have actually adopted Creative Commons licenses for their publications. Hopefully we can stop repeating the same mistakes over and over again, if we can focus on sharing what works, what are best practices or what have you that can help the have nots.

For our Wiki I just chose a GNU license, or a copyleft for free documentation, and so far nothing for this blog... I picked GNU because it is generally used for open source software and I am more familiar with it for that reason. But Creative Commons is more flexible and the logo is much more attractive don't you think?

We have a least two attorneys in our group, one from the Philippines and the other from Thailand - maybe one of you would like to compare these ways (or one other possibilities at OSI) of keeping our content free, and give us an opinion, pro bono publico of course, of what works best? We can probably survive without any of these, but the alternative of letting me pick based on the logo design should scare someone to action here.

Maybe there is someone out there with an interest in how Catholic social teaching might inform this choice too. Perhaps it is too much of stretch, but there was a short but section in David Hollenbach's book that we read for Dr. Chris Vogt's course, The Common Good and Christian Ethics, (p.208-210, available in electronic form), is his chapter, Poverty, Justice and the Good of the City, related to this topic:

The cultural context of today's electronic and information-shaped society sets significant obstacles to the ethos of solidarity ... A knowledge based economy rewards those who can creatively negotiate the world of technology and information. Knowledge and technological creativity are resources that people possess in the inner domains of their consciousness. This easily leads to identifying the conditions of success with the "self " who possess them. In earlier agricultural or industrial societies the resources need for success, such as land or inherited money, were more distinguishable from the persons possessing them. Thus success was more readily seen as dependent on conditions and circumstances that one did not create oneself. Today however people with greater knowledge and skill easily see themselves as earning greater rewards strictly on their own. Well educated members of the middle class come to regard themselves entitled to the kinds of lives they lead, while many of the urban poor are seen as undeserving.

Hollenbach goes on to quote Pope John Paul II, in a reference to Centesimus Annus, no. 32, in saying that entrepreneurial success is never a solo activity. It "requires the cooperation of many people working toward a common goal ... Success is not generated by solitary creative acts." Hollenbach later explains that there is no isolated contribution to the greater good that doesn't rely on knowledge and skills that the current innovator had no role in creating. "Resources and skills," he says,are not purely the private possession of anyone. They are meant to be in service to others." It sounds like a a moral argument for share, reuse and remix to me.

While technology can be a help to level access for some, across both the developing and developed world's the trend seems to be moving more generally toward decreasing people's access to to information and toward privatization of airways radio spectrum and of public goods used to communicate. Specifically in the access of information as measured by copyright restrictions we see a similar trend. The Open Societies Institute in their study called,
Copyright and Access to Knowledge; Policy Recommendations on Flexibilities in Copyright, Laws, examined Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, India China and other countries that significantly "expanded the scope of copyright protection—that is, the works to be protected and the rights accorded to copyright owners—beyond what is required by the international copyright treaties they have acceded to. In addition, they have not incorporated all the available limitations and exceptions that would have opened up access to knowledge".

XML, RSS, ATOM and Ways to Spread the News (or at least read it)

I mentioned in the last post XML, RSS, ATOM and other ways of get updates from websites or other information without having to go and look for it. RSS, according to some, stands for Really Simple Syndication and as the name implies you can "subscribe" to these updates or "feeds" from a website or other services like I-Tunes when you subscribe to a podcast. ATOM is another standard for doing pretty much the same thing and the content for any of these can vary from headlines, to entire article or even audio or video programming. Google, our kind host for this blog, prefers ATOM and if you look at the bottom of this blog you can subscribe to its feed in that format.

There are plenty of ways to receive and read or listen to a feed that you have subscribed to, technically it is a program that reads the feed itself and you read the content. The programs often called newsreaders or feed readers vary from vary full featured with lots of search storage and to those with more basic features built into newer versions of web browsers like Firefox or the newest version of Internet Explorer. You might see in your browser, or in a Google tool bar, a button like the one shown here that will light up like orange like this one when you are on a website or page that you can subscribe to. In Firefox they call one feature like this "Live Bookmarks" because when you subscribe to a page with job listings, this blog, or a news site - you will automatically be sent updated bookmarks listing the latest job openings, posts from this site, or latest headlines.

Beyond these basics you can find programs that do much more with these feeds and many of these are free, powerful and even sometimes work inside or along with your web browser -This blog is carried on free service called Bloglines, for example, that collects or aggregates your subscriptions from multiple websites on one webpage for you and lets you keep clippings or lets you know about similar kinds of subscriptions and even formats them for your mobile phone. There are stand alone programs like Feed Demon or ones that work inside other programs you may already know like Outlook for convenience.

I have my favorites programs and readers, but before I start a fight over which are the best, and before we start talking about how to deliver feeds, I would like to know if any of you actually are using this technology? If not, I would recommend at least subscribing to the feed from this page just to get a feel for it. If you are a seasoned pro we could use your help in explaining and teaching about this technology in our Wiki or in the comments here. I run into news junkies and tech oriented folks who get really excited by the possibilities of RSS and ATOM, but I believe it is a powerful communications technology for all of us to use to stay better connected. It has not hit the part of the development community where I live just yet, though I can tell you about some projects here in Ghana to help teach journalists about the related areas of blogging and RSS newsfeeds for example. If you have an idea or know of a development application for RSS, like delivering public health care information - we would all love to hear about that.

Updated to Blogger 2.0 Beta - ( Now also the new Computer Aid Learning Blog 2.0)

This blog replaces the one I had on Computer Aided Learning at http://calpraxis.blogspot.com/, which is fairly self explanatory I suppose, but actually tended to focus on technology uses in development, not software development, but rather the process of raising the standard of living and quality of life for those in the so-called developing world, and others displaced by natural disasters, war, or other land pressures wherever they live. Because I had placed just the CAL blog on Blogger's 2.0 BETA (test version) and not my other blogs, it became stranded and sometimes inaccessible even to me - the solution was to migrate all my other blogs in a one way process - Done, but no going back!

I deleted the CAL Praxis posts and moved any here as appropriate, but I still like the name so I will hang on to it for the time being, and I put a forward to here from there - Also, there is another blog at http://gdsj-praxis.blogspot.com/ that was orphaned like the other, but this one bears a striking resemblance to this one, check it out and let me know if you like the colors or anything else better than this one. The upgrade here to a new template has scrambled or otherwise killed a few customizations, like a counter and Google Ads that I will not rush to repair, but most things will work eventually.

This new BETA does have some apparent advantages and some nice features that I hope to show off, however, one disadvantage seems to be the smooth integration we enjoyed into Wikispaces no longer works. Wikispaces says they are working on a solution and I will keep you updated. We can however still link to the Wiki I believe How to Spread the News - RSS, ATOM and other technologies, but don't get your hopes up too high yet, because the Wiki is so far a Wiki of one man's effort and while Wikis tend to remain a work in progress forever, this one is still in its beginning stages and password protected right now for reasons of comment spam - If you want into the Wiki, and trust me I want you there - Leave a note in the comments with a way to contact you, or if you are connected with St John's send me an email and I will let you in regardless of the current stage of its ... ah ... development?

Angelina Jolie, Bill and Melinda Gates, George Soros, Bono and the Pope

The list of course could on with others that deserve a mention, however, they all are dedicating serious time effort and sometimes even share of their personal fortune to the greater good - or so they would like us to believe. I put them here to draw your attention and, in some ways at least for some of them, their celebrity might be their largest contribution. That celebrity appeal comes at some cost and distraction too.

William Easterly development economist and former World Bank staffer turned academic at NYU see some of these people as well as others in the development bureaucracy as "do-gooders" gone bad. For example, Live AID concerts do raise awareness and money, but are over in an instant and give people the false sense they have really seriously contributed and relieves them from burden of thinking about poverty or doing anything further -to paraphrase a discussion with Easterly on CNN. His book new book titled, The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good (Penguin Press, 2006), according to the reviews he a takes a more serious look than just this topic, however his aim seems to be to write a more popular book rather than an academic text. It is important to point and he is not so much a critic of development efforts and agencies per se, rather he see some their penchant for repeating mistakes from past and planning that takes place from from the situations where aid is need as things begin to go wrong. In "The Man Without a Plan," Amartya Sen reviews the book for Foreign Affairs, in the March/April 2006 issue.

What do you think about "development celebrities" Are they a help or a hindrance? Give me some thoughts in the comment section about who is providing real help, and who you suspect might just be helping themselves. Who are the hottest "dev-celebs" that missed my A-list? I haven't read the book yet, but it is on my Christmas list - if you have read it we would love your thoughts.

Free and Open Source Software

It is larger discussion of what exactly constitutes free and open source software, but while the two categories are not entirely synonymous, for our purposes we can define it in way that is analogous to a gin and tonic - the recipe is pretty much in the name. Others, however, do worry about the finer points, and if you find yourself in that camp, or are just thirsty for more information, you can click on the logo for the Open Source Initiative (OSI) for a dry and sober discussion of the definitions.

In the previous posting I mentioned Frederick Noronha will be speaking at the ICT conference in Goa, India in part sponsored by St John's. I am certain many of you interested in the topic of Development and Technology will not be able to attend (unfortunately that includes me). Our own information and technology guru Dr. Kevin Rioux, however, is expected to attend and I am certain we can find a way to echo some of the content and discussion at the conference here. While I hope this blog and related Wiki will encompass a broader range of development topics than just ICT, it is the area of development where I have some particular interest and experience, and is at least, the starting place I have in mind.

I recently read an article titled, NGOs, Searching Long for Alternatives, Find Flavour in alt.software, written by Norohna about a conference called Asia Source dealing with technology and development, but more specifically about free and open source software (FOSS) or now as dubbed by him and others as FLOSS (Free/Libre [for the Europeans] Open Source Software) Whatever you call it, the price and power are often right for the developing or developed context as Norohna explains.

St. John's hosts conference on ICT and Development in India

Conference on Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and Development organized by the Division of Mass Communication, Journalism, Television and Film of the College of Professional Studies, St. John’s University, New York in collaboration with the Diocesan Centre for Social Communications Media of the Archdiocese of Goa and Daman, India.
Conference Information

One of the more interesting panelists Frederick Noronha is the founder of Bytes for All a well known development organization focused on information technology particularly for rural populations. While the beaches of Goa do sound like a nice escape from the winter in the Northern hemisphere we still wish the attendees all the best

Pin Yourself Down

Please place a pin in our map. With our current cadre of students I know we have at least 8 or 9 countries represented form where St. John's students are studying currently, and much more than that if we count our home countries, but I would love to see where some of our visitors come from.

This is just for curiosity and fun here, but we'll be spending some time in the new year with slightly more serious Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software in Dr. Barry Brenton's course. Even though this is fairly simple, I have seen slightly more serious mashups of Google Earth and other similar web based tools for development purposes. In Nepal we used the old Terra server with free software that could read the satellite photos and give good estimations of elevation etc and helped us place longer range wireless internet links that required line of sight for our clinic training sites.

Please put in a pin, click on the -/+ buttons to zoom in/out of the map and have fun, but if you have some ideas for how this or something similar could useful for development and NGO purposes leave a note in the comments section.

Introducing SJU Global Development and Catholic Social Teaching

No connection and not approved by St. John's University, but rather this blog is created by and for students and others interested in their innovative approach to global development. It is intended as adjunct to our courses and a way of continuing the discussion outside of class. If you are thinking about perusing graduate studies in development, or perhaps you are already working in development and have plenty of experience behind you, but would like to know more or learn about other aspects than your just your field of work, you might want to add St. John's to your list of schools to consider. This program is designed for adult learners, and although requires a couple of months of residency in Rome, Italy (we all have crosses to bear) it might even be possible for you to keep working while taking online courses.

Please feel free to comment and contribute even if you have never heard of St John's, and especially if you find something you disagree with... but please be respectful of what others have to say in their opinions. Others just might not be as well informed as you are, may not speak English as well as you, but it won't hurt to be gentle in making your point.

I hope to have a team member or two to help me keep up with this, so if you find it useful and want to see it continue your willingness to help is the only qualification I am looking for. You can let me know in the comments if you would like to help out.