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csik's blogMAS.968: Call4Action (extended remix)Submitted by csik on Sun, 02/01/2009 - 23:57.
Each week we will review existing tools for social change, cover techniques for mobile hacking, and piece together new experiments. International speakers ranging from Zimbabwean activists to telecommunication experts will discuss the problems with existing ICTs, and suggest parameters for new systems. We will explore protocols and packages like VOIP, SMS, and Asterisk to look at how they may be reused or reconfigured. And we will do a variety of hacking and technical exercises that can demystify the field and act as springboards for future work. The IAP version of the class included the following speakers: * Katrin Verclas, organizer of MobileActive, the largest conference in the field Future speakers may include: Tactical Tech Collective / Yes Men / Indy Media / Witness / UNICEF / Catherine Lutz / Noam Chomsky / Rich Pell / Ricardo Dominguez Class Scope We will provide an overview of contemporary mobile and participatory technology and techniques, and cross-fertilize that with theory and best practices around social movements. The goal of the class's technical component will be to expose participants to a variety of models for mobile and participatory systems. We will constrain the scope of our in-class demonstrations (for instance, using only the Python programming language) for the sake of continuity. Participants will not learn everything about programming X phone handset using Y operating system in Z language, but rather that these are the possible approaches, and this is what an X, Y, and Z looks like and how to approach finding out more. Likewise, we will introduce some key concepts, scholars, and practitioners of social change, but will not aspire towards a comprehensive overview of their work or their fields. The class will meet weekly. There will be regular small problem sets, readings and short responses, and three studio projects will be assigned over the course of the semester. Attendance is required, students must not miss more than 3 classes in total. Readings Bandy, Joe. “Paradoxes of Transnational Civil Societies under Neoliberalism: The Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras.” Social Problems 51, no. 3 (August 2004): 410-431. Django / GeoDjangoSubmitted by csik on Mon, 04/27/2009 - 16:01.
Hey All, quick note that I did an intro tutorial for how to get Django working on the image. Dan did a great job of installing everything you need to use Django to have a database-aware application and web site, and GeoDjango, allowing that to be geographically aware. Details here: http://src.media.mit.edu/cfa/wiki/GettingStartedWithDjango Mugabe annexes communication ministry: All your communications are belong to us.Submitted by csik on Sat, 04/11/2009 - 17:04.
The Herald, a puppet paper of Robert Mugabe, has annouced that the ICT Ministry, controlled by MDC, has been annexed under one of Mugabe's minitries: *From Radio VOP, 10 April* ** *Chamisa dismisses annexing of ministry's functions* Harare - Information Communication Technology Minister Nelson Chamisa has described the annexing of functions under his ministry and hand over to an expanded Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure Development led by Nicholas Goche as a joke, indicating that President Robert Mugabe does not have the mandate to do so. President Robert MugabeIn an interview with RadioVOP, Chamisa said only the three principals could take such a decision. "Mugabe does not have those powers, those powers in the inclusive government arrangement lie with the three principals and they have not advised me that I have been demoted or that my ministry has been disbanded as I read in The Herald, I will not take things from The Herald, which is notorious for telling lies, so maybe its just a way of misleading people," he said. A Herald report on Friday indicated that President Mugabe had expanded the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure Development to include the Department of Communications and that the new portfolio would now become the Ministry of Transport, Communication and Infrastructural Development under Minister Nicholas Goche. The ministry will oversee the operations at NetOne, TelOne, Zimpost and their governing body, the Postal and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe. Chamisa said he was now awaiting the decision of Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and leader of the Movement for Democratic Change party Morgan Tsvangirai on the matter. "The Information Communication Technology ministry will be left to focus on developing appropriate policies and strategies of ICT innovations while spearheading the development of regulatory frameworks that facilitate the development of ICT. The ministry would also champion and promote ICT literacy in the country while formulating laws and regulations that would establish necessary departments," said the Herald. Under the new arrangement, Minister Goche would be responsible for all the communication parastatals and their regulatory bodies. The Department of Communications would be governed by the Postal and Telecommunications Act, Postal and Telecommunications Services Act and Postal and Telecommunications Corporation Act. Transmedia, which was also at the centre of the dispute, however remains under the Ministry of Media, Information and Publicity. ITU Report now up...Submitted by csik on Wed, 04/01/2009 - 14:43.
The UN/ITU report that Katrin mentioned is now up in Readings.... Get it while it's hot! Free Switch!Submitted by csik on Tue, 03/17/2009 - 05:27.
Dan has just uploaded his freeswitch tutorial: UC Berkeley Human Rights Center Mobile ChallengeSubmitted by csik on Tue, 02/03/2009 - 15:55.
The Human Rights Center at the University of California, Berkeley is pleased to announce the Human Rights Center Mobile Challenge. Recent innovations in science and technology, especially mobile technologies, have provided human rights advocates, journalists, and scientists with new tools to expose war crimes and other serious violations of human rights and disseminate this information in real time throughout the world. Cell phones, combined with GPS, cameras, video, audio, and SMS are transforming the way the world understands and responds to emerging crises. Handheld data collection devices, such as PDAs, provide researchers with new ways of documenting mass violence and attitudes toward peace, justice, and social reconstruction in conflict zones. The Human Rights Center is sponsoring a challenge to encourage innovations for applying mobile technologies for human rights investigations and advocacy. Through a NetSquared Community vote, 10 finalists will be chosen. All 10 finalists will be invited to present their ideas at an international conference, “The Soul of the New Machine: Human Rights, Technology, and New Media,” at UC Berkeley, May 4 and 5, 2009. A panel of judges, selected by the Human Rights Center, will choose three winners, to be announced at the conference. Winners will receive cash awards of $15,000 (first place), $10,000 (second place), and $5,000 (third place) to implement their ideas. Katrin VerclasSubmitted by csik on Tue, 02/03/2009 - 06:19.
Katrin Verclas is co-founder and editor of MobileActive.org, a global network of practitioners using mobile phones in social change work. She was, until recently, also the Executive Director of NTEN: The Nonprofit Technology Network, the national association of IT professionals working in the more than one million nonprofit organizations in the United States. Katrin is passionate about the use of technology in democratic participation, economic empowerment, community organizing, and government accountability. She believes in the importance of community, the power of networks, the good will of people, our ability to collaborate for a common good, the inherent political-ness of everyday life, and the power of people using technology to better this world. Katrin has a strong background in IT management, IT in social change organizations, and in philanthropy. Prior to NTEN and MobileActive, she has led several nonprofit organizations, and served as a program officer at the Proteus Fund for six years, focusing on the use of technology in civic and democratic participation, and in government transparency. She is currently engaged in researching and writing a publication on mobile use in civil society with the UN Foundation and Vodafone Foundation Group, among other projects. Katrin has written widely on mobile phones in citizen participation and civil society organizations, open source software in the nonprofit sector, and information and communication technologies (ICTs) in development. She is the editor of a forthcoming book on IT Leadership in organizations published by Wiley & Sons, and is the author of an essay in a book to be published in 2008 on the use of technology in engaging young people in democratic movements. She is a frequent speaker on ICTs in civil society at national and international conferences and has published numerous articles and publications on technology for social change in leading popular and industry publications. Katrin serves on the boards of Mobile Voter and NTEN, and is a member of IEEE Computer Society and the Development Executive Group. MobileActive.org is a global network of practitioners using mobile phones in social change work. MobileActive.org features a community blog with the latest case studies and analysis of the use of mobile phones in civil society organizations; data on mobile penetration worldwide, and a comprehensive directory of projects, vendors, and tools using mobile technology. The network organizes a popular conference for practitioners and technologists at the cutting edge of using mobiles in social change work around the world. Katrin can be reached at kverclas [at] techstrategy.org or katrin [phat] mobileactive.org. David ReedSubmitted by csik on Tue, 02/03/2009 - 06:16.
Adjunct Professor David P. Reed's research focuses on designing systems that manage, communicate, and manipulate information shared among people. He is best known for co-developing the Internet design principle known as the "end-to-end argument" (with MIT Professors J.H. Saltzer and David D. Clark), and "Reed's Law," which describes the economics of group formation in networks. Reed works with Andrew Lippman in developing the Lab's Viral Communications program, exploring the adaptive, scalable, and evolving wireless network architectures that have fascinated him for years. In addition, along with Lippman, David D. Clark of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and Prof. Charles Fine of the Sloan School of Management, he has helped create the MIT Communications Futures Program. A member of Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, where he is an HP Fellow, Reed has also consulted widely to the computer industry, and has served as senior research scientist at Interval Research Corporation and as vice president and chief scientist for Lotus Development Corporation. Previously he was vice president of research and development and chief scientist at Software Arts. Reed was a faculty member in MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) from 1978 to 1983, working in the Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS). He also earned his BS, MS, EE, and PhD degrees in EECS while conducting research at LCS and its predecessor, Project MAC. Hey World...Submitted by csik on Mon, 01/19/2009 - 07:41.
Okay, so it's almost 3am on Monday morning and I have no idea how I'll do all the preparation I had hoped to do, but I also suspect that I've done far more than could possibly fit in 4 days. Recent speaker additions: + Sarudzayi Njerere, Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights Too cool. |
