Hi Everyone

The First Thursday of the month is almost here again. All being well I will be around for an hour as usual starting - 13.00 Nigerian time, 15,00 Kenyan time, 13.00 British Summer time, 12.00 GMT. 

To enter the chat room go to  http://www.worknets .org/chat/ base/ 

I know that Fola Sunday is hoping to be in the chat room with Ricardo and me, and we hope others will join us. You may remember that Fola uses his phone to go online. He has been doing some successful experiments linking his phone to a PC. He is wondering about the possibility of helping the Information Centre at Ago-Are to use this approach in order to bring email facilities to Ago-Are.

I think various people in Minciu Sodas in East Africa have been exploring similar ideas, linking in with Ricardo's sneakernet ideas.

I hope Pastor David, manager of the Info-Centre, will also manage to be with Fola when he joins us (Fola may be a bit late as he has is teaching earlier in the day, but he will make it as soon as he can).

One of the big problems Fola and Pastor David face is NEPA - the highly erratic Nigerian power supply (given that NEPA officially stands for Nigerian Electrical Power Authority but unofficially stands for Never Expect Power At-all you can undersatnd that power is a serious problem for them).

Either they will have to run a generator (and the Info centre one is very old and unreliable now) or they will need to find some other solution.

At present I am not able to be active in Minciu Sodas at present, but I do still appreciate deeply all it has given me (relationships  and knowledge) I look forward to being more active again later, and I appreciate the regular chance to catch up with people in the chat room on the First Thursday.

I hope to meet some of you there on June 4th.

Hi Pam and all! I look forward to chatting. Andrius, ms@...

Pamela McLean wrote:
> Hi Everyone
>
> The First Thursday of the month is almost here again. All being well I
> will be around for an hour as usual starting - 13.00 Nigerian time,
> 15,00 Kenyan time, 13.00 British Summer time, 12.00 GMT.
>
> To enter the chat room go to  http://www.worknets .org/chat/ base/
> <http://www.worknets.org/chat/base/>
>
> I know that Fola Sunday is hoping to be in the chat room with Ricardo
> and me, and we hope others will join us. You may remember that Fola
> uses his phone to go online. He has been doing some successful
> experiments linking his phone to a PC. He is wondering about the
> possibility of helping the Information Centre at Ago-Are to use this
> approach in order to bring email facilities to Ago-Are.
>
> I think various people in Minciu Sodas in East Africa have been
> exploring similar ideas, linking in with Ricardo's sneakernet ideas.
>
> I hope Pastor David, manager of the Info-Centre, will also manage to
> be with Fola when he joins us (Fola may be a bit late as he has is
> teaching earlier in the day, but he will make it as soon as he can).
>
> One of the big problems Fola and Pastor David face is NEPA - the
> highly erratic Nigerian power supply (given that NEPA officially
> stands for Nigerian Electrical Power Authority but unofficially stands
> for Never Expect Power At-all you can undersatnd that power is a
> serious problem for them).
>
> Either they will have to run a generator (and the Info centre one is
> very old and unreliable now) or they will need to find some other
> solution.
>
> At present I am not able to be active in Minciu Sodas at present, but
> I do still appreciate deeply all it has given me (relationships  and
> knowledge) I look forward to being more active again later, and I
> appreciate the regular chance to catch up with people in the chat room
> on the First Thursday.
>
> I hope to meet some of you there on June 4th.
>
> Pam
>
>

Graham,

Thank you for your persistence with DIY Solar (and our Minciu Sodas
lab).  It's a meaningful mystery to solve, what does it take to start a
business? both in Africa and elsewhere around the world.  I know that
for my own business, Minciu Sodas, there are so many mental hurdles of
my own and others, too.  And also certain realities that aren't
immediately apparent.  Many people aren't naturally sellers, and the
pressure of poverty doesn't seem to make us sellers, either.  But it is
part of entrepreneurship and so I think a good skill for all of us to
develop, at least a little, as independent thinkers.  So this obstacle
for DIY Solar is one reason why DIY Solar is very valuable for our lab
as it's a way for us to support our participants so that we grow as
sellers and entrepreneurs.  In that way, it can be a stepping stone for
larger projects.  Folabi Sunday at Ago-Are is an example.  If Folabi can
sell DIY Solar panels, then he can sell Internet cafe services, too, I
think.  So that kind of support (or investment) in personal development
can be key for developing sustainability.

Fred Kayiwa's email is fdkayiwa AT yahoo.com   Fred is, I think, a great
entrepreneur, always earning money helping others at the Internet cafe
learn different skills.  I would focus on people like Fred who are good
sellers, and then they can coach others.  I like Peter Ongele too,
because he is frank and gave important feedback and ideas.  Peter sent a
business plan which we didn't have time to review but should.  One of
the challenges is that the person who may have the aptitude to sell DIY
Solar may typically (I imagine like Peter) work at a level of income
higher than average and so it would be better if they helped others make
a living from selling rather than try to make a business of it directly
themselves.

We've learned a lot about DIY Solar this last year and I think we can
keep at it and get these businesses going.

Samwel, Peter, Fred, Folabi and all, I ask for your advice.

I also alert us to your interest in mud stoves.  I have set up this page:
http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?MudStoves
I encourage you and all to work at our wiki.  No password is required!

Andrius

Andrius Kulikauskas
Minciu Sodas
http://www.ms.lt
ms@...
+370 699 30003
skype: minciusodas

graham wrote:
> Hi Andrius,
>
> Interesting chat yesterday!
>
> I would like to elaborate on my response to your question to me
> where I  replied that people are reluctant to try new devices, etc.
> There is more to it than that but, as you know, I try to avoid
> upsetting people!
>
> It is been a major mystery during these last 15 years that so few
> people have tried, let alone succeeded in starting DIY Solar projects.
> The fact is that virtually all projects have been due to the efforts
> of Westerners in Africa.
>
> Peter O was an good example where an African who had tested the mobile
> charger but refused to take advantage
> of this to start a business. *Like nearly everyone his attitude is
> that a business requires capital!*
>
> As he was pleading poverty I sent him gratis some larger pv modules to
> do what he wished with.
> Instead of selling them for food he used at least some to make a pv
> panel for his mother!
>
> I just can't get people to accept that if you have a novel product you
> can sell it without any publicity, shop, etc!
>
> Graham
>
> P.S. I was supposed to contact Fred-Uganda but cannot find his email.
> I found his Wiki but there is everything there but that!
>
> Do let me know if you come across anyone who knows anyone connected
> with mud stoves

I'm designing an economic system for our lab's internal work and also
our interaction with other networks. I'm reading through John Roger's
draft (February, 2008) "Flying to the Future", The Community Currency
Design Manual.

John Rogers leads Cyfranogi http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cyfranogi/ for
community currency, alternate economy, participatory society and also
consults http://www.valueforpeople.co.uk

I will think-out-loud.  I appreciate your thoughts and everybody's as
well, especially those who might participate.

John, thank you for suggesting http://www.community-exchange.org  I've
submitted my registration there for Minciu Sodas as a math tutor, open
source software developer and online community organizer.  But I do want
an economic solution custom made for our lab's work, which I think about
below.

John, you offer the practical question, "What is the purpose of any
currency?"  Your manual elaborates:
Who wants to set up a CC?
Why do we want to start a CC?
What do we want to achieve with a CC?
Where do we want the CC to operate?
When and for how long do we want it to be operational?
How should we design it?

And you give the metaphor of passengers flying on a plane:
Who wants to fly?
Why do they want to fly?
What do they want to achieve by flying?
What's the weather like?
Where do they want to fly?
When do they want to fly?
How should they fly?

Here's my understanding of what I want for Minciu Sodas participants and
others we engage:
* Encourage our gift economy rather than erode it.  Our gift economy is
quite strong, tens of thousands of dollars per year, including the gifts
of paid work, loans and donations.
* Focus on supporting each other's endeavors (what people want to
achieve) rather than property (what people are free to do with as they
like).  See our list at: http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?Endeavors
* Encourage people to look beyond their own endeavors and resources, and
consider helping each other to advance all of our endeavors.
* Develop a culture where exchange is a practical way to embolden us to
invest ourselves in each other's endeavors and that investment is valued
more than any particular exchange.
* Foster a preference for co-investment, or at least, identify and
support those who are willing to do work they normally wouldn't do with
the understanding that the overall system will further their endeavors.
* Make explicit the possible and actual exchanges so that all can
appreciate how we might benefit by doing work we normally wouldn't do.
* Leverage cash inputs by catalyzing with them as many non-cash
exchanges as possible and by applying them in ways that strengthen our
culture and infrastructure.
* Foster an understanding that participants may and should profit in a
variety of ways, including part-time work-for-pay for making a living,
deliverables for businesses which profit from them, and work for me (or
other organizers) that might typically equal the work-for-pay that we
provide for teams.
* Encourage Minciu Sodas workers to develop and advance their personal
endeavors, to foster their own self-direction and to ever leverage that
in work they do for Minciu Sodas.
* Identify those who are willing to commit to work and help them by
actively brokering such commitments.

(I invite our views, What do we want, as passengers and pilots?)

A good example of that culture at work is my collaboration this year
with our long term online assistant Sasha Mrkailo, his wife Zdenka
Mrkailo, and artist Ana Ilic, who all live in Sombor, Serbia.  Sasha has
played a key role in My Food Story http://www.myfoodstory.com
(collecting 1,200+ stories for $1 each), our Global Utopias video
bridges, our Pyramid of Peace http://www.pyramidofpeace.com and other
projects.  But I care that he develop his own activities by which he
might be an example and a leader in our culture.   If he only does
"piece-work", then I should invest myself in other workers who are
potential leaders.  I took a bus from Bosnia to Serbia to visit Sasha
and Zdenka for the New Year's holiday.  We realized that it would be
good for them and for me to encourage Zdenka to develop her life's
work.  She makes her own clothes and is interested in fashion design.
At their favorite cafe, I engaged the owner who introduced us to Ana
Ilic, an artist and fashion designer.  I suggested that they develop
"Public Domain Fashion" and they took to the idea.  On the basis of this
endeavor, I was able to invite Zdenka and Ana to London for the COMMUNIA
meeting.  This life-changing trip broadened their horizons and gave
momentum to their businesses.  I ended up contributing from my own
pocket about 2,000 USD for our London meeting (Samwel Kongere, Rachel
Kungu, Zenonas Anusauskas, Irena Buinickaite also came).  Fortunately
for me, we got to meet twice with Leon Benjamin
http://www.winningbysharing.net for whom we're now working to engage UK
online communities on behalf of Mornflake cereal
http://www.mornflake.com and their online video contest
http://www.mornflakecompetition.com  I also benefited greatly when Tomas
Cepaitis and Vygantas Vejas invited me to do an art show at the UMI
gallery in the Uzhupis Republic, which expanded my understanding of my
own life.  I made seven paintings of Ana based on photos and videos that
Zdenka and Sasha made, as well as Jovita Valaityte who did a fashion
shoot with them in London, for free.  Thank you also to those who hosted
us in London, and many others who helped, all for free.  These last
weeks, Sasha has done a lot of great work for Mornflake and Scotland
Cleantech at lower rates than others, making up for obstacles others
faced, and I have given him more work than others.  This is all our gift
economy at work.

I want to encourage this dynamic by making explicit how we can help each
other, not just in the narrow sense of a tit-for-tat exchange, but
focusing more on the bigger picture.  For example, Peter Burgess
http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?PeterBurgess
has written more than 100 letters to our groups.  I've created wiki
pages that note his leadership in endeavors:
http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?CommunityAccountancy
http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?Accountability
and there can be more (and these pages can be edited), and also his
support of endeavors:
http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?Malaria
http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?Internet
which can also be edited.

WendiLosheBernadette is asking for money or paid work that she and
Actwid Kongadzem might do from Cameroon.  And we have other requests
from Kenya, where I have money ready and the projects could be as small
as we like, even 5 USD.

I want a system where it's clear to us who is ready to work together in
what ways.  Would Peter provide 10 USD or 100 USD to work with somebody
in Africa to test out his ideas?  Or if somebody else provided that
money, would he mentor and manage our worker in Africa?  Might he also
be willing to work on other endeavors, for example, as a researcher for
Cleantech Scotland?  Would he like paid work?  An affirmative answer to
ANY of these makes him relevant for the Minciu Sodas economy. A negative
answer to ALL of these means, for our economy, that he's a fan but not a
team player.   I want to know who are our team players so that we can
play our game!  If we all play in our modest ways, and we are willing to
play in response to each other, then a lot of opportunities open up.

If we can have such a system, then I can fuel it with money.  Currently,
I can provide 500 GBP for our work for Mornflake and 200 USD for our
work for Stuart Oliver's Cleantech Scotland.  I don't want to give this
out as paid work, but rather I want to support a "game" or "plane" for
all of our endeavors.

In my work for Leon Benjamin and Mornflake cereal, my plan is to reach
out to the most responsive UK online communities and offer them 50 GBP
worth of credit in this system for their endeavors.  We would include
their endeavors and those of their participants.  They can ask Sasha
Mrkailo, Thomas Chepaitis, Fred Kayiwa, Dennis Kimambo and others to do
online chores for them, including researching, translating, outreach,
editing wikis.  They can ask others who might do software development.
They can give donations for endeavors in Africa.  In each case, I want
the credits to link endeavors to endeavors.

I will try the following simple system.  At our wiki, for individuals I
will add fields "MightGive=" and "MightTake=" which might include
PaidWork but also various skills.  And for endeavors I will add a field
"GiveAndTake=" where we can document how an endeavor has shared or
exchanged resources with other endeavors.  I think this is a good first
step to making explicit how we might work together.  Which endeavors are
most vital?  most central? Which individuals are key to linking our
endeavors?

Using our wiki this way has the advantage that it doesn't require
registration (which is difficult for me to support, but also doesn't
reflect the fact that many of our participants have irregular online
participation and need others who can act on their behalf).  It also
lets us look back and document all of the help that we've given each
other, in general, for each endeavor, without having to think in terms
of exchanges and values.  I hope that the result is that the matchmaking
possibilities in my own mind become explicit and inspire and merge with
all of ours.  Then we can make sure that we're acknowledging those who
are helping and support their endeavors and share resources with them.

See the lists that I've started:
http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?GiveAndTake

And here's a sample entry which illustrates our gift economy and why we
shouldn't try too hard to force it into an exchange system, but we
should be creative in encouraging give-and-take:

GiveAndTake for the endeavor PavasrioDarbai, (EndeavorSummary: Organize
an art exhibit at UMI in the UzhupisRepublic to present and embolden
AndriusKulikauskas as an artist and painter.)
        "ThomasChepaitis and VygantasVejas encouraged and invited
AndriusKulikauskas to do an art show at the UMI gallery in
UzhupisRepublic. Andrius paid only 100 LTL per week for three weeks for
electricity etc. for the gallery space. Andrius also provided Vygantas
with 200 LTL of work for help consulting and putting up the exhibit.
Andrius's parents and artist friends JonasKulikauskas, AlgirdasZokaitis
and AlbinasMarkevicius provided key encouragement. Andrius first showed
posters made from drawings that he made of his math students in Bosnia
as they took his exams. ZdenkaMrkailo and SashaMrkailo then provided
photos and video of AnaIlic who modeled as a problem-solving muse for
Andrius's paintings. Andrius sent Zdenka and Ana 100 euros. Andrius
worked on-site and engaged the youth, provided art supplies for
visitors, and signed up about 50 for ThomasChepaitis's working group
Zmoniskai and KennedyOwino's NafsiAfrikaSaana. Uzhupis artists embraced
and encouraged Andrius. Andrius provided ice cream at the two openings
instead of the traditional alcohol. KazysAlmenas The band IKuna played
for free at the second opening. Andrius had earlier given them a drawing
of the band. Andrius's father EdmundasKulikauskas loved them and got
their phone number for events he might organize. Anuk from Belgium
helped him carry his largest work around the city of Vilnius for a four
hours photo shoot. The city of Vilnius gave him a permit. Ruta's young
daughter posed for eight oil pastel drawings and her four-year-old son,
Andrius's god son, drew a key picture that inspired Andrius's paintings.
Ruta agreed to take Andrius's works for permanent display at a gallery
she will open at her ecocottage in the village of Marcinkonys. A young
man hanging out helped Andrius carry the largest work onto the train.
Andrius gave him 20 LTL instead of 3 LTL. The train conductor allowed
Andrius to transport the work and didn't charge him extra. Andrius spent
about 2000 USD on the exhibit and donated the remaining art supplies to
Vygantas and Ruta. Andrius provided paid work for ThomasChepaitis on the
Mornflake project. Andrius's client LeonBenjamin for Mornflake
encouraged Andrius "I love your art work".

I also want to support our online leaders, especially those are
thinking-out-loud, pursuing investigations and their working groups.  I
want to provide them (Franz Nahrada, Janet Feldman, Edward Cherlin,
Pamela McLean...) with online assistants (like Thomas Chepaitis, Fred
Kayiwa, Dennis Kimambo) whom I would pay modest stipends to.  That would
pour fuel on our fires!

I appreciate our thoughts and also I encourage us to write, what might
we give and take, and what endeavors do we want to pursue and how might
we help other people's endeavors?

This is very relevant for our Mornflake outreach.  I'm trying to show UK
online communities that we can provide them with resources, as described
above, if they simply are happy that, in our lab's communications at
their sites, we may acknowledge Mornflake's support just as we point to
our own efforts and endeavors.  My point is that, if we consciously
appreciate Mornflake's support that we help each other, then it's better
for Mornflake to support us then to promote itself. That's a radical
shift in the use of marketing resources that could work for many clients
and fuel endless amounts of outreach and online infrastructure.

Tomorrow, I plan to start engaging UK communities.  How might we
synergize with them?

P.S. In the future, we might try to link John Rogers's design approach
(which I like) with John Caswell's business problem-solving approach
(which I also like).

Andrius

Andrius Kulikauskas
Minciu Sodas
http://www.ms.lt
ms@...
+370 699 30003
Vilnius, Lithuania

Pamela,
Thank you for alerting us to this "tell a story" contest.
http://www.slideshare.net/contest/fuze-tell-a-story-contest
I share with storyteller John Rogers at Cyfranogi and also with a Leon
Benjamin and all at Voiceful where we're promoting Mornflake cereal's
video competition to create their first video advertisements
http://www.mornflakecompetition.com
Andrius Kulikauskas
Minciu Sodas
http://www.ms.lt
ms@...


Pamela McLean wrote:
> Sorry this is short notice - I only just got notification. Probably
> too late for any of us - but someone may like to have a go.
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: *SlideShare Team* <newsletter@...
> <mailto:newsletter@...>>
> Date: 2009/6/8
> Subject: One Week Left in 'Tell A Story Contest'
> To: pam54321@... <mailto:pam54321@...>
>
>
> SlideShare
> One Week Left in 'Tell A Story Contest'
>
> Remember to Display Images
> You can also view this newsletter online
> <http://marketer.slideshare.com/link.php?M=10241699&N=119&L=120&F=H>
>
> Are You a Great Story Teller?
> There's 1 Last Week to Win US $5000
>
> Last week we announced our Tell a Story Contest
> <http://marketer.slideshare.com/link.php?M=10241699&N=119&L=131&F=H>.
> There are tons of great entries .(see sidebar for links to some of the
> front-runners) Now we are extending the deadline to June 19th, so if
> you want to get in on the action, you still have time to make your
> masterpiece!
>
> Enter the contest here
> <http://marketer.slideshare.com/link.php?M=10241699&N=119&L=117&F=H>by
> uploading your presentation and checking the 'Join Fuze Tell A Story
> Contest' checkbox.
>
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> Books in presentation format
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> <http://marketer.slideshare.com/link.php?M=10241699&N=119&L=127&F=H>
> made me realize how the presentation format suits some books perfectly.
>
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Mercy Isaac, Elibariki, Shaibu Laizer,

Thank you for completing our Minciu Sodas Survey of Computer Usage
Around the World.
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=GiLLw_2fpxkGdad_2bOY0hxKbA_3d_3d
I share your answers.  They are helpful as we think of strategies for
making the most of marginal Internet access.

Andrius Kulikauskas
Minciu Sodas
http://www.ms.lt
ms@...
+370 699 30003

---------------------------
  Sun, Jan 4, 2009 6:29:34 PM

1. What information about you may we share publicly?
What is your name? - MERCY ISAAC
What country do you live in? - NIGERIA
Which city do you live in or near? - KAFANCHAN
How would you describe the house that you live in, is it a farm house,
apartment, dormitory, etc.? - NO. 1 FANTSUAM CLOSE, BAYAN - LOCO, KAFANCHAN
How may we and others contact you? - THROUGH FANTSUAM FOUNDATION KAFANCHAN

2. Please describe how much you use computers:
      Answer
How many hours per week do you use a computer?    95
How many different computers do you use during the week?    10
How many computers do you own?    0
How many hours per week are you online?    95
How many days per week are you online?    7

3. Please describe the computer that you use the most:
Who owns the computer that you use the most? - FANTSUAM
FOUNDATION(SCHOOLS AND THE KNOWLEDGE RESOURCE CENTRE)
What is the operating system? Windows, Linux, Macintosh? What version?
Windows Vista, Windows XP, Linux Ubuntu, etc. - LINUX
Do you go online with this computer? - YES I DO
Where is the computer located? How do you travel there and how long does
that take? How much does the travel cost? - IN THE CLASS ROOMS OF
FANTSUAM ACADEMY AND THE KNOWLEDGE RESOURCE CENTRE OF FANTSUAM FOUNDATION
How convenient is it to use the computer? Is it available when you want
it? - IT IS AVAILABLE 24 HOURS
Do you have to pay to use the computer? How much? - YES MY DEPARTMENT
PAYS 45,000.00 NGN MONTHLY FOR BANDWITH AND 60,000 NGN FOR DISIEL
What can you say about the computer's specifications? (Processor speed,
memory, available devices such as printers) - THE SPEED IS FAST AND IT
PROCESSESS WELL , JUST THAT
How much would this computer cost if you were to buy it today? - IT
WOULD COST 120,000.00NGN

4. What do you do with computers? What software do you use? What
websites do you visit? What online communities do you participate in? Do
you have any websites of your own?
OFFICIAL WORK (ICT, DEVELOPMENT WORK,PUBLIC HEALTH-HIV AND
AIDS),PERSONAL RESEARCH, YAHOO GROUPS,ONLINE CHATING,ETC. I HAVE MY BLOG
WHICH I DO VISIT http://www.20communitydevelopments.blogspot.com I DO
VISIT THE BLOG FOR MY WORKING PLACE www.fantsuam.org AND MANY OTHERS

5. Please describe the Internet connection that you use the most:
Are you using the same computer as above, or a different computer? - SAME
How fast is your connection? (How long does it take for you to download
a 100KB file?) Or what results do you get from http://www.speedtest.net
? - SOMETIMES IT IS FAST, OTHER TIMES IT IS SLOW
What kinds of files do you send, upload, download? - PICTURES, VIDEOS
AND DOCUMENTS
What is the largest file that you have ever downloaded? - I'VE NEVER
BOTHERED TO CHECK ITS WEIGHT
Are you able to use Skype to speak to people? - YES
Are you able to watch YouTube videos? - YES
How many browser windows do you typically keep open at once? - AS MANY
AS POSSIBLE

6. What are examples of how computers and the Internet have affected
your life?
THEY HAVE FASTENED WORK FOR ME AND MADE ME TO KNOW A LOT. BESIDES
DISTANT PLACES ARE DRAWN CLOSER TO ME BY THE INTERNET.

7. How do you make the most of your time online and offline?
Do you have a USB flash drive? or other storage media? What do you use
them for? - TO SAVE INFORMATION, DOWNLOAD INFORMATION AND SEND IT TO SOMEONE
What kind of materials, letters, texts, photos, music, videos do you
create offline? - ALL
What kind of materials, letters, texts, photos, music, videos do you
read, listen to, or view offline? - ALL
What kind of files do you share with others when you are offline? - ALL
OF THE ABOVE

8. What kind of technology would you like to have and how would you use it?
THE INTERNET WITH THE LATEST TECHNOLOGY

---------------------------------------

  Sun, Jan 4, 2009 6:35:10 PM

1. What information about you may we share publicly?
What is your name? - elibariki
What country do you live in? - Tanzania
Which city do you live in or near? - Arusha
How would you describe the house that you live in, is it a farm house,
apartment, dormitory, etc.? - house
How may we and others contact you? - email

2. Please describe how much you use computers:
      Answer
How many hours per week do you use a computer?    6
How many different computers do you use during the week?    2
How many computers do you own?    0
How many hours per week are you online?    12
How many days per week are you online?    7

3. Please describe the computer that you use the most:
Who owns the computer that you use the most? - cafe for now
What is the operating system? Windows, Linux, Macintosh? What version?
Windows Vista, Windows XP, Linux Ubuntu, etc. - xp pact 2
Do you go online with this computer? - yes
Where is the computer located? How do you travel there and how long does
that take? How much does the travel cost? - kijenge chini near pride
How convenient is it to use the computer? Is it available when you want
it? - some times not all the time
Do you have to pay to use the computer? How much? - 500 per 15 min which
is half dollar
What can you say about the computer's specifications? (Processor speed,
memory, available devices such as printers) - xp is one of the program
that is easy to use also the mac pro there are cool too
How much would this computer cost if you were to buy it today? - $650

4. What do you do with computers? What software do you use? What
websites do you visit? What online communities do you participate in? Do
you have any websites of your own?
i use xp most of time xp i'm not sure about the soft ware it in the cafe
and i did not check it in volunteer for kiyoga village web site not real

5. Please describe the Internet connection that you use the most:
Are you using the same computer as above, or a different computer? - yes
How fast is your connection? (How long does it take for you to download
a 100KB file?) Or what results do you get from http://www.speedtest.net
? - some times it fast and some time it not for 100km it can take me one
hour or more
What kinds of files do you send, upload, download? - pictures most of time
What is the largest file that you have ever downloaded? - 250kb and it
has take me about one day to make it work
Are you able to use Skype to speak to people? - yes i have one
Are you able to watch YouTube videos? - nop
How many browser windows do you typically keep open at once? - 8 to 10

6. What are examples of how computers and the Internet have affected
your life?
it has not affect my life yet

7. How do you make the most of your time online and offline?
Do you have a USB flash drive? or other storage media? What do you use
them for? - nop i have phone that i use as flash driver for my files
What kind of materials, letters, texts, photos, music, videos do you
create offline? - pictures
What kind of materials, letters, texts, photos, music, videos do you
read, listen to, or view offline? - picures
What kind of files do you share with others when you are offline? - pictures

8. What kind of technology would you like to have and how would you use it?
i will love to have full computer hardware i will use it to teach and to
make money and soft ware too


--------------------

  Sat, Jan 3, 2009 4:41:04 PM

1. What information about you may we share publicly?
What is your name? - shaibu laizer
What country do you live in? - Tanzania
Which city do you live in or near? - Arusha
How would you describe the house that you live in, is it a farm house,
apartment, dormitory, etc.? - House
How may we and others contact you? - email

2. Please describe how much you use computers:
      Answer
How many hours per week do you use a computer?    25
How many different computers do you use during the week?    5
How many computers do you own?    1
How many hours per week are you online?    25
How many days per week are you online?    6

3. Please describe the computer that you use the most:
Who owns the computer that you use the most? - cafe
What is the operating system? Windows, Linux, Macintosh? What version?
Windows Vista, Windows XP, Linux Ubuntu, etc. - windows
Do you go online with this computer? - yes
Where is the computer located? How do you travel there and how long does
that take? How much does the travel cost? - By bicycle
How convenient is it to use the computer? Is it available when you want
it? - yes
Do you have to pay to use the computer? How much? - yes,Tsh1000 per hour
What can you say about the computer's specifications? (Processor speed,
memory, available devices such as printers) - memory
How much would this computer cost if you were to buy it today? - Tsh 500,000

4. What do you do with computers? What software do you use? What
websites do you visit? What online communities do you participate in? Do
you have any websites of your own?
emaling from one place to another,Google

5. Please describe the Internet connection that you use the most:
Are you using the same computer as above, or a different computer? - yes
What kinds of files do you send, upload, download? - email
Are you able to use Skype to speak to people? - yes
Are you able to watch YouTube videos? - no the speep is to slow
How many browser windows do you typically keep open at once? - microsoft
internet

6. What are examples of how computers and the Internet have affected
your life?
nothing

7. How do you make the most of your time online and offline?
Do you have a USB flash drive? or other storage media? What do you use
them for? - yes
What kind of materials, letters, texts, photos, music, videos do you
create offline? - All
What kind of materials, letters, texts, photos, music, videos do you
read, listen to, or view offline? - all
What kind of files do you share with others when you are offline? - music

8. What kind of technology would you like to have and how would you use it?
the fast inter

Mark, Thank you for inviting us to work with your business
http://www.renewableswest.com  I share with more groups so that we might
give serious thought.  Please keep us posted.  Your Solar Rover is
relevant for Ricardo, Pamela McLean's and Folabi Sunday's discussion of
how to power an IT centre in rural Nigeria.  I have created a wiki page:
http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?RenewablesWest
and through that page's metadata I included Renewables West in our Shop
With Us network http://www.shopwithus.org
Thank you to Leon Benjamin for his idea and phrase "winning by sharing"
http://www.winningbysharing.net
Andrius Kulikauskas, Minciu Sodas, http://www.ms.lt, ms@...

Mark Roest wrote:
>
>     On Sun, Jun 7, 2009 at 2:40 PM, Mark Roest <marklroest@...
>     <mailto:marklroest@...>> wrote:
>
>         Dear Janet, Andrius and All,
>
>         Last Sunday I spent several hours at the Maker Fair (see Make
>         Magazine's website) and afterward discussing his family of
>         inventions for sustainability, and the associated business
>         opportunities. I thought of you all, and this seems like a
>         good point to introduce it.
>
>         Jon is the head of Kyoto, Free is the Sun,
>         www.kyoto-energy.com <http://www.kyoto-energy.com>. I would
>         like to invite discussion with you all about setting up one or
>         more distributorships (larger scale) and / or dealerships
>         (local level) to retail his product line. The Kyoto Family
>         product group is particularly appropriate for small social
>         ventures created by and around both Independent Thinkers and
>         mutual support groups. This will generate real revenues, and
>         it will also pave the way to creating complex solar businesses
>         -- look at the Butterfly, which generates 800 watts per panel,
>         plus 400 degree Celcius air and 70 degree C water from cooling
>         the panels (it's a concentrating collector, 12 feet long, and
>         tracks the sun on two axes!). That business can create
>         revenues that can be the capital for building the houses he
>         designed, which will sell for $1000 per 100 square foot (9
>         square meters) module, which can be arranged 4 around a
>         central space, which needs floor and roof to make a 5th module
>         -- 500 square feet of high-tech living space, with
>         eco-utilities, for $5000.
>
>         Please let me know if you would like to participate in
>         planning this social business venture. David Alan Foster,
>         David's employer, and I are also building a solar sales
>         business, Renewables West, which can source and sell globally;
>         see www.renewableswest.com <http://www.renewableswest.com>.
>         That is probably the vehicle we will use to work with Jon.
>
>         Jon has a franchising system to make learning and managing
>         relatively easy, but the minimum container-load shipments and
>         Jon's habit of making products that start flat for shipping,
>         mean large-budget purchases -- probably on the order of
>         $50,000 to $150,000. That means we need to, and have the
>         opportunity to, aggregate orders from multiple dealers and
>         distributors, as long as we can cover the financing and get
>         the loads broken down and safely shipped to their
>         destinations. Who has more ideas and resources?
>
>         Regards,
>
>         Mark Roest
>
On Sun, Jun 7, 2009 at 3:03 PM, Mark Roest <marklroest@...
<mailto:marklroest@...>> wrote:
Hello All!

Sorry, I forgot to mention that Jon also set up a carbon credits
operation, so the cost of the energy saving and producing hardware can
be recovered from selling them to people in Germany, and he also has
financing, although I don't know the details yet. In other words, this
thing is set up to succeed, and to empower low-income populations to
succeed too -- in fact, that is his purpose in doing it in the first place!

So do you want to make a difference with something that will go global,
while empowering holistichelping and your other groups?

Please let me know, and give me a sense of the scale you think you can
operate on, by direct email, as well as posting: MarkLRoest@...
<mailto:MarkLRoest@...>.

Regards,

Mark

-----------------

Hello All again:

By the way, I realized that some will ask what the relationship of my
communication is to the posting: I responded to the phrase, "winning by
sharing"!, because that is what I am seeking here, along with the others
in the network in the San Francisco Bay area.

Regards,

Mark

Today I spent a few hours working with Twitter http://www.twitter.com
Twitter has become very popular as a way of briefly (in 140 characters
or less) alerting others to what you're up to.  That's much how we use
our chat room and is also a good approach for a lightweight project
management system.

"minciusodas" is my account in Twitter
http://twitter.com/minciusodas
and I'm using that to follow our participants and I'll also use it (with
our help) to send summary messages about our activities.  Ask me and
minciusodas will follow you as you tweet! and include you in our stream.

I've taken the first step which is to show our "tweets" at http://www.ms.lt
Technically, Twitter makes them available programatically through
http://twitter.com/statuses/friends_timeline.rss
and then you have to add your username and password.  I do this
programatically using one of the Twitter API tools
http://apiwiki.twitter.com/Libraries
namely Arc90_Service_Twitter.  Our server calls it every 5 minutes and
stores an RSS file.  Then the program Carp which we use to cache RSS
streams reads it and deposits in our MySQL database.  Then we can do all
kinds of things with it! such as show it at our home page.

Next steps will include
* sprucing up the output
* making it easy to add tweets from our various websites, such as our
chat room
* showing incoming tweets at our chat room

The main idea is to learn how to use the tweets as a way to summarize
what's happening, the activity taking place at our lab, including
comments that people leave with requests, categorizing them and
responding to them.  The result should be a light weight project
management system.

We can make use of our websites short url  ms.lt with short links such
as http://ms.lt/128  that we can generate and include.

I will redo our main page http://www.ms.lt   I'm thinking of showing
different "speeds" including hour-by-hour, week-by-week and year-by-year.

I appreciate our thoughts on how we might work well together.

Andrius

Andrius Kulikauskas
Minciu Sodas
http://www.ms.lt
ms@...
+370 699 30003
Dukiskes, Lithuania

Jonathan Gray,

Yes! we would like to help Open Knowledge Foundation with volunteers,
thanks to our work for Mornflake cereal http://www.mornflake.com and
their online video contest http://www.mornflakecompetition.com

What would be helpful?

I note that our Minciu Sodas team participated at the Open Knowledge
Conference 2009 in London (thank you!)
http://www.okfn.org/events/
and your project page
http://www.okfn.org/projects
(Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network http://www.ckan.net ), The Open
Definition Site (http://www.opendefinition.org), Open Shakespeare
(http://www.openshakespeare.org)

and also your blog:
http://blog.okfn.org/

I encourage Minciu Sodas participants to write, how might we help?  I
will provide a small stipend (50 GBP) for 20 or so hours of work.  Let's
also think about synergies, how might our projects benefit from Open
Knowledge Foundation? and then we can do that much more.

Andrius

Andrius Kulikauskas
Minciu Sodas
http://www.ms.lt
ms@...

Jonathan Gray wrote:
> Hi Andrius,
>
> I wonder if any of your online assistants would be interested in
> volunteering at the Open Knowledge Foundation?
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Jonathan
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>
>> Also, I and my lab Minciu Sodas are currently working for Leon Benjamin to
engage UK online communities on behalf of Mornflake cereal and their online
video contest. We're providing, for free, twenty or so hours by our online
assistants such as Sasha Mrkailo who is active here. Please let us know of UK
online communities that would like such support, would like to help each other
and would allow us to acknowledge Mornflake as we do help. We're pioneering a
new way to support our online work and include a sponsor like Mornflake.

Jonathan,

Thank you for your helpful list of ways to volunteer.  I ask Minciu
Sodas participants to respond.  How might you help the Open Knowledge
Foundation?  I can provide (thanks to Mornflake cereal
http://www.mornflake.com) a 50 GBP stipend for 20 or so hours of work,
depending on the person and circumstances, and we may work together some
how.   Wendi Loshe Bernadette in Cameroon is already interested (thank you!)

I'm especially interested in ways that we can do online outreach.
Translating the Open Knowledge Definition http://opendefinition.org/1.0/
is a great opportunity for us (and for Mornflake) because we can go to
different UK online communities in different languages, we can ask for
their help and also send people who can help there and work on it
together.  That way we discover which communities are responsive.  I
note that you already have Catalŕ | Dansk | Deutsch | Ellinika | Espańol
| Euskara | Italiano | Polszczyzna | Srpski | Íslenska.  This also makes
it possible for me to provide more funds.

We're meeting people in creative communities who might be interested in
Open Shakespeare and helping with illustration or design.

Edward Cherlin leads us in creating open source textbooks,
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/earthtreasury/ so certainly we'd like to
be active there, and we can also engage UK online communities in doing that.

We can also engage UK online communities to see who might use or share
or comment on information from the European Open Data Inventory.

Thank you for thinking of us!  I invite response and will engage more
communities.

Andrius

Andrius Kulikauskas
Minciu Sodas
http://www.ms.lt
ms@...
+370 699 30003


Jonathan Gray wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 16, 2009 at 12:48 PM, Andrius Kulikauskas<ms@...> wrote:
>
>> I encourage Minciu Sodas participants to write, how might we help?  I will
>> provide a small stipend (50 GBP) for 20 or so hours of work.  Let's also
>> think about synergies, how might our projects benefit from Open Knowledge
>> Foundation? and then we can do that much more.
>>
>
> Dear Andrius,
>
> Many thanks for your message and for your kind pledge of twenty hours
> of volunteer time! There are plenty of things volunteers could do to
> help at the OKF. It would be great to hear more about the interests of
> the participants who might work with us.
>
> A few immediate things that I can think of:
>
>   * Translating the Open Knowledge Definition (opendefinition.org)
>   * Curating/archiving books at Open Text Book (opentextbook.org)
>   * Registering open data on CKAN (ckan.net)
>   * Book design for Open Shakespeare (openshakespeare.org)
>
> There is some more information on volunteering at the OKF below...
>
> Warm regards,
>
>
Jonathan Gray

Community Coordinator
The Open Knowledge Foundation
http://www.okfn.org

--

## Volunteer with the Open Knowledge Foundation! ##

The Open Knowledge Foundation (http://www.okfn.org) is a
not-for-profit organisation that promotes knowledge that can be freely
used, reused and redistributed - from sonnets to statistics, genes to
geodata. It hosts a wide variety of volunteer driven projects and
working groups that aim to produce and distribute open knowledge.

Whether you are interested in making new editions of literary works in
the public domain, making interactive visualisations of socioeconomic
data, or in sharing textbooks for educational projects - there is sure
to be something of interest! Current projects requiring volunteers
include:

  * Open Shakespeare and Open Milton: complete editions of Shakespeare
and Milton's works along with tools for analysing the texts - freely
available for anyone to use or share. We need volunteers to proof edit
and format texts, or even to create an original book cover design for
a print edition of the plays!

  * Open Text Book: one of the primary online listings and repositories
of textbooks free to access, build on and re-distribute. We need the
assistance of a part-time editor to curate and extend our current
listing and blog about new finds.

  * Open Economics "Where Does My Money Go": developer and researcher
needed to develop prize-winning "Where Does My Money Go" project
proposal which aims to help citizens make sense of UK government
finance.

  * European Open Data Inventory: Just launched in Brussels - the
project aims to track down and document official information  from
public bodies across Europe. Get stuck into the budgets, socioeconomic
information, environmental data or parliamentary transcripts behind
the headlines!

  * Public Domain Works: help to chart which works have fallen out of
copyright in different jurisdictions around the world. Find out more
about intellectual property law and help to expose literary works or
sound recordings which are in the public domain.

Whether you've got a few spare hours or a few weeks over the summer -
we'd love to hear from you! For further details contact us at
info@....

Mark,

I share your reply with Meredith ( clonearmy@... ).

I also blogged parts of your letters at
http://www.includer.org/?p=711
"The Includer: Episode 46: Never Expect Power At-All".

Yes, it would be great to have a list of recommendations on the best
available solutions around the world.

Andrius Kulikauskas, Minciu Sodas, http://www.ms.lt, ms@...

Mark Roest wrote:
> Hello Meredith and All,
>
> Jon is the inventor of the Kyoto products; if you provide the product
> questions you have, he may be able to assist you (please copy me, too!
> I'd like to know both questions and answers). I would like to know who
> is interested in selling his products, and in going together with
> others to aggregate full container orders (almost everything he makes
> ships flat).
>
> Jon mentioned that the Butterfly only works well in full direct sun,
> not on cloudy days. One of the services Renewables West could provide
> is helping you choose what electricity-making products to buy or build
> (or sell) in a given climate. Jon also sells hot water systems, which
> would conserve on electricity (we use natural gas in California, but
> is appears that much of the world heats water with electricity). A
> kilowatt saved is a kilowatt earned!
>
> I don't know what the production release dates are for those products
> that are not being manufactured yet. My question is in preparation for
> doing business plans, and finding a way to move forward. Jon's
> brochure says he provides financing, as well as the carbon credits
> that make his product line really affordable.
>
> Regards,
>
> Mark Roest
> MarkLRoest@... <mailto:MarkLRoest@...>
>



The Includer is a device for reading and writing emails offline. At some
point, you’ll want to upload and download them at an Internet access
point. But what if you don’t have one? Or maybe you have access to the
Internet through your mobile phone, but you don’t have enough
electricity to power a laptop or computer?
Renewables West sells Solar Rover

Renewables West sells Solar Rover

This month Pamela McLean (of Episode 31) dedicated her First Thursday
Chat to helping Folabi Sunday in rural Nigeria (of Episode 40) think
through how to power a local ICT centre. Her invitation explained:

You may remember that Fola uses his phone to go online. He has been
doing some successful experiments linking his phone to a PC. He is
wondering about the possibility of helping the Information Centre at
Ago-Are to use this approach in order to bring email facilities to
Ago-Are. I think various people in Minciu Sodas in East Africa have been
exploring similar ideas, linking in with Ricardo’s sneakernet ideas. I
hope Pastor David, manager of the Info-Centre, will also manage to be
with Fola when he joins us (Fola may be a bit late as he has is teaching
earlier in the day, but he will make it as soon as he can). Either they
will have to run a generator (and the Info centre one is very old and
unreliable now) or they will need to find some other solution.

A flavor of the chat:

Ricardo: Pam and Fola, have you both read through the 2nd version of the
plan? I suggested using a laptop for internet access, as it’s battery
powered, and not dependent on NEPA. I set out a range of options for
power. :: Also, a GPRS/3G phone for internet access runs on battery
power, or you can use a USB 3G Modem, powered from the laptop battery
when NEPA goes off. … Fola, what do you think the best options are for
power? In the 2nd version, i mentioned that a laptop battery could be
charged a little from many different sources, to keep it 100% topped up.
… Yes sasha, for the Ago-Are ICT centre, they could use an old laptop
from ebay, plus a new battery. :: Sasha, I emailed a whole plan to fola
and pam, but you haven’t seen it yet. …. The centre can charge a laptop
battery a little from NEPA when it’s on, from a 12V DC car cigarette
lighter, or buy a small solar charger, like solargorilla. … Hi Graham.
In Nigeria, NEPA, the 240V mains power is terrible. It comes on, then
straight off for 7 days, on for an hour etc. Solar would be very good,
if the community can afford the capital cost of the solar charger. ::
I’ve seen commercial laptop solar chargers like the solargorilla, but
they are 137 GBP. Is it possible to make a solar charger system for
laptops (aboout 18V DC at 3.5 AMPs i think). … Fola, the ago-are centre
will presumably want to keep the cost of equipment down. We could start
with experiments on internet-access, using your phone for the day and
one of the existing PCs :: but the PC needs 240V power from somewhere. …
We need to think about the short-term and long-term power for the
centre. Although in the short-term, you could use a solar laptop
charger, that would still leave the rest of the equipment (PCs, TV,
Satellite receiver etc) without a good power supply. :: Fola, In a
typical month, is NEPA on for enough hours to charge some car batteries,
to use for the PCs etc when NEPA is off.

Folabi Sunday: I think using a laptop will solve NEPA problem for us in
AA … And replacing the old battery with new ones will be better than
waitng for nepa … This is a good idea but how do we solve NEPA … I took
the small gen from my younger sister to use personally … There is an old
lister gen that is usually developing faults and it use diesel which is
costly than petrol :: I have done that in my own room and not in the
centre … And it works perfectly except that my Megabite runs off faster
than on mobile and I have to print out R tips on how to reduce spent
date and digest them because they seem thecnical to me …

Graham Knight: I’m puzzled as no-one seems to ever mention
solar-charging for mobiles. …
Kyoto Butterfly Solar Generator yields 800 W, hot air, hot water.

Kyoto Butterfly Solar Generator yields 800 W, hot air, hot water.

I did some research into electric generators. I couldn’t find anything
at Appropedia, surprisingly. (Later, I had the chance to give my
feedback to Preston at Global Swadeshi). I wonder what Edward Cherlin of
Earth Treasury would recommend. And then a few days later we got a
letter from Mark Roest about his new venture:

Mark Roest: Last Sunday I spent several hours at the Maker Fair (see
Make Magazine’s website) … Jon is the head of Kyoto, Free is the Sun. I
would like to invite discussion with you all about setting up one or
more distributorships (larger scale) and / or dealerships (local level)
to retail his product line. The Kyoto Family product group is
particularly appropriate for small social ventures created by and around
both Independent Thinkers and mutual support groups. This will generate
real revenues, and it will also pave the way to creating complex solar
businesses — look at the Butterfly, which generates 800 watts per panel,
plus 400 degree Celcius air and 70 degree C water from cooling the
panels (it’s a concentrating collector, 12 feet long, and tracks the sun
on two axes!). That business can create revenues that can be the capital
for building the houses he designed, which will sell for $1000 per 100
square foot (9 square meters) module, which can be arranged 4 around a
central space, which needs floor and roof to make a 5th module — 500
square feet of high-tech living space, with eco-utilities, for $5000.
Please let me know if you would like to participate in planning this
social business venture. David Alan Foster, David’s employer, and I are
also building a solar sales business, Renewables West, which can source
and sell globally. That is probably the vehicle we will use to work with
Jon.

Meredith Patterson: Sometime in the next month or two I will be going to
Ghent to take a workshop from Casa Calida, which teaches people how to
construct low-cost timber-and-strawbale homes. I suspect they will be
quite interested in practical solutions for solar electricity and heat,
and I’m interested in finding out more about the Butterfly for my own
house project.

Mark Roest: Jon mentioned that the Butterfly only works well in full
direct sun, not on cloudy days. One of the services Renewables West
could provide is helping you choose what electricity-making products to
buy or build (or sell) in a given climate.

That sounds like a good service!

On Fri, Jun 12, 2009 at 2:38 PM, Andrius Kulikauskas<ms@...> wrote:
> Today I spent a few hours working with Twitter http://www.twitter.com
> Twitter has become very popular as a way of briefly (in 140 characters
> or less) alerting others to what you're up to.  That's much how we use
> our chat room and is also a good approach for a lightweight project
> management system.

I have been on for a while. I was surprised to find that I have more
than 90 followers.

> "minciusodas" is my account in Twitter
> http://twitter.com/minciusodas

Yes, I have been following you.

> and I'm using that to follow our participants and I'll also use it (with
> our help) to send summary messages about our activities.  Ask me and
> minciusodas will follow you as you tweet! and include you in our stream.
>
> I've taken the first step which is to show our "tweets" at http://www.ms.lt
> Technically, Twitter makes them available programatically through
> http://twitter.com/statuses/friends_timeline.rss
> and then you have to add your username and password.  I do this
> programatically using one of the Twitter API tools
> http://apiwiki.twitter.com/Libraries
> namely Arc90_Service_Twitter.  Our server calls it every 5 minutes and
> stores an RSS file.  Then the program Carp which we use to cache RSS
> streams reads it and deposits in our MySQL database.  Then we can do all
> kinds of things with it! such as show it at our home page.
>
> Next steps will include
> * sprucing up the output
> * making it easy to add tweets from our various websites, such as our
> chat room
> * showing incoming tweets at our chat room
>
> The main idea is to learn how to use the tweets as a way to summarize
> what's happening, the activity taking place at our lab, including
> comments that people leave with requests, categorizing them and
> responding to them.  The result should be a light weight project
> management system.
>
> We can make use of our websites short url  ms.lt with short links such
> as http://ms.lt/128  that we can generate and include.
>
> I will redo our main page http://www.ms.lt   I'm thinking of showing
> different "speeds" including hour-by-hour, week-by-week and year-by-year.
>
> I appreciate our thoughts on how we might work well together.
>
> Andrius
>
> Andrius Kulikauskas
> Minciu Sodas
> http://www.ms.lt
> ms@...
> +370 699 30003
> Dukiskes, Lithuania
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Each letter sent to Learning From Each Other enters the PUBLIC DOMAIN unless
it explicitly states otherwise http://www.ethicalpublicdomain.org  Please be
kind to our authors!Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>



--
Silent Thunder
(�雷/धर्ममे�शब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر
ج) is my name
And Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place, The Truth my destination.
http://earthtreasury.org/worknet (Edward Mokurai Cherlin)

Tomorrow I hope to overview the many small projects by which we're helping
UK online communities thanks to Mornflake cereal http://www.mornflake.com
and their online video contest http://www.mornflakecompetition.com which
is underway.

I suggest one "electricity" project that would show how our communities
might work closer together thanks to Mornflake's support.  And this kind
of project might lead to more support in the future from other sponsors.

I'm thinking in terms of an economy of dreams.  We have different pieces
of the puzzle that might fit together.  I will infer some of our dreams,
and look forward to interviewing us regarding them, but it would be great
if we might write them ourselves in our letters and posts and we might
organize them at our Worknets wiki pages.

Graham Knight dreams (I think) of people in Africa providing for
themselves and developing their regions by selling useful, simple and
inexpensive technology such as the DIY Solar for recharging mobile phone
batteries.  There are social challenges, why won't people start such
businesses?

Marcin Jakubowski dreams (I think) of villagers being independent of
mass-scale industry and being able to build their own tools and energy
sources for creating everything they need to live and thrive.  There are
technological challenges and so much to do!

Vinay Gupta dreams (I'm guessing) of resilient solutions by which
everybody can address their basic needs.  There are mindset and heartset
challenges.

Wendi Loshe Bernadette dreams (I'm guessing) of women being free to shape
their own destiny.  There are social challenges and poverty.

Samwel Kongere dreams of a rural life that is attractive and gainful so
that people don't migrate to the city to look for work.  He has land and
would like to develop his home as a center for alternative technology.
There are challenges of time, commitments, knowledge and resources.

Franz Nahrada dreams of global villages that are centered around
knowledge, mastering it locally and sharing it globally.  There are
challenges of scale, of inspiring people and of showing real progress.

I myself dream of a knowledge of all things that informs a culture that
encourages people to dedicate themselves to their dreams, and especially,
to apply their creativity.  I have challenges of how do we all make a
living? and how do we learn to care to include each other and help each
other?

I note two projects that might further our dreams because they address key
obstacles.

1) We've spent a year trying out Graham Knight's DIY Solar for recharging
mobile phone batteries and it seems like a very practical technology.  Our
African participants haven't demonstrated the aptitude for selling these
solar panels as a business.  I suggest that we practice setting up such
businesses so that we can develop and share business skills.  These skills
are essential if we're going to do larger projects together.

2) We need to be able to generate electricity in rural Africa, for
example, to supply ICT centres but also power all manner of machines.
There is a shortage of solutions, but especially, solutions that don't
depend on sophisticated engines that must be purchased and brought in from
afar.  Marcin Jakubowski is developing a solution that can make us
technology producers instead of technology consumers.  He is exploring how
solar power can heat water to create steam, and steam can then run an
engine that can produce electricity.  He is showing that much of this
equipment we can build or adapt ourselves.

If we develop our business skills with 1), then we can invest in each
other and develop our technology skills with 2).  Because some small
investment will be needed.  But its pointless to invest if we don't care
to develop our business skills.

A major challenge that we have is that we're not skilled at sharing our
opportunities and resources.  I'm trying to show that the work that Minciu
Sodas is doing to promote Mornflake and their online video contest, is an
opportunity for us to work together.  Mornflake benefits if we open
channels between our projects and our communities, because if they are our
friend, then we might share their messages, too.  This makes sense for a
lot of companies and we might find a lot of resources if we are skilled at
working together and reaching out to others.

It would be great if Vinay might meet with Graham, learn of his
technology, embrace that and encourage that in his work with Africans as a
sound first step in working together.  I appreciate Graham's persistence
and I believe that the obstacles he notes show that we need to think
broader and learn more about people's situations, that even though they
may be surrounded by hardship, but that doesn't necessarily motivate them
to have business skills.  (It is strange to see entrepreneurship as
commonplace in some parts of the world like India, but not in Lithuania or
perhaps Kenya.)  I believe that if we value the importance of DIY Solar
for learning business skills, then we can make the investments of time and
resources to work together.  But such an investment has much more value
for me if Vinay, Marcin, Franz and others appreciate that and consider
that an important dimension of their dreams so that I can show to others
that indeed they are relevant to each other.  Appropriate technology must
go hand-in-hand with appropriate behavior.

With Vinay's (and Marcin's and Franz's and Graham's) encouragement (at
Global Swadeshi and other online venues) I can encourage (and fund, thanks
to Mornflake) such small projects.  They can include helping our African
partcipants develop business skills through DIY Solar, and taking first
steps to explore Marcin's electricity solutions.

I conclude with an observation from our Mornflake work.  I have sent a lot
of money to Samwel Kongere, Dennis Kimambo, Fred Kayiwa, Josephat
Ndiablema and William Wambura to help as online assistants.  They simply
weren't able to help very much because their Internet access is to slow
and unreliable to participate at the forums.  Sasha Mrkailo in Serbia,
Masimba Biriwasha in Paris, Thomas Chepaitis in Lithuania, Jeremy Mason in
Missouri were able to do the work because they have broadband access.
It's not very effective for me to pay somebody in the West $20 per hour
for such work.  Yet often they can be very helpful with just a few hours.
And my interest is always to build our assets with our resources, so I'm
interested that we have as strong of an internal economy as possible.  My
conclusion is that it's very good for us all each time we can trade a
US/WesternEurope person's time as an online expert and an African's time
in on-the-ground projects.  And I believe that even small on-the-ground
projects in Africa or elsewhere can add great value to the reality and
attractiveness of Marcin's, Vinay's, Franz's vast projects.  So I
therefore also ask for our teamwork because that can justify me sending
more resources to Africa.

Can we find ways to work more closely together? (I think we have this last
month and I thank Mornflake and Leon Benjamin
http://www.winningbysharing.net)

Andrius

Andrius Kulikauskas
Minciu Sodas
http://www.ms.lt
ms@...
+370 699 30003
Dukiskes, Lithuania

I'm happy to share the beginnings of a lightweight project management
system for our work together.  I invite you to try it out at
http://www.ms.lt

You'll see a stream of incoming items that represent our work over the
last week.  They are ordered starting with the most recent.  On the
right hand side you can see the source, which might be an email working
group (like Holistic Helping led by Janet).  Or it could be our Twitter
stream http://twitter.com/minciusodas   Or it could be comments posted
at our hyperwiki.  In the future I will add wiki page changes, wiki
metadata updates, some of our chat room exchanges, our ning websites,
RSS feeds we're following, our blog posts, Flickr photos, You Tube
videos, SMS's, and whatever you request.  I am showing at most 5 items
from each source so that you get a sense of our activity.

In the future, I will make it so that you can see all of our sources and
you can choose to see the incoming items for a particular source, like
any of our working groups.

On the left, you can choose a tag that categorizes the item in terms of
what we're getting down.  The system's not quite set in stone.  But I'm
keeping it simple.  Each item is categorized with a single tag from this
list:
MetaDiscussion  - discussion about discussion
Introduction - people introducing themselves or being introduced
Values - people's values
Investigation - questions being explored
Experience - real life examples
Pattern - documenting a recurring example
Reference - an article or link with helpful knowledge
Vision - a person's vision
Endeavor - a goal or project somebody's working on
RequestForHelp - somebody asks for help, for free or for pay
OfferToHelp - somebody offer their services, for free or for pay
Outcome - reporting on results
KindWords - somebody says something nice about somebody
Prospect - a potential client we might work for
Opportunity - an event or possibility, usually time sensitive
Partnership - trying to work together
Proposal - a proposal to offer a service

So these tags help us focus on what an item is getting done.  I invite
you to try it out.  Then we can get lists of items about values, or
visions, etc.  We can follow up on them.

You will notice that each item has a code such as W4361 for Fred
Kayiwa's letter today to Mendenyo about his efforts to raise money for
the youth football team's coaches flights from Uganda to Norway.  Each
item is in the same table in our database.  Each item has a unique id.
The id for this record is 4361.  Now, each item has it's own page!  Go
to:  http://ms.lt/W4361 and you will be taken to a page in our hyperwiki:
http://www.worknets.org/en/?page=W4361
devoted to that item.  You will see in tiny letters the url to Fred's
original letter.  In the weeks to come, I will make sure that all of our
letters and other items are, in full, present in our database, and so
you will see a copy of the text in the hyperwiki page, too.  But now
further you will see that I have edited the wiki page below and inserted
a chat that I had with Fred today.  You can edit that wiki page if you like:
http://www.worknets.org/en/?page=W4361&b=we
Or you can leave a comment.  You can see that I have left two comments.
Each comment is also an item!  Now if you go to the page
http://www.ms.lt you will see that one of my comments is W4375 and I
have listed it as a Reference.  So you see that we will end up with a
web of items, where one item may be a comment for another item.  Some
items are in the outside world but others are comments in our inside
world, and there can be comments on comments on comments.  And each
comment has its "type" given by the list of types above in terms of what
it's getting done.

I will make it simple to identify any url on the web with an item in our
system and a comment and an ID and a tiny url.

Also, I will put every wiki page in our system, and every letter that we
have ever written.  So there will be about 50,000 entries to start and
we can handle a million rather easily, I think.

Also, every wiki page can be accessed with a tiny url.  For example:
http://ms.lt/FranzNahrada
goes to:
http://www.worknets.org/en/?page=FranzNahrada
and we can do things like assign http://ms.lt/GV/  to the Global
Villages hyperwiki.  These short urls are very helpful for people who
Twitter.

You can twitter now from our chat room http://www.worknets.org , simply
type:
tweet: This is a sample twitter tweet.

Just as each item has a type, also each wiki page will also have types
such as Person, Endeavor, Location and so on.

So soon we will end up with a system of interrelated items that have
different types.  This should allow us to overview our activity in a
variety of ways and use different visual tools to navigate that as needed.

My priority will be to set all of this up to support and encourage our
participants, especially in Africa and Eastern Europe, who might work
for our lab as online assistants, both for leaders like Franz Nahrada,
Janet Feldman, Edward Cherlin, Pamela McLean, John Rogers, but also for
our work for clients like Mornflake http://www.mornflake.com and Leon
Benjamin and Stuart Oliver's Clean Tech Scotland.   It will be easy to
make lists of how they can help and they can record what they've done
and we can track that and credit them and I can keep sending them bits
of money as available.

So this is the heart of the project management system that I've been
dreaming of.  It's actually very light-weight and simple.  I will be
looking with fresh eyes at my master plan:
http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?Interface
One new aspect is the short urls which is because of Twitter's
limitation of 140 characters so the tiny urls are becoming popular.
We're looking to have the shortest url possible: http://ms.lt   I have
reserved http://ms.lt/W for this system and that leaves a lot of other
urls available for uses, including dedicating or renting urls like
http://ms.lt/A and so on.

I invite our ideas for this interface.  I can customize this for our
various websites and hyperwikis.  Also, it would be great to have help
from programmers.

Thank you for great activity!

Andrius

Andrius Kulikauskas
Minciu Sodas
http://www.ms.lt
ms@...
+370 699 30003

To enter the chat room go to  http://www.worknets .org/chat/ base/

If you do know in advance that you plan to be there, or if there is somethinsgspecial you wnat to discuss, thne  I'd love to hear from you beforehand. But even if I hear from no-one I will try to be there, and if you just happen to drop by, you will be most welcome.

Pam

Pamela, I look forward to chatting with you on Thursday at 13.00 Nigerian
time, 15,00 Kenyan time, 13.00 British Summer time at
http://www.worknets.org/chat/   All are welcome!  I invite ideas for our
new web interface http://www.ms.lt  Andrius
------------------

Ricardo,

I saw a link today which reminded me of your idea that phones should have
USB ports.  I blogged about it at http://www.includer.org

What do you think?

Andrius

Andrius Kulikauskas
Minciu Sodas
http://www.ms.lt
ms@...

EU Industry Commissioner Guenter Verheugen announced that Nokia, Sony
Ericsson, Motorola, Apple, LG, Research in Motion and other phone makers
have signed an agreement to make their data-enabled phones compatible with
standard charging devices based on a standard micro-USB socket.
http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idCALT4437920090629?rpc=44
There are 400 million phones in Europe and 185 million new phones are sold
each year.  In 2010, about half of these new phones will be data enabled
phones.

The European Union pushed for this agreement so as to reduce waste.  This
is also a wonderful step forward towards Ricardo’s vision (in Episode 4)
of USB Host Capability for basic phones.  There will soon be millions of
used phones with micro-USB sockets and we can experiment as Ricardo
envisions.  If there is a need, then I think it should be straightforward
for phone makers to offer and expand USB functions.

In October, Ricardo submitted his idea for the Google challenge Ten to the
Hundredth.  They were supposed to announce the top 100 ideas on January
27, 2009.  They received more than 150,000 ideas and have yet to announce
any of them.  It is a shame that they didn’t collect them openly and we
could be working on them ourselves!  (See Episode 7, Vote for Losers) .

Meanwhile, the Knight News Challenge has declared its winners.  The
Challenge gave out half the money it had intended to, because of the
financial crisis.  I looked up my own idea, Help Room of Episode 6, and
here’s what I find:
WEB PAGE NO LONGER EXISTS
The page you are looking for no longer exists or is unavailable.
Please access the home page to explore more content on this site.

Greetings from the COMMUNIA meeting in Torino where we’re discussing the
Scientific Commons.  I suppose that a key goal might be, how do we keep
alive the losing ideas so that they might develop into winners?

Lisa, welcome to Fred Kayiwa's group One Reaching Another
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/onereachinganother/
I share our chat today with several other Minciu Sodas / Worknets groups
as well.  I have created a page for you at:
http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?ElisabethBwayo
Also, all are invited today at 13:00 London time for a chat led by
Pamela McLean at http://www.worknets.org/chat/
Andrius Kulikauskas, Minciu Sodas, http://www.ms.lt, ms@...
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Lisa: Hi

AndriusKulikauskas: Hi Lisa! Greetings from Lithuania.

Lisa: Where is that? sorry to ask

AndriusKulikauskas: In Europe by the Baltic sea. :: We're having a chat
today with Africa.

Lisa: Oh greetings from Uganda

AndriusKulikauskas: Pamela McLean leads a chat every month's first
Thursday. :: Wonderful. :: Do you know Fred Kayiwa? He is active at our
lab Minciu Sodas.

Lisa: No where does he live which part of uganda/

AndriusKulikauskas: Kampala and his parents live in the village. He is a
student. :: How did you learn of us? :: http://www.kampalajuniorteam.org
:: and http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?FredKayiwa

Lisa: You typing in green I cant read. can you do it in black

AndriusKulikauskas: is that better?

Lisa: yes it is thanks

AndriusKulikauskas: How did you learn of us? :: We have hosted some
"positive blogging" chats, too.

Lisa: just searched and tried out. tell me more about you :: Tell me
more about you

AndriusKulikauskas: I lead Minciu Sodas http://www.ms.lt a laboratory
for independent thinkers around the world :: and we are organizing
Worknets, a culture for independent thinkers :: and mostly we write in
email working group :: about twenty groups in all :: but also we use
wiki and chat and twitter and other means :: We organize around our
deepest values in life. :: Mine is "living by truth", Janet Feldmans's
is "holistic helping", Pamela McLeans' is "learning from each other",
Franz Nahrada's is "global villages". :: tweet: Andrius is back in
Vilnius and chatting with Lisa of Uganda in our chat room
http://www.worknets.org/chat/ :: see I just added a Twitter tweet with
that message above.

Lisa: I'm working with a street children's center as program manager. we
rehabilitate and resettle street chilfren back to their homes. is it in
any way related with what you do?

AndriusKulikauskas: tweet: Pamela McLean leads our chat with Africans
today at 13:00 London time http://www.worknets.org/chat/ :: Sure we try
to help with all kinds of projects. :: I recommend Fred Kayiwa's group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/onereachinganother/ :: his deepest value
is "one reaching another" and :: he's very active with youth. :: Are you
in Kampala? :: If you write your full name I will create a wiki page for
you.

Lisa: No but am going to find out from him let me use the information
you have given me. :: We are in masaka southern uganda

AndriusKulikauskas: May I sing you up for his email group? :: What is
your email?

Lisa: kiwalisa AT yahoo.com

AndriusKulikauskas: I think Fred's parents are in a village near Masaka,
see: http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?Beekeeping

Lisa: I i Yes I have been reading Fred's staff. He has mentioned a name
of some one calkled Busulwa. he is in our neighborhood. He is a farmer
and I know him so well. Could you know his parents names

AndriusKulikauskas: No I don't know their names. :: What is your full
name? I would create a page for you. Also I have signed you up for his
group.

Lisa: Is it ok if i contact him?

AndriusKulikauskas: Yes, the best is if you write publicly to his group
onereachinganother AT yahoogroups.com because we work publicly to
include everybody.

Lisa: My name is Elisabeth Bwayo

Please circulate to anyone who might be eligable

Call for Applications, Ford International Fellowships Program for MA or Ph.D. Study

Hallo Pamela am so much interested with afew of my friends.

I have visited the site of Ford Foundation Fellowship and all what the
scholarships are about and which countries they have involved.

My only problem is how do I apply and when is the deadline for the scholarship.

Thank You for your time

I resend with a correction:
I would certainly benefit if Pamela linked our Mornflake project and
took some of OUR resources (people, money, projects) for her current
work such as her and John Dada's business Dadamac or for the Nigerian
Ago-Are ecovillage.
Andrius
----------------------

Janet, Graham, Wendi, Tom, Benoit, Sasha and all,

I'm very encouraged by your letters at Janet Feldman's working group
Holistic Helping.  Thank you!

Janet, I appreciate your concern throughout this year about our culture
and subcultures and how we might best work together.  I know that you
are very caring at home and I am glad that you engage us so thoughtfully
in the time that you do have.

Thanks to Leon Benjamin and our work for Mornflake cereal
http://www.mornflake.com I and Minciu Sodas participants have had the
opportunity in our paid work to engage UK online communities of our
choice.  This is generally and naturally awkward - much like being a
teenager - but the rewards are great for us and I think for Mornflake
and other such funders as well.  It is the clash of cultures that
happens as we reach out to others and organize ourselves to do so which
helps us all to sort out what's truly important for each of us and
what's not. And then we also build our understanding as to what might be
universally important, and what is personally important.

Janet, I agree that we should get people's permission before signing
them up for an online venue.  I didn't sign up you or Wendi or anybody
else to Global Swadeshi.  Nor am I able to.  I did check the member
list, though, and Janet, you are not on it, nor is Graham or Wendi.  I
wrote a post about the problems and I hope Vinay Gupta responds:
http://www.globalswadeshi.net/forum/topics/global-swadeshi-website

Janet, Yes, it's important to note the importance of your working group
Holistic Helping
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/holistichelping/
for our many productive conversations there including most recently with
Graham Knight about DIY solar as well as solar energy concentrators as
Franz Nahrada mentioned.  Too often, I take you for granted as well as
the few others who I can take for granted including Franz or Ricardo.
I'm glad when you speak up and I can know what you find most helpful and
relevant.

Janet, Yes! I'm very glad that Fred Kayiwa might be your online
assistant, and Dennis Kimambo as well.  I sent Fred 200 USD for our
Mornflake work not so long ago and I think he would agree to do more
work for me for what I have sent so far.  (Although Fred is focused now
on his youth football team's travel to Norway.)  Similarly, I sent 250
GBP to Dennis Kimambo and he was not able to do much work because of
poor Internet access.  Please let us know what tasks they might help
with.  Sasha can help train them, too, please keep him in the loop.  I
will provide resources for your online assistants, and also for Franz,
Edward, a bit of help for Markus, and other active leaders, please let
me know!

Graham, that's a wonderful contribution that you offer a prize of $100
in photovoltaic parts for the first location which demonstrates all of
the steps in a viable solar panel business:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/mendenyo/message/2719
This is a great example of sharing resources.  As I wrote, I also have
money that I can add from our Mornflake project
for just such projects if we can involve a UK online community.  Vinay
Gupta in London, UK founded Global Swadeshi
http://www.globalswadeshi.net which would be great.  I can fund solar
panels for people to try out all over the world.  However, it's not
clear if Vinay or others there are interested.  Without their interest,
I have to find another UK online community that would like to get
involved in such a project.  Or I can certainly keep the money for
myself, which is what I will do unless we work together and find such a
community.  If it works, then we'll have a great example of us sharing
resources, including Graham, Janet, Vinay, Mornflake, Global Swadeshi,
Holistic Helping and many more.

I'm greatly encouraged by Graham's offer because he's acknowledging the
challenges in his own dream, inviting our help to overcome them and
sharing resources.  I wish that more of us were creative in this way.
For example, Pamela McLean is in the UK and introduced me to Vinay Gupta
in London in March, 2009.  I would certainly benefit if Pamela linked
our Mornflake project and took some of our resources (people, money,
projects) for her current work such as her and John Dada's business
Dadamac or for the Nigerian Ago-Are ecovillage.  Likewise, if Vinay
Gupta or Marcin Jakubowski encouraged our work with Graham Knight's
Do-It-Yourself Solar panels as relevant, in whatever way, for Factor E
Farm or Leashless ideals.   I observe a real poverty in our creativity
in finding ways to acknowledge each other's projects and work together.
That poverty is more distressing than any material poverty that I know of.

Janet, my focus with our Mornflake projects has been on finding UK
online communities we might engage.  I have come to Holistic Helping and
other groups to invite people and resources for such paid work.  That
energy needs to take place in the UK online communities or I can't
justify sharing my resources.  I do need groups such as Holistic Helping
which might host my work so that I and others might build momentum for
such projects.  (This is why I've set up so many groups at Minciu
Sodas.)  It's fair that the groups such as Holistic Helping benefit as
well, and also be included and encourage conversations in tandem, as you
suggest.

Janet, yes, I posted your letter at Global Swadeshi as part of a long
thread which Sasha started at my request on May 13, 2009.
http://www.globalswadeshi.net/forum/topics/mornflake-project  I included
a link back to your original letter "A reply by Janet Feldman at
Holistic Helping" http://ms.lt/W4369  which shows my effort to link our
groups (which is the whole point of our Mornflake projects).  If Vinay
or others had replied to any part of your letter, then I may likely have
shared that back with you at Holistic Helping, using my best judgement.
Until then, I didn't want to make extra effort to report to you, and
such a requirement would be counter to our work in the Public Domain,
the point of which is that we encourage people to use their best
judgement and we don't burden them otherwise.   The more we learn about
each other's preference (and your letter helps!), the more our judgement
improves, too.

Janet, you write: "From a process point of view, we cannot build a
culture based on openness,  sharing, and development of independent
thinkers who are also "leaders", if one person alone can determine
where, when, and how we work together. Consultation, cooperation, and
joint decision-making are important for a feeling of inclusion, an
important underpinning to the development of a "culture"."

Janet, if any part of my letters has jarred you, please let me know
which and I may understand your response better.

Can a single person create a culture?  In my life, my answer is yes.  I
have exhaustively cared for all aspects of my life and ever care for my
life's culture, especially, for my thinking within which I live.  I take
credit for my life's culture and, although my parents are great, I
pretty much created my inner life on my own, the decisions that define
who I am and what I do.  "I am my own parent" as I told them.  (Which is
also why I note and absorb the good examples of others, including my
parents, Jesus and our participants around the world.)  My personal
culture is evident in Minciu Sodas and it is tangible for many people.
I hope that it might be the same culture (Worknets) as that of other
such self-cultured people and even that all people be self-cultured people.

I provided resources for Wendi's work and I'm bringing resources to
support possibly more such work.  Those new resources are at my complete
discretion on behalf of Mornflake.  As a single person I decide where,
when and how to apply them because I'm responsible for that.  Graham and
Wendi and you and others have resources and likewise decide.  I try to
give everybody a chance to be included: Do you want to help? or Do you
want help?  But I don't mind not including those who don't help or don't
want help.  If Vinay or Marcin or Pamela or Graham or Wendi or you or
others want (or choose or can) or not to work together with me, I hope
to focus on those who do.  In the Mornflake project, this outreach is
very difficult, mostly because it's so unusual.  I'm trying to include
as many people and leverage as many projects as possible, but
ultimately, I decide myself what to do with the Mornflake resources
which include some of my own energy that I am thereby able to devote at
Holistic Helping and encourage Wendi, Graham, Sasha, you and others.

Janet, I'm writing from my own perspective, as an individual and also an
organizer.  You clearly want an inclusive culture at Holistic Helping.
In that regard, sometimes I may be an "insider" and sometimes an
"outsider".  In either case, but especially as an outsider, I think that
in our overall culture it's important that you speak as the leader of
your group - it's your group and this makes sense or not for you.  Then
it's a matter of two people (you and I) understanding each other.  Then
I can try to acommodate you, which is important to me.  I won't try to
accomodate a "group mind", though, and I don't want to be part of one.
Instead, I want to understand better and develop further my own personal
culture and learn what it shares or not with other people's.

Janet, thank you for your encouragement that we work publicly, as much
as possible, so that our principles and deeds and observations are
transparent and we learn from each other and others might include
themselves.

Janet, thank you especially for your letters and your thinking.  Thank
you also to Samwel and Benoit.  I enjoyed such conversation with Pamela
and Franz but wish that all could see as when we write.  My hope is that
we have such exchanges with Marcin and Vinay and others.  How can we be
leaders and reveal a shared culture without such exchanges?

Andrius

Andrius Kulikauskas
Minciu Sodas
http://www.ms.lt
ms@...
+370 699 30003
Vilnius, Lithuania

Janet Feldman wrote:
> Dear Andrius, Wendi and Graham, Fred, and All,
>
> The ideas for this project are interesting, and I hope it does come to
> fruition!
>
> I am concerned about some of the way this project is evolving, in
> particular the implications for the development of our culture--as
> well as our sub-cultures--and want to share those concerns:
>
> 1) I have been signed up to Global Swadeshi without my knowledge, so
> that when I went there the other day to register, I was told I
> couldn't use my email address, because it was already in use! I do not
> know the current password, as I did not create it myself.  I have
> taken steps to reset it so that I can participate. To this moment I
> have not received an email related to resetting my password, however,
> and I have sent two requests over the past 24 hours.
>
> I will be delighted to be a member of this exciting network! However,
> I would like to have been directly invited to participate (by Andrius,
> in this case), and then to sign up there myself. This is an essential
> element both of self-determination and of control of one's own life
> and information. It should surely be established among us as an
> important principle. How have I been signed up, and by whom?
>
> 2) I see a letter of mine posted there, in which I give support to a
> joint project we might do, and also some ideas about a way to proceed
> and some outcomes that might develop (a manual, for example). I wrote
> that in the context of Holistic Helping and our other forums, not for
> an entirely different setting.
>
> While it's fine that it was posted at Global Swadeshi, I would like to
> have known it was there, first of all, and secondly, that the original
> context of the conversation be understood to apply to my own forum and
> members, as well as those in other MS forums.
>
> I want this conversation and work to happen at HH in tandem with
> conversations and work at Global Swadeshi, and at our other forums. It
> would be great--in addition to a number of us participating at Global
> Swadeshi--if Global Swadeshi members would sign up for HH and our
> other forums, so that we might all participate in a DIY Solar project
> together. I realize there is cross-over already, with Vinay and others.
>
> I want to ensure that this project does not shift away from our forums
> (though it's fine to work in tandem with others!):  it is important
> that we receive full information of what is happening abt the project,
> participate in linked and interwoven discussions, and are generally
> included in a central way in any activities.
>
> Especially given the fact that I am a full-time caregiver, and also
> have other organizations to run, it would be wonderful if--speaking of
> HH specifically--there are others who can carry a good deal of this
> conversation there, and work on behalf of Holistic Helping (and our
> other related forums). And to engage with a larger group of others (at
> Global Swadeshi and elsewhere) for optimum results for this project.
>
> That also applies to other members in such situations:  how can each
> of us be engaged here, yet at the same time address our other
> responsibilities? And how can an overall "culture" be created and
> developed, while "sub-cultures" are also supported and built?
>
> 3) Since discussions about DIY have been taking place at HH, albeit
> with not as much public posting as would have been conducive to mutual
> learning, I would appreciate being included in postings, thoughts, and
> plans about this project (I mean myself by name, as well as postings
> to the HH forum).
>
> >From a process point of view, we cannot build a culture based on
> openness, sharing, and development of independent thinkers who are
> also "leaders", if one person alone can determine where, when, and how
> we work together. Consultation, cooperation, and joint decision-making
> are important for a feeling of inclusion, an important underpinning to
> the development of a "culture".
>
> 4) If some of our members have problems accessing a relatively
> "simple" venue like a Yahoogroups, how much more will be the
> challenges of accessing a website and needing to post in threads? And
> how can more cross-over of information and participation be developed
> between our forums and Worknets? I see so much helpful information at
> Worknets that is not making its way into our forums, for example.
>
> 5) Despite the stated goal of "public" sharing and visibility, there
> are some members who do not engage here publicly in an ongoing way,
> yet they benefit by association with us. Generally people are told
> that if they want us to be engaged and caring, they have to be more
> visible. But this is not applied to everyone in the same way.
>
> If members are not working publicly in some fashion, however
> rudimentary, they are not contributing to the development of our
> "culture". This does not mean that they are not valuable or important,
> as everyone is as an individual. But it does mean that, as a larger
> whole, we are not benefitting from what they can give and share.
>
> There can and should be a place for "private" conversations,
> friendships, and individual activities both within and outside of our
> working groups, and of course people have times of greater or lesser
> ability to be involved here. But in order for there to be a feeling
> and fact of "culture" among us, there does also need to be a sense of
> "fairness" fostered--both perceived and real--and of standards evenly
> applied. "Winning by sharing" should become our motto!
>
> On a personal note:
>
> 6) I would appreciate it if Fred Kayiwa--who Andrius had suggested
> this past spring could be my assistant--might now become that
> assistant. I don't know what money arrangement can be made:  Fred
> mistakenly thought that I was going to pay him to do so (which he and
> I discovered in a recent conversation), but I did not offer to do
> that, as I do not have the funds.
>
> Since Fred has been mentioned both in Ricardo's recent letter about
> eBay trading, and in the context of DIY Solar, he would be a "perfect"
> bridge person, both as regards communicating to Holistic Helping and
> the other MS forums--including his own--and at Global Swadeshi about
> these projects, and in terms of helping to build a greater sense of
> inclusion and integration in our mutual work, laying some of the
> foundation for construction of a "culture", in feeling and in fact.
>
> I would also like to work with Dennis, who is a longtime friend,
> someone who came to this setting from ActALIVE (my arts coalition).
>
> Thanks and blessings to all, Janet
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Andrius Kulikauskas" <ms@...>
> To: <globalvillages@yahoogroups.com>; "help group"
> <holistichelping@yahoogroups.com>; <voiceful@yahoogroups.com>;
> <socialagriculture@yahoogroups.com>; <mendenyo@yahoogroups.com>
> Cc: "graham" <diysolar@...>
> Sent: Thursday, July 02, 2009 5:14 PM
> Subject: [holistichelping] DIY Solar Project with Wendi, Global
> Swadeshi, Mornflake
>
>
>
>> Hi Graham,
>>
>> Thank you for chatting with us today.  I've personally invited you to
>> join Vinay Gupta's Global Swadeshi http://www.globalswadeshi.net and
>> please let me know if you still have trouble joining.  I encourage
>> others to join there, too.
>>
>> Sasha is active there.  Sasha, please, make a list at
>> http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?GlobalSwadeshi of Global Swadeshi
>> participants and their endeavors and their websites and any countries
>> where they are especially active or interested.  I also ask anybody who
>> would like a bit of paid work to train with Sasha and help to make this
>> list.
>>
>> As you know, we're helping UK online communities on behalf of Mornflake
>> cereal http://www.mornflake.com and their online video competition
>> http://www.mornflakecompetition.com (less than two weeks left).
>>
>> My plan is to send $100 to $200 to Graham Knight from the money Minciu
>> Sodas is earning from Mornflake.   Graham will send DIY Solar mobile
>> phone recharging kits to:
>> * Wendi Loshe Bernadette in Cameroon
>> * Fred Kayiwa in Uganda
>> * William Wambura in Tanzania
>> * Dennis Kimambo in Kenya
>> * Samwel Kongere in Kenya
>> and also to people who we learn of through Global Swadeshi, who might be
>> in Afghanistan, Palestine, India and other places around the world.
>>
>> Each person will tell us in advance how much they think they can sell
>> the kit for, and how many they can sell in one month.  They will report
>> to us about the people they sell to, preferably, with their permission,
>> giving their name and location and a bit about them and how they use
>> their phone.  They will report how much they actually sold each kit for
>> and any expenses they had. They will check in one month to see are the
>> people satisfied.  They will keep all of the money they make from
>> selling the DIY Solar kits.
>>
>> We will work on this project at the Global Swadeshi website
>> http://www.globalswadeshi.net as well as Minciu Sodas working groups and
>> Worknets wiki.  The purpose of this project is to work together with
>> others at Global Swadeshi and get to know them and their projects.  We
>> will also learn about the opportunities, challenges and abilities of
>> different entrepreneurs in different parts of the world. This will be a
>> lot achieved for a small amount of money.
>>
>> Wendi, Fred, William, Dennis, Samwel, would you like to participate?
>> Who else?
>>
>> Graham, Does this make sense? What do you think?
>>
>> Andrius
>>
>> Andrius Kulikauskas
>> Minciu Sodas
>> http://www.ms.lt
>> ms@...
>> +370 699 30003
>> Vilnius, Lithuania
>>

jadamo2002 wrote:
> Hallo Pamela am so much interested with afew of my friends.
>
> I have visited the site of Ford Foundation Fellowship and all what the
scholarships are about and which countries they have involved.
>
> My only problem is how do I apply and when is the deadline for the
scholarship.
>
> Thank You for your time
>

Hi! What is your name and where do you live?
The application deadline depends on the country.
Look here also for more information: http://www.fordifp.net
Andrius Kulikauskas, Minciu Sodas, http://www.ms.lt, ms@..., Vilnius,
Lithuania
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.internationalpeaceandconflict.org/forum/topic/show?id=780588%3ATopic%\
3A159074&xgs=1

The Ford Foundation International Fellowships Program
<http://www.fordifp.net/> provides support for up to three years of
formal graduate-level study leading to a masters or doctoral degree.
Fellows are selected from countries and territories in Asia, Africa, the
Middle East, Latin America, and Russia and include Brazil, Chile, China,
Egypt, Ghana, Guatemala, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico, Mozambique,
Nigeria, Palestinian Territories, Peru, Philippines, Russia, Senegal,
South Africa, Tanzania, Thailand, Uganda, Vietnam, where the Ford
Foundation maintains active overseas programs. U.S. nationals are not
eligible, although Fellows may study in the United States.

Fellows are chosen on the basis of their leadership potential and
commitment to community or national service, as well as for academic
excellence. Fellows may enroll in masters or doctoral programs and may
pursue any academic discipline or field of study that is consistent with
the interests and goals of the Ford Foundation. The Foundation currently
works in thirteen fields to strengthen democratic values, reduce poverty
and injustice, promote international cooperation, and advance human
achievement.

Once selected, Ford Foundation International Fellows may enroll in an
appropriate university program anywhere in the world, including their
country of residence. The program provides placement assistance to those
Fellows not yet admitted to graduate school.

IFP support also enables Fellows to undertake short-term language study
and training in research and computer skills prior to graduate school
enrollment. In addition, new Fellows attend orientation sessions, while
current Fellows actively participate in learning and discussion
activities designed to create information and exchange networks among
Ford Foundation IFP Fellows worldwide. Finally, the program encourages
IFP alumni to maintain contact with the program after completing the
fellowships to help them remain current in their respective fields
through the expanding Ford Foundation IFP network.

Because local requirements vary widely among IFP countries, applicants
should carefully follow the specific application guidelines provided by
the relevant IFP International Partner organizations, including
deadlines for the submission of applications.

*Who Can Apply?*

Ford Foundation International Fellowships Program applicants must be
resident nationals or residents of an eligible IFP country or territory.
Currently, these are: Brazil, Chile, China, Egypt, Ghana, Guatemala,
India, Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico, Mozambique, Nigeria, Palestinian
Territories, Peru, Philippines, Russia, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania,
Thailand, Uganda, and Vietnam. IFP selects Fellows on the strength of
their clearly-stated intention to serve their communities and countries
of origin, and expects that they will honor this obligation.

*Successful candidates will:*

* Demonstrate superior achievement in their undergraduate studies and
hold a baccalaureate degree or its equivalent.
* Have substantial experience in community service or
development-related activities.
* Possess leadership potential evidenced by their employment and
academic experience.
* Propose to pursue a post-baccalaureate degree that will directly
enhance their leadership capacity in a practical, policy, academic, or
artistic discipline or field corresponding to one or more of the
Foundation's areas of endeavor.
* Present a plan specifying how they will apply their studies to social
problems or issues in their own countries. Commit themselves to working
on these issues following the fellowship period.

*IFP Fields of Study*

Ford Foundation International Fellows may choose to study in any
academic discipline or field of study related to the Ford Foundation's
three grant-making areas, which are:

Asset Building and Community Development

* Community Development
* Development Finance and Economic Security
* Work-force Development
* Environment and Development

Knowledge, Creativity, and Freedom

* Arts and Culture
* Education and Scholarship
* Media
* Religion, Society and Culture
* Sexuality and Reproductive Health

Peace and Social Justice

* Civil Society
* Governance
* Human Rights

The Application Process

All applications must be submitted to the appropriate IFP International
Partner in the country or region where the applicant resides. IFP
International Partners determine application deadlines and selection
schedules in their region or country. Applications are reviewed and
final selections decided by panels composed of practitioners and
scholars from various fields of work and study. The level and duration
of awards are determined as part of the selection process. Ford
Foundation staff and their family members may not serve on selection
panels and are not eligible to apply for IFP awards. Members of
selection committees, staff of the organizations managing the program in
the various regions, and their family members are also ineligible for
IFP awards.

jadamo2002 wrote:
> Hallo Andrius,
> Am Moureen Caroline Ochieng Ugandan by Nationality have just completed my
bachelor degree in Information technology at Makerere university.
> Am interested in upgrading my course to a masters of either Information
Technology or computer science.
> I love programming and at the same time networking I believe will come true
one day and will be able to help the nations out beat poverty with some
knowledge of technology,if am offered the scholarship.
>
> I have been to http://www.fordifp.net/  which took me to the site
http://www.ahead.or.ug/content/index.php a branch of Ford Foundation based in
Uganda but the problem I have tried writing to them but all in vein there is no
response.
>
> I really wanted to know the deadline of scholarships and more Information
about them.
>
> Thank You for your time
>
Hi Moureen,

I found the same information that you did:   "All completed applications
must be received by post or hand-delivered to the AHEAD offices on the
deadline which will be communicated."
http://www.ahead.or.ug/ifp/ifp_app_forms.php

You can try calling them:
For further information please contact: AHEAD/IFP Uganda Plot 80A Kira
Road-Kamwokya, P.O. Box 28332, Kampala, Uganda Tel: 0782-764426, 0776
764426, email: info@... <mailto:info@...>

Thank you for writing us!

Andrius

Andrius Kulikauskas
Minciu Sodas
http://www.ms.lt
ms@...

unfortunately the deadline already clocked am really to late
the deadline was meant to be 19th Feb 2009.

Maybe next time.

Thank you for your time.