ICT Strategies

I'm taking this online course on "Emerging Information and Communications Technologies" at the ITU Academy. It has an interesting agenda, a wonderful multidisciplinary group of students from all over the world and walks of life. I am really excited about it and look forward to update and refresh my knowledge on networks, mobile technologies and learn more about new technologies, how they might shape our future and how we can take advantage of them and include them in our development strategies.

I guess that in order for us to know each other better and at the same time do a little sampling and research on the state of the art of technologies in the immediate environment of those participating and around the globe as well, our first assignment during the first week of the course was to share:

Excelent presentation by Claudio Perrone on Agile Software Development but relevant to participative, iterative, agile process in almost any field.

50 min. video presentation by the author below...

Margarita Quihuis, Fellow at Persuasive Technology Lab at Stanford University, presents the EPIC initiative at the Social Entrepreneurship panel of Relief 2.0 in Haiti @ Stanford.

EPIC (Earth-Wide Peace, Innovation and Collaboration) is a global incubator network with multi-million dollar awards to nurture ventures, create new markets, and employ people to work on the world's most epic problems.

Barack Obama's campaign promises on technology. Are his government actions living up to these promises?

The first step would be to understand the local ecosystem and its stakeholders and to become familiar with existing and similar experiences, their successes and failures, both at a local level and in other places. This would keep us from duplicating efforts, repeating mistakes and would allow us to learn from such experiences and to identify local partners and others with relevant experience.

Given enabling environments for social entrepreneurship, both individuals and institutions will have similar incentives (beyond their social motivation) to innovate, explore, pursue and develop solutions, goods and services for their local communities and global markets.

Last week my work of the last eight months for United Nations Economic Commission of Latin America and the Caribbean doing a Public ICT and Information Society assessment of the Caribbean region was presented in a regional Policy Makers Seminar at Barbados.

It has been a shock to read a note published in a local Barbados newspaper highlighting only negative parts of the extensive 12 page Public ICT Profile I put together for Barbados.

How to promote entrepreneurial initiatives and spirit at the local level by engaging relevant stakeholders and providing adequate support with ICT, beyond microcredit or financing. Money is not enough to promote and support entrepreneurial activity. Know-how, experience, administrative skills, marketing skills are all part of the picture and can only be attained by engaging multiple stakeholders.

How is CODE3 different from a Conventional Development Process?

CODE3 differs from a conventional development in that we are taking the traditional approach…

• From discrete to continuous.
• From intermediated to direct.
• From top-down / bottom-up to horizontal.
• From anonymous contribution to value recognition.
• From unknown decision process to documented and trackable evolution.
• From partial (individual) observation to complete (social) monitoring.
• From making up profiles to real users needs and preferences.
• From standardization to customization.

Artificial Biases

A diagnose, design or research group may not be representative of the public being served, introducing biases in the observations and conclusions. The bias can come in many different aspects, some often unnoticed...