Archive for the 'People' Category

It’s with great please that we announce the new Geekcorps Mali Program Manager, Olivier Alais. Olivier comes to Geekcorps after working in Burkina Faso deploying computer labs with the French Embassy there. As a Parisian, he’s bringing a true French flair to Geekcorps Mali.

Olivier is also bringing Geekcorps Mali into a new program area. For the next year, he will build on GCM’s success in improving rural radio stations by developing five new radio stations in Mali’s far north. These stations will bring needed communication technologies to underserved areas previously excluded from Mali’s active social and political systems.

ICT’s like Geekcorps’ Desert PC, Can TV, and Cybertigi and Adapted Consulting’s Open FM radio transmitter. Together, these technologies will enhance the sustainability of the stations, increasing their already significant benefits.

Olivier will also lead GCM in developing more Cybertigi successes with new sites in new locations, proving that ICT’s can deliver both impact and profit to rural Africans.

We’re confident that Olivier will continue Geekcorps achievements in expanding private enterprise with innovative, appropriate, and affordable information and communication technologies and you can congratualte him on oalais at iesc dot org.

It’s with sadness that we say goodbye to Wayan Vota, who has led Geekcorps for the last three years from IESC’s headquarters in Washington DC. As Director, he helped Geekcorps expand into new countries, like AIM-IT in Lebanon, and in new directions, like Smarter Seminars with Hewlett Packard.

Wayan is moving on to direct an online microenterprise mentoring program and will miss the conversation stopper of “I’m with Geekcorps.” A line guaranteed to generate a “Wow!” or two.

If you’d like to have the same fame and cachet at your next gathering, be sure to register with Geekcorps. It’s the first step to get involved.

IESC Geekcorps volunteer expert Steve Porter was featured on SHAW TV for his assignment with the AIM-IT program in Beirut, Lebanon.

During two separate workshops he delivered interactive hands-on training and simulation labs on Microsoft Visual Studio Team System Training to participants from Lebanese ICT companies.

Watch this SHAW TV interview about Steve’s impression of his “experience of a lifetime”: Read the rest of this entry »

As announced last week, Geekcorps Director Wayan Vota hosted a webchat on the U.S. State Department’s USINFO website. The October 25 chat was written up in a USINFO article by Mary L. Specht entitled “Information Technology Critical in Development, Expert Says.” A transcript of the webchat is also available online.

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Join Geekcorps Director Wayan Vota next Wednesday, October 25, at 10:00 a.m., when he leads a USINFO webchat about “making technology accessible to people living in some of the least developed parts of the globe.” In particular he will talk about how IESC Geekcorps has adapted technology and transferred technology skills to people in developing countries.

USINFO, a program of the U.S. Department of State, delivers information about current U.S. foreign policy and about American life and culture.

For more information and instructions on how to join the webchat, see the the USINFO article “Expert Discusses Technology in Developing World.”

Designer Meg Ross volunteered in 2005 with the MISTOWA project in Ghana, where Geekcorps partners with the International Fertilizer Development Corporation (IFDC) to get real-time agricultural market information available to market players who can use it. (See the MISTOWA website for more information.)

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Geekcorps welcomes back Meg Ross, one of our longest serving volunteers, to the MISTOWA program in Ghana. After nine months of service with Geekcorps in 2005, and then an eventful wandering from Ghana to South Africa overland (yeah, we’re jealous too!), Meg has returned to Accra, Ghana, for another year of web and graphic design with MISTOWA.

While we give a hearty “Thanks Meg!” we are also a little bit envious. Accra is not a hard place to spend a year living the Geekcorps lifestyle.

Do you consider yourself a technology expert, a geek even? Ever wanted to apply your ICT knowledge in exotic lands, say the famous Timbuktu? Wonder if they have Linux or WiFi there already?

Thanks to Geekcorps, you can take your skills worldwide, bring modern information and communication technologies to developing nations, and help entire countries become digitally independent, able to solve problems and grow economies, using technology.

Join Geekcorps Director Wayan Vota at the next San Francisco 501 Tech Club on March 2 for a short presentation and Q&A on Geekcorps, its work, and the role of technology in international development.

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Imagine trying to piece together a wireless network with no manuals, sporadic and slow access to the Internet, inadequate tools, a shortage of supplies, and in the most inclement weather. Geekcorps volunteers don’t need to imagine—they know how hard this is as they do it every day.

Now Geekcorps alumni Ian Howard, former Geekcorps Mali Program Manager, and Tomas Krag, who volunteered in Ghana, have contributed to a recently published book, “Wireless Networking in the Developing World” that aims to address what Rob Flickenger, the book’s editor and lead author, calls a chicken-and-egg problem: “While much information about building wireless networks can be found on-line, that presents a problem for people in areas with little or no connectivity,” said Flickenger from his workshop in Seattle.

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This summer, Geekcorps tested Matt Berg by sending him to volunteer in Dakar, Senegal’s Sandaga market to develop sustainable business solutions for the CyberLouma cyber café.

There, he successfully developed Leuk a accounting software allowing illiterate but numeric market venders to understand sales, profit, and other basic accounting metrics.

We at Geekcorps were impressed, and once he jumped through all the right hoops, we offered him a dream job - Geekcorps Mali Program Coordinator. Matt is now living the good life in Bamako, Mali with Geekcorps.