Through his pioneering ‘Halls of Learning’, Marvin G. Hall, a trained teacher and information technology specialist, has embarked on a mission to bring robotics to all the children of Jamaica - not just the privileged.

In 2003, Hall left the comfort of the suburban classroom where he first introduced robotics, to dedicate himself to his vision of providing all children with the opportunity to ‘lego their minds’, and explore the innards of technology, even those who could never provide adequate monetary compensation for his efforts. Read the rest of this entry »

Ken Banks presenting at W3C Workshop
Ken Banks, RDVP Collaboration Fellow (2007) will be presenting a paper on Day Two of the W3C Workshop on the Mobile Web in Developing Countries, due to take place in Bangalore, India, on 5th/6th December. He will also be Chairing a meeting on the first day discussing Network Technologies. Read the rest of this entry »

Brac brings internet to rural homes

bracNET, an affiliation of Brac, the world’s largest non-government organisation, has recently launched e-Hut to give internet access to people in rural areas of Bangladesh.

Through e-Hut the people living in the remote corners of the country will have access to the internet at an affordable price. While explaining the programme, bracNET officials said e-Hut is a one-stop shop of different types of digital services including internet browsing, basic computer training, photocopying, scanning, digital photo taking and lamination of documents and photos. Read the rest of this entry »

Seminar details:
November 28, 2006
3:30pm-5:00pm PST
Nora 103

Seminar speaker:
Rajiv Taneja works in the Office of the CTO at Motorola, Sunnyvale. As a member of the Applications Research team, Rajiv works with the Silicon Valley ecosystem to create partnerships for open innovation and new products. He also works with Motorola Research and Venture groups to commercialize research efforts focusing on enterprise mobility, mobile applications, and content handling. Previous to joining the Office Of The CTO, Rajiv led Motorola’s mobile devices software teams in United States, Europe, and Asia. These teams create software that is deployed on millions of handsets. Rajiv has spent the lion’s share of his 20 year career managing and motivating teams to bring new products and ideas to market. The product development efforts that he has led have generated several billion in revenues. Prior to Motorola, as part of the executive team, Rajiv led three technology startups and raised over $50 million in venture money. His business and operating experience includes significant customer, partner, and board interaction. Rajiv is a graduate of Stanford and Indian Institute of Technology with degrees in engineering and management.

DV Seminar:
Location: Nora 103
Date: November 21, 2006
Time: 3:30-5:00

Speaker bio:
Perhaps the only CEO ever accused of being anti-establishment, a communist, and a socialistic anarchist, since 2000 Jim has led craigslist to be the most used classifieds in any medium, and one of world’s most popular websites, while maintaining its renowned public service mission, non-corporate vibe, and staff of less than 20.

Formerly served as craigslist’s lead programmer and CTO, contributing the site’s multi-city architecture, search engine, discussion forums, flagging system, self-posting process, homepage design, personals categories, and best-of-craigslist.

Before joining craigslist, directed web development for Creditland (defunct) and Quantum. In 1994-95, built a terabyte-scale database-driven public website for ICPSR at U-Mich.

Graduated summa cum laude from Virginia Tech with a bachelors in biochemistry, and studied medicine and classics at the University of Michigan.

Seminar details:
Thursday, 16 November, 2006
3:30pm-5:00pm PST
Cordura 100

Seminar speaker:
Carol Bartz is executive chairman of the board of Autodesk, Inc. Bartz was chairman, president and CEO of Autodesk for 14 years and stepped-down in April, 2006. During her tenure, the company diversified its product line and grew revenues from $285 million to $1.523 billion in FY06.

Bartz previously held positions at Sun Microsystems, most recently serving as vice president of worldwide field operations and an executive officer of the company. Before joining Sun, she held product line and sales management positions at Digital Equipment Corporation and 3M Corporation.

Silicon Valley Challenge Summit:
Santa Clara University
Date: November 16, 2006
All Day

For more information: http://www.scu.edu/sts/Events/rios/index.cfm

DV Workshop:
Date: November 14, 2006

Internal Meeting

DV Seminar:
Date: November 9, 2006

Speaker bio:
Lee H. Ng is a Business Director for New Business Creation at Agilent Technologies, Inc. She leverages past experience in manufacturing, consulting, and venture capital to assess new technologies and launch new business ventures. Currently, her focus is in creating new business for Agilent in developing markets like China.

As an internal consultant in HP before the Agilent split, she has worked with many divisions on manufacturing strategy, new product positioning, strategic planning and evaluation of strategic alliances for several internet businesses.

Before joining HP, Lee was a Project Manager at IBIS Associates and consulted to Fortune 500 companies. She also worked with Ampersand Ventures to assess the viability of new business ventures, start-ups, and spin-offs and was involved in deal screen, due diligence, technology, and market analysis
Lee holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from University of Texas at Austin, Masters and Ph.D. degrees in Materials Engineering from M.I.T, with minors in Economics, Finance, and Strategy.

Vital Wave Consulting and Reuter’s Digital Vision Program at Stanford University Partner for Technology Business in Developing-country Markets

PALO ALTO, November 2, 2006 – Vital Wave Consulting, analysts of developing-country markets, and Reuter’s Digital Vision Program at Stanford University announced today a collaborative initiative to analyze the market potential of technology-oriented development projects for emerging markets. Read the rest of this entry »

Workshop details:
Date: November 7, 2006

Workshop speaker:
Genelle King Heim is President and Founder of Unity Partners, Inc. a policy and communications consulting firm. Ms. Heim has worked with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, World Vision, Save the Children, Procter and Gamble, Credit Suisse, BBC World Trust, UNICEF and the United Nations Development Program. Prior to founding Unity Partners, Heim worked for Cisco Systems for 6 years. While at Cisco she served as head of marketing for Netaid.org, a unique partnership with the United Nations Development Program, commissioned primary economic research with Thought Leaders at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, Wharton Business School, Brookings Institution and the University of California at Berkeley, and represented Cisco’s interests at various UN engagements.

Heim is an accredited public-private partnership broker with the Prince of Wales International Business Leaders Forum/Overseas Development Institute. She holds a Master in Public Administration from Harvard University ’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, an advanced degree in Japanese language from Progre Osaka, and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of California at Santa Barbara. She serves on the boards of Court Appointed Special Advocates of Santa Cruz County and the Moldova Foundation.

DV Workshop
Date: 11/02/06

Speaker Bio:
was born in 1969 to teachers in Onicha-Ugbo, a small Nigerian village, and, at age 4, was adopted by my biological uncle, an agronomist and diplomat, and his American wife, a teacher. In 1980, we moved to USA where I continued my primary education in Florence, Alabama.

In 1984, I enrolled at St. Bernard Preparatory School and graduated valedictorian four years later, soon gaining scholarship admission into Dartmouth College where I learned the power of the Internet. I was introduced to the Internet with “blitzmail”, the college’s proprietary email system, and I frequently used a newsgroup to communicate with an international network of Nigerians—all nostalgic and concerned about a deteriorating homeland, desirous to return and eager to help out.

After Dartmouth, I settled in Boston with my brother. Together we started a pre-press design company in which we used FTP to pass designs between our clients and printers and realized a 30% margin in a 10% margin business. We were young, creative graduates pursuing our entrepreneurial ambitions. However, in 1994 I won several fellowships and left the business to join the University of Massachusetts MFA Painting and MBA programs. I graduated in 1999, worked in the Staples’ corporate finance team for a year, and then started a dot-com that built the world’s largest “evening entertainment” community portal (clubbersworld.com). When the “bubble” burst in 2000, I decided to return to Africa to seek opportunities and apply my knowledge and skills on the continent.

In 2001, while in Accra, Ghana, I met Mark Davies, the visionary co-founder of CitySearch, who had moved from New York to launch “BusyInternet,” a community IT center modeled after the international EasyInternetCafe chain. The design included a 100-station cybercafé, a business incubator with entrepreneur offices, a restaurant, and a document center A cybercafe aficionado, I was quick to join Mark’s team as a business development director. We soon had a center running in Accra, and it is currently the largest IT center in West Africa.

I became intent on deploying a more efficient, scalable version of “Busy” to cultivate the Nigerian digital information revolution by providing consumers affordable access to content, media, and communication tools. I moved to Nigeria in 2002 and, after a year of promoting the digital center concept, helped launch XS Broadband, Nigeria’s largest BFWA provider—created to make Internet readily available. I have since liaised with key players in the education, banking, government, telecom, and entertainment sectors who concur that there is a strong need for digital centers across Nigeria.

The Reuters Digital Vision Fellowship would enable me to organize the necessary resources to fulfill that developmental need—for Africa in general and Nigeria in particular.

The BusyInternet project is one of which I am proud. I took away this lesson: you cannot develop by transplanting ideas; instead you must customize ideas, taking into account socio-economic and cultural dynamics. By customizing the cybercafé idea, we gave people the power to send emails, listen to music, watch movies, and write their own story. We enabled them to experience their dreams together. In short, we changed lives. I believe we can customize the idea even more and impact the lives of at least 15 million people in Nigeria and, eventually, over 80 million people continent-wide.