Date: Thursday, May 31, 2007
Time: 3:30-5pm
Location: Cordura 100

Speaker bio:
Nishita Bakshi conducts social and environmental research on shareholder campaigns to support dialogues with target companies. Previously, Nishita worked as a researcher for academic, governmental and non-governmental organizations such as the Indian Institute of Forest Management/World Bank, Virginia Tech, and Redefining Progress. She holds a MS in Agriculture and Applied Economics from Virginia Tech and a MBA in Forestry Management from the Indian Institute of Forest Management.

FrontlineSMS has been shortlisted in the “Messaging Application/ Service: Public Sector/Not-for-profit” section of the 2007 Mobile Messaging Awards. The winners will be announced at a Gala Awards Dinner in Monte Carlo on the 5th June 2007, immediately after the first day of the Global Messaging Congress.

A special get together is planned to launch the felicitation volume of Prof. V. K. Samaranayake and to revive the IT Chapter of the Alumni association of the University of Colombo. The function will be held on the 4th of June 2007 from 4.30 - 7.00pm at the Prof. V.K. Samaranayake Auditorium of the UCSC*.

The commemorative volume is based on academic articles and memoirs by over 40 professional colleagues of Prof V. K. Samaranayake whom he considers Partners in Progress. These are further enhanced by the inclusion of the proceedings of the felicitation ceremony. The contents of this volume illustrate the breadth of the contribution made by Prof. Samaranayake towards the development of Education, Science and Information Technology and towards social action both nationally and internationally.

Seminar Details:
Date: Tuesday May 31, 2007
Time: 3:30-5pm
Location: Nora 103

Seminar Speaker:
Arjun Batra, Director - Intel India, manages Business Development and US Operations for Intel India and is based at Intel’s world headquarters in Santa Clara, California. The mission of this function is to help Intel capitalize on the opportunities presented by the availability of high quality talent in India. He has played a key role in the establishment, success and rapid growth of the Intel India Development Center at Bangalore, India which now employs about 3000 professionals and has become a true microcosm of Intel Corporation in a short span of six years.

Arjun also drives all internal and external interaction in the US and oversees key initiatives including an ILH Program - a vital program to attract and hire professionals, with critical skills and experience, from the USA wishing to return to India.

Arjun did his undergraduate work at Delhi and his Master of Business Administration, MBA, from the Indian Institute of Management at Calcutta and McGill University, Montreal, Canada. He has worked in various leadership positions in IT, engineering and marketing, with Dow Chemical, IBM and Intel, in India, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the US. Arjun is a naturalized citizen of the USA and the Silicon Valley has been his family’s’ home for the last two decades.

Mexican American Community Services Agency has released its 100 Most Influential Latinos in Silicon Valley list with the top 10 people in 10 different categories. Margarita has been listed in the Business category. You can vote for your top 10 here.

Date: Thursday 5/17/2007
Time: 3:30-5:30pm
Location: Cordura 100

Speaker bio:
Chandrakant Patel, known for his pioneering work in energy-efficient computing, is an HP Fellow at HP Labs, where he is responsible for strategically engaging in thermo-mechanical research for future microprocessors, workstations, servers and data centers.

Patel played a key role in establishing HP’s leadership in energy-efficient computing by founding HP Labs’ thermal technology research program in the early 1990s, and subsequently the data-center architecture program. He foresaw the thermal-management challenges associated with high power density due to miniaturization in semiconductor technologies, and the need to manage energy as a key resource as enterprise IT system resources became increasingly connected and shared.

He pioneered a holistic approach to power and cooling that encompasses everything from chips to systems to racks to the data center itself. With partners in HP’s product R&D groups, he started a virtual thermal community known as the HP Cool Team.

Patel’s work has been incorporated into HP products and services, including its Adaptive Infrastructure offerings, and also used by HP to manage its own information technology infrastructure.

His interest today is research in energy used by data center cooling resources at a global level through the HP Labs’ smart cooling proposition. The smart cooling vision is to dynamically provision cooling commensurate with the heat loads in a data center, and to provision computing, and thus the heat loads, based on the available cooling resources. Chandrakant and his team are exploring the “smart” data center that integrates power, cooling and system architecture.

The vision is to realize a savings of 50 percent in cooling energy costs in the global data center network of tomorrow through a combination of mechanical thermo-fluids engineering and computer science.

Patel joined HP Labs in 1991, initally leading the cooling and packaging research of the Wide Word microprocessor. This research contributed to what later became Intel’s Itanium, which represented the next generation of microprocessors.

In addition to his work at HP, Patel has taught computer-aided design as an adjunct faculty member at Chabot College in Hayward, California since 1990, and graduate level thermal management courses at University of California, Berkeley Extension and Santa Clara University since 1999.

He has authored many refereed journal and conference papers in the area of electronics cooling and has been granted 68 U.S. patents. He is a Senior Member of IEEE, a member of the Engineering Advisory Board at Chabot College and a member of the Industrial Advisory Board at Santa Clara University.

In addition, Patel was the winner of the 2005 Joel S. Birnbaum Prize for Innovation for “visualizing and leading the creation of end-to-end solutions for managing the energy requirements for computation thereby positioning HP as a leader in physical design of datacenters.” The Birnbaum Prize, named for a former director of HP Labs, is awarded annually to a member of HP Labs for contributions to HP or HP Labs that demonstrate extraordinary vision, perseverance, innovation and creativity.

“The Loose Wire Blog”, written by Wall Street Journal columnist Jeremy Wagstaff, has reported on the use of Ken Banks’ FrontlineSMS system in last months Nigerian elections. NMEM, the group who used the software, have just released a report (available by clicking here) detailing the monitoring process and their findings. FrontlineSMS and NMEM’s report was also showcased on the White African website, which specialises in the use of ICT on the African continent.

Tomorrow night, through a videoconference, the Digital Vision program will meet online with students from Tokyo’s Keio University Research Center for Foreign Language Education. This will open their English language teleconferencing program (called the E-Lounge).

Their announcement is here.

General info:
Future Mobile Applications - Practical and fun
May 12th, 2007 (Saturday)
1:00 pm — 4:00 pm (Registration starts at 12:30 pm)
Fenwick & West LLP, Silicon Valley Center
801 California Street, Mountain View, CA 94041,
650 - 988 - 8500

Summary:
Though not focused on mobile phones, one of the things we have learned from the mobile phone boom is the viability of the ASP model. Some apps are fun, while some are just quite germane to life. Either way, the economies of scale is what makes them all successful. It so happens that the ASP model is central to the success of the ICE network and there is a lot that computer/PDA/laptop OEMs and ODMs can learn from the success of the mobile phone ASP example.

Event info:
It is the bi-monthly seminar of Silicon Valley-China Wireless Technology Association (SVCWireless), a registered non-profit organization with over 3,500 members. We are not just technology focused, but also focus on promoting entrepreneurship, networking, learning, and building a bridge between the wireless industries in Asia and the United States.

The theme of discussion this time is the future of mobile applications. We will invite a few industry leaders to talk about what is hot in mobile applications, what makes a “Killer App” for end users, what are the revenue streams that can be generated from this growing market and other key questions to understanding this growing market. Details are enclosed.

Date: Thursday, 5/10/2007
Time: 3:30-5pm
Location: Cordura 100

Seminar Synopsis:
New Hands for Old Palms

The purpose of this project is to get unused PDA hardware into “New Hands” in the global south, initially with very simple software for literacy and health, including HIV/AIDS. The idea can have the greatest impact if we can create a new user model — circulating the units to multiple students and individuals like a library book, instead of the traditional 1:1 adult work approach.

The session will start with hands-on experience with the graphics software, and move on to discussion of the many aspects of making it all happen. Of special interest is the possibility that additional locally-determined software content could then attract sponsors and/or customers, so the project could generate revenue.

I invite RDVP fellows to become advisor-partners to help get New Hands projects going with specific organizations in your various countries. It could be a new platform, to complement your own and other projects, especially if our creativity can get income streams.

John is talking about online communities & gaming tomorrow at the Stanford
Humanities lab from 3-4:30 on the 4th floor of Wallenberg.

RSVP with Henrik Bennetsen - bennetsen@gmail.com or just show up.

http://shl.stanford.edu/

The US federal agency, Americorps*Vista, has awarded Global MapAid (GMA) a kick-start grant over three years, to fundraise, build and test a ‘Geographic Emergency Response Vehicle’ (Geo ERV) for use in mainly New Orleans and the southern coastline. The project will be accomplished in Partnership with the University of New Orleans. A manager is needed for the project, preferably a recent retiree, with long term sales and marketing experience. There are three other technical positions also available. Read the rest of this entry »

Ken Banks’s interview with Erik from White African through Skype is now available. White African is a popular blog on Africa and technology. The interview is available here.

Date: Tuesday 5/1/2007
Time: 3:30-5:30pm
Location: Cordura 100