Hello all,
This week, I was in Abuja (Nigeria) for the Digital World Africa 2006
Conference - ICTs for Education and Development. I presented our
projects, with a focus on "empoverment". Sj was also present at the
conference, along with the OLPC team and made a very insightful talk on
motivation.
The conference was attended by possibly 300-400 people, most of whom
where Nigerians. A big focus was given on OLPC (with a presentation by
Negroponte), with Nigeria being announced to be one of the first
countries to likely receive the laptops in the future.
The conference dealt with issues of
* Information and knowledge as human capital (this is where Sj and I
participated)
* Practical realities in Bridging the Digital Divide
* Role of capital, institution building, entrepreneurship in promoting
education and development
* Technical infrastructure (not surprisingly, the least nigerian panel)
* Local content
* Learning (I entirely missed this one)
I learned a lot from seeing how a conference was held over there and
more generally, about social relationships. I reported some of my
thoughts here
(http://blog.anthere.org/index.php/2006/09/17/76-laughing-not-to-show-happiness-but-to-share).
I believe some of those specific cultural characteristics will probably
be an issue in the participation of a project such as Wikipedia. The
pyramid of age/position seems to be very heavy weight in all their
activities (requirements of official agreement before doing anything.
High respect due to position and age etc...). It will be hard to
concilliate this with our flat-decision making system. However, I also
felt a huge desire to become active and to comment things.
Amazing moment though was the panel about local content. Most of what
has been discussed was of technical nature (the "content" was perceived
as being "hardware to build"). The only person who really talk about
"content" as text/image, simply explained that 1) creating content was a
terribly painful and tiring and boring activity. As such it 2) required
to be a for-benefit activity and 3) as is, needed serious protection in
terms of copyright.
As far as I can remember, he was the only person to ever mention
copyright issues. His presentation was quite depressing :-)
This said, later, a woman went to see me and blessed us for the projects
and what we are doing. I felt very moved from an emotional point of view.
Most of those people are currently struggling to simply have computer
and internet, issues such as "open source", "filtering internet for
kids", "cybercrime" (Nigeria being the highest in terms of cybercrime),
do not seem to be yet on their plates.
As usual, I asked in the room who knew about the project and I probably
do not need to say that the number of hands were amongst the lowest I
have ever seen. Maybe 1/5, probably less. And most being the
international visitors...
A government employee came to see me and said he had used Wikipedia, but
never realised he could edit it.
To make it short, this conference probably united the most technically
advanced people from the country. People amongst the few with nearly
unlimited computer and internet access. They are english speaking
people. They work on ICT issues. And YET, most had no idea of our
existence.
This suggests to me that one of the first thing we can do to increase
our audience over there is precisely being present at such conferences
to spread the word.
A couple of journalists attended the conference. I highjacked one of
them (who knew the project), working for specialised (technical) press
and "sold" him an article. We agreed to come in contact after the conf,
with developers input as well, and to have an article on Wikipedia in
his journal.
I also talked with many NGO, some being quite big. And potentially a
good way to increase awareness.
Another cool thing was to actually identify good and interesting
speakers or people we could invite to assist Wikimania next year.
Last, we talk about a project, which was presented at Wikimania, Wiki
voices. The idea is to list all languages spoken in Nigeria (over 250)
and to describe each of them. To define texts, to be recorded in top
quality in all those languages (the concept of merry christmas and happy
new year of Gerard and Sabine). It seems it could fit both in wiktionary
and to be a basis for a wikibooks. A clearer proposal should be written
in teh next few weeks, but would have to need to be approved by the
Nigerian gvt before any implementation.
This project would be both a cool way to bring content and one to get
more people to know about the project.
Overall, I was quite happy of the various outcome of my visit. It was
worth it and helped me understand what would be good to do to expand our
visibility over there, as well as participation rates... but also to see
what barriers we are likely to meet.
An old reference
*
http://www.vanguardngr.com/articles/2002/features/technology/tec319072006.html
---------
Some time ago, I also talked to you about a project I first heard about
2 weeks ago in Geneva
(http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-September/009707.html).
Since I was going through Geneva again to come back from Abuja, I took
one additional day to talk more in length about the RAFT project.
It is very likely to be started in january 2007. The concept is simply
to make a wikibook (in french) related to tropical diseases and various
ways to handle these deseases according to cultural and geographical
areas. The book would be in particular written by medical professional
staff (but it is perfectly understood it will be open to others as
well). During fall, one or more coordinators will outline the content of
the book and gather the information to be made available to future
participants. Then, just before a conference in Bamako, a training
session will occur, with participants from Mali and others countries
being presented the project and the wiki way.
I really look forward this project to happen (the organiser seems
reasonnably confident it will occur as of today), as it would both mean
a foot in several african countries and local content of quality.
----------
At the same time, I have discussed with the CEO of the HonCode (first
system of accreditation of medical information on the net). The
accreditation system is designed to label sites respecting a certain
code of deontology. Wikimedia projects can not currently get the HonCode
accreditation because of one unique element we can not respect
(identification of authors :-)), but the organisation would be
interested in crafting a Code for collaborative wiki systems. See
http://www.hon.ch/ for further reference.
best
Ant
_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
This week, I was in Abuja (Nigeria) for the Digital World Africa 2006
Conference - ICTs for Education and Development. I presented our
projects, with a focus on "empoverment". Sj was also present at the
conference, along with the OLPC team and made a very insightful talk on
motivation.
The conference was attended by possibly 300-400 people, most of whom
where Nigerians. A big focus was given on OLPC (with a presentation by
Negroponte), with Nigeria being announced to be one of the first
countries to likely receive the laptops in the future.
The conference dealt with issues of
* Information and knowledge as human capital (this is where Sj and I
participated)
* Practical realities in Bridging the Digital Divide
* Role of capital, institution building, entrepreneurship in promoting
education and development
* Technical infrastructure (not surprisingly, the least nigerian panel)
* Local content
* Learning (I entirely missed this one)
I learned a lot from seeing how a conference was held over there and
more generally, about social relationships. I reported some of my
thoughts here
(http://blog.anthere.org/index.php/2006/09/17/76-laughing-not-to-show-happiness-but-to-share).
I believe some of those specific cultural characteristics will probably
be an issue in the participation of a project such as Wikipedia. The
pyramid of age/position seems to be very heavy weight in all their
activities (requirements of official agreement before doing anything.
High respect due to position and age etc...). It will be hard to
concilliate this with our flat-decision making system. However, I also
felt a huge desire to become active and to comment things.
Amazing moment though was the panel about local content. Most of what
has been discussed was of technical nature (the "content" was perceived
as being "hardware to build"). The only person who really talk about
"content" as text/image, simply explained that 1) creating content was a
terribly painful and tiring and boring activity. As such it 2) required
to be a for-benefit activity and 3) as is, needed serious protection in
terms of copyright.
As far as I can remember, he was the only person to ever mention
copyright issues. His presentation was quite depressing :-)
This said, later, a woman went to see me and blessed us for the projects
and what we are doing. I felt very moved from an emotional point of view.
Most of those people are currently struggling to simply have computer
and internet, issues such as "open source", "filtering internet for
kids", "cybercrime" (Nigeria being the highest in terms of cybercrime),
do not seem to be yet on their plates.
As usual, I asked in the room who knew about the project and I probably
do not need to say that the number of hands were amongst the lowest I
have ever seen. Maybe 1/5, probably less. And most being the
international visitors...
A government employee came to see me and said he had used Wikipedia, but
never realised he could edit it.
To make it short, this conference probably united the most technically
advanced people from the country. People amongst the few with nearly
unlimited computer and internet access. They are english speaking
people. They work on ICT issues. And YET, most had no idea of our
existence.
This suggests to me that one of the first thing we can do to increase
our audience over there is precisely being present at such conferences
to spread the word.
A couple of journalists attended the conference. I highjacked one of
them (who knew the project), working for specialised (technical) press
and "sold" him an article. We agreed to come in contact after the conf,
with developers input as well, and to have an article on Wikipedia in
his journal.
I also talked with many NGO, some being quite big. And potentially a
good way to increase awareness.
Another cool thing was to actually identify good and interesting
speakers or people we could invite to assist Wikimania next year.
Last, we talk about a project, which was presented at Wikimania, Wiki
voices. The idea is to list all languages spoken in Nigeria (over 250)
and to describe each of them. To define texts, to be recorded in top
quality in all those languages (the concept of merry christmas and happy
new year of Gerard and Sabine). It seems it could fit both in wiktionary
and to be a basis for a wikibooks. A clearer proposal should be written
in teh next few weeks, but would have to need to be approved by the
Nigerian gvt before any implementation.
This project would be both a cool way to bring content and one to get
more people to know about the project.
Overall, I was quite happy of the various outcome of my visit. It was
worth it and helped me understand what would be good to do to expand our
visibility over there, as well as participation rates... but also to see
what barriers we are likely to meet.
An old reference
*
http://www.vanguardngr.com/articles/2002/features/technology/tec319072006.html
---------
Some time ago, I also talked to you about a project I first heard about
2 weeks ago in Geneva
(http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-September/009707.html).
Since I was going through Geneva again to come back from Abuja, I took
one additional day to talk more in length about the RAFT project.
It is very likely to be started in january 2007. The concept is simply
to make a wikibook (in french) related to tropical diseases and various
ways to handle these deseases according to cultural and geographical
areas. The book would be in particular written by medical professional
staff (but it is perfectly understood it will be open to others as
well). During fall, one or more coordinators will outline the content of
the book and gather the information to be made available to future
participants. Then, just before a conference in Bamako, a training
session will occur, with participants from Mali and others countries
being presented the project and the wiki way.
I really look forward this project to happen (the organiser seems
reasonnably confident it will occur as of today), as it would both mean
a foot in several african countries and local content of quality.
----------
At the same time, I have discussed with the CEO of the HonCode (first
system of accreditation of medical information on the net). The
accreditation system is designed to label sites respecting a certain
code of deontology. Wikimedia projects can not currently get the HonCode
accreditation because of one unique element we can not respect
(identification of authors :-)), but the organisation would be
interested in crafting a Code for collaborative wiki systems. See
http://www.hon.ch/ for further reference.
best
Ant
_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
