Canadian Play: The Monument

I was just reading the Sept. 2010 issue of readers digest, and found an article about a play written by Canadian Colleen Wagner, and how it is being performed in Rwanda, to help with the healing process there.  If the performing arts can help with the healing process by telling a powerful story, then that's a good thing.  The story sounds pretty harsh, but it connects with people that have lived through very difficult times.

Large maps

Here's a quick tutorial on how to make large maps from google map data... may be useful..

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1073912/google_maps_hack_how_to_save_large_maps/

Support systems...

Here's an article recently published in the ontario society for professional engineers news letter. (link) It talks about how important it is for the local system to be in place to support infrastructure development.  Things like management, construction standards, accounting systems must be in place for large infrastructure systems to work.  Even for relatively small systems, if the support structures are not there, the projects will eventually fail.  This means its not just the technology, its the people and how they relate, the responsibility and social structures that are as important as the tools....

Maker Faire Africa and MultiMachine

This one is very exciting... The guys involved in TEDAfrica and Ushahidi are organizing and event for people from Africa to get together and display their inventions and exchange ideas.

http://makerfaireafrica.com/

If you are in Nairobi this August 27 or 28, you might want to head over to the university and see what's going on.  I want to see pictures and stories when it's over...

another man to watch: Al Hammond

Working in rural india, but planning to scale much larger, Al Hammond is developing a way to make affordable medical care in remote areas.  Local staff trained to run equipment and tests, tele-connected to doctors in urban areas, they can provide doctors visits or diagnostic tests for $1.  The local clinics also provide clean water at a reasonable price $1.50 for a month's supply.

Fast company article

Youtube video describing and demonstrating how it works.

Starting and growing a business

Okay, so this one is a little off of my usual topic.  But maybe there's something here that can scale down to small businesses as well....

Found a couple of blogs via a fast company article here, that are by some venture capitalists in Silicon Valley i think.  They talk about business models and scaleable companies.  Stuff that is way out of my league, but might be useful if it can be distilled.  The first one is by Ben Horowitz, and one blog entry of his talks about the roll of a CEO in terms of passing on bad information and getting help solving problems...

Some how, from the comments of one of Ben's blogs, I came across this article by Steve Blank. Steve also seems to be one who knows a lot about building businesses, so it's worth following some of the posts he puts up...

Peace Dividend Trust

Okay, last one for tonight....

Link from fast company. com  article about a new initiative to help aid $ get spent locally rather than in the usual rich places that donated it... building local economies as they are being helped through gifts...

The idea is to deliver 5 services:

• Training local entrepreneurs on how to find and bid on international contracts
• Translating and distributing international tenders locally
• Maintaining an online database of local entrepreneurs who we have personally verified
• Matchmaking large scale international procurement needs (like bottled water for a big UN mission) to local vendors
• Advocating for the concept of buying local with our "Buy Local - Build Afghanistan (or Timor or Haiti) campaigns

So, the key is linking local people with the contracts to be fulfilled, hiring local people to help their neighbours.  It's one of those "why didn't I think of that sooner" ideas...

The Peace Dividend Trust website looks to have a large data base of reports and papers about development and peace building ideas... maybe another night i'll dig into it more...

The Peace Dividend Market site links local businesses with international contracts, and currently is operating in Afganistan, Timor and Haiti