Tension between “intentionality” and “self-expression” in Egyptian social movements?
Maria Garrido presented an outstanding TASCHA Talk on Monday on the role of ICT in the revolution in Egypt. It’s easy to get hooked on the news narrative that made events in Iran and Egypt “Twitter Revolutions,” however Maria and her team were emphatic that such a narrative …
Aggregating election social media in real time to prevent conflict
Mike Best and his team at Georgia Tech have designed a real-time election monitoring tool that aggregates social media content from about 20 different sources, including Twitter, Facebook, Ushahidi, blogs, and SMS messages.
Reconstructing Cambodia: The role of libraries in development
Following Open Cambodia 2011, I spent a day touring libraries with Margaret Bywater, a 25 year veteran of Cambodian libraries and development work. Margaret is at the epicenter of the movement to train librarians and open libraries in Cambodia. It is an uphill struggle because the genocide …
Innovation Grounds 1.0
This mind map lays out a framework for thinking about “innovation grounds” — spaces where people can come together and generate ideas, solutions, knowledge, culture, and relationships. It emerged from perceiving coworking spaces as next-generation telecentres; seeing connections between …
Learning from outside the library: PLM 2011
Seven NGOs share innovative technology programs at the "Learning from outside the library" session at the Gates Foundation Global Libraries annual grantee peer learning meeting.
Innovation hubs and co-working
Innovation hubs and co-working spaces are flourishing. Community technology centers and libraries can ride this trend. Physical space offers important, often overlooked, value for people coming together around technology.
Policy & Technology: Edward Tufte’s keynote for Tech@State’s Data Visualization event
Despite the title, Tufte's keynote for the Tech@State event on data visualization was the same that he gave at a one-day workshop I attended in 1999. It was a brilliant talk then, and it’s still good now. It could have been better if Tufte addressed implementation. The how. The practice of …
Seven points for successful youth technology programs
Last month I attended a conference on Youth, Partnerships, Employability: From Innovation to Scale, hosted by the International Youth Foundation. I moderated a session on “The role of technology in helping youth at risk gain access to information, skills and resources.” This session centered on …
Survey data analysis begins
Over the past few months, the survey analysis working group of the Global Impact Study has been planning for and implementing the user and venue survey data analysis. This working group, comprised of Mike Crandall, Chris Rothschild, George Sciadas, and Araba Sey, is working with the University …
Survey data analysis and integration begins with two workshops
April 18-21, 2011 was very busy and productive for us here at the Global Impact Study. We held two workshops - one on survey data analysis and one on our project-wide data integration plan. During the survey data analysis workshop, we reviewed initial user survey data to identify three …