My colleague Maria Garrido and her team finished a long investigation into the role that ICT hubs played in the wake of the Chilean earthquake. The earthquake was massive. Communities were cut off from each other and as people tried to secure assistance and contact loved ones, ICTs played an …

In civil society spaces, particularly for NGOs and funders who feel pressure to tout/justify their own impact, incentives to share content are often mixed. Organizations and individuals are often torn. Post to someone else’s site increases exposure to a particular post, but also imposes …

On May 11, 2012, the Ministry of Justice of Georgia launched the "Computer Knowledge Society Initiative" to promote digital literacy and e-skills, with a focus on economic development. Will they build on learning from other countries? How can the global library and telecentre communities help …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 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.

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 …