From sandy at psyknet.dk Wed Dec 4 14:27:12 2002 From: sandy at psyknet.dk (Sandra Delgado) Date: Wed, 4 Dec 2002 08:27:12 -0500 Subject: [Bytesforall] Feliz Navidad!!! Message-ID: <200212042124.gB4LOLW4016809@mail.sarai.net> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/bytesforall/attachments/20021204/234a1de5/attachment.htm From monica at sarai.net Fri Dec 6 10:53:21 2002 From: monica at sarai.net (Monica Narula) Date: Fri, 6 Dec 2002 15:23:21 +0530 Subject: [Bytesforall] Report on TML@Sarai Message-ID: Dear All Below is a report of the Tactical Media Lab at Sarai which was held on the 14, 15 16 of November. Feedback welcome. Also available online at www.sarai.net/events.htm best M Tactical Media Lab @ Sarai On November 14 - 16, 2002, Sarai hosted the South Asian Tactical Media Lab (TML), one of a chain of such events, that are taking place in different parts of the world (Amsterdam, Barcelona, Cluj, New York, Delhi and Sydney) as a run-up to the fourth Next 5 Minutes Conference (N5M4) in Amsterdam in 2003. Over three hectic days free software enthusiasts, programmers, graphic designers, filmmakers, artists, activists, members of NGOs, telecommunications experts, students and media practitioners from Mumbai, Dehradun, Kolkata, Dacca, Kathmandu, Tehran & Delhi shared ideas, experiences, problems and grievances, explored varied uses of tactical media, discussed strategies, designed posters and websites, disbanded opinions and formed new ones through panel discussions, presentations, installations, workshops and a film screening. The event lent itself naturally to the crystallization of a loose coalition of tactical media enthusiasts in the Asian region. From the very begining it was positioned as being a 'process' in the course of which the participants would uncover the energies of a network ... after three days this network was brimming with ideas of many possible collaborations to counter everyday local situations. We hope to sustain these energies in the months to come. Day 1 of the Tactical Media Lab at Sarai, November 14, 2002 The first day began with a very well attended public conversation between Shuddhabrata Sengupta from Sarai and the TML's "Mystery Guest" - David Barsamian. David Barsamian , the founder and director of Alternative Radio, an independent, award-winning, weekly radio program produced in Boulder, Colorado, is well known in Delhi through the publications of his interviews with Noam Chomsky, Edward Said and Eqbal Ahmed. Barsamian, who happened to be visiting Delhi at the time was invited by Sarai to open the Tactical Media Lab, which he did with a very inspiring invocation to media activists to be positive, energetic, creative and humorous and not turn into moaners with dwindling audiences! The conversation with him led to a very lively discussion in which the question of "free speech", particularly in conflict ridden societies like South Asia's was actively discussed. The TML got off to a very active and lively start as a result of this and through the next few days the importance of free expression, new ways of reaching the public domain and the necessity to be inventive and creative recurred several times in the conversations and presentations. The afternoon of the first day featured presentations by the people at Sarai working on the Cybermohalla (Cyber Neighbourhood) Project. Shveta Sarda, Ruchika Negi, Joy Chatterjee and Ashish Mahajan from Sarai, with Azra Tabassum from the LNJP colony Cybermohalla Compughar, talked about the processes involved in setting up digital media labs using free software in the LNJP squatter settlement and the Ambedkar Nagar Resettlement Colony in Delhi. Issues of access, technological flexibility, creativity and different ways of looking at the city were discussed. Shveta presented some of the work done by the Cybermohalla project, Joy and Ashish spoke of the software and hardware configurations involved in operationalizing each lab, Ruchika read from the journal that she is keeping of her interactions with people on the street, and Azra spoke of how the process works to steadily remove layers of fear in terms of her engagement with the urban environment. Following this, Pradip Saha, Managing Editor Down to Earth magazine, spoke briefly about using humour and subversive fun as an essential element in designing an effective communication strategy by activists This intervention was followed by a panel composed of Shekhar Krishan, PUKAR , along with Sanjay Bhangar from Indymedia, Mumbai; Arun Mehta, telecommunications engineer and Internet activist; Partha Sarkar of the Bytesforall Network, from Dhaka, and Shilpa Gupta, from the Open Circle Artists' Collective in Mumbai. Each presentation featured candid discussions on the possibilities and limitations of media activism in South Asia. While the panelists were often of the opinion that, barring very specialist fora, online discussion lists have not taken off as expected in South Asia, they emphasized the need to develop effective communication strategies that engaged with public concerns in a demonstrably public manner. The Indymedia Mumbai group spoke of their efforts to involve communication students in the university to develop an effective web presence, especially in the context of online actions commemorating the anniversary of the Bhopal Disaster of 1984, in tandem with the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, earlier this year. Arun Mehta spoke of the feasibility of low-cost and low-tech strategies for radio as a tool for building sustainable, community controlled communications networks in the rural areas of Orissa in Eastern India. Gaurab Upadhyay from Bytesforall, Kathmandu, intervened with his experience of alternate radio networks in Nepal and discussions revolved around how to use the technology, and available networks, to suit urban conditions. Partha Sarkar spoke about the experience of building the Bytesforall network, which he initiated from Dhaka, together with Fredrick Noronha, who is based in India. Bytesforall has now grown into a pro-active South Asia wide network for people interested in the social usage of information and communication technologies. He led us through the evolution of Bytesforall as an online forum where technicians, activists, and people interested in the issues of development network and brainstorm together. He also pointed out how discussions on Bytesforall have, by being focused on concrete and practical issues, and by discussing all matters in a spirit of knowledge-sharing as peers, have so far managed to transcend the fractious 'political' barriers that exist in South Asia. Shilpa Gupta from the Open Circle collective talked of public art intervention experiments that she and some members of her group have been involved in, especially the Aar Paar Projects that brought together artists from India and Pakistan for exchanges of portable art objects and posters which were then exhibited in tea stalls, grocery stores, and other public spaces. She also spoke about the another artist-led initiative called "The Reclaim Your Freedom Week" earlier this year in response to, and in protest against, the violence in Gujarat in March 2002. The discussions that followed the presentations focused on the need for creating an active discursive community of artists, practitioners and others that could step out of the "responding to events" syndrome that seems to characterize much of artist/practitioner inspired activism, in order to move towards more sustained forms of public-practitioner interfaces that draw on the energies of everyday forms of resistance and communication. Event-centred protests, often take on a "token" character, even as they sap the energies of the artists/practitioners/activists who get involved, and also lead to hierarchies of people who "deliver a message" as opposed to people who passively "receive a message". Day 2 of the Tactical Media Lab at Sarai, November 15, 2002 The second day was devoted to Free Software. The morning session started with a general presentation on Linux, its ideas and practices by Kishore Bhargava from Linux Users Group, Delhi. This was followed by a presentation of Knopik and LAP (Linux Access Project) by Supreet Sethi from Sarai. A lot of pertinent issues and queries were raised on the implementation, usage and the philosophy of the projects. Arun Mehta from www.radiophony.com demonstrated the software that has been developed for Stephen Hawkings (http://indataportal.com/software/hawking.htm)which was written in visual basic and he made a public request to the audience to render the same on a Free Software platform. The second half of the day concentrated on the localization efforts within the Free Software /Open Source platform. Ravikant, from the language programme of Sarai, briefed the audience about the problems non-English users face - related to fonts, encoding standards, keyboards and web design. Gaurab Upadhyay (bytesforall, Kathmandu) and Arash Zaini from Linux Iran, talked of the progress being made in localising Nepali and Persian respectively. Gaurab discussed the differences between Nepali Devanagari and Hindi Devanagari and was of the opinion that Unicode is so far the best available solution. From the audience Niyam Bhushan clarified certain basic issue about fonts, glyphs and typefaces. But the presentation that truly inspired everyone was Arash Zaini's who has recently translated the KDE desktop in Persian. (KDE is a Linux-based-programme package that provides efficient mail handler, calendars and organisers apart from the usual functions for browsing, editing, word processing, graphics and games). After interactions we realised that with only slight modifications the same desktop can be used for writing in Urdu as well. Arash then took us inside KDE and showed how effortlessly and flawlessly each of the applications worked. It was a revelation to learn that only four people could create this in just four months. He also fielded questions on the whole idea and process of translation and the public reception of the package. The concluding panel of the day was an open discussion on 'Collaborations and Contributions: Practitioners and Users in the Free Software Movement - the making of a creative community'. This discussion, attended by Raju Mathur, Leo Fernandes, Kishore Bhargava and others from the Linux Users Group, Delhi; Sharad Kukreti from Dehradun, Trevor Warren from Media Lab Asia, Mumbai, and other participants, focused on issues of freedom and programming culture and aroused strong reactions from both Free Software practitioners and others in the audience. Critical debates in the international Free Software/Open Source community were reiterated in local contexts.. debates that were mirrored in the film, 'The Code: Story of Linux', that was screened at the end of the day. Day 3 of the Tactical Media Lab at Sarai, November 16, 2002 The third day of the Tactical Media Lab began with a session moderated by Ravi Sundaram from Sarai on "ICT and Civil Society: Can we think beyond the Development Paradigm". The participants in this discussion were Leo Fernandes of the Free Software Foundation (India), Trevor Warren (MIT Media Lab, Asia), Gaurab Upadhyay (Telecom activist, Kathmandu), Arun Mehta (Telecom Activist, Delhi), Jeebesh Bagchi (Sarai) and Shekhar Krishnan (PUKAR, Bombay) The discussion focused on the problems of limiting software interventions within a social frame strictly of "instrumental" and "developmental" paradigms. This was based on a critique of the notion of "development" itself, and how it often perpetuated top-down models of social processes. The second session of the day was a presentation by Shaina Anand of her Tellavision Project and the allied Chitrakarkhana.net website. This project aims to document social and political processes in Bombay, post September 11. She showed footage from her film in progress and made a presentation of the website and hopes to tie in responses from the film viewing process on to the interactive parts of her website. The discussion focused on what needs to be done to create a language of image-making and viewing that ties into everyday concerns of young people in a way that reflects their lives and conditions, rather than reproduce a "political" rhetoric that might serve also to alienate and distance large numbers of people, while speaking only to the converted. The final session of the day was a round table on the need for a network of new media networks in Asia. The participants from Iran, Bangladesh, Nepal and various parts of India, spoke of the need to carry the energies that they had discovered through their meetings into the future. Plans were made to set up a Tactical Media Asia discussion list hosted by Sarai, and everyone was keen to initiate a cluster of collaborative processes, like for instance a free software desktop in the Urdu language as a concrete instance of collaboration between people at Sarai and the LinuxIran group. The TML ended on a very positive note, with people taking away many ideas for future collaborations, and everyone agreed on making a strong Asian representation and platform at the next Next 5 Minutes ! WORKSHOPS: Cybermohalla Workshops: Leading up to the TML a series of workshops were conducted at the Cybermohalla labs in the working class settlements of LNJP basti, Central Delhi and at Dakshinpuri, South Delhi). Workshop 01 November 1 & 2, 2002 Furthering the Cybermohalla experience of writing the city, this workshop explored the insider/outsider binary, problematising it through the sharing of daily encounters within the neighbourhood and outside it, through life stories, stories about migration, work and labour in the city, narratives of meeting spaces within the basti, of contested spaces, the production of criminality. The primary forms were writing and conversation. Workshop 02 November 8 & 9, 2002 This was a fun, hands-on workshop with reels of paper, transparency sheets, colour pens, crayons, scissors, pictures and glue, to produce a wall magazine. Over twenty enthusiastic participants spent two days writing, cutting and pasting material, working on their own and each others' work. The theme for the wall magazine was 'water' - daily routine around it, the material objects, related with it and conversations around community taps. The idea was to explore forms that would allow for a playful text-image relation and collaborative work to create content for a common output, through the concepts of hypertext and hyperlinking employed in print publications. Emphasis was also on the design elements used to produce a publication that would be reproducible through photocopying. The content generated in the two workshops, along with other forms that have been explored in Cybermohalla (mails, diary entries, ethnographic notes, notes on conversations at the labs) was compiled and circulated among visitors at the TML as a photocopied publication, Cybermohalla Notebook 01. Print & Web Design Workshop November 14-16, 2002 The workshop, held on all three days of the TML, was conducted by Pradeep Saha, Managing Editor Down to Earth magazine and Mrityunjoy Chatterjee from the Sarai Media Lab. It was held at Sarai Public Access Zone using free software tools like Open Office [text, vector image design & HTML editor], Gimp [raster image editor] & Scribus [publishing layout software]. The workshop started with an introduction to Tactical Media and different approaches to it. The fourteen participants - students, filmmakers and activists - were shown flyers and broadsheets as examples of tactical media and were introduced to varied print design strategies and to web technology. After this the participants were split into two groups and asked to design a campaign that could be put to use outside the workshop area. As most of them were from the Delhi University they chose to work on issues that are of immediate concern to the student community - Sexual Harrassment & Communal Violence. Throughout the workshop participants discussed ideas and strategies and on the final day Shuddhabrata Sengupta talked briefly on visual rhetoric and other tactical principles. At the end of three days each group designed a website and a print campaign. People from both groups presented their work, describing them and their experience in detail to all those who had assembled for the TML. The first group designed a poster campaign on 'Sexual Harrassment in the City' while the second adopted a satirical position on communal violence - 'How to Orchestrate Riots'. The websites were extensions of the same ideas with more links and images. The works were warmly appreciated. The participants too enjoyed the process of making creative use of low-cost, easily available materials and designing tools. Many of them were already making posters for their campaigns, and the workshop opened up a wide range of ideas and strategies and helped them to put these in perspective. INSTALLATIONS AT THE INTERFACE ZONE There were three installations(Video/sound, Flash/sound, HTML) playing all through the Tactical Media Lab at the Sarai Interface Zone giving visitors a virtual spatial sense of the city. The works originated from the idea of quintessentially focussing on a sound piece, i.e to make a psycho-geographic scape of various kinds of urban networks, right from electronic communication portals like the telephony networks, internet cafes and call centers to more physical networks like transport portals in Delhi, which would include public transport portals like the Inter State Bus Terminus and the railway station. The idea was to make textural sound recordings at these sites and then develop a panoramic navigational sound scape of several of these co-ordinates in a non-linear pattern. Installation 1. Traffic media: Modem Telephone Line Parenthesis by Dylan Volkhardt, independent media artist in residence at the Sarai Media Lab The installation was an attempt to look at the (dis)location between the liquid architecture (the sound scape) of the telephone communication network and the physical aspects of labour and cabling. The video was shot just outside the CSDS where some cable work was in progress. The installation, work on which finished just the day before the TML, consisted of three 15" TV screens playing a video loop at different speeds. The sound track was a long loop playing in the background all through the day, of locational sounds recorded at PCO booths and call centres and worked on in the Sarai Media Lab. Installation 2. Traffic media: Platform no 12 by Renu Iyer, Sarai Media Lab This was a 2 minute audio/video scape playing as a continuous loop on a computer screen. The video was a 4 box per frame flash movie, shot at the New Delhi Railway Station. The idea was to look at the Railway Station as an urban navigational spatial network, and attempted to highlight our collective memories of our fragmented everyday recordings of these sites. The soundscape was a layered piece of recordings made at the Station, with ambient sounds and conversations with travellers. Visitors could listen to the soundtrack with headphones. Regulars at the Sarai caf?, cast curious, at times even perplexed, glances at the screen playing in the background and then went over to engage with the works. Installation 3. Dilliwale Kaun? Baharwale Kaun? A web installation by Syeda Farhana Zaman and Mrityunjoy Chatterjee This is an HTML web installation of hyper-linked images and texts, looking at the migrant communities in Delhi. The work is based on photographic documentation and conversations with emigrants living in slums and in shrines in Delhi. It explores issues of citizenship, of migration and of related harrassments and hardships faced by the many Bangladeshi migrants on the streets of Delhi. Mrityunjoy Chatterjee, from the Sarai Media Lab, helped Farhana convert photographs and texts to build web-based narratives of the experience of being an outsider. The installation was available on a computer screen, as was the Sarai digital Interface which is always available on the local network at the Sarai Interface Zone. Posters were also put up - made from photographs taken at the Delhi Metro construction sites and cyber cafes. Installation 4. Weather Report by Rustam Vania, Centre for Science & Environment, Delhi The installation which takes a satirical look at the politics of Climate Change was made for the World Climate Change Conference held in Delhi in October 2002. The panels were put up all over Sarai and the CSDS. -- Monica Narula Sarai:The New Media Initiative 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 054 www.sarai.net From laangpu at rediffmail.com Mon Dec 9 08:37:46 2002 From: laangpu at rediffmail.com (langh laang) Date: 9 Dec 2002 07:37:46 -0000 Subject: [Bytesforall] Acknowledgement Message-ID: <20021209073746.16272.qmail@webmail24.rediffmail.com> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/bytesforall/attachments/20021209/4d7f40d9/attachment.diff From dp-info at digitalpartners.org Wed Dec 11 21:52:48 2002 From: dp-info at digitalpartners.org (dp-info) Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2002 12:52:48 -0800 Subject: [Bytesforall] re: digital partners sel update Message-ID: SEL Update A mid-term report on the progress of this year's SEL program Beginning this month, teams of graduate student, experts from business, development, and the ICT industry, along with Social Entrepreneurs from around the world began working together at sites across the US and Europe as part of Digital Partners' Social Enterprise Laboratory (SEL). Focused on mobilizing the enormous potential of ICT to stimulate markets in service to the poor, SEL identifies and supports Social Entrepreneurs and innovative NGO's using ICT to empower the poor and the underserved communities in which they live. In this year's cycle, ten projects - located in Brazil, India, Mexico, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, and Uganda (see inset) -, were selected from roughly 140 applications drawn from around the world. Accepted proposals were then reviewed by a blue-ribbon panel of leading executives and luminaries in ICT, development, and business - such as Ethan Zucherman, the driving force behind Geekcorp, Michael Best of MIT's Media Lab, and Peter Cowhey, former Chief of the International Bureau of the FCC. Selected projects had to not only meet Digital Partners' standards of sustainability, replicability and grassroots impact but also the demanding eye of each judge. "The selection process is not an easy one", says Joseph Joy, one of the judges and a key developer of Microsoft's emerging server technologies. "For me personally, the project's management team is very, very important, as are fundamental viability issues and the novelty of the idea." The selected projects represent a diverse mix of initiatives, from helping handicrafts industries use the internet to connect directly with wholesale and retail buyers to expanding credit access via the use of SmartCards to the poor. For each of the projects, the aim is to take technology to the next level in helping the underprivileged help themselves. The SEL teams, now convening, will work with the Social Entrepreneurs to further develop their ideas. The goal is for each of the teams to develop a deliverable - be it a business/marketing plan, impact study, or market assessment - that will help give the project a solid foundation on which to grow. Harvard Business School, one of the five universities Digital Partners is partnering with this year (see inset), is providing two teams of MBA students to help carry participating Social Entrepreneurs' visions forward. One team will be working on the PDAs in Uganda project helping to bring the benefits of PDAs to rural healthcare providers in Uganda while the other team is focused on helping the Handicrafts eTrade Center project use the internet to increase the income of rural handicrafts producers in India. Students are not only able to contribute their considerable talents to furthering notable projects of social value but find participating in SEL to be a wonderful opportunity, often rare in the academic setting, to bring together all of their academic and experiential learning. "This experience is invaluable" notes Steen Simonsen of Thunderbird Graduate School of International Management, another school participating in the SEL program. "Working over the span of a year, with a talented team located around the globe, presents a great opportunity to apply my international business skills to a very meaningful, real world project." For team advisors, participation in SEL is equally rewarding, offering these seasoned professionals - such as Chris Hedrick, former Technology Policy Advisor to Governor Gary Locke of Washington State and Director of Strategy and Operations for the Gates Library Foundation - the opportunity to bring their considerable knowledge and experience to bear on projects initiated and controlled at the grassroots level serving real people on the ground in developing communities around the world. This commitment to local control and service is very important to many SEL advisors who, like Tom Martin, a senior development specialist with the Grameen Technology Center - the technology arm of the Grameen Foundation - give their time and energy to Digital Partners' programs because, "it is one of the very few organizations that let grassroots organizations have the control". The key to SEL's success really does lie in the participation of grassroots organizations that see the value in what Digital Partners' SEL program has to offer their nascent initiatives. Social Entrepreneurs like Njideka Ugwuegbu of the Youth for Technology Foundation's TechPreneurship program in Nigeria (see inset) are already reaping the benefits of working with their mentoring teams - in her case, from the University of Washington. "The YTF team spent a lot of time here [in Seattle] and in Nigeria defining the strategic vision for the TechPreneurship program," says Njideka of her preparations for working with her team. Like many organizations working at the grassroots level, finding time and resources to focus on strategic planning issues is always difficult. SEL offers both a framework and support to help grassroots organizations focus on strategic concerns so often neglected but so very critical to the long-term success of the project. To find out more about Digital Partners, SEL, participating projects, or to lend your financial support, please visit our website at www.digitalpartners.org . -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/bytesforall/attachments/20021211/e29aa053/attachment.htm From fred at bytesforall.org Thu Dec 12 05:36:34 2002 From: fred at bytesforall.org (Frederick Noronha) Date: Thu, 12 Dec 2002 10:06:34 +0530 (IST) Subject: [Bytesforall] LINK: Hyderabad consultation on rural women in the knowledge society Message-ID: egional Consultation on Rural Women in Knowledge Society Jointly organised by the FAO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific and ICRISAT December 16-19, 2002 Patancheru (Hyderabad), India Program Note The rapid advances in information and communication technologies (ICTs) in the last decade have led to creation of wealth in a significant way, and have led to unprecedented ways and opportunities for sharing of information sources and knowledge. Simultaneously, there has been a concern about the widening digital divide within and across nations, primarily caused by inequitable access to ICT and the benefits. The digital divide is more alarming in the context of marginalization of rural community and the widening information and opportunity gaps between rural and urban communities. A number of experimental or pilot activities have been initiated all over the world, especially in Africa, Asia and Latin America, which aim to address the challenge of narrowing the digital divide. Such projects have shown that a blend of innovative technology development, financing, and fostering use of ICT as a common resource can offer unprecedented opportunities for rural women and men to derive benefits from the use of contemporary ICTs. Many of these initiatives require sources of information, knowledge and expertise which are available in considerable measure in the intergovernmental organisations and in the CGIAR system which are working for enhancing food security and reduction of poverty. Through these initiatives, there are new ways available now to take such expertise and knowledge to partners in development who need them most. With the enhancement in the definition of National Agricultural Research Systems to include new partners, particularly, the non-profit and for-profit private sector, there are emerging opportunities to make an impact through knowledge on the broad issue of food security. In FAO, the importance of ICTs is recognized as tools that serve the rural community by improving the access, quality and current relevance of information to support their livelihood and food security strategies. The international community has emphasised the importance of access to information from a rights perspective, and opportunities are now available that allow blending the rights approach to information with the sustainable livelihoods approach. Prior to the World Summit on Information Society, it is important that we examine the value of ICTs for every segment of global society and particularly for those who have been marginalized in the previous phases of technological revolutions, namely rural communities, illiterate rural women and populations living in resource poor environment and isolated areas. ICTs offer the opportunity to mainstream their concerns into development as well as empowering them with information to connect to the outside world to explore alternative approaches to livelihood and life styles. This consultation is designed to address two of the most critical components of the digital divide, namely the rural and the women, and to explore with partners, processes, designs and models that can have a positive bearing on these issues. There are a number of studies on the disparity between rural and urban locations in access to ICTs. Far fewer studies are available on the impact of ICTs on women, especially on women living in rural areas. A position paper prepared earlier this year analysed a number of pilot initiatives in parts of Asia and it emerges that any new initiative in ICTs for development (ICT4D) needs to reflect on the following issues: 1. Enabling participation of rural women in an information economy (for example, through on line community banking and micro credit transactions) 2. Facilitating skill and expertise development in the context of introduction and spread of new rural micro enterprises, which are skill and knowledge intensive and which arise directly from adopting an I-NRM approach to rural production and employment 3. Enabling rural women's organizations in the use of ICTs for networking opportunities. 4. Improving opportunities for Distance Learning (including addressing instruction at a basic level) to address rural educational access inequity 5. Disaster preparedness (e.g. drought, cyclones/hurricanes, extreme weather conditions) 6. Capacity building for "invisible" impact (such as nomenclature processes on the Internet, meta- tagging and content creation protocols) The consultation will bring together key actors in some of the ICT4D projects in Asia, eminent academics analysing impact of ICTs among rural communities, partners from the corporate sector in ICTs and agri-business sectors, experts in open/ distance learning, and CGIAR experts based in Asia in training and information sciences and impact evaluation, innovators of applying ICTs for rural development, and the regional and global representatives from the FAO and UN Agencies. The consultation itself will be a process-based one and demonstrate multi-sectoral collaboration on UN FAO, other relevant UN Agencies, CGIAR System, Private sector (both commercial and non- government) and government representatives. The following are the anticipated outputs of the consultation: o Publication of a summary of proceedings of the on line and real time workshop in electronic and hard copy format for global access o Recommendations to strengthen F O work in the technical area of harnessing ICTs for the advancement of rural women. A regional network to monitor the efforts in the area of ICTs and Rural Women. o Consolidation of the recommendations of the proceedings to form the basis for a multi-stakeholder, multi-partner regional project on "Asian rural women in knowledge society" Formation of a technical task force to transform conference recommendations as input to the processes associated with the first phase of the World Summit on Information Society In the post-conference phase, the country studies will be consolidated for publication as an analytical work that can be distributed by global marketing agencies. The technical task force will also establish a virtual platform for partners and stakeholders involved in the group of projects identified in the conference and consultative processes. Contacts: Revathi Balakrishnan, Rural Sociologist and GID Officer, FAO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, Bangkok, revathi.balakrishnan at FAO.org V.Balaji, Information Resource Management Office, ICRISAT, Patancheru, India, v.balaji at cgiar.org From dp-info at digitalpartners.org Wed Dec 18 21:57:01 2002 From: dp-info at digitalpartners.org (dp-info) Date: Wed, 18 Dec 2002 12:57:01 -0800 Subject: [Bytesforall] re: Holliday Greetings from Digital Partners Message-ID: Dear Friends and Colleagues: The Staff and Volunteers at Digital Partners take this time during the Holiday Season to wish you Seasons Greetings and Best Wishes for 2003. We thank you for your support and look forward to working with each of you in 2003. Akhtar, Justin, Tom, David, Chandana and Volunteers