Recent Event Wrap-ups

Boston

Harvard University, Kennedy School of Government & the AAG hosted the first “Geospatial Technology for Sustainable Development in Africa” conference May 27th & 28th. The conference arose from continued work following the GDEST activities and summary conference in Cape Town, South Africa.
The conference attendees included the GDEST outreach members themselves as well as invited guests representing the donor community, large private sector vendors, academia and government. While the conference did have several African participants, the focus was mostly on the American development community.  The workshop agenda can be found here (http://www.aag.org/developing/africa/harvard.htm)

The format included a number of speakers, expert panels and breakout groups and the small number of participations (around 50) made of an intimate setting. Just about everyone had a chance to share information about their respective programs and activities in Africa.  A summary of the presentations can be found here (http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/19107/geospatial_science_technology_for_sustainable_development_in_africa.html) . The venue provided a unique opportunity for discussion and collaboration on a variety of African based programs. While there we’re no concrete action items resulting from the workshop, there was some discussion about making it an annual event. A smaller group will be following-up and reconvening in Kampala, Uganda for the AfricaGIS conference in October 2009.

Crisis Camp

The first CrisisCamp was held in Washington DC, June 12th 13th and 14th. The idea for CrisisCamp came out of TransparencyCamp and GovernmentCamp as a way to informally discuss technology and organization related to managing and mitigating information during crises. Much of this information is spatial and Jubal Harpster from the AGCommons program spoke about mapping food insecurity in Africa.

The camp kicked off with an Ignite session on Friday night hosted by the WorldBank. AGCommons was represented along with 15 other speakers for 5 minute presentations that allowed for just 20 slides with slides autoforwarding every 15 seconds. Close to 200 people convened for sessions on Saturday. These revolved around crisis mapping, mobile technology and communications, early warning systems and open source development and deployment in times of crisis.

A wide range of people we’re represented including the private sector, academia, government officials, donor agencies and software developers.  There is a great summary of CrisisCamp here (http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dgqt5vdq_6dskwm4g3) which are mostly notes taken in real time and aggregated from Twitter.

After attending the events in Washington DC and Boston, the bottom-up community based approach to mapping and geospatial technology is quite unique. This approach, when combined with more top-down driven development programs led by government and academia creates a unique situation for the AGCommons program and related projects. In this environment, with so much activity around African development, geospatial technology, and food security, and climate change, along with the rapid expansion of social networking, mobile phone usage, AGCommons is at the confluence of many activities. And as the high-speed internet is finally made available to much of East Africa during the end of 2009 and onward to 2010, these activities will likely continue to accelerate.

So how can AGCommons continue to grow and prosper as an African entity while still remaining nimble, effective and responsive to its ultimate customers, the small-holder farmer? How can it stay abreast of emerging technology, attuned to the technical community while still participating in larger government sponsored initiatives?

These challenges can be met through a multi-faceted approach maintained throughout the program.

• Maintaining a relentless focus on the end-user, the small holder farmer. Always keeping African farmers in mind in everything we do.
• Actively maintaining, implementing and developing networking tools which help communications and promote transparency of the program.
• Use high-tech approaches to produce low-tech, very local effective solutions for the field.
• Working with partners and governments to strive for and promote the use of open geodata and open systems.
• Participate and sponsor both technology centric and non-technology conferences ranging from AfricaGIS and UNIGIG to Where2.0 and local Barcamps.
• Constantly work towards bridging the camp between new and old forms of technology and communications, bring together different groups for the sharing of ideas. And bring African based developers together with North American and European counter parts for exchanging solutions.

BostonHarvard University, Kennedy School of Government & the AAG hosted the first “Geospatial Technology for Sustainable Development in Africa” conference May 27th & 28th. The conference arose from continued work following the GDEST activities and summary conference in Cape Town, South Africa. The conference attendees included the GDEST outreach members themselves as well as invited guests representing the donor community, large private sector vendors, academia and government. While the conference did have several African participants, the focus was mostly on the American development community.  The workshop agenda can be found here (http://www.aag.org/developing/africa/harvard.htm)The format included a number of speakers, expert panels and breakout groups and the small number of participations (around 50) made of an intimate setting. Just about everyone had a chance to share information about their respective programs and activities in Africa.  A summary of the presentations can be found here (http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/19107/geospatial_science_technology_for_sustainable_development_in_africa.html) . The venue provided a unique opportunity for discussion and collaboration on a variety of African based programs. While there we’re no concrete action items resulting from the workshop, there was some discussion about making it an annual event. A smaller group will be following-up and reconvening in Kampala, Uganda for the AfricaGIS conference in October 2009.Crisis CampThe first CrisisCamp was held in Washington DC, June 12th 13th and 14th. The idea for CrisisCamp came out of TransparencyCamp and GovernmentCamp as a way to informally discuss technology and organization related to managing and mitigating information during crises. Much of this information is spatial and Jubal Harpster from the AGCommons program spoke about mapping food insecurity in Africa.The camp kicked off with an Ignite session on Friday night hosted by the WorldBank. AGCommons was represented along with 15 other speakers for 5 minute presentations that allowed for just 20 slides with slides autoforwarding every 15 seconds. Close to 200 people convened for sessions on Saturday. These revolved around crisis mapping, mobile technology and communications, early warning systems and open source development and deployment in times of crisis. A wide range of people we’re represented including the private sector, academia, government officials, donor agencies and software developers.  There is a great summary of CrisisCamp here (http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dgqt5vdq_6dskwm4g3) which are mostly notes taken in real time and aggregated from Twitter.After attending the events in Washington DC and Boston, the bottom-up community based approach to mapping and geospatial technology is quite unique. This approach, when combined with more top-down driven development programs led by government and academia creates a unique situation for the AGCommons program and related projects. In this environment, with so much activity around African development, geospatial technology, and food security, and climate change, along with the rapid expansion of social networking, mobile phone usage, AGCommons is at the confluence of many activities. And as the high-speed internet is finally made available to much of East Africa during the end of 2009 and onward to 2010, these activities will likely continue to accelerate.So how can AGCommons continue to grow and prosper as an African entity while still remaining nimble, effective and responsive to its ultimate customers, the small-holder farmer? How can it stay abreast of emerging technology, attuned to the technical community while still participating in larger government sponsored initiatives?These challenges can be met through a multi-faceted approach maintained throughout the program.·         Maintaining a relentless focus on the end-user, the small holder farmer. Always keeping African farmers in mind in everything we do.·         Actively maintaining, implementing and developing networking tools which help communications and promote transparency of the program.·         Use high-tech approaches to produce low-tech, very local effective solutions for the field.·         Working with partners and governments to strive for and promote the use of open geodata and open systems.·         Participate and sponsor both technology centric and non-technology conferences ranging from AfricaGIS and UNIGIG to Where2.0 and local Barcamps.·         Constantly work towards bridging the camp between new and old forms of technology and communications, bring together different groups for the sharing of ideas. And bring African based developers together with North American and European counter parts for exchanging solutions.