Sky’s Blog @ The Dalai Lama Foundation — Spreading the word in a networked world

Every once in a while I look back at resources that I’ve created and/or blogged, and suggest that you take a look at them.

The AirJaldi 2006 Summit, held in Dharamsala, India, was a several-day sequence of presentations, panels and then a week of workshops, dealing with Wireless infrastructure and how these can be used to further the development of the world into a place where veryone can live a healthy, happy life. The meeting was attended by social activists of many sorts, all of whom had an interest in using communications technologies.

Here’s your action item for today: The Video page for Airjaldi I would recommend that you take a look at what’s available there.Here are two of my favorites:

Dr. Rodger Downer, keynote speaker, and President Emeritus of the University of Limerick (Ireland), A Global Perspective on Sustainability {28 minutes running time}

Dr. Richard Stallman, keynote speaker, On free software, human rights, development and GNU. {52 minutes running time IMPORTANT NOTE: the camera was not rolling until shortly after the talk was underway}

Everything else on that page is worth viewing! Just a reminder.

You can find all of my articles on AirJaldi here in my blog. I tried to blog the conference in real-time, since we had wi-fi available in the hall, but it was really a challenge. It’s hard to estimate how much bandwidth, and how many routers, to provide for so many tech-literate participants. So I ended up writing blog entries each evening, and then posting them during the day. This set off an inquiry into offline blogging tools (like MarsEdit and Ecto) which I use to this day. And an overview of blogging tools. And it continued my series I’m a Turtle about how I carry my “home” (computer) on my back(pack) everywhere I go (cyber-nomadics).

The phrases last mile or last mile problem refer to the way network connectivity is brought from the telephone central office (or other connection point) to a subscriber’s home or business. For telephones, this used to be the pair of copper wires that ran from the central office, where the switching equipment lives, to the home, where the subscriber lives. Today, of course, it could refer to cell phone towers (which use radio), cable TV lines, fiber-optics or lots of other types of circuits.
Friends have suggested to me that it’s useful to pivot, face the other way, and think of this as a first mile problem instead. And for yet another perspective, the folks at AirJaldi call it a beyond the first mile problem.The AirJaldi Summit took place in 2006. But AirJaldi itself, as an organization, is far more than just a one-time meeting. It aspires to be a model for disseminating Internet connectivity to places commercial carriers will never venture. Using open-source software, modified and loaded into wi-fi routers equipped with battery backup, solar power (in some cases), armored against the weather, and connected to high-gain antennas, AirJaldi has constructed a model network that spans 70km and connects thousands of users’ computers to the Internet.

I talked with Mikey Ginguld, who has just taken a full-time role as acting CEO/COO with AirJaldi, about how they’re doing it. [Use QuickTime or VLC Media Player to play the interview...]

Which are you more concerned about - seizing an opportunity, or “selling out?”

Ryanne (above) and Jay have signed a deal with PodTech and will blog on sustainable culture

Ryanne and Jay, who I met in Dharamsala, India, in October this year, and whose “hearts of gold” were so obvious from the beginning (they just stepped up and volunteered to help our students learn how to shoot and share video without hardly being asked), have just “sold” the rights to their video podcasts to PodTech. You can see that there was definitely some discussion about the commercialism of selling to a “channel” that carries advertising, and all that… (more…)

I learned something about Flickr last night. Grrrrrr … it took a lot of debugging, but I did finally figure it out in spite of their documentation.

For those who do not know, Flickr is a web site where you can upload your photos and they’ll be available for other folks to view. Visitors to the AirJaldi Summit in Dharamsala, India, have been posting their photos to Flickr, and I needed a way to show those photos on the AirJaldi Resources site… (more…)