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

Jay and Ryanne (right) conduct a workshop for Yeshi Khando (in pink) and students at Upper TCV

For me, today’s tasks were all connected with what we are calling Project Happiness. Randy Taran’s work with high school students has now expanded to become a project where students in three countries are studying the same book and exchanging their thoughts about what happiness is, and how to behave in ways that promote happiness all around them.Three groups of students are participating: one of them is in California, at Mount Madonna School in Watsonville; another is in Jos, Nigeria; and the third at the Tibetan Children’s School in Dharamsala, India. California and India being iterally on opposite sides of the world. (more…)

My schedule kind of fell apart on Thursday, which was the first day of workshops, as I had appointments elsewhere to attend to (and upcoming work on Friday as well). I went to my 9am appointment, then picked up my video equipment and pack, and walked up to TCV - walking is nearly a fast as catching a 3-wheeled taxi, costing me only about 5 extra minutes, and I always like the hiking.

Comfort Kazanka - Nigeria

I rejoined the workshop groups at the zone of peace for lunch and had a chance to shoot many photos of attendees. All of the luncheons had been catered by Milap’s restauranteurs, and a surprisingly broad variety of food had been presented over the course of the event. I was looking forward to lunch each day! (more…)

By Tuesday, I had discovered that I could not both blog and really have quality time at the summit. So now that I’m posting this, the three day summit is over and the workshops have begun.

I have also volunteered to do a bunch of posting of AirJaldi resources - such as the videos from the sessions, presentations, and other resources. So it’s almost impossible for me to blog in real time now. (more…)

What’s the similarity between my blogging and wireless network access? [Answer at the bottom of this post]

Eric Brewer of the University of California, Berkeley, gave an interesting keynote presentation this morning, discussing wireless technology and a project supporting eye clinics that perform cataract operations in remote locations for approximately $10 per patient. The details will be available elsewhere online. One of the things Eric has done is to stretch the range of wi-fi greatly - currently tested to 60km, but they’re going to test at a range of 280km and there is no reason it shouldn’t work. This would be particularly important in India, where almost all people in the country reside within at least 80km of a network connection point - so if this could be bridged by wireless, it could be a big improvem ent in availability of access. (more…)