During our recent visit to Burkina Faso for the Web-alliance for Regreening Africa (W4RA) project , we organized a two days workshop and invited a mixed audience of people working in agriculture/agroforestry in Burkina, people working in the ICT sector in Burkina, and people from development agencies (e.g. IICD), or international organizations working on agroforestry…
Read MoreVideos from Day 1 of Visit with Farmer Innovators in Burkina Faso
Chris Reij from VU University – Amsterdam led a group including Stephane Boyera, George Sadowsky and me from the Web Foundation on an educational tour of the desert regions north of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. The purpose was to orient participants in the new Web-alliance for Regreening in Africa (W4RA) and others on the progress…
Read MoreThe Man Who Stopped the Desert: Helping Others to Do the Same
The Web-alliance for Regreening in Africa (W4RA) — the Web Foundation’s first project — starts in earnest in a bit over a week. We are all quite excited, to say the least. We are also collecting other experiences in the use of the Web to support agricultural projects. So please comment below or send email…
Read MoreMobile Web East Africa Conference
I’m glad to see that Matthew Dawes and All Amber are continuing their efforts to promote the Mobile Web in Africa. Last october, i attended and chaired part of Mobile Web Africa which took place in South Africa. This was the first event focusing on this topic in Africa, and this was a real success…
Read MoreInternet Governance Forum 2009
IGF Nov 15-18 2009 in Sharm
I’ve been involved with the UN Internet Governance Forum as W3C representative since before it was created, and I’ve attended most of the plenaries (Athens, Rio) and most of the prep meetings in Geneva, so for me, the IGF community, inclusive of UN staff like Markus Kummer and his team,…
Web Foundation Workshop in Egypt
While those in Boston were working day and night preparing the new Web site and speaking with the press, I was with Tim Berners-Lee and Daniel Dardailler in Sharm-el-Sheik, at the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) meeting, to participate in the launch of the Web Foundation and to organize a workshop on the Web Foundation. This…
Read MoreMobile Web Africa
I spent the last two days in the Mobile Web Africa conference in Johannesburg, South Africa. The first quite surprising fact for me was the attendance; Around 200 people everyday interested to learn and talk about Mobile Web. Based on my past experience, with other related event like Africom, this was a real surprise.…
Read MoreLocalisation in the Clouds Conference
I gave a talk entitled, “Breaking Barriers to Empowerment“, and encouraged the localization community to work with the Web Foundation to identify the opportunities for reducing language as a barrier to using the Web.
Read MoreMobile Web Africa
I’ve been trying to bring discussion about Mobile Web access in Africa on the agenda of different conferences for more than 3 years now, and it might be that eventually this will take off!
Up to know, except the conferences I’ve been organizing like the one in mozambique last April, there was no real interest on…