America, June 20, 2008

A Bi-Coastal BBQ Lifestyle

The down-low on IAD to SFO

Inveneo makes me smile

See that Iridium flare?

Now that I live in Washington, DC and work for Inveneo, based in San Francisco, CA, I am living a bi-coastal lifestyle. I spend an average of a week every month or so in the Inveneo offices, living at the "Inveneo Hotel" - the home of Mark and Kristin, Inveneo's co-founders.

Before you cringe at the thought of working all day in the same room as your boss and then spending the evenings with him or her too, I have to say that Inveneo isn't your standard company.

First, we're a social enterprise, which means we are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, yet we're run like a business. We're out there selling product and hustling for business like any other company. At the same time, we have a strong social mission that permeates everything we do.

One example is my task - to develop the skills and opportunities for technology entrepreneurs to serve rural and underserved communities. While we do train them on Inveneo product, making them Inveneo Certified ICT Partners, we also share expertise that can be used with other vendor's products and actively promote our partners to our own clients, effectively and purposely cutting ourselves out of a middleman role.

Another example is the organization's culture. We may have Silicon Valley start-up roots, but how many firms have an impromptu BBQ on a random Thursday night? Better yet, a geek fest where the nights conversations centered on Iridium flares and the booze-inspired conspiracy? A Mt. Diablo to Mt. Shasta WiFi link.

The very kind of barbeques that I host at "Inveneo East" - my home office and staff hotel in Washington, DC. On this coast, we alternate BBQ themes between OLPC geek outs and extreme piñata duels.

So while the hours are long and the pay is low, I love me this bi-coastal BBQ lifestyle

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America, June 07, 2008

An Announcement from Amy and Wayan

There is a Ziggy on the way! Conceived after our second wedding, Ziggy the zygote is now 13 weeks old.

That means Amy is just starting to show and we're both just beginning to freak out. Ziggy will one day soon be an actual child - it already has little arms and legs, and sucks it thumb. One day soon, we'll be actual parents, and of something way more intense than a Taxi, too.

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America, May 28, 2008

Directing Inveneo's ICIP Program

Inveneo ICIP in action

Back when I was Director of Geekcorps, we focused on developing appropriate technology to increase economic development. In the hot, dusty, off-grid environment of Mali, that meant developing solutions like the Desert PC.

While we only built a few for radio stations, another group, Inveneo, took the appropriate computing idea to the next level. They developed an entire product line of information and communication tools for rural and remote communities in the developing world.

But tools themselves are not enough. Technology is only truly sustainable when they are affordable and can be serviced and supported locally and the lack of qualified in-country ICT professionals is a great hindrance to technology diffusion. At Geekcorps we tried to solve this human capacity by linking international technology volunteers with local professionals for one-on-one training.

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Switzerland, May 22, 2008

Building Online Communities of Practice

Do I look official to you?

Sitting up here at the presenter table, I feel quite amazing. I am feeling a professional high, and that's not because the presenter table is raised a few feet above the main floor. We're still in a basement conference room, even if it’s a rather large room.

I'm all excited because this is a WSIS follow on meeting and the room is full of ICT leaders who are looking forward to my presentation. I'm about to speak on two topics of interest to this crowd: 4P Computing and online communities of practice.

The first topic, 4P Computing, or the rise of a new class of computing devices that are responsive to the performance, power, portability, and price constraints of the developing world, speaks directly to the crowd - they're all interested in low cost user devices as that's the stated topic of this session.

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Switzerland, May 20, 2008

An Underground Atlas in Geneva

Colliding atoms over men

Have you ever seen a supercollider up close and personal? Do you even know what one is? Today I deep inside the Swiss countryside, face-to-face with ATLAS, what soon will be the world's largest proton supercollider. Or black hole creator if the swarms of particle physicists get their math wrong.

And right about now, fighting back jetlag while listening to George, our gracious host, explain the difference between protons and muons, and how his giant muon spectrometer will measure the deflection of muons after they pass through the Barrel Toroid, I'm in awe of the human mind.

Somehow, in the grey mush between our collective ears, we're able not only to conceive the existence of "dark matter" and other universe-level mysteries, we're actually able to build things like this Large Hadron Collider to smash beams of speeding, highly energetic protons together to explore them.

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America, May 14, 2008

A Whole Other Kind of Taxi Time

Taxi, getting some learning

"Taxi! Come here Taxi!" This is what I shout on a daily basis now. I'm calling a Taxi in the morning, during the day, and even late into the night. But it's not the taxi your thinking of.

This is not a New York Taxi story, nor a taxi experience in Macedonia, Russia, or even Bangkok, and its much better than the San Juan Taxi Mafia.

This is a story even better than Portland taxi driver perfection, this is a whole other kind of "taxi".

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America, May 06, 2008

Deconstructing Downtown Washington DC

Deconstructing memories of youth

Walking to work the other morning, I was struck by an amazing sight. A pinnacle of destruction piercing the downtown skyline, another office building deconstructed in the name of development.

This office building was special to me. Back when I first moved to DC, I worked at its sister building across Connecticut Avenue and the two were the only buildings around that had windows that could open. On beautiful spring days like today, I loved listening to the hustle of commuters exiting the Metro and melodies of the musicians singing for spare change.

Over a decade later, I find myself deconstructing my own downtown DC experience. No longer am I a clueless beginner accountant in a small nonprofit. No longer to I think Washington DC is the shit. Now I've lived on the world stage. I've circumnavigated the earth twice, and I've even been on 60 Minutes. And I'm the better for it.

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