My Blog

First week in September at Dadamac September 8, 2010

This is a personal review of the past week here on Dadamac's Posterous -  looking back to see if any themes are emerging. We're trying to make it easier for people to get an overview of what is going on in Dadamac:
First Thursday

As it was the first week of the month there was our usual "First Thursday" meeting:

Violence against children

Dadamac Foundation helps to raise the visibility of John's work - which includes support for Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC) - violence is an ever-present issue.

Local communities

I am interested in effective two-way flows of information (and intrigued by aspects of "community" in Nigeria). From my viewpoint, the UK debate on "Big Society" is relevant to what I am learning and thinking about in Dadamac - local examples, global issues.

  • September 4, 2010 - The Big Society - Some background reading (plus personal introduction) related to my interest in how 21st century systems are developing and what the future might look like if it combined the  "best of both cultures" (UK and Nigeria). 
Computer recycling policies

I saw a reference to computer recycling policies in the PRADSA group - something we have been thinking about in Dadamac so I followed it up:

Ethiopia connection

Introducing people:

Uganda

When I was sent information on three projects in Uganda it seemed I should at least help to raise their visibility.  (I'm feeling my way here - not sure the best way to deal with this. What if more follow? Responding and uploading the information did eat into my time and I am overstretched on my voluntary work already).

An Open Source alternative to Facebook

The dabate about Facebook continues - I wanted to share it, and have it to hand, so I popped it on posterous

A theme for the week?

An over-arching theme in all my work is effective two-way flows of information - and the resultant opportunities for collaboration. I guess the past week on posterous reflects that in a fairly typical way:
  • Connecting people to people - the majority of the posts were written for that purpose.
  • Thoughts about local/global issues - a couple of posts (Big Society and Violence to Children)
  • One post is about the technology (Open Source alternative to Facebook) - which is not surprising given that everything we do is dependent on the Internet - but the post was more concerned with human issues than technical ones.
Massive changes are happening - and increasingly able to happen thanks to the Internet. We are taking small steps that illustrate those changes.

This week has included - in order of appearance Ireland, Nigeria (several people, scattered over one site), England (several people, various locations), Uganda (three people, probably different locations), plus introductions related to Rwanda, USA and Ethiopia. Collaboration and information sharing is getting easier.

I am only looking at the week on Posterous (more of course is covered at www.dadamac.net - especially through Nikki's blogs, and even more goes on behind the scenes). For those with eyes to see, these few exchanges represent a 21st century that is dramatically different to anything that has gone before.