At first it was way more work than 
I expected to organize a conference and workshop like TEDC – but in the end, it was a lot of fun to see it all come together and to have so much participation from local Ugandans and from the people from all around the world who attended.
Soon we will have uploaded the audio and hopefully at least some video from the keynote addresses and Appfrica session.
Here is a video slideshow I created which captures some of our experience from the 3 day conference.
(If it doesn’t play, you can go directly to this link: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7294789452996405975&hl=en)
Also, in the comment section to this blog entry Herment Mrema wanted to start a discussion regarding the way forward with what we gained from this conference. Whether you attended or not, feel free to add your thoughts…
If you attended:
What were the highlights of this year’s conference for you?
What was your main “take-aways”?
What would you like to see happen differently for next year?
Between now and then, how do you think we could be involved in supporting and learning from each other?
If you didn’t attend:
Why not, and how can we get you there next year?
In the time between now and then, would you like to be involved in this effort at all? If so, how?
Hi Clint,
My over-all comment on the Workshop.
1. It was well organized, the number of attendants although could have been higher but was enough
2. We picked some information from the presentation but as usual time was not adequate to discuss the presentations so that we could pick up the next steps (What next)
3. There is so much IT information out there which has not been used and be developed into critical strategies for problems solving or to improve on what we are currently doing. To me it appears that we are chunning new knowledge too fast than what we can use. We need to be selective
4. “Knowledge for immediate Use” should be the way forward instead of knowledge for sake of it.
5. Some of IT programs are not well thought to ensure that they have value which will make them sustainable.
6. A comprehensive approach by addressing the basics first before we move up the ladder is important. Each situation should be treated differently. For example if a student is not assured of his supper, nor day lunch, a desk to sit on it and if the teachers are not motivated to teach and the environment is not conducive for learning, brining in a computer to the school is wastage of resources raising expectation that we can’t meet.
7. I would suggest that we design projects on the basis of the resource base of the recepients. Our efforts should be to grow and complement their assets resources) into higher value. This will instill a higher level of ownership, commitment, determination and confidence in the whole system.
8. Lets try to push for “pay for performance” approach so that we could lead to harmonization of resources, which will enhance efficiciency, accountability and effectiveness of our interventions.
9. The presentation on Assetbased approach could be the first step towards the right direction to ensure that we have an inventory of all resources needed at a specific point of time and try to link the resource users, and resource providers to harmonize their service provision and use of resources.
10. Africa is an extremely rich country and we do not need help, we need partnerships – that equitably will reward each other for our contributions. The mere fact that 80% of the African population are farmers who are either feeding themselves or have the potential to feed us and food being our survival we could make a huge difference if we concentrate our resources on supporting farmers (agriculture first). Lets adopt the concept of Farmers as owners of the basic resources, can transform these resources without loosing ownership up the chains and we come in as service providers to ensure value additions within the supply chains and using the power of our supply chains we can bargain for competitive prices that will reward each stakeholders within the chains. This could cause a paradigm shift in which the supply chains determine the demand, market and prices instead of the current classical economic theorty in which the “demand” detetermine the supply. With this approach we could make African emerge out of abject poverty in less than 15 years. This will provide a bigger and a better market for the developed countries as African purchase power will be enhanced hence will need higher value technologies that the developed world coud supply. It will be a win win situation instead of the current way of doing things in which so much resources is wasted because we are not coordinated and focused.
Way Forward
1. Let us keep talking and sharing our work, whatever we are doing, and see how the knowledge base we have could help us.
2. We could establish and network of the attendees of this workshop and share openly on how we could work together.
3. Although sometime funding is considered as a bottleneck, there are some things which we could do with very little funding yest achieve great results with values that we can turn into cash and slowly generate the necessary resources to finance our bigger plans.
4. I am open and we could start the ball rolling and hopefully I am in the right direction
Once again thank you for the opportunity to be part of the team.
Why not, and how can we get you there next year? I really wanted to attend… I just need to get a sponsorship, educators don’t really get paid all that much! đ
In the time between now and then, would you like to be involved in this effort at all? If so, how? Yes… however you need.
Yes, I think that getting the funding for the plane ticket was one of the biggest reasons why many people were not able to attend. It is nice when your university or department can sponsor it, but that is not always the case. Still, there are other ways that people can find funding too.
Does anyone have any creative ideas or solutions they can share for how to get funding to attend conferences like this?
Excellent video, Clint. Congratulations on a successful conference!
Simplistic response, perhaps, like most of mine…but pay all your bills and make all your purchases with a credit card accruing skymiles. Keep it paid off every month, though. My sister and her husband still travel all over the world doing this, though they have 4 kids and a single income (working for the church, no less =o) ). I love that they still make travel, learning and time together a priority, and make it happen!
VeNicia,
Thanks for the comments and thoughts. It is rare for many people from Africa or developing countries to have a credit card, but definitely those of us who do have one could use it for double purposes – to accrue airline miles. I wonder if any kind of donation schemes have been created where businessmen donate their airline miles for something like this?
Also, there was a part of the conference that made me think of you for some reason. One of the presenters, Tom Lechner, asked questions regarding what is the real end result of education that we want? When we talk about the “knowledge economy” – what do we mean by knowledge? What knowledge?
In my response, I referred to an article I just read by Russ Osguthorpe, where he says he thinks the two main foundational purpose of education are 1) to increase in our love for each other, and 2) to come out of it with increased agency (e.g. more choices, synergy, ideas and capacity) available to us.
I also told everyone those were my two goals for the conference (and I was happy at the end to feel like we had done just that). Anyway – I want to get you that article sometime and get your thoughts on it.
Herment notes
7. I would suggest that we design projects on the basis of the resource base of the recepients. Our efforts should be to grow and complement their assets resources) into higher value. This will instill a higher level of ownership, commitment, determination and confidence in the whole system.
8. Lets try to push for âpay for performanceâ approach so that we could lead to harmonization of resources, which will enhance efficiciency, accountability and effectiveness of our interventions.
I absolutely agree with what he says
Many supposedly good projects like the telecentres have become almost wasted because recipients donât value them. The find the services very costly because during the implementation stage, they were completely free ventures.
So designing a project with the resource base of the beneficiaries in mind will ensure its sustainability.
In Uganda many people like free things but if you later tell them to pay for what was âpreviously freeâ they imagine they wonât get value for money.
So project leaders must also ensure that people get value for money. Instill the payment culture right from inception. With this, I believe we wonât see other technologyso many projects becoming white elephants
My two centsâŚ
What do others think?
Esther, I agree with you – and what both you and Herment say aligns well with a couple of the main points in William Easterlyâs “The White Manâs Burden: Why the Westâs efforts to aid the Rest have done so much ill and so little good”.
I posted some related quotes from that book here: http://clint.wisdomoftheworld.com/2008/08/02/mistakes-in-giving-aid-and-development-part-3-rural-africa-wirelessalmost/#comment-2546
Dear Clint, thanks for a well-organized event. I especially appreciated the wealth of information you made available beforehand, both on the conference web site as well as by e-mail. Kind regards.