12 years ago today, on the 14th of June 1998, during the World Cup in France, I posted my first ever blog post.

Back then I was blogging at krag.org, what was in fact a very personal blog. I’d written a few blog-like pages on what was then my website, but those have been lost to the world by now. I started blogging after hearing Justin Hall speak about his blog at links.net (I gorget where he spoke, but then it has been 12 years).

The blog I started back then was hand-coded HTML, with a few CGI scripts to generate a calendar of posts, and a logo designed by a colleague I had at Tele Danmark Internet. OK, so it looks a bit dated, but this was 1998.

I ran that blog for almost 2 years, before moving to Movable Type, and since to finally to WordPress, at which point I also switched to the multiplicity.dk domain.

In those 12 years there have been a lot of periods with little or no blogging, and for the past 3 years or so I haven’t blogged a lot. I think this weekends Barcamp Nairobi, has made me think about picking up again.

The tecch challenges we have at Refugees United, seem like the perfect kind of thing to blog about. Perhaps clear my mind by writing them down, perhaps even soliciting some feedback.

Also, and on a more personal note, perhaps rekindling this blog will help me keep in touch with my friends abroad, now that i spend significantly less time travelling and going to events. Meeting old and new friends in Nairobi this week, has certainly made me miss all those trips more, and the spirit of sharing, and the common ground that they bring.

(On the other hand, I really miss my wife and son right now, so it’s not like i’m going to be travelling much more anytime in the next 18 years

In any case, enjoy the embarassment that was the late 90′s

• 0 Comments

* I think it’s impossible to develop good mobile interfaces without being emerged in this context

* I think it’s much harder to outsource innovation than coding, but, at least in this context, innovation is what we need to find

* I think that the advice i got today from Bridgette at Google Africa is worth taking seriously:
** That we can never under estimate the need for marketing, incentive structures and face-to-face assistance.
** That hiring 10 smart interns might be worth more than hiring 1 smart developer.
** That we need to stop thinking of mobile applications as an extension of our web service and start thinking about it as self contained apps
** That incentive structures, immediate gratification for people to register may help lower the barrier to entry

* I think that we really need to embrace the open-source and barcamp style communities if we want to deliver world class systems to refugees worldwide.

* I think the challenges ahead could be extremely exciting but also pretty risky.

* I think the Nairobi scene is the coolest shit i’ve seen since the good old days of the wireless communities in djurlsand, freifunk berlin and the amazing copemhagen interpolation.

Rock On.

• 0 Comments

I’m in Nairobi for a week for a series of meetings with partners and to get an impression of the local tech scene. Day 1 was very much about touching down, having a quick meeting and then a quick football party for the world cup opening.

Today is BarCamp Nairobi, a geek, web developer, tech entrepreneur hangout. Its a great place to meet people, and an amazing place to get an impression of the buzz in the Nairobi tech scene. It’s pretty wow. The kind of scene we were always dreaming of interacting with back when http://wire.less.dk/ was my day job. The kind of scene that just didn’t exist back then in Africa. Well it’s certainly happening here, right now.

It’s also pretty strange being at an unconference like this in a city and a scene i’ve never been involved in before. It isn’t easy finding an in, getting to meet people and figuring out who’s who and what’s what.

In some weird way it’s also quite strange not to be deeply involved in open, grassroots driven projects anymore. I find it easier to get up in front of a crowd and talk about http://wire.less.dk/, open books such as http://wndw.net/ or geeky networking stuff, rather than Refugees United. Part of that is experience. I know how to talk to geeks about geeky stuff. I am (or at least was) deeply into the intricacies of linux networking, license-exempt wireless and even open-content ict training materials.

And while there are some truly fascinating tech challenges involved in the Refugees United idea, it’s still too early for me to feel confident that I haven’t missed something really fundamental.

Anonymity and location anonymity for publicly viewable personal profiles. Mobile interfaces, sim applications and xforms. Open data and APIs. Multi-language web tool, advanced search indexing and Open Source tools.
I think i have to get used to the idea that there are just too many distinct challenges at Refugees United for me to be deeply familiar with any of them. I guess thats part of what it feels like to be a manager rather than a trainer, geek and grassroots enthusiast.

But it also makes it much harder to define myself as a geek, to give a one-line description of what my current challenges are. And here at Barcamp that’s a surprisingly new challenges.

All that said, the advantage of a place like barcamp nairobi is that unlike back home, every geek i’ve talked to immediately understands the challenges, the reality of refugees life etc. It seems, on anecdotal evidence, that refugee life and refugee realities are much closer to home here. In tech terms it probably means that we could learn a lot from being more active participants in the nairobi scene.

This is after all where we do our outreach, where the challenges we’re dealing with go from the abstract to the concrete, and where, in ushahidis (http://ushahidi.org/) words “if it works here it’ll work anywhere”.

But, and this is a pretty big but, there’s also an organisational challenge to be faced. A dichotomy of self that we’re going to be facing at refunite. We’re pretty big on corporate partnerships here, with some amazing positive experiences arising from that. In tech terms, the work ericsson has done for us, and the prospect of some great partnerships with mobile operators are literally invaluable to us. But they also represent a fundamentally different culture and approach than the grassroots, open-source approach of frontlineSMS, ushahidi, translate.org.za and so on. Orgs and projects that have the definite potential to be as invaluable as the corporate contributions. Orgs and projects that, in the context of difficult to reach populations are easily at the forefront of innovation.

How to combine the 2 worlds into undeniable success? I guess it starts with myself embracing the corporate along with the, to me, much more familiar open. But it also starts with us, as an organisation embracing the open, and the local. Engaging with techies as close to our constituents as possible.

• 1 Comment

• 0 Comments

I’m now a few weeks into my new full-time job with Refugees United, and after the epic fail of my 4 months in the bossom of the danish state, it’s not only a relief, but so far it’s been an amazing journey.

It reminds me of the famous “Like drinking from a firehose” quote. There’s so much new stuff to learn, the entire world of Refugee issues is new to me, but at the same time the nitty-gritty of the job is so much down my alley, that i really feel like i have something to contribute.

Refugees United (http://refunite.org/) is essentially an independent .org with a web-based platform where refugees and the internally displaced can register and search for lost family members. It’s a huge problem , with a huge target group, which is begging to be brought into the 21st century, and we’re trying to tackle it as best we can. We’re working with partners to upgrade the current service to a kick-ass system, with state-of-the-art tech. Including mobile support, better collaboration features, better translation issues and better architecture for security.

We’re a small team, with 5 people in the copenhagen office, and some outreach efforts around the world, and it’s a massively complex issue, but I’m ludicrously excited to be working with such passionate and smart people again, and i’m sure we’ll do something well worthwhile while always having fun.

In a best-case scenario i’ll update my blog once in a while with news of our ventures, and at some point i’ll be asking for input and help as well (but perhaps that’s better done on twitter?)

• 1 Comment

Strange but quite exciting. I accepted a job offer from the danish state, more specifically Statens IT, where i’ll be part of a ridiculously ambitious project to consolidate IT systems from more than a hundred government offices over the next 3-4 years.

I never pictured myself as a government employee, it’s quite a strange transition from freelancing, developing world do-gooder, but:

* It’s new and very much different.
* It’s family friendly, and will allow me to pick Arthur up from day-care most days.
* It’ll be chaotic, unpredictable and probably very interesting.
* I can get unpaid leave for a few weeks a year in case there are book sprints, workshops or otherwise i just can’t live without.
* It comes with a stable, albeit modest, income, which will help us get rid of our mortgage, and perhaps do something crazy sometime in the future.
* The whole project is unpredictable enough that nobody knows what will happen there after the first few years, which means i can keep a mental image in my mind of this as a temporary 2-4 year thing.

In general, i’m happy with the decision, the job and the general outlook of my near future.

I am however sad that there’s been so little time and energy for the developing world projects i really love. But it fels like an inevitable consequence of fatherhood.

• 1 Comment

Relax, have fun, be more…..

Short version:
If you have an interesting job for me (part-time, full-time or even freelance-based), or hear about one, that suits someone like me (resume and Linkedin profile), let me know.

Rationale:
As part of my new years resolution for 2009, i’ve decided to start looking for work. I need change, after the part-time limbo that i’ve been in since i left All Africa, and my paternity leave behind me. Arthur is well-ensconced in his daycare routine, and with i’ve gotten used to life as a father. My desire to travel, is tangibly smaller than it was before, so life as a free-lance/volunteer ICT4dev wizard isn’t quite as appealing as it once was. And rather than pretend that’s what i’m still doing, and supplementing it with occasional freelance work, i think it’s about time i move on.

And since i can’t quite wrap my head around any of the start-up ideas i have, a job seems just what the doctor ordered.
Frankly, i’d love to start a Book Sprint-based tech-publisher for Creative-Commons licensed books, and i’d be excited about actually starting a Linux-based training company, like i meant to do in spring. BUT, I’m starting to realize that i don’t want to do any of these things alone, that whatever i do, i need day-to-day interaction and sparring with others, the feeling of achieving some goal together. And neither of these startups will give me that, mostly because Copenhagen seems to be woefully short of people with my particular brand of strangeness.

In other words, i want some stability, a project that lasts more than a week or 2, and i want to share that project with others. My family and I could certainly use a second income, after years of fairly eratic income on my side, so a job feels like the right thing for me at this point.

• 3 Comments

After a week of booksprinting, we finished what looks to be an amazing book on bypassing internet censorship.
It’s available for purchase as a print book from lulu.com, here, and can be read on-line at flossmanuals.net, here.

Big shout out to Adam Hyde from FLOSS Manuals, and the entire Book Sprint crew. You all rock!

I’m immensely proud to be associated with this book, and the crew who wrote it.

• 1 Comment

Despite having kept a low profile, and done next to no development-related work in the past 2 years, a old journalist contact of wire.less.dk gave me a call yesterday, and today there’s a  couple of decent quotes on danish on-line computer mag version2.

It’s an article (in danish) about Tim Berners-Lee’s World Wide Web Foundation, and his claims that we need to focus on extending the web to those 4 billion people who still aren’t properly on-line. His is a hard point to argue with, and i got away with spewing some very un-controversial answers to the usual questions, i.e. Do they really need the web? and what do they need it for? isn’t it hard when there’s no clean drinking water and no electricity?

I’m not going to bore anyone here with the obvious answers, but all-in-all the journalist did a decent job, only misspelling my name once in 4 mentions, and getting almost the entire name of our non-profit correct (it’s wire.less.dk rather than just wire.less).

perhaps this means i’m forgiven, not forgotten?

• 0 Comments

5 years of wireless wizardry, a very successful book project, some time out as a linux enterprise consultant, some time spent combining my technology skills with my interest in africa, and a good 6 months mostly hanging out with the future. I’m now spending a lot of time thinking about what the next 2 years could/should bring.

The technology non-profit space, web 2.0, free (open source) software, open networks, open content books, africa, and small kids. These are some of the things i’ve racked up some experience in over the last few years. There’s little doubt that the book project is the most impressive project i’ve had a hand in. With litterally hundreds of thousands of downloads (250,000 since february 2008), a 2nd edition, and official translations into spanish, french and arabic, this is one hell of a success for what is essentially a double niche-in-a-niche project. A technology book about wireless networks, targetted specifically at developing world practitioners. Yet the success if unequivocal, impressive, and ultimately has very little to do with my involvement.

I came up with a model that seems to work, found a little bit of funding to try it out, and invited the perfect team of authors. I also used my charm to convince the best technical editor and author i know to spend enormous amounts of time on very little money to help make this book as amazing as it is. Then i stepped back, went off and did some of the other stuff i mentioned above, and watched this idea unfold.

I’m proud of what i helped create, but also well aware of the role i played in it. But I want this success to be replicated, and there are a number of titles i think deserve to be written which could help create a series of pragmatic, hands-on technology books with a focus on the developing world, and free (open source) software. Published under some form of open content license, ensuring they reach their maximum potential as tools for communities around the world.

Not only do i think this is possible, but i also think it’s important in ways that i can’t yet quite describe in simple words, having to do with open content licenses, books as conveyors of learning, and the importance of technology independence.

Unlike other open content publishing business models, there’s a little twist in this one, since the prime source of income won’t be from book sales or advertising, but will come directly from funders, for whom the value-proposition should be pretty clear. Given the book sprint model, we can produce pofessionally edited books at a fraction of the cost of the traditional publishing industry. And we have shown that these books are useful as training materials for workshops, as hands-on guides for individuals and organisations trying to implement these technologies, and as awareness raisers for decision-makers looking at technology solutions to exisiting problems. And the price point for a single title seems to be close to that of a single regional week-long technology workshop. So for the price of a single workshop, a book can be published that can become a tangible input to future workshops, but also can massively expand the reach of a workshop-based training model by reaching an audience far beyond that of the equivalent workshop.

And given some of the fascinating discussions i’ve seen on pricing models for open content books, those costs would be shareable between multiple funders, by collecting bids before initiating the project. A model that could perhaps be combined with a magnatune, pay-what-you-feel-is-right model for downloads. The profits of which could be shared with the authors, and help fund the day-to-day running of the organisation. If the costs of publishing the book has already been covered by non-profit funders, the post-production sales might help fund the difficult overhead that always dogs non-profits between projects.

Somewhere in this model there may even be room for experimenting with Social Business models, in the spirit of Mohammad Yunus. But that’ll be a discussion for another day, and perhaps another blog.

• 0 Comments