Open Source

Earlier this year Radio La Luna in Ecuador surprised us with the great documentary “Memorias de Quito”, a very interesting proposal on recovering the collective memories marked by social and racial differences. La Luna is more than a radio station; it is a grassroots communication centre. In November, when I visited them, they were very enthusiastic to show me their computer lab, a 24-seat room based on thin client technology, NComputing. The seats are arranged in a “U” shape and in the centre a screen projector. Funds and knowledge were scarce, thus they had to use all the means available to make it happen.

Mauricio Velasco, project manager, told me they had to break down a wall between two offices to make a larger room. The furniture is simple, "we hired an electrician to set the cables, all the rest we do it by ourselves."

He said it was cheaper to buy the small black boxes (the clients) in US, so they imported them. The LCD screens, keyboards and mouse were bought locally. They couldn’t afford a real server thus they fed up a tower PC with extra RAM memory and powerful processors. Initially they had planned to run everything with open source software, the server as well as the clients. They couldn’t make the server work with Ubuntu, it seems they missed some drivers. So they switched to MS server. The clients do run Open Office, Gimp and Skype (is not open source but it is free).

Then they started the test period. Would so many seats work with the “server”? Could they Skype? Would the USB sticks work? Their approach was very empirical, they tested different scenarios and when they found problems they went to the online forums and tried to find similar problems other people had encounter and how they solved them.

This has been a whole learning experience, at the beginning they didn’t know much about thin client technology. But the whole process of selecting the equipment (choosing for the L-series that allows audio in/out and a USB port), designing the space u-shape in place of rows, installing the system and testing the performance, contacting the technicians from the national network (InfoDesarrollo) or searching in the web for answers. All this process, including the frustrations, generates ownership and embedding.

Not all is solved and a consultancy from the local NComputing provider will check on the setting and look at some bugs. But this is a minor thing.

Congratulations Radio La Luna!

On Wednesday September 19^th 2007 I attended the first Dutch Plone users day in Amsterdam. One of the presentations was about the new features of Plone 3.0, which is, amongst other things, OpenID compatible!

The first time I heard about OpenID was about 2,5 years ago. A colleague of mine, who helps keeping me up to date on all sorts of things including web developments, showed this movie during a break in the web2.0 writeshop held at IICD.

OpenID is a sort of online passport. If you’re registered there, any other website which is compatible with OpenID, allows you to sign in with the OpenID profile. You don’t have to create another username and password combination for that specific website! For all the people like me, making use of web services like blogger, flickr, facebook, linkedIn, gmail, surveymonkey, etc. on top of your official accounts like email, network, ftp, cms’es, etc. it is such a hassle to have to remember all of those unique combinations of different usernames and passwords. Thank goodness someone out there is trying to find a solution to this problem, and thank goodness it seems to be catching on!

It was truly a feeling of “the future is here”, sitting there listening to the presentation, and seeing that Plone has now become OpenID compatible, something I had heard about once within the context of “this is what the future will bring”.

Another fun thing of that day was learning that Plone is becoming more Web 2.0. For example, without being a programmer, you can ensure that the content in your website is automatically pushed towards web 2.0 tools like delicious and reddit. Also, users can design their own member profile pages with widget-like portlets filled with content or RSS feeds of their choice. Besides the increased web 2.0 characteristics, Plone 3.0 also has great improvements in user interface functionalities and easing the task of content management through inline editing, OpenID, and link integrity. And of course, all the strengths of 2.5 remain, such as the use of resolveUID, RSS feeds and smart folders remains.

I also learned about Bungeni: “ It is a Parliamentary and Legislative Information System that aims at making Parliaments more open and accessible to citizens ... virtually allowing them "inside Parliament" or "Bungeni"  the Kiswahili word for "inside Parliament". (Source: http://www.bungeni.org/)

It is based on open source standards and applications including Plone and is being developed in collaboration with eight national parliaments in Africa, including three countries IICD works in, namely Ghana, Tanzania and Uganda. I hadn’t heard of Plone being applied in such a high profile project in Africa before.

It just goes to show, days like this Plone users day can lead to many unexpected new sources of inspiration and possibilities for finding synergies! Thank you to the “Stichting Zope & Plone” for organizing this day!

In 2002, the IICD-supported project ‘ICT Basic Training’ (IBAT) was launched at Kyambogo University in Kampala, Uganda. Through this project, an ICT training centre equipped with 42 computers was set up to train student-teachers and lecturers for the duration of a full semester course. Aside from being taught basic computer skills they were also shown how to use ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) in the standard curriculum. 

In July 2007, after five years, the project was successfully integrated into the University’s curriculum. During the final stage of this process, a discussion took place about the number of students and lecturers who had been introduced to ICTs via this project. A chaotic and protracted debate ensued in which various figures were bandied about, ranging from 6,000 to about 25,000. This discrepancy did not arise from the fact that it was impossible to say how many participants actually took part in the training courses (according to the registration figures, this was 6,200), but rather because it was difficult to estimate with any accuracy the total number of people who had benefited, both directly and indirectly, from the project. First of all, it is not known which percentage of the student-teachers actually uses these skills once they become a teacher. A short survey revealed that 65% of the participants are reaching out to an average of 50 students a year. Secondly, at any university the average computer is not being used by just one student at a time: students who are entitled to go for training have been taking along their friends, brothers, nephews, etc... 

In sub-Saharan Africa there is a concept called “Ubuntu”. This concept is difficult to translate: it means something like ‘an individual only exists because of others’. 

Nelson Mandela explained Ubuntu as follows: “A traveller through our country would stop at a village, and he didn't have to ask for food or for water. Once he stops, the people give him food, entertain him. That is one aspect of Ubuntu but Ubuntu has various aspects. Ubuntu does not mean that people should not enrich themselves. The question therefore is: “Are you going to do so in order to enable the community around you to improve?” 

In other words, Ubuntu when applied to telecentres or computer labs could be taken to mean: ‘If you are entitled to use a computer, you should also take your friends and family to this new world’. Therefore, every time I walk into such a centre and see that the ratio computers:users is 1:3 (or worse) I think two things: “More computers are needed” and “Ubuntu in practice”.