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Welcoming participants and outlining vision for workshop

The International Development Research Centre (IDRC) is currently convening a very interesting workshop entitled, “Toward A Caribbean Open Institute: Data, Communications, and Impact”, being held in Kingston, Jamaica from 20 June – 1 July 2010.  I was invited to give a talk entitled, “Open Government Data”.  About 40 experienced and energetic policy and technical experts from regional and international organizations (including the UN), non-governmental organizations, universities, and the finance and communications sectors are actively engaged in discussion.  A key aim is to explore how open institutional data approaches, Web 2.0 communications, and monitoring and evaluation methods can become forces that increase regional collaboration on issues such as agriculture, fishing, trade, tourism, immigration, ICTs, entrepreneurship, etc.

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The Web has the potential to increase access to educational materials in Africa, and make it easier for people in Africa to contribute new materials to the world.

This is a belated post on the World Economic Forum on Africa, held last month in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.  First, this event has been in Cape Town, South Africa in past years, and it is critical that WEF moved it closer to the locus of matters of greatest importance to the continent.  Second, the gathering of leaders and practitioners from government, industry, and philanthropy provided the perfect mix for gaining feedback on the programs and plans of the World Wide Web Foundation.

I was invited to talk in the session, Higher Education in Africa, with a focus on the use of the Web to empower educators and students to access content from around the world, and, ultimately, to contribute educational materials for the benefit of the rest of the world.  The format of my talk, Web-Empowered Education in Africa — Read more

Raleigh, North Carolina was a busy place two weeks ago.  At the same time as the Web for All Conference, and just upstairs in the convention center, the second Web Science Conference took place.  The agenda for WebSci10, as it was tagged (Tim Berners-Lee commented that this tag implied the event had been around for more years that it has been) framed the diversity and dynamism of this new field of study.  Tim and Wendy Hall announced the creation of a network of Web Science laboratories — WSTNet.  I took the opportunity of the proximity of the two conferences to hear some Web Science talks, review interesting posters, and have valuable discussions with Web scientists.

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Today and tomorrow, in Raleigh, North Carolina, USA, the 7th International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility is taking place. Most call this event Web for All or W4A. The focus this year is “Developing Regions: Common Goals, Common Problems?”, which is perfect fit for the Web Foundation’s initial focus.  I had the honor of delivering the opening keynote, entitled, “Breaking Barriers to a Read/Write Web that Empowers All” (PDF, PPT).

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Though most of photos and videos from Burkina Faso in this post are strongly related to our Web Alliance for Regreening in Africa project, I want to share these reflections on this country, its people and its potential.

The work to the right is by the artist, Kabré, who does custom painting outside of our hotel in Ouagadougou. I asked him to illustrate the use of mobile phones, laptops and computers in his country. I also asked that the panel on the left be a farmer talking on his mobile phone. My French must be even worse than I thought, because he painted a tourist.  This cool work is now hanging in Boston office.

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CNN producer Jason Sanchez interviewed Tim Berners-Lee and me for a segment on their show called “Conscious Capitalism”.  Have a look…

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