[wsfii-discuss] May 19 DC Community Wireless Panel on Economics of Community Wireless Networks in Developing Countries

Tue May 15 22:11:10 UTC 2007

Hi Jeff, regarding the event at guifi.net, the link is this one: 
http://guifi.net/node/7698, but still not in English and just at a draft 
stage.
I'm not in the core group who is organizing the meeting, but I know that 
there is a lot of stuff to do. As soon as we have more concrete 
information we'll forward this.

Regarding event in Columbia, I'll be there, so I hope to have a chance 
to meet all of you and if you like, share with all of you regarding our 
approach to the subject. I think I can also talk a little bit on the 
Athens experience (awmn.net) which I find also quite interesting and I 
know a little bit, although no one from there will be in Columbia.

Ramon Roca.

En/na Jeff Buderer ha escrit:

> Dear All,
>
> Following up on the Economics of Community Wireless Discussion that 
> started in March from the Discussion by Lindsey Annison 
> <http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/wsfii-discuss/2007-March/001260.html>, 
> Ashish Saboo 
> <http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/wsfii-discuss/2007-April/001292.html>, 
> Ian Howard 
> <http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/wsfii-discuss/2007-March/001271.html>, 
> me Tracy Lauriault 
> <http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/wsfii-discuss/2007-March/001273.html> 
> and others, we were able to organize a panel discussion on this issues 
> at the Community Wireless Summit on May 19 in DC (Columbia Maryland 
> Loyola U). The title of the panel is the "Economics of Community 
> Wireless Networks in Developing Countries."
>
> *Overview: *The Economic Sustainability of Community Wireless Networks 
> in Emerging Markets will be a major theme at the WSFII Africa 2007 
> Summit _www.wirelessafrica2007.org 
> <http://www.wirelessafrica2007.org/>_ in August. As a precursor to 
> this event, _oneVillage Foundation 
> <http://www.onevillagefoundation.org/>_ and several other 
> distinguished ICT leaders will hold a panel on this topic at the 
> upcoming "International Summit for Community Wireless Networks" on May 
> 18-20 in Washington DC _http://www.cuwin.net/summit_.
>
> Participants (More about them in the attached document: 
> *econ_of_comm_wireless_nets_051407.doc*): Panel will feature several 
> well known leaders in the ICT field, including Ian Howard former 
> GeekCorps Mali Director and author of _Wireless Networking for the 
> Developing World 
> <http://www.geekcorps.org/2006/01/learn-wireless-networking/>_, Jeff 
> Buderer Program Development Manager of _oneVillage Foundation 
> <http://www.onevillagefoundation.org/>_; Toby Morning of _Accton 
> Technology Group <http://www.accton.com/>_; Peter Baldwin of the 
> _Digital Opportunity Trust <http://www.dotrust.org/>_ an ex-GeekCorps 
> Mali Volunteer Economics Advisor.
>
>
> To further explain this are two documents that I have attached:
>
>    1. Overview for the Panel in terms of what it is going to discuss (
>       *econ_of_comm_wireless_nets_051407.doc*)
>    2. Some of my thoughts on what I would like to discuss (*Panel Prep
>       Discussion.doc*).
>
> *Repesentation From Emerging Markets is Important *I would have liked 
> it if we could have gotten someone from a emerging market to 
> participate in the panel. However since that is not the case I want to 
> be sure that in our discussions on the panel that we represent some of 
> the ideas by those who are in emerging markets of which I believe 
> Ashish Saboo's comments are particularly valuable in this process.
>
> Ugo Vallauri of Computer Aid has been very  helpful in forwarding this 
> discussion and linking me to key people to move this discussion 
> forward. He introduced me to LinkNet 
> <http://drupal.vanstam.net/?qnode/712> which is aimed at promoting 
> holistic rural development in Rural Zambia. I have included Adrian and 
> Gerthan in this email. This is along similar lines that we have 
> outlined with our Open Digital Village concept that we are now trying 
> to implement in Winneba Ghana.
>
> Xigi.net Gary Bolles <http://www.gbolles.com/gbbio.htm>of Xigi.net 
> <http://xigi.net/>  was unable to resolve his scheduling conflict with 
> the other conference he was participating but we had some good 
> telephone conversations last week and he is very interested in what is 
> developing. Gary points out the need to breaks thing down into layers 
> such as the policy layer etc. his organization www.xigi.net 
> <http://www.xigi.net/> helps to explore power relationships that lead 
> to the development of emergent economic sectors (such as for example 
> wireless) and make them transparent, putting capital to work to 
> promote social good. Xigi.net is a collective intelligence tool that 
> can be used to help document the power relationships involved in the 
> development emergent economic sectors (like wireless) and make them 
> more transparent. He sees Muni-Wireless <http://www.muniwireless.com/> 
> (which he is also involved in) as helping to adapt this process to the 
> development public broadband wireless market in the US. Gary has been 
> involved in developing a framework for the development of a Digital 
> Village Fund <http://www.xigi.net/index.php?en=585>, seeing that as a 
> platform to promote entreprenuerialism in the social enterprise sector 
> and focused on the convergence of the wireless and digital 
> village/telecenter sectors. My understanding from the calls was that 
> right now he feels that these events and dialogues are important 
> because they pave the way for developing that fund on a firm 
> foundation. Finally Good Capital <http://www.goodcap.net/> is an 
> investment firm that he is involved with that is designed accelerate 
> "the flow of capital to innovative ventures and initiatives that 
> harness the power of the market to create sustainable solutions to 
> some of society's most challenging problems. Our initiatives and funds 
> address a wide range of social issues ranging from social enterprise 
> financing, community and economic development, brownfield development, 
> and healthcare financing."
>
> *Grassroots Wireless in India *Ashish Saboo of the Association of 
> Public ICT Access Provider (ApiAp) <http://apiap.org/> - I am reading 
> and particularly interested with some of Ashish's comments. He says 
> the telecenter model needs to be flexible to the needs of each 
> neighborhood/community. So then possibility organizations taking rigid 
> of a template approach were not able to see the expected success 
> because of that rigidity which may have stifled things so that the 
> local early adopters of ICT did not take ownership of these projects 
> leading eventually to their failure? So its very important to have 
> local stakeholders involved and understand the local culture in 
> developing these programs.
>
> We need better tools to measure and connect economic value with social 
> value. Ashish feels that we need to come up with better matrix linking 
> tools - tools helping to link and model outcomes of programs with 
> consideration to social as well as economic factors - to measure the 
> social benefits of these project and also to how that often translates 
> into added economic value for the community as well as the center itself.
>
> There are many publications on the launch of telecenters but few offer 
> honest reporting of the challenges so accountability and transparency 
> is an issue that needs to be improved. He suggests there is a need to 
> develop an online resource that could serve as center for such resources.
>
> Tools for ensuring Accountability I wanted to add Kris Dev to this 
> (Chennai India) has been working on how to develop ICT tools 
> <http://blog.onevillage.tv/wp/?p=339> to improve accountability and 
> transparency
>
> Ashish I am reading your email about how you see the need to address 
> the unsophisticated ICT consumer in emerging markets and where you 
> give Dharamsala as one example of a dysfunctional pattern emerging in 
> emerging markets where by some of the poorest regions of the world now 
> spend extremely disproportionate amounts of their very meager funds on 
> ICT. So this makes me think that this panel should also discuss more 
> fundamental problems with the launch of ICT in emerging markets and 
> how community wireless networks can be effectively positioned to 
> address this problem. I would to see more about this that is more 
> refined that we could discuss and feature in the panel discussion.
>
> Juergen Neumann Founder of Friefunk 
> <https://snr.freifunk.net/trac/wcw> suggested that this Barcelona 
> event (could not find weblink on this so if anyone could send it that 
> would be great) being organized by Ramon Roca of guifi.net 
> <http://guifi.net/en> would be a good venue to continue our work about 
> community compatible economics. I look forward to hear more from him 
> about this although most likely I will not be able to attend. Possibly 
> some of you can make and keep us updated.
>
> I look forward to further discussion on this and thanks all for the 
> contributions made so far.
>
> Jeff
>
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>
> Jeff Buderer
> oneVillage Foundation
> www.onevillagefoundation.org
>
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