And I will post updates, thoughts etc. here. You can also follow my real-time updates on twitter: http://twitter.com/oluwakorede
Yes, I changed the title of this post from ‘Notes from the NTC’ to Thoughts from the NTC. I am adding the collaboratively taken notes in another post and prefer that takes the title ‘Notes from NTC’ Its the second day of the NTEN Non-profit technology conference (NTC) and my third in Washington DC. Even though the 2nd day of three is justing getting to its end, I am already feeling a loss – a loss of the physical community I have come to know in the last two days. Loss of the rush of looking for meeting rooms where issues of interest to me and the organization that paid for my trip here and hopping between two/three meeting rooms trying to get the best of two/three worlds – sincerely, I think NTC should be spread over two weeks and sessions repeated in order to allow all of us benefit from the many good choices of workshops and discussions. Yesterday, I immersed myself in several of the product highlights/exibition sessions. Two of particular interests were (a) NPOWER’s demystification of Microsoft Dynamix (Microsoft’s answer to the question of CRM) aptly tagged by the presenters as xRM (x can be: constituents, customers, citizens or simply x) and (b) The session by Google’s Public Data team describing DSPL which enables visualization of ‘public data’.
In a couple of days, technology professionals working in the non-profit sphere will gather at the Washington Hilton to deliberate issues, trends and the future of their trade. When these happens, I will be there, with my colleagues from other non-profit institutions from all over the world. My personal goals are as follows:
Social Networks have become the signature word of the second incarnation of the Internet. The first incarnation being the development of hyperlinks and the the hypertext mark-up language – which literally made it possible for several documents to link to and from several others. The second incarnation – christened web 2.0 by Tim O’Rilley – first was about user generated content and now user connection that defies space and time. Social Networks seem the future of the internet and the people using it. Social networks give increasing power to people and organisations to: (1) create their second selves or multiple selves- the perception they want others to have of them – and maintain this/these (2) provide and be presented relevant information – a sieve to sort important information from the current overload and a funnel to ensure only the sieved information gets to you or your targeted audience.
I am writing this, first as a note to myself and then to others. I work in an environment where there are several activities best grouped as projects. No project management methodology is employed and project/team leads run their activities as they best deem fit. Since I am PMP, I chose to abide by the PMBOK (R) Guide . But on occasion – I get tangled in the intricacies and uniqueness of my work environment. Often times blending the formal and acceptable practices with the unwritten but realistic general approach to things here. I often – when assigned a project – ensure a project scope is agreed to, though I prefer client/project deliverable owner/consumer generated written project scope documents, I sometimes accept verbal ones (and write this up for the customer’s approval). I also document scope changes as a result of additional requirements ordered by client or discovered while developing project plan or implementing the plan. In a recent incident, the project owner changed and the new client lead dictated additions to the scope – via email. Several more changes came via email and verbally and with an understanding that I know what the client required, I spent approximately 50 hours developing the product and sharing pre-release versions with the client lead. On all occasions, I get positive feedback – infact on one occasion, the client lead jumped up and down in my office and exclaimed: this is fantastic, I did not expect so much in so little time. Confident
CIVICUS World Alliance for Citizen Participation calls for solidarity with Egyptian partners and all citizens of Egypt: Personal notes: I have no qualms with the 30 year rule of Mr Mubarak. I have serious problems with a president whose people no longer wants but clings to power at all cost! I cannot process it – those served no longer wants your service and you refuse to bulge and continue to offer that service (it defies logic). Dear, Mr. Mubarak, why not listen to the voice of your people? They are everywhere…search twitter for the following and perhaps it will dawn on you how unpopular you are becoming, not only in Egypt, but accros Africa and indeed the world: Mubarak Egypt Ghonim Jan25
Logged in to do a post and realised my last post was my 100th here. This seem a milestone and I decided to celebrate with my 101st post. I remember clearly when a friend and then mentor – ‘Gbenga Adeyemo – first mentioned the word blog to me in 2005 and my deep confusion at hearing the word and my subsequent attempt at demystifying the whole thing. I remembered creating my first blog on Blogger.com got stuck afterwards for lack of what to write about. My return to it later on and my inability to find it and subsequent creation of another on the same platform and then later hopping unto the social network for young development workers -takingItglobal.org. I remember when I trended – that was not the word, I think featured was – for several weeks unending.
Theme: The Workplace 2011, the trends, the threat and the timing! Every New Year comes with its unique characteristics and vista of peculiarities particularly as we stand on the edge of another decade in 2011. As competitive companies strategize, winning organizations plan and industry players retreat, so also must smart individuals think about what the year and the future holds for them in their career and life in general. Career & Life Retreat for Professionals offers working class individuals the platform to brainstorm, opportunity to network, avenue to interact and posture to glean from the wisdom and experience of seasoned life coach, career consultant, and entrepreneurs on finding the right context to compete in 2011. What would be the trends in the workplace in 2011? Outsourcing and contract staffing? How does that affect the security of your job? Virtual office and flexible work hours, implications for professionals! Transiting from employee to consultant, how to get it right. Moving from task worker to knowledge worker and then to iconic worker, strategies for earning more. These and more would form the focus of this gathering. Speakers and discussants include the following:
Its 3am and I am wide awake again – sweating profusely and unable to return to sleep. The question eating away at me is ‘When will I complete my plans for the starting year?’. In time past I always have this ready by the time the new year is welcomed. Usually following a few days of hard analysis (and sometimes consultations with mentors) of the ending year’s achievements and failings and the many additions and notes I have in the course of the year attached to the year’s goals list. Then a peek at the long term plans (which almost always suffer from amendments and improvements given new knowledge and expectations and also given the very undetailed stage I prefer to leave the looong term goals for the same purpose) and pheew the new year’s list of goals + justifications + plans and thoughts on reaching them. I have found it easier to keep going when I have a goal in mind.
I am flat broke so the ideas of travelling – first to India and then later to the hinterlands of Johannesburg – have been scrapped. In my disappointment, I have decided to take time out and be a blessing to others and will be spending time with a group of dynamic people who themselves have taken the well being of others as their primary goal at least into the foreseeable future. These people have taken upon themselves to provide a safe haven for the vulnerable children and teenagers in the Hilbrow/Yeoville area of Johannesburg (as well as in Soweto), operating a centre akin to an orphanage – providing the basic needs of life for a teeming 450 people who otherwise would have been without these. First brought to my attention by my Australian colleague a couple of months ago, I have resolved to spend Christmas day with this children and hopeful ignite the interests of some of them in computers – that way I will have no excuse not to volunteer 10 – 15 hours monthly as from January helping out with their interests in the hope of building it up and perhaps sowing the seeds for another computer genius from amongst them.
Greetings wonderful people! Your participation in the first two weeks of the Youth Consultation on Migration and Development is greatly appreciated! This is the third and final week of the consultation, and will focus on policy coordination and climate change. The effects of migration on development are complex and depend on many different factors, from immigration rules to ease of overseas investment to social services available to migrants and their family members. This week, we ask you which different government agencies and social organizations should be included in making migration policies.
by Oluwakorede Asuni on Friday, 15 October 2010 at 09:01 Original posted to facebook I am a public speaker. Yes ke, a motivational speaker. I love to speak and motivate, so it is the clear and direct career option for me. Haba, I require nothing but the idea to change the world and an energy to pursue it on the stage. I understand crowd dynamics. See punctuating my sentences with rhymes + gesticulation (sometimes I somersault in mid sentence) = Crowd uproar! And success per presentation? the volume of applause that follows me as I leave the stage! Gba be! I need no degree or any work experience except those I gathered before the mirror. Me? I no fit join the labour market and as I no get any skill pass to talk, I will make it a public speaking a career. What does it matter, if all I say are pure theories I read in books? Who cares if even me myself, have not put into practice some of these theories? And cannot even point at any working model of the things I talk about!?
I love technology – especially if viewed from the lens “technology makes life easier”. But, in my acquisitions, I have always had one guiding principle, ‘juice out the maximum benefit per dollar invested!’ For this reason, I am not always the first of all people to buy new techs, though usually, I am the first to read and talk (and sometimes write) about it in my village, I am not always the first to buy and be sure when I buy, its always one of two things: (1) Why in the world have I been so foolish to have waited this long to acquire this piece of machine (that was the feeling when I succumbed to the pressure from Apple to buy the MacBook and then later the MacBook Pro) or
By Dr Lindiwe Majele Sibanda * Africa has a quarter of the world’s arable land but produces only a tenth of our food. On the eve of a pan-African conference on food security, Lindiwe Sibanda asks how African farmers can turn things round. One week from now, 200 agricultural experts from across Africa and around the world will meet in Namibia at the annual regional food security policy dialogue of the Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (Fanrpan) to discuss some of the most pressing issues facing the African continent. One month from now, a UN summit will take place in New York to discuss the upcoming five-year deadline for achieving the millennium development goals (MDGs), the successes gained so far and the new priorities that must be supported. However, in today’s world these discussions need not, and should not, be confined to those in Namibia or New York. This is why I am asking readers of this website to create their own dialogue here about the issues we are addressing and the potential solutions available.
Then it hurts So close yet elusive Striving and sweating Batting and swatting Running and fighting Yet so close Yet so elusive Then it hurts! Yet another feeble attempt at poetry -don’t I just give up? beats me too 🙂
Originally written on Tuesday 20/07/2010 Today, I had my first direct experience with the term virtualisation – note my choice of words. I am certain I have had many indirect ones and in most cases the term virtual/virtualization did not count or I was not aware of my interactions with virtual machines. I equipped my Windows machine with Oracle’s Virtual Box (free to download and use on several platforms, including windows, Mac OS, and Linux distributions) – which runs open source hypervisors and allows me create as many virtual machines (VM) as I chose on my single processor Toshiba PC. Another good thing is: I never have to shut down and reboot to use any of the VMs.
This Sunday, 18 July 2010 the world will gather to celebrate a man who has come to define resilence, conviction, persevrance and brute determination. Nelson Mandela, turns 92 and celebrates 67 years of service to humanity(and his fatherland/mother land if you will). Without pretending to know the history of South Africa or the full details of the struggles that make Mandela what he has come o be known for, or attempting to recreate information that already exists and can be easily gleaned from many sources, I’d like to state Nelson Mandela is a model of conviction and determination. As part of celebrations, may civil society actors/groups have teamed up and are campaigning that we contribute 67 minutes of ur time on Sunday 18, July 2010 doing service to humanity. Read about the 67 minutes campaign on the Every Human Has Rights website. Image courtesy of: loyapower.files.wordpress.com
I grew up around stories that the earth can no longer support man and we have to look for a new abode. Where? Where will man make his new home? I asked these and many other related questions many times and the usual and confusing answer – coming from mostly my pre-teen peers as confused as I am – is space. My appropriation of space then was something in the clouds – today, many, ok not so many years after, it still is. And dateline for our ultimate transition to the cloud, man’s new abode was the magic year 2000. Today, grown – yes, if I go by counting the number of hairs on my chin– and a lot more appreciative of the challenges that face man’s continued habitation of the earth, I smile when I think about those years. Indeed man has not relocated to the clouds, but his data has – or more appropriately is doing so. Increasingly, the cloud is housing our data – whether or not we like it. And going the way of the cloud seem the most sustainable approach to data management and storage. Nerds and those who pay them, believe so much in the concept of cloud computing – which in its most literal interpretation stands for computing suspended or housed in the skies/clouds, but in its real and most basic sense stands for shared computing resources accross boundaries of geography (and if you will time and spac) – that entirely new technologies
Yesterday, I visited the Lion’s Park in the outskirts of Johannesburg. Approximately 30 minutes drive (most of it on a road called Malinbongwe Drive). The experience was both eye popping and exhilarating. It was closest I have seen and been with wild beasts in their natural habitat – and except I decide a PhD in the science of wild mammals that may the closest I will ever be to wild beasts in their natural habitat. At the lion’s park the environment was as close to the wild as possible – the animals were set up in camps with gates and wire fencing around each camp and free roaming as would have been possible in a jungle is restricted to the camps. Also restricted or totally impossible is the usual territorial wars amongst lions and the subsequent mass murder of the losers offsprings (the new lord usually does not want to have anything to do with the defeated lion except for his wives (lioness) which are the only spoils besides the jungle that the new lord takes on as part of the benefits of war- something about the Lion’s pride) thus the life expectancy of the Lions in the park is higher than that of a typical lion in the Jungle – I was introduced to a 19 year old Lion (forgive me, I have forgotten his name). Many things came to live for me. The ‘regalness’ of the King of the Jungle; The stupidity of the Ostrich (whose eyeballs are
Bros your ranting are seriously resembling that of a sycophant (the same genre of people who have led past leaders astray and currently leading Jonathan). We trusted your vision to provide some sort of direction for young people in Nigeria being one yourself, now, all of a sudden you have gone partisan (there is no other way to describe your recent actions) – you are causing much more damage than any good to whatever credibility our common cause has garnered. Rethink your position else, we will give up on you. We need to review principles. We need if we must, provide an unbiased platform for all to express their aspirations (and we on an individual or collective basis decide which way to go). Bros, the next one will mention names- wetin sef? Is enough not enough? #enoughisenough o!
The Octalysis framework is perhaps the most complete framework for grounding gamification design efforts in reality. In this paper, I present the framework and opine
Yesterday, I told the barista politely that I am going to do something about our trade deficit. The back story: I buy coffee from her,
If you’ve ever wished for a tool that could cut through the chaos and help you focus on what really matters—understanding and applying the information—you’re not alone. That’s where NotebookLM steps in.
Do we do work for the sake of it and its direct benefits (ability to buy things and by a stretch the ability to create wealth) or as a means to live a fulfilled life (where each is free to define fulfilment)? A position I might have maintained given “my confusion” is to maintain a hybrid view of work. I seize or attempt to seize every opportunity to create something that brings me fulfilment (I have been known to go as far as crossing boundaries of organisational hierarchy to get stuff done and apologise afterwards rather than wait endlessly for permission) and sometimes, too, I simply toe the line – in the hope that something great emerges – especially one that does emerge despite our efforts to the contrary.
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