November 16, 2011 – 4:13 am
I’m catching up on a backlog of blog posts. National Novel Writing Month (nanowrimo.org) has really taken the place of blogging. But I’m currently at 23000 words after 15 days. The more you write, the harder it gets to tie all these characters and plot elements together in a climax. Maybe I’ll be like Stephen […]
November 6, 2011 – 9:14 am
As the 2011 “municipal liaison” (read: event coordinator) for National Novel Writing Month (www.nanowrimo.org) in Kenya, I organized a writers’ kick-off party at the iHUB (www.ihub.co.ke) in Nairobi. One of our activities was for writers to sculpt their “internal editors”: My internal editor is the creature with bug eyes, claws for hands, and a big […]
October 25, 2011 – 5:11 pm
Tensions in Nairobi are running high this week. Many Kenyans are as adamant in support of fighting Al-Shabab in Somalia as I am against it. I feel like I’ve seen this movie before, and it was awful the first time. Just war? But right now people driven by sense of justified righteousness. Being right doesn’t […]
By Marc Maxson
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Posted in Politics
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Also tagged African dialogues, Al-Shabab, complexity, critical thinking, diffusing tension, escalation, fatuma adan, HODI, horn of arica, justified righteousness, kenya, somalia, war, wisdom
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Here are all the locations we’ve collected stories for January to June of 2011 (about 4500 stories so far): The numbers represent unique locations within a city, not numbers of stories. I tried pumping those 1500 story locations mapped into BatchGeo (http://batchgeo.com/map/1fc96e2b6c4a458a54d51bcb25771493) – the results are not totally accurate, but […]
By Marc Maxson
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Posted in GlobalGiving Storytelling Project, Visualizations & Maps
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Also tagged batch geo, geo, geolocation, geomapping, geonames, google fusion tables, kenya, latitude, location, longituge, nairobi slums, reverse geo, uganda
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Last week I discovered Unsuck-it and quipped, “When will somebody create a de-jargon-izer for International Development? The storytelling project is starting to demonstrate that people working at non-governmental organizations all over the world speak a different language from those in the communities they help. And The Economist recently explained why “NGOish” matters. I searched around […]
By Marc Maxson
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Posted in Innovation in chunks, maps and mapping, metrics, neuroscience, systems
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Also tagged access, activities, AIDS, areas, arts, awareness, basic, better, build, building, business, Buzzword, care, center, change, children, clean, community, concordance, create, development lexicon, dictionary, district, economic, education, educational, empowerment, environment, environmental, families, family, farmers, feedback switchboard, food, free, fund, future, girls, glossary, health, help, high, hiv, hivaids, home, human, improve, income, increase, information, international, international development, jargon, lack, language, leadership, learn, learning, lexicon, life, literacy, live, lives, living, local, materials, medical, motion chart, need, new, NGO, NGOish, opportunities, orphans, parents, people, phrases, poor, poverty, primary, public, quality, relief, resources, rights, rural, safe, sanitation, school, schools, services, skills, small, social, sports, students, supplies, sustainable, teachers, technology, training, use, village, villages, violence, vulnerable, water, who-what-where, women, work, working, years, young, youth
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February 15, 2011 – 4:57 pm
Building Local Trust I met a group of 16 Ugandan youth organizations in Kampala last week, and led a discussion on local and international fundraising strategies they could adopt. In this and similar meetings, organizations say that trust is the biggest barrier to local fundraising. It is not in our culture in Uganda. There are […]
By Marc Maxson
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Posted in GlobalGiving Storytelling Project, Innovation in chunks
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Also tagged African dialogues, african youth peace initiatives, amnesty international, Building Bridges Uganda, building trust, Childrens AIDS Fund, communication for development foundation, community, community effort, complexity, confident, congolese refugee community in uganda, CRY uganda, dialogues, DSW, earning, fundraising, globalgiving, globalgiving storytelling project, hurinet, Integrated efforts in culture for development, international development, Kamokya christian care centre, kenya, learning, mapping networks, money, MUCDINET, MYDEL, NACARE, ngo network, red cross, rewards, serenity centre, shine african child, TASO, trust, usaid, uydel, uyonet, world vision, YES uganda, youth aid uganda, youth Alive
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February 13, 2011 – 4:19 pm
Last week I visited Kampala, the capitol of Uganda, where a national election is underway. They vote for a new President and members of Parliament on February 18th, 2011. The last big election was 5 years ago. There are 8 political parties, and they drive buses or flatbed trucks around the city at all hours […]
January 12, 2011 – 5:19 pm
Some ironic observations about how easy phones make things, and how behind the times Internet remains in Nairobi in 2011: I couldn’t check my gmail in a Nairobi restaurant with their wifi, but kindle works great (on Whispernet3G) for gmail and costs nothing. Skype (which is free over the Internet) can barely call the USA, […]
By Marc Maxson
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Posted in Uncategorized
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Also tagged ADSL2, broadband, EDGE, GPRS, ict, Internet in Kenya, kenya, kindle, kindle africa, Next G 3G, telecommunications, telephony, Whispernet3G, wireless 3G
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October 5, 2010 – 12:55 am
I am just now getting acquainted with Amazon Mechanical Turk. This is pretty amazing if you want somebody else to do a repetitive, cumbersome task and you have an extra $25 to buy a solution. For example, my goal for Fall 2010 is to learn something about Python programming, and build a useful website to […]
