One Geek

I am thinking now that next year is about working out how I can best use or be used to help people (including me).

My thesis has me traveling to Africa to evaluate how some poverty focussed NGO’s there are using Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in their organisations. As part of my evaluation I hope to work with the people in the organisations to improve their ICT usage in appropriate ways.

The real thing though this thesis is doing is helping me to work out what the needs are in at least one African country.

As far as I can see when I complete my degree next year I have a few options:

1. Work locally in the community sector and help people locally. This option would enable me to stay in my community and continue to develop my relationships to people locally. Whilst there is some chance of me using my ICT skills here in Sydney, I feel that there a many geeks available to service this need.
2. Create a not for loss company in Australia and work as a consulting and IT/Engineering support to both corporate and community based organisations. I could do some interesting projects and really help a lot of organisations. This would be a risky venture and would require a lot of long term commitment and energy.
3. Work for an organisation that works overseas in an ICT role, somewhere in a rich country. I think that I would not be able to get this role as I don’t have enough experience in developing countries or working in classic IT workplaces.
4. Make ungodly large sums of money working for profit companies, and give large amounts of it away. Sadly I think I’d just buy very nice things for myself and my friends…
5. Start a Dosa restaurant with a great selection of wines. Sadly I know nothing about restaurants and can only really cook a few dishes.
6. Work in the field in one of these roles:
   1. ICT Developer
      In this role I would develop new systems with local NGO’s to address their needs. Fun but I have big question marks around the sustainability of such systems.
   2. ICT Manager
      In this role I would manage and co-ordinate the ICT systems of an NGO.
   3. ICT Consultant
      In this role I would provide advice for people in organisations to politely listen too and then ignore.
   4. ICT and Disaster Management role
      In this role I’d work to find ways to use Information Systems to help in Disaster Management better.
   5. Mentor/Teacher of ICT.
      In this role I’d work in an organisation, and provide someone on the job support. I have found that in India this was the most ultimately rewarding, though sometimes incredibly draining thing I did. How much I did to help the development of those I worked with I don’t know, but those I trained seem to be taking on larger roles now.

So what do you think? Any other roles??

Way back in 2000 on 8 September 2000 the leaders of the “free world” made these commitments:

We will spare no effort to free our peoples from the scourge of war, whether within or between States, which has claimed more than 5 million lives in the past decade. We will also seek to eliminate the dangers posed by weapons of mass destruction.

We will spare no effort to free our fellow men, women and children from the abject and dehumanizing conditions of extreme poverty, to which more than a billion of them are currently subjected. We are committed to making the right to development a reality for everyone and to freeing the entire human race from want.

We must spare no effort to free all of humanity, and above all our children and grandchildren, from the threat of living on a planet irredeemably spoilt by human activities, and whose resources would no longer be sufficient for their needs.

We will spare no effort to promote democracy and strengthen the rule of law, as well as respect for all internationally recognized human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the right to development

We will spare no effort to ensure that children and all civilian populations that suffer disproportionately the consequences of natural disasters, genocide, armed conflicts and other humanitarian emergencies are given every assistance and protection so that they can resume normal life as soon as possible.

We will spare no effort to make the United Nations a more effective instrument for pursuing all of these priorities: the fight for development for all the peoples of the world, the fight against poverty, ignorance and disease; the fight against injustice; the fight against violence, terror and crime; and the fight against the degradation and destruction of our common home.

Milenium Declaration.

May you all have a great Christmas today!!

Some German’s have designed a new wind power system for boats but using kites.

More here.

Community dinner tonight was good tonight. We did a fun gift Christkindle thing, bon bons and fun stories.

A multi-millionaire family was convicted of having slaves in theUS this week.

I must say I am glad to see cases like this getting some attention on mainstream sites like CNN.

Today I got my refund from 8 weeks ago when my trip to India got cancelled, got my laptop back from the repair centre, confirmed two fun dinners, and cooked some peanut chutney. Too bad I didn’t get any work done on my thesis..

I feel so very naked now. I just put my Macbook in for the case to be repaired. I may be without her until Friday. How am I going to cope?

Anyone want to come and see Atonement on Wednesday 6.45pm at Hornsby.

If you want to get some good insights into what is happening in the UN Climate Change Conference, Ben is doing some live reporting. I’m a little concerned now that Rudd’s approach to Climate Change is not that serious, as he seems to be avoiding setting a 2020 target. Wouldn’t the perfect way to keep interest rates low, be to decrease growth through massive emissions cuts???

If anyone wants a bit of information on why we have water problems globally, this post here has some good information. That post made me think that power generation through coal and nuclear power require massive amounts of water for cooling, switching to solar and wind would help reduce this aspect of water consumption.

Well I got home this afternoon, thankfully the clouds blew over and the rain stopped. We managed to get our work finished by noon and headed home. Got home at 5.30pm. Pretty worn out. Might go to sleep now.

Today I am meant to be spending the morning working on a railway but it is pouring down. I don’t know what that means yet but I imagine I will have to still work outside in the mud and rain. Ah the joys of it all.

I’m staying in a typical country motel, but something strange happened. Last night the fan in my room turned itself on, I can’t find the switch for it anywhere. It’s making my room rather cold now, but the AC was offsetting it overnight. Strange.

In other news, I somehow forgot to pack any shirts even though I had selected and laid them out. Ops, I hope no one notices.

Well I’m here in Gunnedah (near Tamworth) ready for work in the morning, hopefully leaving again tomorrow. The drive up was pretty slow because of all the rain. I’ve got to visit a few country NSW towns over the past year with work. They are to me a city boy at heart, surprisingly pleasant. I would though find it hard to last more then a week in a small town I am sure.

It was nice too getting to spend some time with Dad in the car heading up here. He has travelled most of NSW for work over the years. He even set up some of the phone exchanges in small towns we passed, back in the days of Telecom.

Today is World AIDS Day. I feel like I have talked in the past a lot about HIV/AIDS in poor countries. For now I want to talk about the rising rates of HIV infection in the West. I just read an article over at Forbes, talking about the rising rates of infection primarily among men who have sex with men in the US. It is clear that more unprotected sex is occurring among young people. The article suggests it’s because the effects of HIV/AIDS are seemingly less visible because of antiretrovirals and also that the profile of HIV has dropped in the public sphere.

In Australia the number of infections has risen 31% over the last six years, and the growth is not confined to men who have sex with men.

The Australian has an interesting article discussing Australia’s early response to the HIV epidemic hitting Australia. Whilst I knew about the Grim Reaper ads I didn’t know that some health professionals setup illegal needle exchange programs. I wish it wasn’t showing on a Tuesday night.

I think the federal election sadly has buried most of the stories on World AIDS day this year in Australia, which is a shame. I struggled to find anything in the SMH about HIV today. Hopefully that will be fixed later today, because it is an important story.