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iRevolution and FSI09 iRevolution is a fantastic blog by Patrick Philippe Meier that focuses on technology and innovative applications that "empower the individual to make better decisions for her or himself in times of crisis." Meier reviews technologies, techniques and approaches that allow individuals, groups and movements to foster "self-sufficiency, self-determination and self-survival facilitated by information communication technology." From Meier -

The normative motivation behind this blog is based on the recognition by “many scholars and practitioners that the techniques associated with strategic nonviolent social movements are greatly enhanced by access to modern information communication technologies, such as mobile telephony, short message service (SMS), email and the World Wide Web, among others” (Walker 2007).

Meier, a third-year Henry R. Luce PhD Candidate at The Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy and a Doctoral Research Fellow at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI), recently attended the Fletcher Summer Institute (FSI) for the Advanced Study of Nonviolent Conflict 2009. Everyone from "local and international NGOs, journalists, staff members of international institutions, think-tanks and research groups" attended the event to learn about topics like movement building, civil resistance and the role of diasporas in a resistance. The presentations are all very interesting and Meier did a great job summarizing them. Take a look below -

• FIS09: Introduction to Civil Resistance
• FSI09: Geopolitical Constraints vs Opportunities in Civil Resistance
• FSI09: Strategic Planning & Tactical Choices in Civil Resistance
• FSI09: Failed States and Civil Resistance
• FSI09: Lessons from Serbia’s Civil Resistance
• FSI09: Building a Movement for Civil Resistance
• FSI09: Economic Context of Nonviolent Resistance
• FSI09: Backfire, Legitimacy & Dividing Loyalties in Civil Resistance
• FSI09: Rechanneling Militancy in Nonviolent Struggle
• FSI09: Role of Diplomats & Diasporas in Civil Resistance
• FSI09: Law, Justice and Nonviolent Conflict
• FSI09: Media and Nonviolent Conflict
• FSI09: Repressive Strategies, Democratic Assistance & Civil Resistance
• FSI09: Civil Resistance in Democracies
• FSI09: The Future of Civil Resistance

These are all very interesting discussions and will give some context to the work a number of organizations and individuals that use our services engage themselves in.

Did you know?

You can now get RSS and Atom feeds for your Google Blog search results. Google Blog Search has also added Hot Queries and Latest Posts to the search home page. Take a look below -

What do these do exactly?

Hot Queries lists searches currently popular in Blog Search — it’s an easy way to quickly dive into the trending points of conversation on the web. Latest Posts, on the other hand, shows new posts from popular blogs. While Hot Queries highlights what people are looking for, Latest Posts lets you find out about stories even before people start searching for them.

Did you know?

Google recently announced Google SMS, a suite of mobiles services via SMS, aimed at users that have little or no internet access. This is especially true on the continent of Africa where cell phones have a high saturation rate. Included in the suite of services are -

Google Trader, a SMS-based “marketplace” application that helps buyers and sellers find each other. People can find, "sell" or "buy" any type of product or service, from used cars and mobile phones to crops, livestock and jobs.

Google SMS Tips, an SMS-based query-and-answer service that enables a mobile phone user to have a web search-like experience. You enter a free form text query, and Google’s algorithms restructure the query to identify keywords, search a database to identify relevant answers, and return the most relevant answer.

Basic search is also include, which features "news, sports scores, stock quotes, horoscope, glossary, currency converter, religious texts, translation, flights, Q&A, calculator, and local time."

Hi everyone!

We also want to remind you of our Facebook Causes page, please check it out and join when you get a chance –

http://apps.facebook.com/causes/85337?m=3124eff7

We use both our Fan Page and Causes page because of the great, but different, tools they both have.

Thanks!
Scott

Friends & RPCVs of Guyana

Did you know? If you look to the top right of your Gmail, you notice an alert for new email tips – Google has set up a series of tips to help you become a more proficient Gmail user. They’ve broken the tips into White Belt, Green Belt, Black Belt and Gmail Master. The tips range from the simple, like using chat to the more complex such as using Gmail on your own domain. Interested in becoming a Gmail ninja?

Did you know?

Google Books recently launched a number of new features to their service. What have they added? Take a look -

• Embeddable previews of books
• Ramped up in-book search
• Thumbnail view options
• Contents drop-down menu
• Plain Text Mode
• Page Turn Button and Animation

For more info on Google’s effort to promote reader interaction with Books, Techcrunch has a great breakdown on what each of these updates entails.

Google Earth Enterprise System

For past two years I’ve been a board member of the RPCV group Friends & RPCVs of Guyana (FROG) and as nonprofits go, it takes time to build up membership, fund raise, continue outreach and develop our programs but I’m confident that we’re progressing at a solid pace.

There’s plenty of room for FROG to grow and I’ve begun to spend more time thinking long-term about the future of our organization.

How can we make our work more sustainable?

How can we better integrate into the nonprofit community in Guyana?

How can this community effectively work together and share it’s collective resources?

Guyana is a small country but with a large number of NGOs, nonprofits, community groups, volunteers and activists operating within the country. At any one time, there are thousands of people on the ground planning, organizing, volunteering and working toward the collective goal of bettering people’s lives. Thinking of our work within this context keeps bringing me to the conclusion that we’re operating without the most basic tool, collaborative mapping.

Obviously it’s the responsibility of each organization to archive their activities and projects, successes and failures, resources on the ground, for the sake of organizational memory and building upon their work. But it’s the collective responsibility of the NGO community to share with each other what will ultimately benefit the people they’re serving.

One mapping tool that strikes me as incredibly powerful is the Google Earth Enterprise system. This system allows mapping and sharing large amounts and varying types of data sets for making better organizational decisions collaboratively.

How does this work?

Google Earth Enterprise helps organizations with imagery and other geospatial data make that information accessible and useful to all employees who need access via an intuitive, visual, and fast application. Visualize, explore and understand information on a fully interactive 3D globe or 2D browser based maps. Enable your workers to collaborate, improve decision-making, and take faster, more informed action based on geospatial information.

Using this system, organizations in Guyana will quickly learn where overlapping projects exists, where resources are lacking and where they are redundant, which villages volunteers should be sent and what they need to focus on while there. Organization can compare a wide range of data sets to draw conclusions that may have otherwise been missed. Combined with tools like FrontlineSMS, InSTEDD and Ushahidi, crisis management will be more effective. Local data sets combined with UN data, information from the World Bank and other sources will help both the NGO community and the Guyanese government with “big picture” planning and outreach.

As this system, and those like it, mature, there will continue to be success stories and wider implementation of mapping technologies. Long-term, I realize this idea may be bigger than FROGs capacity, but it’s a direction we’ll push for regardless.

Friends & RPCVs of Guyana would like to take a moment and thank J. Aramathea, art director of Deitrick & Associates and The HALO Foundation, for the volunteer work she’s done with our organization.  During her hours away from her work and volunteering with The HALO Foundation, J. Aramathea has been working on updating the FROG logo so that we can use it in a variety of ways.  The new logo can be replicated on stationary and letterheads to items as large as posters and barndoors if we needed to.

I’d also like to take a moment to highlight her work with The HALO Foundation, which recently launched The 93 cents for Flight 93 Campaign, which is dedicated to building a memorial for Flight 93 of September 11.