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The Dirk Award is given annually to Circuit Riders or eRiders who have shown extraordinary contributions to the nonprofit and international NGO technology communities while paying tribute to the principles of social justice and the role technology can play in empowering other communities and individuals. eRiders are one of the largest global resources of ICT capacity building for development organizations and work in a world-wide movement with growing representation in more than 20 countries. More information about eRiders is available at www.eriders.net.
Since 2003, Vladimir Petkov (aka Kaladan) has worked as an eRider, serving as Content and Project Manager at Interspace, a New Media Art Centre in Sofia, Bulgaria. He is part of a great team which supports his efforts in spreading eRiding; the team is creative, dedicated and ever-willing to welcome new visitors to Interspace. Several years back, the term "supeRider" was coined to describe an individual who showed strong mentorship and leadership skills both on their own eRider team as well as in the larger eRider community; Kaladan has been an embodiment of that term ever since he started eRiding.
Along with his team of talented eRiders at Interspace, Kaladan has hosted visits from two other eRider teams, Open Consultants from Georgia and the eRider team from Tajikistan. Kaladan set a week-long agenda for each visiting team that offered learnings on how the Interspace eRiding team has been successful, but also provided opportunities to address the visiting teams' current challenges. Kaladan has also traveled to Tajikistan and most recently Thailand to provide training to eRider groups there; in Thailand he trained with eRiders working in the "Free Burma" movement, and he has agreed to travel to Sierra Leone to work with teams of eRiders working in West Africa. He is also responsible for the running of the eRiders.net website.
Kaladan and Interspace have long been at the forefront of providing Open Source Solutions to NGO's. His strategy of deploying open source solutions came as a response to a Bulgarian Government crackdown on illegal software piracy which threatened to close several Bulgarian NGO's. With Kaladan's help, many Bulgarian NGO's remained open and his model for migrating NGO's to Open Source has been used by many other eRider organizations.
In person, Kaladan is warm, friendly and always has a smile. He is also entirely humble and always ready to help where he can. It is because of these traits that we are honored to acknowledge Kaladan and all that he has done for the eRider community and for the NGO sector as a whole.
The Committee of previous Dirk Award recipients and the global eRider and nonprofit technology support community congratulate Kaladan for passionate, inspiring, far-reaching work!
More information about the Dirk Award for eRiders is at www.dirkaward.org.
Check out the new video hub for Human Rights video which was launched in partnership between WITNESS and Global Voices Online.
Circuit Riding in the North East has been shortlisted for the IT in the community award 2006 from Computing Magazine.
The Dirk award was presented to Ungana-Afrika in 2005. The nominations are in for 2006 winner and the lucky Dirkee should be announced this fall.
The massive popularity of wireless networking has caused equipment costs to continually plummet, while equipment capabilities continue to increase. By applying this technology in areas that are badly in need of critical communications infrastructure, more people can be brought online than ever before, in less time, for very little cost. We hope to not only convince you that this is possible, but also show how we have made such networks work, and to give you the information and tools you need to start a network project in your local community.
We are pleased to announce the release of the eRider Starter Kit, created by Teresa Crawford and the Tactical Technology Collective with the support of the global eRider community. The starter kit is designed to help organizations understand, design, imp
Digital Divide Narrowing Fast, Says World Bank
(ITweb) The digital divide between rich and poor nations is narrowing fast, the World Bank said yesterday, calling into question a costly United Nations campaign to bring hi-tech telecommunications to the d
Is the digital divide still a big problem in poorer nations
around the world? This topic is being hotly debated this week as experts meet in Geneva to discuss the issue.
We am very happy to announce the release of aroundme 0.4.2, our social networking, group collaboration membership and community platform.
Barnraiser announces the release of aroundme 0.4.0, their social networking, group collaboration and interaction software.
VJ | Video editing | Audio editing
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Hosted by OpenMute, London UK - Monday 13 Dec - Tuesday 14 Dec
**PD.ZILLA --- PURE DATA STOMPS THE UK!**
Workshops and demos on Free and Open Source Software by Aymeric Man
We Heartily Invite Your Participation and Contributions!
This guide is for eRiders who would like to start implementing open source software projects with NGO's. The guide is also a place for eRiders that are implementing Open Source projects to submit resources and information that they've found helpful.
Asia Source hopes to bring together over 100 people from 20 countries to
increase the use of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) amongst the
voluntary sector in South and South East Asia.
A United Nations task force today began examining the adequacy of funding worldwide for information and communication technologies.
Financing for these projects has been realised through the "Catalyzing the creation and exchange of local content" .
The Tactical Technology Collective is seeking a erider projects
co-ordinator to support our ambitious (complex)project to help NGOs use
new technologies in developing countries.
We have started new forum for eriders.net
The LINC Project Guide to Choosing an Operating System has been officially released.
The Barnraiser team is very happy to announce the latest release of 'aroundme', Barnraiser?s open source social networking and team interaction software.
The Bulgarian voluntary sector is pioneering the adoption of Linux, and is even advising some UK voluntary organisations on how to make the jump to open source.
The international, three-day event took place in Djursland - Denmark and was followed by a five days hands-on workcamp. Five conference tracks were offered with lectures, workshops and discussions on:
* wireless community networks
* wireless4developmen
CIVIL SOCIETY POLICY WEBSITES SET UP IN TEN NATIONS
The 2004 Alliance Annual Conference will focus on "Empowering the Nonprofit Sector."
A new support system for eRider users of TechSurveyor Offline has been set up.
We are so cool. Just take a look.
What's a Blog, and Why Should Nonprofits Care?
The following article describes weblogs (commonly known as blogs) and presents ideas on how they may be useful for the work of nonprofits. As with any new Web tool, tech organizations are first to e
Not even his own staff would call Democratic congressional candidate Ben Chandler a nethead.
"He uses the Internet almost exclusively for fantasy baseball," said campaign spokesman Jason Sauer, who added that he wasn't sure whether, until re
Training on open source, web designing and networking will take place in Sofia, Bulgaria from the 18th.of February 2004.
http://tinyurl.com/zc9m
Early signs show next year could be the breakout year for the open-
source operating system.
http://tinyurl.com/zc9iThis article describes the mission of a small Spanish town dedicated to using Open Source software. ?It isn't about the process of collaborative development or objections to intellectual property. It's about power to the people.?
http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?id=17712
Click the Vote (http://www.clickthevote.org/), a new nonprofit organization has launched a campaign intended to connect file-swapping and open-source computing advocates into a political force.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3250876.stm
The local authorities in the city of Sao Paulo, Brazil have opened countless Internet caf?s for citizens to use computers for free. Advocates believe that ?access to technology is fundamental in order to
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/3303129.stm
Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe at the Commonwealth summit said, ?There could be no just information society without more social equality.? What do you believe?
From Improving IT Infrastructures to Achieving Social Good: Outcomes of Nonprofit Technology Assistance Providers (NTAPs)
Out on the Internet exists an alternative universe where mainstream media, social mores, personal lives and government activities are diarised, critiqued, mocked and satirized by thousands of amateur and independent writers.
Interesting article on MSNBC today. Could eRiders and all the other technorati out there be working to make the world safer?
Cooped up in their communities for most of the past three years of fighting, Palestinians have found a way to escape: going online.
The European Parliament has, by an overwhelming majority, adopted a report on women in the information society which calls on the Commission and Member States to devise policies to ensure gender equality in the information and ICT sector.
Headlines are flying with stories of incriminating e-mail messages ? and the many court cases that have been launched by (discovered) e-mails. That makes this a very good time for you to be securing your corporate communications with new tools.
Software which enables e-mail writers to choose the image they want to portray is being developed by a team of Scottish researchers.
This paper examines how non-state dissident actors in the Middle East use the Internet for political action in the face of state-imposed constraints on Internet access. Non-state dissident actors have revisionist goals and the Internet offers certain adva
It has taken 10 years of talk about ?new media? for a critical mass to understand that every computer desktop, and now every pocket, is a worldwide printing press, broadcasting station, place of assembly, and organizing tool?and to learn how to use that i
Interesting take on piracy and copyright issues in Eastern Europe. From the article...Not only can music enthusiasts in the Baltic states buy boatloads of pirated tunes on the streets, they pay taxes on the prohibited material.
The purpose of this guide is to help a non-technical or low end technical person working in a small non-profit or NGO(non-governmental organization) make informed decisions about aquiring computer systems based on their needs.
Activists and protesters arm themselves with technology -- peer-to-peer, wireless gadgets -- in preparation for next month's meeting of the World Trade Organization.
A modern generation of activists around the world who are relying on new technologies -- from hidden cameras to satellite communication -- to collect evidence of wrongdoing, promote their causes or simply provide an alternative voice to the mainstream pre
Search engine Google, owner of one of the most powerful brands on the internet, is now close to floating its shares for the first time, according to a swathe of media reports.
Technological measures alone will not be enough to bridge the digital divide. UNESCO believes that the social, political and cultural aspects of the information revolution must be tackled, if people in North and South are to reap its benefits fully.
Greater investment in technology is the key to boosting the stagnant economies and labor markets of Latin America, a new report by the Inter-American Development Bank says.
Net User is the first international and interdisciplinary conference in Bulgaria, which features a wide variety of contemporary trends in Internet activities in order to develop a better theoretical and pragmatic understanding of the Internet.
The days when you could forward an embarrassing e-mail to your colleagues could be a thing of the past.
I have removed the Google results that used to be on book detail pages and have replaced them with results from Yahoo News RSS feeds, as described by Jeremy Zawodny a few weeks ago.
Computer literacy has become a vital workplace skill - a skill that millions of people worldwide still lack. To help narrow this skills gap and aid global work-force development, Microsoft Corp. today launched Unlimited Potential (UP), a global initiative
Always envied other eRider?s cool handhelds but did not want to shell out the money to buy one? Participate in a content contest on eRiders.net and win a Palm Zire for yourself.
Bringing together activists from non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and free and Open Source software proponents on a common ground for mutual learning and cooperation,was the mission 110 people from over 35 countries lead to the island of Vis.
Connecting touch tone phone users to the web - without a computer. Check out how one tool is working in Peru.
Ever sat online and watched a web page take 15 minutes to load over a slow connection? This may change with the release of a new search engine developed by MIT.
There's no question that the Internet is helping activists call attention to human rights violations, but barriers still exist. One significant barrier is encryption software, which even the experts acknowledge is far from user-friendly.
Innovative use of handhelds by organizations in New York. How a little technology can go a long way in documenting and meeting community needs.
We have started a test IRC channel for eRiders. The chat room is for online help for issues with open source programs.
The OSI Information Program is pleased to issue a request for project proposals for its ICT Toolsets initiative. This initiative seeks to advance and support open society principles and practices by funding the development of software tools designed to me
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