Front runners on the use of modern technology for (rural) development meet in Rome

25 Sep 07

The first conference on the use of Web 2.0 for rural development and natural resource management  opens its third conference day with one of the most respected and quoted experts on blogging and development, Mr Ethan Zuckerman. Ethan Zuckerman, Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society from the Harvard Law of School, is co-founder of Global Voices, the largest aggregator of developing world blogs and citizen media. He has been involved with the development of web tools and specifically technology for the developing world since 1994, when he helped co-found Tripod.com. In his presentation Zuckerman will talk about how blogging has changed traditional patterns of communication and knowledge sharing and demonstrate some live blogging.

Other key-note speakers of the Conference are Ms Anriette Estherhuysen and Mr Joel Sol. Anriette Esterhuysen, Executive Director of the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), an international nongovernmental organisation focusing on the use of ICT by civil society for social justice and development. She has a longstanding career in the field of ICT and social justice and development. Previously she worked for SANGONET, an electronic information and communications service provider for the development sector in South Africa and founded WomenNet in South Africa. Over the years she also fulfilled several membership roles within organisations such as the African Technical Advisory Committee of the Economic Commission for Africa's African Information Society Initiative, the Social Science Research Council's Information Technology and International Cooperation Steering Committee and the UN ICT Task Force.

Mr Joel Sor is the executive director of CIRAD, a French agricultural research centre working for international development. Its expertise spans the life sciences, human sciences and engineering sciences and their application to agriculture and food, natural resource management and society. He will present the Scientific and Technical Information System Project (SIST) of CIRAD, a project focussing on making African research less isolated and the reduction of the North-South digital divide.

 

 

By: Hilde Eugelink