CIO altruism and the problem of accountability

John Soat of InformationWeek wrote about how altruism will be an important element of “Tomorrow’s CIO.” The basic thrust of the column is that corporate Chief Information Officers have an important role to play in helping charitable organizations leverage technology more effectively.
He notes that a problem for many nonprofits is that: “Contributors don’t want charities [...]

Safaricom, Africa-tech and Google in Africa

One of the things that many Afro-optimists share is an excitement about the way that technology is providing new opportunities for the passion, energy, and talent that’s so apparent in young people across the continent.
Last week, Google announced (hattip Appfrica) that it was launching a blog dedicated entirely to its work in Africa, which has [...]

A bunch of great things I wish I had written about today

A couple cool social change/technology things from around the blogosphere:
“Nonprofit Blogging: Burning Questions and Answers”: Blogger and nonprofit consultant Britt Bravo shares experience and lessons from her consulting with nonprofits about why and how a blog can be useful in advancing the mission.
“Why Do People Give to Charity?”: Sean Stannard-Stockton (of Tactical Philanthropy) responds to [...]

Barcamp Nairobi and the next hubs of innovation

Last weekend, the folks from AfriGadget, Ushahidi, and a bunch of others helped organize “Barcamp Nairobi” a (non) conference meet-up that brought together programmers, social activists, mobile phone enthusiasts and technologists to get to know one another and share ideas.
The topics ranged from ICT and rural energy (as presented by LightingupKenya.org) to women bloggers to [...]

OLPC, Microsoft, Opensource and customer questions

There is a really interesting conversation that started last week at outsourcing expert Steve Hamm’s blog Bangalore Tigers at BusinessWeek. The conversation is about the One Laptop Per Child program founder’s decision to agree to ship units with a version of Microsoft’s XP operating system rather than the open-source, Linux based system.
http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/blog/globespotting/archives/2008/06/olpc_the_open-s.html?campaign_id=rss_blog_bangaloretigers
For some, this is [...]