Good news on the Cisco "admin glitch"/communication problem which I wrote about previously - Help needed to save Rural Training Centre - do you know anyone in Cisco? and More on Cisco and Rural Training Centre. In those posts I explained how the little rural Cisco acadamy at Fantsuam was being treated like a normal urban unversity department, regarding the bill for an essentiail upgrade. It was thus being placed in a situation which was threatening its survival.
John, as a local course provider, had problems connecting with anyone appropriate higher up the administrative chain. Through Dadamac in London were able to raise the problem "sideways" via Tuttle (an informal club and related network). As a result a connection was made with Cisco in USA, from there the issue was passed on to Lagos, and then to Jos, and John was contacted. As a result he was able to make the right connections to address the problem.
Update
John Dada reports:
I was in Jos to meet the Nigeria Cisco rep regarding our request for their support.
The Cisco meeting was good and we were given some concessions. For example the cost of retraining our instructors will be waived as well as the annual fee we are required to pay the Jos support centre. We were also given a blue print of how we can deploy the Cisco program in secondary schools around Kafanchan so that we can earn some revenue.
The issue of the lab bundles will be discussed with the regional representative to see how we can be supported.
John also referred to the five minute video that I helped to organise back in 2008. He said:
Cisco is happy with the FF documentary which you uploaded on UTube and hope we will continue to highlight the impact of the Cisco support we are getting.
You may enjoy watching it more if you know how it was made. John mentioned it over an evening meal. It needed to be ready quickly and everyone was busy. It was supposed to be about 5 minutes long. I suggested we should start by sharing the task out. We'd lose about one minute to the opening and closing credits. That left 4 minutes.
In the four minutes we could have several talking heads, in different locations, to give variety and we could add other visuals on top if there was time. Kelechi could do the camera work and editing. Comfort could do one minute on the microfinance programme. Ochuko could do one minute on Cisco and the techie side of things. John could do the remaining two minutes on everything else - some at the start and some at the end. People would write their own scripts, and when it came time to record someone could hold up the script up out of sight of the camera. I would simply chase people, and chivvy them, and help to create times when the camera and one of the 'talking heads" could be brought together so things could happen. In the event Kelechi found time to do some work on the video after the recording and added plenty of relevant photos, so it wasn't just talking heads.
We don't have the team to do another video, but we do have the blogs - so the story continues.
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