This is an archive of the Dadamac.net website, as it was in 2015, it is no longer being updated.

First Thursday - sharing the June archive

Submitted by Pamela on 13 June 2013 - 10:06pm

First Thursday is an online meeting that I hold once a month.I go online for an hour and some of my geograhically scattered friends and contacts drop by for a chat, and have the opportunity to meet each other - more about how "First Thursday" works

It is a great opportunity to exchange information and knowledge from very different cultural perspectives (this month we have people from Nigeria, USA and UK).

We have bandwidth constratints so we don't talk, we type. This means there is a typed archive by the end of the chat. I'm experimenting with ways of picking out key points and then sharing our conversations.

This is my experiment for June

When people join the meeting I encourage them to introduce themselves: I also point out that "any information you share here is in the public domain - so do not share private information."

Introductions

Pamela  McLean - UK using laptop at home. In the "Dadamac" collaboration I'm    the "mac" part of the name Dadamac. I'm  exploring how the Internet  can   help us to collaborate and learn - especially learning-by-doing  and   learning-from-each-other http://dadamac.net/

Jeff  LaHay - Minneapolis, MN USA  using desktop and high speed  DSL from  work. My colleague Fran and I train people to  assemble small solar   cellphone charging systems to create local cottage industries in the   developing world. We worked with Dr. Dada at Fantsuam in March 2012.

I am Kazanka Comfort from Fantsuam Foundation joining today

Charley Quinton - Chicago, IL USA - Rebel Soul from The South extending - converting to Union Organiser in The North. The Uncivil War is over but the rewrite of History continues... http://ozonefarm.wordpress.com

Kelechi Micheals, Owerri, Nigeria. I am using  my HTC phone as a Hotspot and connecting thru a laptop. Its very very slow.

Gerry Gleason - Chicago, IL  USA  using old iMac via home network (which went dWhown early this morning, so we are lucky not to be interupted (etherpad.openstewardship.net points to one of the servers on the home network here)).  Trying to get re-employed  (besides all my for  benefit work), working on Wagn(.org).

I am Victoria Eze From Nigeria, though right now i am not in Nigeria I run an NGO in Nigeria. www.divinevictory.org

Mark Roest, San Mateo, California, USA. Working in a battery technology start-up; title is strategy and international development.

Olalekan Lawal: from Yoruba World Institute, London United Kingdom. At Yoruba World we tame technology for cultural revitalization, human development and developing digital content for economic sustainability.

Tayo Dada from Fantsuam Foundation (This is an organisation with a Mission to eliminate poverty and disadvantage via integrated development prograns and a Vision to be the most effective model of integrated rural development in West Africa.Fantsuam Foundation is located in Nigeria,Kaduna State,Kafanchan Bayan Loco.I have been a volunteer with Fantsuam Foundation for a long time now and  Fantsuam still runs a program for persons who are interested in volunteering with them,the Fantsuams GAIYA program has been pivotal to the effective development of Fantsuams integrated service delivery model,it has been very interesting volunteering with them,i have learnt so much and want to learn even more.

Discussion topics from June 6th

I am trying to find ways to pull out the main points of the disucssion while it is happening. We use an etherpad and most of our conversation takes place in a chat box - but of course it gets very chatty, with people greeting each other and so on. We are experimenting with ways of selecting the most important points from the chat and posting them into the shared document section of the etherpad (which is where we write our introductions) This month only a few got copied over.

There were other interesting threads which remain buried in the chat box. At the start of our chat Kelechi mentioned some archeological finds, and we then got into deep philosophical discussions, which were additionally interesting because of our varied cultural backgrounds.

The comments below are ones that Olalaken, Mark and Victoria selected as we were chatting, but the way our experimenting went this session means that it is not easy to see who wrote what,

The selected comments

Olalekan, do you know about the medical health information program at Ife?
It was brought to the University by the Finns, who got it from the US Veterans Administration and modified it. Sorry, 'It' is called Vista EHR here; it is the hospital information management system that was built as a guerrilla movement in the VA, against the will of the central computer system managers, and eventually took over.
This ties into early work of oneVillage Foundation in Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya. One of our team met Chris Richardson of WorldVistA, which used the Freedom of Information Act to make the current version of that database available open source and free on the Internet every six months, at the World Summit for the Information Society, and I was asked to follow up.

I'm not aware of the project
There is a program at the University, but they have a non-sharing attitude about what they have, even though they received it through sharing. It seems that they are siloed and at a dead end because of that -- the last I heard there were only 2 or 3 people.
Do you have their site link
Not any more -- I can't access those records right now.
Ok, contact the insitution (Uni) they will be in best position to update you

But what you can do is go directly to WorldVistA.org, Hardhats.org, and Mumpster.org to get everything you need.
If you need anything else, or mentoring, I can introduce you to Chris Richardson, who was one of the team that ported it to the entire US military, on time and on budget, over a decade ago.
If your organization has a sharing, community ethos, you can have a working relationship directly with WorldVistA and Chris, and be using all the latest updates. MUMPS is easy for programmers, doctors, nurses and health technicians to learn, because it has very few commands, is very flexible, and was developed for medical informatics. MUMPS is the Massachusetts Utility Multiprocessing System programming language. VistA EHR (Electronic Health Record) has been modified for the Indian Health Clinic system as a client-server, and has been modified for stand-alone clinics as well. It has APIs, so it can be the back end repository and outcomes research system for other data systems used in clinics and in the field.

Mark Roest: I  have a concept for a knowledgebase which supports organizing and  accessing all the knowledge by eco-region, ecosystem and culture, as  well as by problem.
7:49 victoria eze: Yes the topic for discussion
7:49 Mark Roest: When you narrow things down like that, you go from Niagara Falls to a garden hose.
7:49 Mark Roest: It's manageable.
7:49 Olalekan Lawal: Yoruba World: @Mark: It's difficult to read your message, change the highlight colour to yellow or lighter colour
7:49 Mark Roest: And it supports cultural revitalization.

I have to go now; Olalekan, you can email me at MarkLRoest (at) gmail (dot) c

Conclusion

The way we collected the selection last month made things clearer to read and easier to share - First Thursday - sharing the May archive but it was harder to organise. If I want to develop that strategy I'll need to find a better way to set things up so it is easier for people to do.

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