- (Written by Pamela) Franz is passionate about "global villages". My understanding of the ideas behind Gobal Villages is that Franz loves all the good things about small-scale village living, but also recognises the reasons why people drift away to the cities. One of these reasons is the many opportunities that exist in cities to share ideas and knowledge. By contract the village can seem an intellectual desert. (You can read what he really thinks by following the links to hie work, below).
- I met Franz Nahrada face to face for the first time in London in March 2009, but I already knew him online - I think I met Franz, Andrius Kulikauskas and Helmut Leitner online all around the same time (perhaps 2006 or 2007) - possibly through Janet Feldman. We met F2F again in January 2010 when I attended a workhshop he organised about video bridges - related to his Global Villages network. He is also active in GIVE - Globally Integrated Village Environments.
- I see many connections between the ideas behind Franz' work and my own experiences of living parts of my life in London and part in rural Cornwall. It also ties in with work I did with Peter Oyawale, who wanted to use ICT to enable his family and community in rural Nigerai, to access new information, ideas and knowledge without having to follow in his footsteps and having to leave his home village - and then his home country - in order to access the ideas and particular knowledge that he wanted.
- The practical side of Franz' work - the distance connections - ties in with much of my own practical online work and analysis. The interest in small scale and sustainablilty issues is another area of overlap.
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