I arrived at the Sandton Convention Centre, Joberg, South Africa( Notice the correct spelling of Centre) after 10 o clock today.
This is the first Linux World Expo in South Africa http://www.linuxworldexpo.co.za/
The event was organized with the leading distros in attendance with large booths and a nice Linux Community Centre.
Mark Shuttleworth, Shuttleworth Foundation, Canonical and much more conducted the keynote address today
For detailed articles on the booth exhibits, please visit http://www.tectonic.co.za for articles by Jason Norwood-Young
LPI Booth:
We have a share booth space with Shuttleworth. If you could see the pictures you will know why we are the hit of the show.
We had a FREEDOM TOASTER run by Jaco Kroon, Volunteer for Shuttleworth and a day job with the local university is a Assistant System Administrator oversaw the Shuttleworth Freedom Toaster which at the request of the booth attendee we managed to burn over 400 CD's burned with the Toaster at the booth. He offered a choice of SUSE, Slackware, Ubuntu, Mandrake, Geento, Knoppix, Fedora, K12, FreeBSD, Whitebox all burned for the viewer's pleasure For more information http://www.freedomtoaster.org/
At the end of the week we will have an idea was was the most popular.
Meetings:
I had an excellent meeting with Hayward Rose, HP, Icommunity Information program who will be ramping up an extensive LATP community based intiative with LPI. See appendix for more information
Examlab:
Tomorrow we plan on having for the four examlabs for 148 exam seatings for more details visit http://www.tectonic.co.za/view.php?id=440
Thats all
Glenn
Appendix
Background information on HP I Community Program
Community Program:
Historically the Mogalakwena Municipality in the Limpopo Province of the Republic of South Africa (RSA) has had limited access to information and communication technology (ICT) solutions. Located 3 hours north of Johannesburg, Mogalakwena has approximately 300,000 people and is eagerly hoping to increase literacy rates, socio-economic development and AIDS alleviation.
In September of 2002, Hewlett-Packard Chairwoman and CEO Carly Fiorina presented the Mogalakwena i-community as a legacy project from the UN World Summit on Sustainability to RSA President Thabo Mbeki. HP is working with the national, provincial and municipal governments to jointly develop an ecosystem of partnerships with independent local and international third parties to strategically deploy an ICT infrastructure aimed at addressing the challenges identified above.
HP's vision for the Mogalakwena i-community is to help create a thriving self-sustaining economic community where ICT solutions are strategically deployed to significantly enhance economic and social development and thereby improve many facets of it's citizens’ lives. The details of this vision were collaboratively developed by HP, government partners in the province and municipality, key partners and the Mogalakwena community stakeholders.
Through nurturing of the partnership between the Government, HP and the partners, the goal is to deliver upon the objectives derived from the visioning session.
The i-community project was kicked off in September 2002 with the signing of memorandums of understanding between Limpopo province, Mogalakwena municipality, and HP and is progressing rapidly per the plan. Each participant is responsible for meeting their commitments and delivering upon the plan. The participants will respectively invest personnel and resources as may be necessary for the establishment and success of the effort.
About a HP i-community:
An " i-community " is a community where Information and Communication Technology (ICT) solutions are strategically deployed for sustainable economic and social development of the community. The processes, learnings and technology solutions from each i-community will be the basis for future replication in several underserved regions around the world.
i-community in Mogalakwena Municipality
Republic of South Africa
Brief Overview
President Mbeki commends HP for contributing to World Summit success
Attending a press event immediately following a World Summit on Sustainable Development panel on “The Future of Multilaterialism,” in which HP Chairman and CEO Carly Fiorina participated, South Africa President Thabo Mbeki spoke about how pleased he was with how smooth the Summit was running. He stated that much of the Summit’s success could be attributed to HP’s support and involvement. President Mbeki added that he only realized the scope of HP’s commitment shortly before the summit began.
“A few days before the summit opened officially, I was telling Carly I was getting a bit nervous about our state of preparedness, and so I thought I’d do a quick round of all the venues just to see how ready we were to receive people. I started at Nasrec and walked into a room and it was just banks and banks and banks of computers. So I went up to each one and they were Hewlett-Packard computers. That is the first time I actually realized how big the contribution was”.
“I really do want to say thank you very much indeed to Carly, to everyone from Hewlett-Packard, and to the leadership of Hewlett-Packard locally. It’s been critical to ensuring the success that everyone is talking about,” he said.
Limpopo Province boosted by HP i-community Public-Private Partnership Announcement
Hewlett-Packard also launched a new public-private partnership that embodies the spirit of the Summit. The rural community of Mogalakwena in Limpopo Province is the beneficiary of South Africa’s first i-community, an HP emerging market solution aimed at providing real business benefits to local communities. The formal announcement of this partnership was made by Carly Fiorina and President Mbeki on Tuesday, September 3 at a standing-room-only event held at the Ubuntu Village.
As a legacy project derived from the Summit, several heads of state and local politicians attended the launch of the Mogalakwena i-community project. This project is similar to others HP has launched in Kuppam, India and Houston, Texas.
The i-community project aims to create sustainable economic and social development opportunities in underserved areas through the use of information and communication technology (ICT) solutions. It also aims to improve literacy, create jobs, and use ICT to expand access to government, education, and health services. HP is working with the local community to design new technology solutions that will meet community needs.
“With 90 percent of the world’s population currently technologically-excluded, our goal is to invent sustainable and scalable solutions to address the challenges of the global digital divide,” said Carly Fiorina. “By partnering with selected communities and understanding what new products and services are needed, we can tackle the really tough problems of sustainable rural development.”
Debra Dunn, HP senior vice president for corporate affairs, who also attended the special ceremony, stated “no country or company has the entire solution to address the challenge of sustainable development. At HP, we believe that the creation of stronger and deeper partnerships offers greater potential for achieving true sustainable development success.”
Fiorina addressing a crowd of more than 500 invited guests and commented that the “I” in i-community does not stand for the Internet – although the Internet is involved. Instead, the “I” in i-community stands for “inclusion.”
She added that “Instead of simply committing resources - sending money or computers or equipment - and wishing them well, we are actually committing some of our best talent to targeted communities around the world, putting them in place for up to three years, and charging them with the responsibility of working with local citizens to set goals and create solutions for the challenges that the community prioritises.”
[sidebar] The Mogalakwena i-community effort began with a three-year memoranudum of agreement with the provincial and local governments signed just prior to the Summit. In the i-community, HP’s emerging market solutions team works with local community members to develop solutions to improve literacy, create jobs and expand access to government, education and health services.
Limpopo Province and Mogalakwena Municipality were selected, “because of the vision and commitment of the leadership and community stakeholders to partner with the private sector to invent new tools and services that will create social and economic growth,” says Maureen Conway, HP vice-president for e-inclusion and emerging market solutions.
“Over time, the Mogolakwena i-community partnership will become the foundation that will make us equal partners in the global village,” said Premier Ngoake Ramathlodi of Limpopo.
“I believe the commitment of the Mogalakwena community will drive the success of the i-community project not just for ourselves but for the future generations,” said Bob Mmola, Mayor of Mogalakwena Municipality.
[end sidebar]
Fiorina, also a member of Mbeki’s Presidential International Advisory Council on Information Society and Development, noted “ “If we've learned anything here this week, we've learned that financial capital alone is not the greatest wealth multinationals can bring to the developing world - its human capital. It's experience and knowledge, and the ability to transmit that as capacity building. At a time when the challenges to sustainable development are so great, and the urgency to achieve is so profound, we need to apply all of our best talents to solving those problems”.
[sidebar] HP’s technology sponsorship of the Johannesburg World Summit
As the Summit’s lead technology sponsor, HP partnered with The Johannesburg World Summit Company (JOWSCO) to provide infrastructure technology, support services, and website solutions to integrate the Summit’s 39 venues and create a rich virtual environment for the dissemination of news and dialogue via www.josummit.com.
HP technology networked 39 separate Summit sites which involved more than 2300 computers, 128 servers, notebooks, scanners, printers and switches at various venues across Johannesburg. After the Summit, some of the equipment will be donated to the iCommunity project in Limpopo.
HP’s was especially pleased that all technology aspects of the Summit ran smoothly. With an army of HP engineers working 24 by 7 to support the project, backup measures were in place should there have been any real-time problems.
In the end, the 300 PCs running the Summit press room, the HP backbone infrastructure that handled all delegate and press credentialing for more than 40,000 attendees and the Summit website – which received more than half-a-million page views per day with visitors staying an average of 10 minutes per stay – none of the technology aspects of the Summit experienced any downtime.
Fiorina stressed that a global economy that is creating prosperity for millions will not be sustainable if billions are left behind. While the computer industry’s products are affordable right now to about 10 percent of the world, “we know that a good part of our long-term growth and success will come from the other 90 percent of the world that are on the outside looking in today. People we help today may very well be our partners, our customers, and maybe even our employees in the future. We see this as a critical and necessary long-term investment in our own future success.”
