Conmergence

on Youtube. Also, this: Internet2 DNSSEC Special Interest Group (SIG) Provides Forum for Research/Education Community (link 1)(link 2)

And, CEO Dave Lambert commented about #Ohio, #Indiana connecting to @Internet2 ‘s #100G network

Meanwhile, at National LambdaRail

Finally, in eScience more generally

The fine folks at LanzaTech in Auckland, New Zealand are seeking a Bioinformatics Research Scientist.

But to the right of that job description on their web site they have posted:

Not the right job?
Describe your perfect job:
Join our Talent Network (with the appropriate link to tech)

Does that not seem a tremendously more efficient way to communicate and build your database of candidates for future projects?

Stumbled upon Don Tapscott’s ReCivilization series created with the CBC/Radio-Canada. If you know people in your life who have NO IMAGINATION about the implications of global collaboration, point them here.

Key content is news from, about, or of interest to National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) in Africa. We request and invite you to submit an item before the 20th of each month capturing:

• News and developments from your NREN and news items of interest to NRENs
• Content networks: how researchers and academics are using the REN infrastructure to enhance effectiveness and efficiency their work and to promote national and international collaboration
• Hot tips about something you have done successfully (organisational or technical)
• A photo that tells a story
• Looking into the future, especially with regards to fibre infrastructure

Submissions should be sent to info@ubuntunet.net

You might want to do some research here http://www.internet2.edu/presentations/jt2012winter/

I think it is fair to say that 2011 was a good year for the VC4Africa community. What originally started as a Linkedin group has now grown into a thriving and productive network. This year we closed the old website and started a new chapter on VC4Africa.biz.

We now have more than 4.300 members who have opened personal profile pages on the new site and over 200 entrepreneurs stepped forward to crunch their venture online ( http://bit.ly/9Yzi7T ). There are promising businesses making progress in over 30 African countries and we have seen members in Cameroon, South Africa, the United States, Kenya, Nigeria, the Netherlands and Somaliland establish partnerships, investments and joint ventures. Increasingly, VC4Africa featured entrepreneurs are being picked up by global media channels like Forbes and BBC World. We have opened a new thread where members are starting to share their successes as their continued progress remains our bottom line – as a community and organization ( http://bit.ly/sWTglN ).

In the past months we have launched a number of new programs and resources VC4A entrepreneurs can tap into for support. For example, entrepreneurs are now calling in on Free Feedback Fridays ( http://bit.ly/s9Xd9j ). These are sessions hosted by business experts and are useful for working through challenges faced in the business development process. We also hosted several Business Modeling Workshops and worked with entrepreneurs to practice and film their elevator pitches ( http://bit.ly/tsItJ9 ). More recently, we launched the ( http://bit.ly/rHbJa9 ) VC4Africa Mentorship Program that connects members for peer-to-peer coaching with some early successes already on the books. We also gave a facelift to the venture profiles and entrepreneurs can now post their video pitches online, one of the reasons ventures like ( http://bit.ly/s2cyCG ) Njorku are top ranked all time. In the year ahead we will be doing even more to support our entrepreneurs as they champion their ventures.

Our team is constantly working to introduce new tools and services that further improve the VC4A networking experience. To foster more effective network building we launched our own ‘dating widget’ that matches members on the basis of complimentary skill sets and forwards recommended connections. How do you tap into a global network spread across 159 countries? This past year saw the release of ( http://bit.ly/w4VuI2 ) Questions & Answers as a tool for crowdsourcing knowledge from across the member base. There are now 68 open threads and 128 responses. We also launched dedicated groups that allow members to come together around a specific country or theme. Some notable groups we look forward to growing in 2012 include ( http://bit.ly/tMHdEC ) Green Entrepreneurship, ( http://bit.ly/vsF8up ) the Social Entrepreneur, ( http://bit.ly/rHbJa9 ) VC4Africa Mentors and ( http://bit.ly/vTS0vG ) VC4A Woman Entrepreneurs.

Far and away, one of the greatest projects we launched this past year was VC4A Badges. Building great companies and an effective network of contacts is a lot of hard work, but it’s also a lot of fun. With great looking badges we look to recognize your milestones and contributions along the way. See an overview of all of the badges and keep your eye out for new ones :) ( http://bit.ly/us5lZs )

Editor: Got me my nifty VC4Africa Officer Badge Rightcheer; woohoo!:

VC4Africa Officer Badger

We will continue to listen to your feedback and build the tools that enrich your time spent with VC4A ( http://bit.ly/sbph8f ).

These developments aside, VC4Africa had a great year because we have such great members. People who believe in the continent’s potential and want to see its best entrepreneurs succeed. It is remarkable to see more than 30 VC4Africa meetups organized by members from around the world. We already have great events online for 2012 starting with Accra, Oslo and London.

Certainly Africa is a great business opportunity and we all agree the time to make it happen is NOW.

The best part about all of this? We’re just getting started :)

Folks:

Help me funnel ideas to Martin. Thanks! – Ed

Dear Ed,

I am writing to you because I am conducting some research on future developments in ICT to assist development in Africa, in particular mobile and internet. I’m aware of the HIMSS Medical Banking Project and World Bank Task Force  and some of my research may be of interest to you.

This project is to inform Comic Relief’s grant-giving, who are a grant-giving charity based in England that raised a £100 million or so last year through their telethons. I’m looking for any ideas, projects, contacts  or resources you may have on this. The most restrictive parts of the brief, which makes it interesting,  are technologies must be future, have direct impact and have some component of ICT in them, but I try to be flexible. Amongst other things, I’m looking at:

•        Cutting costs of ICT devices to include more people

•        Increasing the numbers of people connected through subsidising mesh networks (eg. Solar panel equipped mesh devices), WIMAX and 3G

•        Converting information from one medium to another (eg. SMS to Facebook or translated voice calls from local to commercial language)

•        Citizen journalism

•        Voice recognition

•        Crowd sourced information on complex events

•        ICT that enables other technologies (eg. Add-on sensors for mobiles eg. Ultrasound wands, 3D printing in remote areas)

•        Machine to machine communications (eg. Micro-grids for solar and other power sources with dyanamic pricing linked to m-banking)

Assuming this is of interest, I’d like to talk further about this sometime this week. I can send through a slide deck that may be of interest as well.

Best,

Martin Underwood

Future Media & Technology

Comic Relief

1st Floor, 89 Albert Embankment, London, SE1 7TP

tel: +44 (0)207 820 2298

email: m.underwood@comicrelief.com website: http://www.comicrelief.com/

Citizen Engagement, Aid Coordination, and Transparency: An Experience from Mapping of Data in the Horn of Africa

When: Tuesday, October 11, 2011, from 12:30 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. Washington D.C. time

Live Webcast at: http://streaming7.worldbank.org/vvflash/extlive1

Comments or questions: please use Twitter (#mapdataafrica)

Drought, conflict, and rising food prices have created one of the worst humanitarian crises in the Horn of Africa in decades. As areas of famine have grown over the past few months, data about the impact and response are sobering: food prices have increased nearly 200 percent, 750,000 people estimated to be at risk of starvation, and 2.4 billion U.S. dollars are needed to provide relief. There is a great need to understand, disaggregate and communicate this type data to increase citizen engagement and bolster a strong, coordinated international response. Sharing data about the famine’s impact and response can increase citizen engagement, improve coordination among organizations, and increase transparency of those involved in the relief effort.

This seminar, organized by World Bank, will present the recent work of Development Seed in the Horn of Africa. Development Seed is a firm which offers services to government, international development agencies, and the private sector to creatively use data for visualization and mapping in order to help those organizations to explain complex issues and improve their decision-making.

Chair: Johannes Sebastian Kiess, Operations Officer, World Bank Institute

Speakers:
Eric Gunderson, President, Development Seed
Dave Cole, Project Lead, Development Seed

Discussants:
Alexandre Marc, Lead Social Development Specialist, World Bank
Joshua Goldstein, Consultant, ICT Sector Unit, World Bank

On August 12, 2011, Dr. Robert Malmstrom provided an update for The Discovering Dengue Drugs – Together project via webcast. Here are the links to the webcast and the related question and answer session.

On August 12, 2011, Dr. Robert Malmstrom from The University of Texas Medical Branch conducted a live webcast, where he provided an update on the Discovering Dengue Drugs – Together project.

Dr. Malmstrom provided an excellent update on The Discovering Dengue Drugs – Together project, which has been running on World Community Grid since 2007.

Press Release with graphics here.

Africa-Europe research collaboration to be transformed by EC-funded research infrastructure Boost for African research as European Commission injects €14.75M into regional research and education connectivity

Gaborone, Botswana, and Cambridge, UK, 11 May 2011: DANTE, the international research network operator, and the European Commission’s EuropeAid Cooperation Office today announce the signature of a €14.75M contract for support to a sub-Saharan African intra-regional research networking infrastructure which is already interconnected to the pan-European research network, GÉANT. Eighty percent of the project’s funding will come from the European Commission’s EuropeAid Co-operation Office, and the remainder will be contributed by the African partners in the project.

The contract represents a significant injection of capital to develop research networking infrastructure across sub-Saharan Africa and with Europe. The initiative will dramatically accelerate the development of the Information Society in Africa, providing advanced data communications infrastructure and enabling African researchers to collaborate more easily in advanced international research projects. Within the framework of the Africa Caribbean Pacific Islands (ACP) programme, the AfricaConnect project will establish a high-capacity Internet network for research and education in Southern and Eastern Africa to provide the region with a gateway to global research collaboration, the objective of which is to overcome the current limitations of international research collaboration within sub-Saharan Africa and towards Europe, and to foster research and education collaboration and advancement within and between these regions. The project will be strongly collaborative, so whilst DANTE will coordinate AfricaConnect, they will be partnered by DANTE’s regional counterpart organisations in Africa – UbuntuNet Alliance covering Eastern and Southern Africa, and West and Central African Research and Education Network (WACREN) covering Western and Central Africa – as well as the Association of African Universities; existing National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) in Africa (DRC, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia); and several European NRENs (Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal and the UK). All will work to ensure that the project benefits all of sub-Saharan Africa.

“We are delighted to see this project underway,” said Cathrin Stöver, DANTE’s International Relations Manager. “DANTE has a strong history of supporting regional connectivity including actions in South America and Asia, and we will build on this experience to support African research and education networks as together they transform the research environment in Africa. DANTE always puts the emphasis on partnership in this kind of activity, and we are therefore excited to be working with such a strong group of partners on a project of this importance.”

Eng. Dr Francis Tusubira, CEO of the UbuntuNet Alliance agrees: “For the Alliance, this support is invaluable, since our challenges run from the macro-challenge of establishing regional connectivity in a geographical area that could contain the whole of Europe several times over, to the comparative micro-challenge of ensuring that each NREN has the human capacity to set up and operate their national network. Achievement of the impossible is our mantra, and we appreciate the support of the European Commission in this respect – their funding makes the achievement of the impossible a whole lot easier!”

DANTE will soon announce an international tender for the connectivity and equipment required for the AfricaConnect project. The infrastructure is expected to be operational by early 2012.

The AfricaConnect project is expected to last for four years, after which time the African Project Partners of AfricaConnect will ensure the sustainability of the intra-regional African research network and its direct connection to GÉANT.

About DANTE

DANTE is a non-profit organisation, coordinator of large-scale projects co-funded by the European Commission, and working in partnership with European National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) to plan, build and operate advanced networks for research and education. Established in 1993, DANTE has been fundamental to the success of pan-European research and education networking. DANTE has built and operates GÉANT, which provides the data communications infrastructure essential to the success of many research projects in Europe. DANTE is involved in worldwide initiatives to interconnect countries in the other regions to one another and to GÉANT. DANTE currently manages projects focussed on the Mediterranean, Asia-Pacific and central Asia regions through the EUMEDCONNECT, TEIN and CAREN projects respectively. For more information, visit www.dante.net.

About the UbuntuNet Alliance

UbuntuNet Alliance is, at both the conceptual and implementation levels, a commitment and movement by member NRENs to unlocking Africa’s intellectual potential by ensuring that African Researchers and Educators achieve equity with the rest of the world in terms of ease and cost of access to the global information Infrastructure as well as opportunities for research collaboration . The UbuntuNet Alliance was established in 2005 and registered in 2006 as a not-for-profit regional association of NRENs in Eastern and Southern Africa and currently has 13 members.

In January 2009, UbuntuNet Alliance established a 1Gb/s IP interconnection with the GEANT network in London. This connection has recently been upgraded as fibre has become available, prices drop and demands from NRENs increase, The upgrade includes a 10Gb/s IP connection to GEANT and a new 10-Gbps link for dedicated point-to-point connectivity, making Sub-Saharan Africa the first world region outside North America to gain dedicated circuit capacity with Europe. Therefore, the AfricaConnect project builds on a proven relationship between Europe and sub Sahara Africa.

NUANCE mailing list

NUANCE@lists.ubuntunet.net

http://lists.ubuntunet.net/listinfo/nuance

From: UbuntuNet Alliance <info@ubuntunet.net>

Date: Wed, 11 May 2011 12:19:35 +0200

To: <nuance@lists.ubuntunet.net>

Dear members,

We are in a unique position to promote the continent’s most promising individuals (and their brilliant ideas) with the network, knowledge and capital they need to succeed in challenging circumstances. When local governments and institutions turn a blind idea, banks refuse to open their doors and micro-finance institutions can’t offer the right capital, our global network is there to fill the gap. And thankfully our peer-2-peer platform goes beyond capital and offers a lot of the information and support entrepreneurs need to put it to good use.

As part of this mission we launched an innovative matchmaking platform VC4Africa.biz. We are still working through an incredible ‘to do list’ and have a host of exciting partnerships, features and programs in the works, but it’s great to see that our early infrastructure is already having some meaningful impact. Most importantly, we can say our entrepreneurs are securing funding and finding partners needed to grow and scale their business. Rick, the founder of Market-fleas.com , an online craft market similar to the more renowned Etsy.com, was one of the first to close an investment round via VC4Africa.biz.

He writes, “Hi Ben, We finally finished our investment round and once again, thank you for the great platform. It really is the best out there, as we found a lot of fraudulent sites on the web claiming to help angel investors and entrepreneurs connect.” He goes on to explain, “As web entrepreneurs, we found the going tough as a startup and tried a lot of avenues to get initial investment including venture capital firms in South Africa, other online investment platforms and more with absolutely no luck. The problem was that 1.) we we’re a startup so a venture capital company with a minimum mandate of R50million was never going to look at us and 2.) every investment platform that we found (paid) would send (the guaranteed) connection via a random yahoo or gmail account which gave us hope, only to crush it again later. VC4Africa helped us connect (for free) to an investor we found within 3 days of being on the site, and created a platform where we could connect easily and without hidden agenda. Thank you VC4Africa, you are the only true investment platform.” Market-Fleas is not alone and iYam mobi and a few other ventures are now in discussions with possible investors so it’s good to see more deals are in the works.

Other members don’t require funding and are finding the strategic partners they need to expand their business instead. Brian, the founder of Next2.Us writes, “Your website has been very helpful to me. I was able to connect to a company that wants to represent Next2.Us geosocial sms network throughout Africa. We have executed a Framework Agreement and are finalizing a relationship with a SMS provider that will allow Next2.Us Africa to offer our geosocial network service in Kenya.” Following his developments on twitter @hungrygarden it’s great to see they are now engaging local developers to test the service now live!

I think we are just scratching the surface of what is possible and already we have 86 ventures online from more than 20 African countries. What is really exciting is to see the diversity of projects across countries and sectors. If you are en entrepreneur working on a great project and in need of support feel free to reach out and connect with our network. You can sign up as a member on VC4Africa.biz and visit the Ventures section where you can post your project.
Posted By Ben White

# # # #

November 9th 2010 – Today VC4Africa starts the first African online venture capital matchmaking platform at http://www.vc4africa.biz/.

Many investors are looking for businesses to get involved with but have difficulties finding promise. At the same time many businesses seek knowledge, capital and practical support. Without matchmaking their potential is never realized, hindering economic growth.

The VC4Africa community currently consists of 10.000 members worldwide. Business ideas have been registered through the website and entrepreneurs are seeing benefit. VC4Africa works to visualize the continent’s business potential. VC4Africa has the ultimate goal to contribute to a paradigm shift focusing on transparency and entrepreneurship as a leading agents for development. VC4Africa wants to become the one-stop shop for African business development.

VC4Africa is a truly global initiative with the team working from Cameroon, Kenya, The Netherlands and the USA. Events (or what the community calls VC4Africa Meetups) have already been hosted in Kigali, Kampala, Nairobi, Johannesburg, Lagos, Tunis, San Francisco, Atlanta, Washington DC, New York, London and Amsterdam.

Due diligence is a limitation factor for investors interested in Africa. It costs too much time and capital to find genuine entrepreneurs with a solid business idea and plan. As a result, most existing funds seek large deals and better margins. MicroCredit is limited in its ability to support high growth businesses, this results in entrepreneurs with potential, struggling on the sideline.

VC4Africa solves these issues by applying innovative technology that leverages the power of the crowd. Anyone anywhere in the world is able to positively contribute to the development of African businesses with their own competencies and interests.

Open up! Now is the time. Let’s connect!

About VC4Africa
VC4Africa is an initiative by Ben White (Founder, Amsterdam), Bill Zimmerman (Founder ActivSpaces, Cameroon) and Bart Lacroix (Founder 1%Club, Amsterdam).

VC4Africa is an online community dedicated to connecting innovative, Africa-based entrepreneurs (and their ideas) with access to knowledge, markets and capital— i.e. mentors, business partners and investors. The focus is on entrepreneurs with innovative projects that apply new technology, new media, the web, mobile and green energy.

Contact Details

For more information contact: Ben White
Telephone number: +31 (0)6 29 227 200
E-mail: ben@vc4africa.com
Blog: http://www.ict4entrepreneurship.com
Twitter: @VC4Africa

Haven’t been blogging much personal stuff lately — tweetin’ and Facing mainly (@ed_dodds, @conmergence, @project_network). HIMSS11 has happened; didn’t attend but really looking forward to news out of the 9th Annual Medical Banking Project sponsored Institute, especially the working being done by John Casillas, Jim St. Clair and Eric Cohen on things XBRLish as relates to healthcare and the World Bank/World Health Organization/global health related tangent re: mobile money, mHealth, and mPayments which Angela Dunbar is patiently encouraging. That’s not to say that I don’t appreciate the work that John Phelan and June St. John and a cast of other visionaries are producing, but let’s be honest about where my passion is ;)

Got news this week that vc4africa completed the first venture capital funding deal (market-fleas.com). Ben White et. al. are to be commended for taking the world wide web and making it an asset for African entrepreneurs.

Takeshi Utsumi’s Global University collaboration initiative chugs along as he seeks to extend the Global Early Warning System (GEWS) concept to African nations as the global broadband build out enables cluster clouds to crunch big data virtually anywhere.

Mental Placeholder links here:

The Cloud-Enabled Space Weather Platform

http://www.hpcinthecloud.com/features/The-Cloud-Enabled-Space-Weather-Platform-116166269.html

ESG Gateway at the National Center for Atmospheric Research

http://www.earthsystemgrid.org/home.htm

The Earth System Grid – Center for Enabling Technologies

http://tw.rpi.edu/web/project/ESG-CET

Ranger Supercomputer Supports Microclimate Forecasting

http://www.hpcwire.com/news/Ranger-Supercomputer-Supports-Microclimate-Forecasting-117212923.html

The majority of the World Convention site rework has been completed. Some tweaking will be on-going. Julia Keith as the hub of cyber activities around Global Women Connecting has been enthusiastic about adopting and extending “all things over IP” comms tools and Gary Holloway continues to travel and meet folks from the global Campbell-Stone family of churches while facing the fundraising challenges all NPOs are dealing with (Deana’s staff [more like family, really] at United Cerebral Palsy of Middle Tennessee have this in spades with the consequences of the Nashville floods on area families and individuals who live with disabilities).

The Shepherds at Woodmont Hills have authorized an ad hoc committee to analyze and review all comms related activity that the congregation currently undergoes in hopes of “shepherding” all of our assets and processes into a more unified and effective approach re: our resources. I hope this will produce an “infrastructure” which will enable the Mission Committee to be as effective as possible re: it’s obligations to our various global colleagues.

“Open” groups continuing to grow on LinkedIn.

More folks investigating Results-Only Work Environments.

Interoperancy and hyperlocality affecting the eNews biz as well as the Edison-Carterification of smart phones and other similar devices.

Time to wade out of this stream of consciousness for awhile…

Dear Colleagues,

1) A City Sponsored BOINC Distributed Computing Effort

Zivis is the first “city-wide supercomputer”. The project is run by the Zaragoza City Council, and the Institute for Biocomputation and Physics of Complex System (BIFI) at the University of Zaragoza. The objective is to harness local (and non-local) computing resources for local research; and at the same time to involve the community in the science being done locally. The initial research being done on Zivis is on the subject of fusion plasma (“Integration of Stochastic Differential Equations in Plasmas”) — improved understanding of this could lead to better designs for fusion power stations. (Fusion power is a form of nuclear energy that produces a lower volume of less dangerous waste than traditional nuclear fission power.)

Start Date: October 2005
Users: 2,359
Project URL: http://zivis.bifi.unizar.es

2) Intel introduces distributed computing to Facebook

Intel has set up a Facebook page designed to induce casual users to sign up for a distributed computing project that runs on the BOINC client system. Now Facebook users can crunch away on any of three DC projects… – Ars Technica

3) HIMSS crowdsources with Clinical Decision Support Wiki

Hello! The HIMSS Clinical Decision Support (CDS) Task Force helps guide and execute HIMSS efforts to ensure that CDS delivers on its promise to improve care delivery and outcomes.

What’s a Wiki? A wiki is an easy-to-use Web site that makes it easy to collaborate. You can use it to run a project at work, plan a trip, teach a class, etc.

Why a Wiki? The wiki provides a forum where stakeholders can come together to help develop, use, and discuss Task Force deliverables. The links below provide access to pages where this conversation and work is unfolding. Please browse this home page and links, and join us on this important performance improvement journey.

CTO Executive position – Enterprise Collaboration software – SaaS at Cisco Systems

Location: San Jose (San Francisco Bay Area)

URL: http://www.cisco.com

Type:

Full-time

Experience:

Executive

Functions:

Engineering

Industries:

Computer Hardware, Computer Networking, Computer Software

Posted:

September 14, 2010 by Mohamed Ali

Compensation:

DOE

Employer Job ID:

MA_CTO

Job Description

Email your executive BIO to mohamali@cisco.com
POSITION: Chief Technology Officer, Enterprise Collaboration Platform Business Unit (ECP)
LOCATION: San Jose, CA.
REPORTS TO: VP & GM of Enterprise Collaboration Platform Business Unit
COMPANY BACKGROUND:
Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) is the worldwide leader in networking that transforms how people connect, communicate and collaborate. Information about Cisco can be found at www.cisco.com
ORGANIZATIONAL OVERVIEW
ECPBU is a business unit that is responsible for delivering Enterprise Social Software as part of Cisco’s Collaboration Strategy. This business unit is part of Cisco’s Enterprise, Commercial and Small Business (ECSB) Group. Enterprise Social Software is one of Cisco’s newest Collaboration offerings and the ECPBU sits alongside our Voice Technology Group and our Collaboration Software Group (WebEx) in delivering on our collective Collaboration vision.
RESPONSIBILITIES:
The CTO of ECPBU will ultimately be responsible for future technology choices and technical/system architecture for the Enterprise Collaboration Platform business (ECP). This role will shape forward ECP and Collaboration Technology investments, roadmaps, acquisitions and alliances. The CTO will act as a strategic advisor to the product roadmap and Cisco’s overall Collaboration strategy. He/She will have had experience in the Enterprise Software; Social Networking; Web/Internet application market, SaaS based delivery models in either a CTO, Engineering or Operations capacity.
Core Responsibilities: The CTO ECP drives bold innovation and the development of new technologies and applications that are embraced by customers by defining the technology roadmap for the business group, getting buy-in from customers and internal stakeholders, and leading high performing, high innovation teams.
•Key customer-facing advocate for the business resulting in highly sought-after technical customer-facing resource for key customers and partners; providing customer credibility to technology and business recommendations. A spokesperson and representative of ECP in the broader Cisco technical and CTO community.
•Lead ECP standards activities which results in effective use of standards bodies to advance our customers’ interests and Cisco’s business interests.
Research and Development: He/She must lead the next generation of ECP products to ensure Cisco keeps its lead in the market. Manage a team responsible for architecture, hardware, software, test engineering, and system integration. Products must be developed in a global environment and be available for global launch. Oversee the allocation of time and resources to research and development for the advancement of the business is key.
Superior Leadership: The CTO ECP must provide visible and effective leadership within the company as well as with customers, partners, and the external community. This individual will also be responsible for scaling and leading the organization as it grows and requires an individual to continually enhance the team to ensure a culture built on innovation, collaboration, and effective execution and striving for success, as well as recruiting and developing the next generation of leaders for the group. He/She will know how to work collaboratively on product solutions that will span more than just ECP (for the benefit of our customers), thus requiring individuals to work across organizational boundaries to deliver broad scale solutions.
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:
•The CTO needs to be versant in Software and Cloud technologies. It is important to have experience and knowledge of enterprise customers, while exposure to consumer/end user is desirable.
•Strong management skills are required. The ECP CTO must be capable of balancing technology and leadership in order to optimize the effectiveness and development of the team.
•The CTO must have demonstrated the ability to collaborate within a large organization and achieve significant results. Success at Cisco will require one to establish strong relationships and the ability to navigate through a complex organization. The ideal candidate must have demonstrated effectiveness at setting and implementing standards-making strategy.
•Finally, the Enterprise Collaboration Platform CTO must have strong presentations skills and be equally effective in communicating internally to the organization as well as externally to partners and customers. She or he must be capable of communicating to both at the technical and business level.
LEADERSHIP CHARACTERISTICS:
•Collaborate: Works with the highest-level contacts of customers, partners, suppliers, and other units in CDO and across the enterprise to develop high-level strategies, align the goals of these groups, and maximize results.
•Learn: Builds business unit capabilities by giving staff the balance of autonomy and support needed to build business and technical skills, resulting in a pipeline of viable candidates for future VP positions.
•Execute: Achieves business critical objectives and obtains exceptional business unit results measured against a combination of financial, customer, technology, and quality metrics.
•Accelerate: Develops the overall strategy for the business group, effectively communicates it to the group, and aligns it with Cisco’s overall strategy, enhancing Cisco’s network-as-the-platform strategy, and resulting in strong buy-in and commitment from the business group, customers, and the enterprise.
•Disrupt: Promotes innovation and change in order to improve the technology, operations, and business processes needed to execute strategy and set Cisco apart in the global marketplace.
EDUCATION:
An undergraduate degree required and an Advanced degree preferred.
COMPENSATION:
The successful candidate will receive a highly competitive and attractive compensation package, which includes a base salary, a performance-based bonus, and equity.
Mohamed Ali
mohamali@cisco.com
408-853-3523

Skills

SaaS
Enterprise Collaboration Software
Office 2.0
Cloud Computing
Messaging
Facebook
Twitter
Blog

Job ID: 1127388

Call for Papers

The national network of scientists will facilitate the discovery of researchers and collaborators across the country. Institutions will participate in the network by installing VIVO, or by providing semantic web-compliant data to the network.

The VIVO National Conference, Enabling National Networking of Scientists, will bring together scientists, developers, publishers, funding agencies, research officers, students and those supporting the development of team science.

This two-day conference will begin with workshops and tutorials for those new to VIVO, those implementing VIVO at their institutions, and those wishing to develop applications using VIVO. Keynote speakers (to be announced) will present regarding the Semantic Web, Linked Open Data and the role of VIVO in support of team science. Panelists will discuss adoption and implementation findings. Feedback sessions will engage participants in requirements gathering and brainstorming regarding future network services. Presenters will discuss mapping, social networking, crowd sourcing, support for societies and other national network applications. For more information about the VIVO project and national networking, please visit http://vivoweb.org http://conferences.dce.ufl.edu/vivo/

Greetings from the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore (http://www.cis-india.org/).

CIS, in collaboration with Hivos’ Knowledge Programme (http://www.hivos.net/), launched a project, Digital Natives with a Cause?(http://www.cis-india.org/research/dn/dnrep) in 2008. As younger generations growing up in emerging information societies learn to engage with their geo-political and socio-cultural environments, a form of technology-mediated identity, popularly dubbed as the Digital Native, has been the discussion of a growing public and intellectual debate. These digital natives are transforming the ways in which they understand themselves as well as the world around them while engaging with Internet and digital technologies. Young users of technology are moving towards a reconfiguration of the world, where questions of identity, political participation, social transformation, cultural production, education, and livelihood are being restructured. The Digital Natives Research Programme focuses on producing new knowledge frameworks, vocabularies and lexicons to understand, investigate and support these new citizens or netizens rather who shall be the agents of change in the future. After the initial research (http://www.cis-india.org/publications/cis/nishant/dnrep.pdf/view), CIS will gather responses from young users of technology to help us understand, document and support different practices aimed at social transformation and political participation more efficiently.

We believe that the world we live in is changing rapidly and the rise of Internet technologies has a lot to do with it. As young users of technology (as opposed to young users who use technology) adopt, adapt and use these new technologised tools to interact with their environment, new ways of effecting change emerge. This survey is an attempt to capture some of the information which gives us an insight into who the people are using these technologies, the ways in which they use them and what their perceptions and experiences are.

The survey will not take more than seven minutes of your precious time and it will help us get a better sense of the way things are. Please click here (http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dG9reUVvQ0w4d1ZER3lKOUtFanZMUnc6MA) to start the survey. We would also appreciate if you could share the link to the survey with your friends and relatives via your blog, tweets or other social networking pages. Your help would go a long way in enabling us to find out how the youth of today are shaping the society and influencing the political/social scenario around them. Please note that the data collected as part of the survey would be anonymous and not used for any commercial purposes. We would also acknowledge your help in preparing the final report.

In case you need any further information or clarifications, please feel free to call us at +91 – 080 – 25350955 or write to us at nishant@cis-india.org.

With best compliments,

Prasad

I have been thinking about #140conf NYC since I left the stage of the 92nd Street Y the evening of April 21st. On many levels we had a pretty amazing event. Over 1,000 people shared the experience in person and more than 170 people shared the stage in 76 different sessions. The crowd was not just a NYC audience. A large percentage of the people attending the event traveled to the conference from across the United States, Canada, Europe and Asia. The live broadcast on Ustream, added a worldwide audience of 77,728 unique viewers / 128,664 total viewers. And on twitter, we were also one of the top 10 trending topics of the week.

Looking back at the conference, there were moments that were just surreal to me on both a personal level and business level and a lot of great content and energy was shared.

This iteration of #140conf was more about the evolution of our collective soul and the underlying effects on both our relationships with each other and the effects of this on businesses, institutions and organizations. Once again we had a chance to experience humanity and for some, the serendipity of the moment.

I enjoyed having Education as a focus of #140conf and the opportunity to provide a platform for educators who are changing the way they connect with their students because of the effects of the real-time internet. Overall, I especially enjoyed providing a platform to friends who might not have been that well known by our attending audience whose presence on the 92nd Street Y stage gave them a chance to get discovered by the #140conf community.

Looking at the event schedule ( http://nyc.140conf.com/schedule ) I am reminded about how great the speakers we had were in sharing their message. For example, Chris Lehmann was the first person to receive a standing ovation at the event. (Watch his session here ).

If you would like to catch up with the content shared at #140conf, it is now all available on-demand. Simply visit: http://nyc.140conf.com/schedule and click on the "Watch This" link.

I believe we are now in the very beginning stages of a social revolution which will redefine, maybe forever, the way we do business. The transition will be slower than some might expect, but as companies are discovering the benefits of listening to what their customers are saying using social communications, individual customers will discover the innate power they have (but don’t always know it) by simply speaking up, sharing their knowledge and often times serving as unpaid but passionate brand ambassadors The balance of power is shifting. A new era in buyer/seller relationships is being defined. And unlike other revolutions, this isn’t so much about the power of "we the people" but rather  "me the people." For the first time in a long time, our individual voices matter and each of us can effect change. When we work together, the chaining together of multiple "me’s" does empower a stronger and more powerful "we" the people but the point is that each of us matter in our own right and that at any given moment, any of us can and maybe will stand up and effect change. This shift will have possible dramatic effects in many other parts of the business, social, environmental, political and other ecosystems.

For the past year I have been exploring the effects of the emerging real-time internet on business while fighting the perception that #140conf was just a "twitter conference." I also took a gamble at the end of last year when I decided to reduce the price of our tickets to $140 for the two-day event. I left NYC with no regrets with that decision.

As the content DJ for #140conf, when I was working on the mixing of the schedule, I tried to share the voices of as many people from a variety of backgrounds and geographies as possible. My hope was for the people on stage to connect with various people in the audience and that at the end of two days, the effects of the worldwide systemic change the emerging real-time internet is having on our lives would become more obvious.

It will be the people at corporations, institutions and political organizations who allow themselves to connect with their digital souls who will maximize their respective company’s returns on investing in the real-time ecosystem. Don’t confuse the hugging you might have seen at the conference as #140conf not being a business event. Because it was. Maybe more business focused than we might appreciate.

I would like to believe that some of the connections made face-to-face at the event will have a positive effect for many of the attending delegates in the weeks, months and years ahead.

The conference happened because of the support of our speakers, delegates, sponsors and the volunteers who helped out with the on-site and some friends of mine who worked behind the scenes leading up to the conference. I appreciate the time everyone gave being at #140conf and the distances many of our speakers and delegates traveled to be there with us. I thank the work of everyone who contributed to the success of the event.

#140conf NYC was sponsored by: Kodak, gyPSii, Answers.com, Avaya, Best Buy, Jabra, tap11, Virgin America, Yahoo!, bing, keenkog, Oxygen, Phone.com, sprinklr, Roger Smith Hotel. I thank each of our sponsors for their support of the #140conf events.

I also thank the members of the media and various bloggers who helped amplify and tell our story. In just a few days, we had Forbes, WSJ, Washington Post, Publisher’s Weekly and many others reporting. A summary of coverage to date may be viewed: here.

I am now working on the sessions for the upcoming #140conf events planned in Washington DC (June 17th), Tel Aviv (July 6th), Los Angeles (October 5/6) and London (October 26/27). If you have suggestions for topics you would like to see covered at future events or would like to either speak at a future conference, please let me know.

There are also the #140conf meetups. Please visit: http://meetup.com/140conf for an updated list of #140conf meetups currently planned.

To help cover the on-going costs of creating/producing/hosting the #140conf events, it seems I am always looking for sponsors. Any leads/suggestions/connections/contacts in this area are always welcome. :)

Best regards, Jeff

GLORIAD is built on a fiber-optic ring of networks around the northern hemisphere of the earth, providing scientists, educators and students with advanced networking tools that improve communications and data exchange, enabling active, daily collaboration on common problems. With GLORIAD, the scientific community can move unprecedented volumes of valuable data effortlessly, stream video and communicate through quality audio- and video-conferencing.

GLORIAD exists today due to the shared commitment of the US, Russia, China, Korea, Canada, the Netherlands and the five Nordic countries of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, to promote increased engagement and cooperation between their countries, beginning with their scientists, educators and young people. The benefits of this advanced network are shared with Science & Education (S&E) communities throughout Europe, Asia and the Americas.

GLORIAD provides more than a network; it provides a stable, persistent, non-threatening means of facilitating dialog and increased cooperation between nations that often have been at odds through the past century. This new era of cooperation will provide benefits not only to the S&E communities but to every citizen in the partner countries through:

These are a small sample of the literally thousands of active collaborations served by both the general and advanced network services provided by GLORIAD. To learn more about the applications using GLORIAD, browse the following pages. This site describes the currently operating GLORIAD network and plans to expand this to a much higher capacity and more capable infrastructure in the years ahead.

available here.