Conmergence

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 :)

Programme for UbuntuNet-Connect 2011
http://www.ubuntunet.net/uc2011_programme

CHAIN Workshop on Research Applications and e-Infrastructures
http://agenda.ct.infn.it/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=632

Latest newsletters here

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/

VC4Africa wants to initiate a shift to business as a key tool in the development of the continent. The VC4Africa social network is aimed at investors and entrepreneurs seeking sustainable businesses in Africa. 1.9 million African persons operate online. 43% of the African population is under 14 years old. This rapidly growing open platform, has members from over 250 countries, and meet ups worldwide.

Please see http://vc4africa.biz/blog/2011/10/10/vc4africa-nominated-for-the-accenture-innovation-award/ and|or http://shar.es/bb0nB

https://data.innovationawards.nl/2011/publieksprijs/vote.php?id=20&ind=fs

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.

XSEDE project brings advanced cyberinfrastructure, digital services, and expertise to nation’s scientists and engineers

A partnership of 17 institutions today announced the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE). XSEDE will be the most advanced, powerful, and robust collection of integrated advanced digital resources and services in the world.

Scientists and engineers use these resources and services—things like supercomputers, collections of data, and new tools—to propel scientific discovery and improve our lives. They are a crucial part of research in fields like earthquake engineering, materials science, medicine, epidemiology, genomics, astronomy, and biology.

“Enabling scientific discovery though enhanced researcher productivity is our goal, and XSEDE’s ultimate reason for being,” explained Barry Schneider, a program director in the Office of Cyberinfrastructure at the National Science Foundation. NSF will fund the XSEDE project for five years, at $121 million.

“For this sort of cyberscience to be truly effective and provide unique insights, it requires a cyberinfrastructure of local computing hardware at sites around the country, advanced supercomputers at larger centers, generally available software packages, and fast networks. Ideally, they should all work together so the researcher can move from local to national resources transparently and easily.”

XSEDE, and the experts who lead the program, will make that ideal a reality.

XSEDE will replace and expand the TeraGrid project that started more than a decade ago. More than 10,000 scientists used the TeraGrid to complete thousands of research projects, at no cost to the scientists.

That same sort of work—only in more detail, generating more new knowledge and improving our world in an even broader range of fields—will continue with XSEDE.

“The TeraGrid really helped invent the concept of having digital resources like supercomputers, tools, and expertise spread across the country and allowing researchers to easily use them,” said John Towns of the University of Illinois’s National Center for Supercomputing Applications. Towns will lead the XSEDE project and also had a variety of roles in the TeraGrid project.

“This is much more than just the same old resources that TeraGrid offered,” Towns said. “XSEDE will take the next step by lowering technological barriers to access and use. We are creating a distributed cyberinfrastructure in which researchers can establish private, secure environments that have all the resources, services, and collaboration support they need to be productive.”

The XSEDE User Access Layer, for example, will provide a comprehensive view of the resources available—not just those at XSEDE partner sites, but any resources. It will integrate things like authentication and job monitoring, providing a comprehensive view and single contact point for all the cyberinfrastructure that researchers need to achieve their science and education goals.

XSEDE will provide an array of services to ensure that researchers can make the most of the supercomputers and tools. This will include outreach to new communities that haven’t traditionally used cyberinfrastructure and other digital services. It will also include advanced support for very large, complicated, or novel uses of XSEDE resources.

Initially, XSEDE will support 16 supercomputers across the country. It also includes other specialized digital resources and services to complement these computers. These resources will be expanded throughout the lifetime of the project.

The XSEDE partnership includes: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Carnegie Mellon University/University of Pittsburgh, University of Texas at Austin, University of Tennessee Knoxville, University of Virginia, Shodor Education Foundation, Southeastern Universities Research Association, University of Chicago, University of California San Diego, Indiana University, Jülich Supercomputing Centre, Purdue University, Cornell University, Ohio State University, University of California Berkeley, Rice University, and the National Center for Atmospheric Research. It is led by the University of Illinois’s National Center for Supercomputing Applications.

See also How XSEDE will facilitate collaborative science

Brad, Scott: I don’t deny any of what you’ve pointed out and my suggestions are no panacea but my thoughts run like this: We (TN) have Gigabit Ethernet in Chattanooga, Clusters and Supercomputers at Oak Ridge / UT Knoxville (plus Global Ring Network for Advanced Applications Development, or GLORIAD), Nashville educational interconnects to Internet2, National LambdaRail, dark fiber, etc. but our management structures refuse to connect all these resources up and use distributed development, both city-wide, state-wide and nationally and globally. Our education system keeps saying we need “an excellent teacher in every classroom” rather than giving every student access to an excellent teacher (via distance education and free educational resources and repositories). The Microsoft and Google Campus models keep perpetuating the “technology cluster mindset” as the global broadband network continues to build out and speed up–and Nashville and Tennessee companies continue to geo-lock positions which actually require best practices project management. 10 Tools for Distributed Developer Teams makes me wonder how many members of the Nashville Technology Council make serious use of the liberation of the great global grid. It reminds me of the olden days folks who walked to the telegraph office to send a message even though they had new-fangled telephones in their parlors (which they didn’t fully trust).

The Second Annual VIVO Conference will be held August 24 – 26 at the Gaylord National in Washington D.C. The conference is sponsoring a competition for applications using data coming from VIVO systems to support science.

Eligibility

Applications can be written in any language.

To qualify applications must:

• Consume VIVO data from more than one VIVO consortium site. Applications consuming data from other sites will not be considered.
• Be hosted outside the consortium (University of Florida, Cornell University, Indiana University, Washington University School of Medicine, Weill Cornell Medical College, The Scripps Research Institute, and Ponce School of Medicine).
• Be accessible from a single persistent URL, accessible on the public Internet without authentication.

Criteria for Success

Applications will be judged on the following criteria:

1. Value to scientists on the national network.
2. Functionality. The application performs as described.
3. Presentation. The application is well organized and attractive.

Prizes

The first prize winner will have registration refunded, receive a cash prize and will be awarded a plaque at a recognition ceremony during the conference. Second and third prize winners will receive certificates.

Submission

To submit your application, please send an email to vivo-application-contest@vivoweb.org. Applications are due July 31, 2011. Winners will be announced at the conference. Submissions must include:

The judges will execute the application from the URL provided without assistance from the authors.

Additional Resources

VIVO uses Linked Data (http://linkeddata.org) standards for data access via Resource Description Framework (RDF).  See the Linked Data site for more information regarding Linked Data, RDF and data processing. VIVO enjoys a robust open source, open community space on SourceForge. The VIVO software and ontology are publicly available at http://vivo.sourceforge.net along with content that supports implementation, adoption, and development efforts around the world

http://vivoweb.org/files/CFApps_0.pdf

NUANCE is a monthly e-newsletter published by UbuntuNet Alliance. 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

Why Chattanooga Represents Broadband’s Future

What a Gigabit Network Can Do? Find Out

Not to mention Pulaski

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>

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.

VC4Africa was started as a LinkedIn group in the spring of 2008 and has grown organically into what is now the largest online community dedicated to Venture Capital in Africa. The VC4Africa community (vc4africa.com) and related platforms have always been free for anyone to join, and the entire network and its content remain open and accessible.

Currently the community can be found on social networking platforms like LinkedIn (+/- 3.900 members), LinkedIn Incubators (+/- 2.200), VC4Africa.com (+/- 3.300 members), VC4Africa.biz (+/- 3.400), Facebook Group (+/- 550 members) and Twitter (+/- 5.000). Members of the VC4Africa community use these social platforms to connect with other members and to exchange knowledge, information and contacts.

A core vision behind the project is that VC4Africa is only a platform within a larger social movement. Open communication and collaboration is encouraged and all members are invited to become active participants in both growing and developing the project. This means members are encouraged to invite new members, post content, start discussions, initiate networking events and join the VC4Africa management team in a more concerted effort to grow, develop and evolve the concept. Every member is expected to contribute in some meaningful way.

A few key points that make VC4Africa unique:

SME Pipeline: Entrepreneurs crunch their venture by choosing icons that represent some of the standard answers that a business plan must provide. Members can vote for ventures and their input is used to rank the projects per country, stage of investment and sector. The output is a dynamic Digg.com style feed that sees the best projects rise to the top of their respective field so we can connect them with capital.

Matchmaking: Organizations and individuals interested in investing in African businesses are able to register their investment profile with VC4Africa. Once registered as an investor we can facilitate targeted e-mail updates with ‘high potentials’ that match their investment criteria. This is currently a manual process that we look to automate in the next phase of development.

Member initiated networking events: Second to networking online, VC4Africa makes use of the Barcamp model for events and organizes its own VC4Africa Meetups. Meetups have already been hosted in Johannesburg, Kampala, Nairobi, Kigali, Abuja, Lagos, Tunis, San Francisco, Atlanta, New York, Washington D.C., Amsterdam, Leuven and London. See a video about a VC4Africa Meetup.

Open Source Approach: VC4Africa is an open source project built on open source software and anyone can contribute code to the VC4Africa platform. We are also working on an open Application Programming Interface (API) that would allow anyone to access VC4Africa data and repurpose it for their own use.

Officers Program: The VC4Africa community also initiated an Officers Program used to engage active members in running and building the network. Officers take on different tasks in managing the community and are responsible for specific functions i.e. someone that manages the blog, someone that invites new members on LinkedIn or is responsible for growing the network on Facebook. These individuals are instrumental to the vitality of the project and help spread the word virally through their own networks. Moreover, they bring in new ideas and make valuable contributions that help define the scope and focus of the project. To this extent VC4Africa only builds what members demand.

Want to get involved? Has VC4Africa been useful to you in any way? Do you have a venture you would like to promote/share with the community? Please reach out and share your ideas and experiences with us!

ben / ben@vc4africa.com
Posted By Ben White

Hi. I’d like to announce that at the next OMG Technical Meeting (21-25 March near Washington DC, USA) we will be having a Cloud-related meeting to restart the efforts begun months ago. I will be acting chair for now and would like to encourage anyone interested in Cloud and how the OMG might be relevant in this space, to come along to the meeting. We are essentially starting from scratch again, so the goal of this initial meeting is to determine membership interest as well as gather ideas and brainstorm around a number of options concerning the roles that the OMG could play. The idea of language neutral standards in the Cloud is critical, particularly given the fact that some standards will undoubtedly be driven through organisations that concentrate on a single language, such as Java. As an industry, whatever we do needs to be coordinated across these various bodies or we risk weakening the benefits that standardisation can bring. The OMG can play a leadership role in this area.

The meeting will be held on Monday 21st of March at the Hyatt Regency Crystal City Hotel, Arlington, VA, USA. Details of the overall Technical Meeting are here:

http://www.omg.org/news/meetings/tc/va/info.htm

I’d also encourage anyone interested to sign up to the OMG cloud mailing list (cloud@omg.org) by sending email to request@omg.org.

Mark.

— Mark Little mlittle@redhat.com

JBoss, by Red Hat Registered Address: Red Hat UK Ltd, Amberley Place, 107-111 Peascod Street, Windsor, Berkshire, SI4 1TE, United Kingdom. Registered in UK and Wales under Company Registration No. 3798903 Directors: Michael Cunningham (USA), Charlie Peters (USA), Matt Parsons (USA) and Brendan Lane (Ireland).

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

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SaaS
Enterprise Collaboration Software
Office 2.0
Cloud Computing
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Job ID: 1127388