"Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being "in love" which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossom had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two."
-St. Augustine
Thursday, 24 September 2009
Thursday, 10 September 2009
Create an Internet Action Group for Namibia
Did you know?
• The fifth biggest “country” in the world is Facebook. That’s right, a country that only exists on the Internet has over 200 million people sharing their thoughts, photographs, birthdays, love lives, interests and causes with one another. In the “Nation of Facebook” your every thought is shared with all your friends at once. They can indicate if they like it, or make a comment. In addition, you or a friend can “write on the wall” if you wish to send each other private messages. The photographs area allows you to upload any of your photos and share them instantly with those you know. The best feature is the ability to tag a friend, and everyone they know will be informed that a photo has been loaded.
• In the Twitter application an actor, Ashton Kutcher, beat the news company CNN to having a million users following their “twitting” (Twitter is a service that allows you to send and post SMS messages to a network of contacts.) Kutcher had challenged CNN to the Twitter race, saying he would donate 10,000 mosquito bed nets to charity for World Malaria Day in late April if he beat CNN, and 1,000 if he lost. CNN agreed to do the same. "It's a turning point in media. He's one person who uses a free media platform to reach a large audience. And that really hasn't been done before," Cherwenka said. "He didn't spend a penny on this. And that's kind of the point of any kind of social activity on the Web."
• Digital divide is shrinking through the use of mobile technologies, in countries such as South Africa, Nigeria and Namibia especially in mobile telephony. More than half of the Namibian population has a cellular phone.
• ICTs are technologies that enable us to receive, disseminate and share information and knowledge as well as to communicate – they are the foundation of the Information Society and Knowledge Economy. The Polytechnic of Namibia is a mirror site for most of the information libraries across the world and a key node for connecting Namibia to the information highway.
• Telecommunication is technically defined as the transportation of information from point A to B. Telecom has a fibre optic cable covering almost all of Namibia – a fully digital transmission network (6500 km of Fibre Routes).
What does all this mean for Namibia?
Our challenges are:
• Nationally – the imbalances in basic infrastructure, education, health and government services
• Globally – the technological advances far outpace our national development
“Poverty does not only refer to lack of income, but also includes:
• the deprivation of basic capabilities;
• the deprivation of information needed for meaningful participation in society
• and lack of access to:
• education
• healthcare
• natural resources
• employment
• land and credit
• political participation
• services
• infrastructure, etc.
Neither investment in ICTs or access alone is sufficient for development to occur, ICTs must also mediate the delivery of useful services and civic interaction that contribute to the economic and social well being of the community.”
Creating a better future, Today
Namibia can use the latest technology to the benefit of all its residents. The attitude to education which is presently geared to becoming an industrial country, must be changed to a system where knowing where the information is available is more important than having the information in your head. This means moving from our present agricultural society to a knowledge-base society within five years.
This leapfrogging into a knowledge-based society can be assisted by creating an ICT Action Group (IAG) reporting directly to the President. The IAG should consist of four staff members, of which two should be young people under the age of twenty-five. (The (male and female) staff member should each have software programming skills and should also participate in gaming leagues such as Starcraft. In addition, they should have a minimum competency in the number of words they can SMS per minute on their cellular phone.)
The objectives of the IAG:
• Advise the President and Cabinet on ICT.
• Ensure ICT capability of all members of the Cabinet and their staff.
• Create a Government Ministerial scorecard on Information and Communication Technologies. This includes a baseline survey of computer equipment and civil servant skills, as well as monitoring the information availability over government websites.
• Oversee the creation of a central register for Namibia.
• Ability to declare certain areas to be under-serviced and secure funds from the universal service fund to roll-out infrastructure
• Identify international trends such as Facebook and Chat with the view of encouraging local sites that are able to provide the same service. A social network site for people located in Namibia (in other words within a national local area network) is within the capability of the Polytechnic or UNAM. This will encourage innovation and access to information.
• Promote local content development to enhance the National Identity.
• Host free internet websites for any resident of Namibia.
The funding for the Internet Action Group will come directly from the Universal Fund that is contributed to by the telecommunications companies in Namibia.
• The fifth biggest “country” in the world is Facebook. That’s right, a country that only exists on the Internet has over 200 million people sharing their thoughts, photographs, birthdays, love lives, interests and causes with one another. In the “Nation of Facebook” your every thought is shared with all your friends at once. They can indicate if they like it, or make a comment. In addition, you or a friend can “write on the wall” if you wish to send each other private messages. The photographs area allows you to upload any of your photos and share them instantly with those you know. The best feature is the ability to tag a friend, and everyone they know will be informed that a photo has been loaded.
• In the Twitter application an actor, Ashton Kutcher, beat the news company CNN to having a million users following their “twitting” (Twitter is a service that allows you to send and post SMS messages to a network of contacts.) Kutcher had challenged CNN to the Twitter race, saying he would donate 10,000 mosquito bed nets to charity for World Malaria Day in late April if he beat CNN, and 1,000 if he lost. CNN agreed to do the same. "It's a turning point in media. He's one person who uses a free media platform to reach a large audience. And that really hasn't been done before," Cherwenka said. "He didn't spend a penny on this. And that's kind of the point of any kind of social activity on the Web."
• Digital divide is shrinking through the use of mobile technologies, in countries such as South Africa, Nigeria and Namibia especially in mobile telephony. More than half of the Namibian population has a cellular phone.
• ICTs are technologies that enable us to receive, disseminate and share information and knowledge as well as to communicate – they are the foundation of the Information Society and Knowledge Economy. The Polytechnic of Namibia is a mirror site for most of the information libraries across the world and a key node for connecting Namibia to the information highway.
• Telecommunication is technically defined as the transportation of information from point A to B. Telecom has a fibre optic cable covering almost all of Namibia – a fully digital transmission network (6500 km of Fibre Routes).
What does all this mean for Namibia?
Our challenges are:
• Nationally – the imbalances in basic infrastructure, education, health and government services
• Globally – the technological advances far outpace our national development
“Poverty does not only refer to lack of income, but also includes:
• the deprivation of basic capabilities;
• the deprivation of information needed for meaningful participation in society
• and lack of access to:
• education
• healthcare
• natural resources
• employment
• land and credit
• political participation
• services
• infrastructure, etc.
Neither investment in ICTs or access alone is sufficient for development to occur, ICTs must also mediate the delivery of useful services and civic interaction that contribute to the economic and social well being of the community.”
Creating a better future, Today
Namibia can use the latest technology to the benefit of all its residents. The attitude to education which is presently geared to becoming an industrial country, must be changed to a system where knowing where the information is available is more important than having the information in your head. This means moving from our present agricultural society to a knowledge-base society within five years.
This leapfrogging into a knowledge-based society can be assisted by creating an ICT Action Group (IAG) reporting directly to the President. The IAG should consist of four staff members, of which two should be young people under the age of twenty-five. (The (male and female) staff member should each have software programming skills and should also participate in gaming leagues such as Starcraft. In addition, they should have a minimum competency in the number of words they can SMS per minute on their cellular phone.)
The objectives of the IAG:
• Advise the President and Cabinet on ICT.
• Ensure ICT capability of all members of the Cabinet and their staff.
• Create a Government Ministerial scorecard on Information and Communication Technologies. This includes a baseline survey of computer equipment and civil servant skills, as well as monitoring the information availability over government websites.
• Oversee the creation of a central register for Namibia.
• Ability to declare certain areas to be under-serviced and secure funds from the universal service fund to roll-out infrastructure
• Identify international trends such as Facebook and Chat with the view of encouraging local sites that are able to provide the same service. A social network site for people located in Namibia (in other words within a national local area network) is within the capability of the Polytechnic or UNAM. This will encourage innovation and access to information.
• Promote local content development to enhance the National Identity.
• Host free internet websites for any resident of Namibia.
The funding for the Internet Action Group will come directly from the Universal Fund that is contributed to by the telecommunications companies in Namibia.
Overview of SharePoint capabilities
The capabilities of Office SharePoint Server 2007 are focused in six areas:
• Collaboration
• Portals and personalization
• Search
• Enterprise Content Management
• Business processes and forms
• Business intelligence
Collaboration
You can use a SharePoint site to share information and get your work done more efficiently. A SharePoint site offers workspaces and tools that your team can use to track projects, coordinate schedules, and collaboratively create and edit documents.
Improve team productivity by using a SharePoint site
You can use a site to store routine information for a single department or short-term information for a special project that spans several departments. By using a collaborative workspace such as a team site, your team can become more efficient and more productive.
Manage projects more efficiently
You can use a site to manage projects and coordinate tasks and deadlines among team members. The Project Tasks list template includes a Gantt chart view where you can see task relationships and project status. Your team can coordinate their work with shared calendars, alerts, and notifications. You can also connect a calendar on your SharePoint site to your calendar in Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, where you can view and update it just as you do your personal calendar.
Create, review, and publish documents
Groups of people can create, review, and edit documents collaboratively on a SharePoint site. You can use document libraries to store and manage important documents, or use Document Workspace sites to coordinate the development of specific documents. Slide Libraries are a great place to share and reuse Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 slides in a central location. You can take document libraries offline in Office Outlook 2007 to enable people to view and edit documents while they are not connected to the network.
Capture and share community knowledge
You can use a team site to capture and share collective team knowledge or important information. Teams can create and capture community knowledge or document internal processes in a wiki. You can use surveys or discussions to gather information or encourage dialog, and then share your findings in a blog. Team members can use alerts or Really Simple Syndication (RSS) to track updates to your sites.
Portals and personalization
You can use portal sites to work collaboratively and access the people, information, and business applications that you need to do your job. Office SharePoint Server 2007 includes features that organizations can use to personalize the portal site for individuals or groups of users
Search
You can use search on a SharePoint site to help you find information, files, Web sites, and people. For more information about using search, click the following links.
Enterprise Content Management
Office SharePoint Server 2007 provides powerful Enterprise Content Management (ECM) features for creating, managing, and storing content throughout an enterprise. You can use workflows (workflow: The automated movement of documents or items through a specific sequence of actions or tasks related to a business process. Workflows can be used to consistently manage common business processes, such as document approval or review.) to help manage the process of creating, reviewing, publishing, and even managing the content that your organization creates.
Document management
Document management capabilities can help you consolidate content from multiple locations into a Document Center, which is a centrally managed repository that has consistent categorization.
Records management
Integrated records management capabilities can help you store and protect business records in their final state.
Web content management
Web content management capabilities enable people to publish Web content with an easy-to-use content authoring tool and a built-in approval process.
Business process and forms
Office SharePoint Server 2007 provides many features that can help you integrate and streamline your business processes. You can create browser-based forms and gather data from organizations that do not use Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007. Workflows can streamline the cost of coordinating common business processes, such as project approval or document review, by managing and tracking the tasks involved with those processes
Business intelligence
Business intelligence is the process of aggregating, storing, analyzing, and reporting on business data to support informed business decisions. Office SharePoint Server 2007 provides a number of tools that can help you extract data from a variety of sources and present that data in ways that facilitate analysis and decision making.
• Collaboration
• Portals and personalization
• Search
• Enterprise Content Management
• Business processes and forms
• Business intelligence
Collaboration
You can use a SharePoint site to share information and get your work done more efficiently. A SharePoint site offers workspaces and tools that your team can use to track projects, coordinate schedules, and collaboratively create and edit documents.
Improve team productivity by using a SharePoint site
You can use a site to store routine information for a single department or short-term information for a special project that spans several departments. By using a collaborative workspace such as a team site, your team can become more efficient and more productive.
Manage projects more efficiently
You can use a site to manage projects and coordinate tasks and deadlines among team members. The Project Tasks list template includes a Gantt chart view where you can see task relationships and project status. Your team can coordinate their work with shared calendars, alerts, and notifications. You can also connect a calendar on your SharePoint site to your calendar in Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, where you can view and update it just as you do your personal calendar.
Create, review, and publish documents
Groups of people can create, review, and edit documents collaboratively on a SharePoint site. You can use document libraries to store and manage important documents, or use Document Workspace sites to coordinate the development of specific documents. Slide Libraries are a great place to share and reuse Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 slides in a central location. You can take document libraries offline in Office Outlook 2007 to enable people to view and edit documents while they are not connected to the network.
Capture and share community knowledge
You can use a team site to capture and share collective team knowledge or important information. Teams can create and capture community knowledge or document internal processes in a wiki. You can use surveys or discussions to gather information or encourage dialog, and then share your findings in a blog. Team members can use alerts or Really Simple Syndication (RSS) to track updates to your sites.
Portals and personalization
You can use portal sites to work collaboratively and access the people, information, and business applications that you need to do your job. Office SharePoint Server 2007 includes features that organizations can use to personalize the portal site for individuals or groups of users
Search
You can use search on a SharePoint site to help you find information, files, Web sites, and people. For more information about using search, click the following links.
Enterprise Content Management
Office SharePoint Server 2007 provides powerful Enterprise Content Management (ECM) features for creating, managing, and storing content throughout an enterprise. You can use workflows (workflow: The automated movement of documents or items through a specific sequence of actions or tasks related to a business process. Workflows can be used to consistently manage common business processes, such as document approval or review.) to help manage the process of creating, reviewing, publishing, and even managing the content that your organization creates.
Document management
Document management capabilities can help you consolidate content from multiple locations into a Document Center, which is a centrally managed repository that has consistent categorization.
Records management
Integrated records management capabilities can help you store and protect business records in their final state.
Web content management
Web content management capabilities enable people to publish Web content with an easy-to-use content authoring tool and a built-in approval process.
Business process and forms
Office SharePoint Server 2007 provides many features that can help you integrate and streamline your business processes. You can create browser-based forms and gather data from organizations that do not use Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007. Workflows can streamline the cost of coordinating common business processes, such as project approval or document review, by managing and tracking the tasks involved with those processes
Business intelligence
Business intelligence is the process of aggregating, storing, analyzing, and reporting on business data to support informed business decisions. Office SharePoint Server 2007 provides a number of tools that can help you extract data from a variety of sources and present that data in ways that facilitate analysis and decision making.
Tuesday, 1 September 2009
SharePoint is the next thing you need
Twenty years ago most of us did not use word processing or spreadsheets. Today it is compulsory for all of us to be computer literate and probably be a super user with documents and spreadsheets.
WELL, the next thing we must be able to is to collaborate with one another. A SharePoint Web site allows you to easily collaborate with colleagues from across the hall and around the world. The ability to create knowledge bases, online surveys, discussion boards, and chats can help produce, organize, and distribute project information.
What is SharePoint
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 is an integrated suite of server capabilities that can help improve organizational effectiveness by providing comprehensive content management and enterprise search, accelerating shared business processes, and facilitating information-sharing across boundaries for better business insight. Additionally, this collaboration and content management server provides IT professionals and developers with the platform and tools they need for server administration, application extensibility, and interoperability.
There are three levels of users, namely:
1. End users / Site Administrators
2. System Administrators / Architects
3. Developers / Architects
In September and October I am focussing on SharePoint for all three levels of users.
In my next blog I highlight some of the areas of work in SharePoint.
WELL, the next thing we must be able to is to collaborate with one another. A SharePoint Web site allows you to easily collaborate with colleagues from across the hall and around the world. The ability to create knowledge bases, online surveys, discussion boards, and chats can help produce, organize, and distribute project information.
What is SharePoint
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 is an integrated suite of server capabilities that can help improve organizational effectiveness by providing comprehensive content management and enterprise search, accelerating shared business processes, and facilitating information-sharing across boundaries for better business insight. Additionally, this collaboration and content management server provides IT professionals and developers with the platform and tools they need for server administration, application extensibility, and interoperability.
There are three levels of users, namely:
1. End users / Site Administrators
2. System Administrators / Architects
3. Developers / Architects
In September and October I am focussing on SharePoint for all three levels of users.
In my next blog I highlight some of the areas of work in SharePoint.
Tuesday, 25 August 2009
White and Black Economic Empowerment
Namibia has gone through various political changes over the past two centuries. One thing however is always constant. Once the political change occurs, there is a realisation that political independence means very little without economic ownership change. When the English ruled over Southern Africa they had the economic might. The Afrikaner took over and had to create state institutions such as the “Eerste Nasionale Ontwikkelings Korporasie” (ENOK or First National Development Corporation) to allow Afrikaner businessmen to get a share of the economic pie. The also created other institutions that should be supported by their people to become as powerful as the English ones, for example banks and insurance companies (Sanlam, Santam, etc.).
In much the same way, the black people of Namibia need to become participants in the economy. The first efforts were made in the early 1990’s to unite the two chambers of commerce, namely the Windhoek CCI and Windhoek Business Chamber. This resulted in the Namibia National Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the predecessor of the present NCCI.
This was one of the most challenging times in my working life. The mistrust of decades had to be plastered over for the sake of the country and our newly created democracy. We succeeded.
BUT, we only plastered over the problem. The black majority is still not participating in the meaningful way promised by the politicians. Or for that matter, the way the previous English and Afrikaner political movements allowed their voters to prosper.
In much the same way, the black people of Namibia need to become participants in the economy. The first efforts were made in the early 1990’s to unite the two chambers of commerce, namely the Windhoek CCI and Windhoek Business Chamber. This resulted in the Namibia National Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the predecessor of the present NCCI.
This was one of the most challenging times in my working life. The mistrust of decades had to be plastered over for the sake of the country and our newly created democracy. We succeeded.
BUT, we only plastered over the problem. The black majority is still not participating in the meaningful way promised by the politicians. Or for that matter, the way the previous English and Afrikaner political movements allowed their voters to prosper.
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