Free yourself to do the right thing
We always know a place where we find strange peace…
Story Yelling at Digital Natives Workshop in Taipei
Aug 13th
The Centre for Internet and Society in collaboration with the Frontier Foundation is holding a three day Digital Natives workshop in Taipei from 16 to 18 August, 2010. The three day workshop will serve as an ideal platform for the young users of technology to share their knowledge and experience of the digital and Internet world and help them learn from each other’s individual experiences. – http://cis-india.org/research/dn/open-call
At first, if Nishant Shah or anyone would have asked me if I had heard the term “Digital Natives” I would’ve made a blank face as well. However, after coming across the thought and digging more about it I thought that after literally living on the internet for over a decade I could, very well, relate to the thought that technology has been a central part of my life and it has been affecting lives of people around me.
Looking at the list of participants I am very excited and looking forward to meet young, like minded people from more than 16 nationalities all of whom have a story to share, an experience to learn from.
I too have a story and experience to share. In 2006, when the whole country was agitated against the Reservation Policy introduced by the Government of India, there were some of us, in fact many of us who didn’t agree with it. We needed to voice our opinion and be heard. That is how the Power of Youth campaign (like many others) took shape. It was all an immense form of networking, people power & exchange of thoughts resulting in action in a short time for us. While most of it being as a result of that instant rage, it was a learning experience and a “growing up” excercise for some of us.
I am looking forward to share the lessons learned from this and other activites I have been a part of over these years & hear how others have been changing things around them using technology: a cause, an impact, any social change for a better world.
The Venue is Academia Sinica and the (incomplete) twitter list of participants/people involved that I have created is here http://twitter.com/ajuonline/digital-natives-tw10.
And I strongly recommend you guys to take a look at Nishant’s talk on Digital Natives below.
See you in Taiwan!
OHAAIII Dear Blog!!
Apr 8th
Dear Blog 
I know its been a while since we hung out together, but I haz been traveling too much and this thing called twitter got me hooked up and addicted to it. Its nice for instant gratification and all. And you know everybody gets attracted to shiny glittery stuff around and just gets tempted to give in. But you know, as some people say distance makes one realize the love and bond between people. So here I am back to you, my first love
I have already cut down on my tweeting habit these days and now plan to focus all my attention back to you. I hope this works around well between us and I am able to post stuff about the work I do more often. Oh and I got this WordPress app too on my phone, which I think allows me to blog from the phone itself so I will try to do that as I travel as well. And I will also try to finish the “drafts” that I haven’t published whenever.. errr like soon too.
I did take care of you in between and made sure that I have upgraded you to the latest versions of WordPress at all times. So I am sure you’d understand and be nice and also like the new tidying up that I have done to you.
With Love,
Ajay.
SourceForge.net – Community Choice Award Nominations
May 25th
This is the last week to nominate your favorite open source project for the Source Forge Community Choice Awards. So if you are a supporter of the Sahana project, please show your support by nominating us.
Suggested categories:
- Best Project
- Best Project for Developers
- Best Project for Government
- Best Project for Academia
- Most likely to change the way you do everything
Please click on the image above to nominate or follow this link.
I am also going to nominate my other favourite FOSS projects there: LimeSurvey & Joomla! Go ahead nominate your favourite project as well!
Speaking at Sahana Conf 2009
Mar 19th
Sahana Conf 2009
As mentioned earlier in my post here, The Free and Open Source Software Community of Sri Lanka [FOSS.LK] is hosting the 1st Annual SAHANA Conference on March 24 & 25, 2009.
And I happen to be speaking at the first ever Sahana conference and am pretty much excited about it! Specifically, to meet the people/team who started the project, the board members and various community members involved with Sahana in one way or the other.
My agenda at the conference would be to put forward the contributions done by the Indian community for Sahana across the past year, that I have been working on after I finished my GSoC 2008 project for Sahana, and discuss India’s role in community driven efforts for Sahana in the future as well.
I am going to be present for the complete week, so if you happen to be around meet me there!! 
