Inveneo USA Archives
- Posted by Inveneo on August 29, 2012 in the categories: News
mission*social, a unique workspace for social enterprises, small businesses and entrepreneurs in San Francisco, has new space available for rent. mission*social is more than affordable office space and shared resources – it provides the opportunity for informal dialogue and collaboration among the organizations.
mission*social is conveniently located in the heart of the SOMA district at 972 Mission Street. It features an open loft layout with hardwood floors, full access to video conference rooms, high-speed Internet, a freight elevator, pool table, and a full kitchen, along with the bevy of other amenities no coworking space should be without. We are currently upgrading mission*social with booths for private phone and internet conferencing, an additional conference room, and new/updated AV equipment in all conference rooms.
So what are you waiting for? Join innovative organizations like Catapult Design, Digital Divide Data, Inveneo, and Meedan to share ideas, tips, and advice in person. As Google confirms:
Information is shared most easily and effectively among office neighbors, even at an Internet company where instant messaging and e-mail are generally preferred to face-to-face discussion.
More information and rental options can be found at mission*social.
- Posted by Inveneo on August 27, 2012 in the categories: Events, News
New technologies are changing the nature of monitoring and evaluation, as seen in our previous Salon on the use of ICTs in M&E. However, the use of new technologies in M&E efforts can seem daunting or irrelevant to those working in low resource settings, especially if there is little experience or low existing capacity with these new tools and approaches.
What is the role of donors and other intermediaries in building local capacity for communities and development partners to use new technologies to enhance monitoring and evaluation efforts.?
This August 30, join the Rockefeller Foundation, the Community Systems Foundation, and your friends at the Technology Salon for the second of three Salon discussions around the use of new technologies for monitoring and evaluating development outcomes. Some aspects we will be discussing, include:
- How are smaller organizations, development agencies and communities incorporating these tools in sustainable ways? Are there any well-documented case studies?
- What examples exist of blending new ICT tools and traditional M&E approaches to adapt to local contexts?
- What local or regional intermediaries exist who can support this process?
- How can donors and other intermediaries help encourage and strengthen M&E capacity in local organizations, institutions and individuals?
We will have 3 thought leaders joining us for the session:
- The World Bank’s Innovation and Governance team (discussant name TBC) will share how the Bank has worked with intermediaries on open data and open government and the potential role of Technology Hubs
- Tom O’Connell, UNICEF Health Specialist, will discuss capacity strengthening on local health systems
- Revati Prasad, Senior Program Officer at Internews, will talk about how the organization goes about strengthening local capacity with their partners and in local communities.
As always, we hope you will bring your experiences to the Salon as well for a lively and engaging round-table discussion on the ways that new technologies are changing how we work.
Strengthening Local Capacity for ICTs in M&E
August Technology Salon New York City
9-10:30am, Thursday, August 30, 2012
The Rockefeller Foundation
420 Fifth Avenue
New York City, NY (map)
We’ll have coffee, tea and light breakfast for a morning rush, but seating is limited so RSVP ASAP to be confirmed for attendance or you will end up on the waitlist.
For those attending, please arrive 15 minutes early to clear security and be sure to bring photo ID.
About the Technology Salon™
The Technology Salon™ is an intimate, informal, and in person, discussion between information and communication technology experts and international development professionals, with a focus on both:
- technology’s impact on donor-sponsored technical assistance delivery, and
- private enterprise driven economic development, facilitated by technology.
Our meetings are lively conversations, not boring presentations. Attendance is capped at 20 people – and frank participation with ideas, opinions, and predictions is actively encouraged. It’s also a great opportunity to meet others motivated to employ technology to solve vexing development problems. Join us today!
- Posted by Inveneo on June 27, 2012 in the categories: News
In 2011, the Petzl Foundation hosted Andris Bjornson, Inveneo’s Chief Technology Officer, and Jen Overgaag, Senior Project Engineer, and in 2012, Matt Crum, Sam Perales, and Eyleen Chou, Inveneo Project Engineers, for a Tower Access and Rescue train-the-trainer course at the Petzl America headquarters in Utah. This course was designed to provide invaluable hands-on training for Inveneo staff and enabled Inveneo to develop a training curriculum and a safety equipment kit with Petzl’s work-at-height safety experts.
These skills and $10,000 in donated Petzl tools will be used to train and kit our extended Inveneo team and our in-country technology partners, helping them deploy safe practices in configuring broadband Internet networks on communication towers in the developing world. Often, setting up these networks involves large-scale tower climbing to position equipment correctly. Our entrepreneurs, though not new to technology, are often new to climbing or have haven’t formally learned safety skills. These trainings are critical to the safe set-up and delivery of our broadband networks, and we proud to share these invaluable skills with others.
Ronald, an apprentice engineer, during a Haiti training
Based on the Petzl training, Inveneo implemented two trainings in Haiti and trainings in Eldoret and Nairobi, Kenya. In Haiti, where we are implementing the Haiti Rural Broadband Network, communications technicians were anxious to learn safe climbing techniques and were very interested in trusted climbing equipment. Inveneo’s Haitian partner, Transversal, continues to use the training and equipment they received on a daily basis as they roll out and maintain remote tower sites.
As we move forward in 2012, Inveneo will be expanding our work on broadband networks in East Africa. The investment in the Petzl-Inveneo training will continue to provide security, confidence, and dividends in many countries and for many people.
- Posted by Inveneo on June 14, 2012 in the categories: News
Inveneo has a history of utilizing Ubiquiti products in our broadband deployments, and many Ubiquiti products are Inveneo Certified Solutions.
Now Inveneo is proud to announce that we are a Ubiquiti Authorized Training Partner and Jen Overgaag, our Senior Project Engineer, is a Ubiquiti Certified Trainer. On March 19-21, Jen traveled to Ubiquiti’s headquarters in Chicago, IL, to complete the first Ubiquiti Training Academy course – Ubiquiti airMAX Certification (UAC). Jen says:
“The Ubiquiti Certified Trainer course was an outstanding experience. The instructors Jamie, Salvador, and Matt were incredibly knowledgeable, adapted to the needs of a very diverse class, and created an environment where trainees could share their professional successes and challenges to learn from each other. I’m now armed with all the tools I need to be an effective trainer, and look forward to training our partners on networking with Ubiquiti solutions.”
As a Ubiquiti Certified Trainer, Jen joined the Ubiquiti training community and will bring enhanced skills-transfer techniques to Inveneo deployments around the world, increasing the capacity of our local ICIP partners and the ICT ecosystems in which they work.
- Posted by Inveneo on March 9, 2012 in the categories: Economic Development, Events, News
If we are serious about ICT as an accelerant for social and economic development, and we know that a) women are the key to investments in family health and education, and b) broadband connectivity is a major ICT catalyst for both, then we should be working towards a world where every African woman can have access to broadband Internet.
But what does “broadband” or “access” really mean? And how can we accelerate connectivity? Yes, mobile operators will play a role, as will ISPs, national backbones, sea cable operators, and the private ICT ecosystem. In fact, its a policy, regulatory, financial, and cultural challenge, which will take many actors working together to achieve impact.
How do we start? What advice do you have for the technologists? The technocrats? The ICT4D community as a whole? Or the whole US government foreign assistance framework? What levers and leverage can make broadband ubiquitous?
Come to the next Technology Salon for a lively discussion at the intersection of technology and development, boosted with broadband. We’ll be joined by Priya Jaisinghani of USAID, Ann Mei Chang of State via Google, and your peers – so please RSVP early – we will reach capacity fast.
Broadband Access for Africa
March Technology Salon
8:30 a.m. – 10:00 a.m.
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
IREX
2121 K Street NW, Suite 700
Washington, DC (map)
We’ll have hot coffee and Krispe Kreme donuts for a morning rush, but seating is limited at IREX’s headquarters. So RSVP ASAP to be confirmed for attendance – once we reach our 20-person capacity there will be a waitlist.
About the Technology Salon™
The Technology Salon™ is an intimate, informal, and in person, discussion between information and communication technology experts and international development professionals, with a focus on both:
- technology’s impact on donor-sponsored technical assistance delivery, and
- private enterprise driven economic development, facilitated by technology.
Our meetings are lively conversations, not boring presentations. Attendance is capped at 20 people – and frank participation with ideas, opinions, and predictions is actively encouraged. It’s also a great opportunity to meet others motivated to employ technology to solve vexing development problems. Join us today!
- Posted by Inveneo on December 1, 2011 in the categories: Economic Development, Events, News
Terms like mobile money, mPayments, and M-PESA are all the rage in International development these days, but what do they really mean for the national development of countries we attempt to help?
Menekse Gencer of mPay Connect will lead us in a discussion of mobile financial services, the full gamut of finance that is now taking place on mobile phones: mobile payments, mobile microfinance, and mobile banking.
She will showcase ways in which mobile financial services are (and will be) radically changing emerging economies, shifting the economic landscape in ways we are just now starting to see but as yet cannot fully understand. Here is one example of that shift:
- mPay Connect research shows M-PESA saves 3 hours per day for every Kenyan subscriber in reduced shoe leather costs – the cost of walking money from place to place. If we multiply 3 hours per day, by 13.2 million subscribers, by 365 days, that’s 14.4 BILLION hours saved per year. Add in the average wage per hour in Kenya, and the time savings start to make you gasp in savings shock.
Priya Jaisinghani of the Mobile Solutions Office at USAID wants to bring savings like that to both the host country governments that USAID works with and to the USAID system itself. She’ll continue with Menekse’s theme and bring the discussion home:
- How can USAID and its implementing partners also leverage mobile financial services to increase the efficiency of foreign assistance? Two simple suggestion to start: contractors using mPayments to pay host country national staff and national pensions paying through mobiles.
Of course there are many more, and more ways in which mobile financial services are radically changing the world in which we work. Join your fellow Technology Salon professionals in a deep dive on the impact all of this will have at the next Salon:
Mobile Financial Services in USAID Programming
December Technology Salon
8:30 a.m. – 10:00 a.m.
Tuesday, December 6th, 2011
RTI International
701 13th Street NW, Suite 750
Washington, DC (map)
We’ll have hot coffee and Krispe Kreme donuts for a morning rush, but seating is limited and the UN Foundation is in a secure building. So RSVP ASAP to be confirmed for attendance or you are on the waitlist.
About the Technology Salon™
The Technology Salon™ is an intimate, informal, and in person, discussion between information and communication technology experts and international development professionals, with a focus on both:
- technology’s impact on donor-sponsored technical assistance delivery, and
- private enterprise driven economic development, facilitated by technology.
Our meetings are lively conversations, not boring presentations. Attendance is capped at 20 people – and frank participation with ideas, opinions, and predictions is actively encouraged. It’s also a great opportunity to meet others motivated to employ technology to solve vexing development problems. Join us today!
- Posted by Inveneo on October 26, 2011 in the categories: News
At Inveneo, we like to test new technologies thoroughly before we deploy them in the field, including installing and using them in our offices. In Silicon Valley, this is called “eating your own dog food” and it is a time-honored way to drive innovation that is actually practical and useful.
Recently, we heard about Ubiquiti UniFi, which is a WiFi system combining carrier class performance, unlimited scalability, and a virtual management controller all at disruptively low pricing. To test it out, we’ve installed 4 Ubiquiti UniFi access points throughout mission*social, the shared workspace for social enterprises organized by Inveneo.
UniFi solves many local WiFi issues
There are six social enterprises and countless visitors who work out of mission*social, and Inveneo manages 3 local wifi networks to support them: 1 for Inveneo staff, 1 for mission*social staff, and 1 for visitors. Each of these networks has different bandwidth and security requirements.
Previously, we had consumer grade access points where one access point was its own independent wireless network – we had to manage each access point separately and users had to manually switch between networks. With Unifi, each of the four new access points we installed will serve the three wireless networks seamlessly.
Users will be able to freely roam from one AP’s coverage area to another, and the UniFi “virtual controller” will make sure the user is always connected to the access point with the strongest coverage. We are still working through a learning curve with the UniFi controller management platform, but the interface is nice, and it allows us to show access point status and coverage overlaid on a floorplan of our office.
As an added bonus, installation of the access points was pretty painless, and once installed, they look much more professional than installations we’ve seen done with consumer gear. Best of all, UniFi gives us enterprise-level WiFi at consumer prices.
- Posted by Inveneo on October 17, 2011 in the categories: Events, News, Relief
As part of the ICTworks community, Inveneo organized Fail Faire DC 2011 on October 13th at the World Bank. The event was an amazing celebration of failure as a mark of innovation and leadership in ICT interventions.
With fun, fast, Ignite-style presentations of professional failures, we had much laughter as we navel-gazed at where we have all gone wrong in mixing technology and international development.
Yet we LEARNED from failure. Failure is no reason to be ashamed. Failure shows leadership, innovation, and risk-taking in pushing the boundaries of what is possible in scaling ideas from pilots to global programs. As Slate.com says, there is great value in examining our mistakes as we go beyond the easy and the simple.
To be involved in Fail Faire DC 2012, be sure to sign up for alerts on this and other Fail Faire activities.
- Posted by Inveneo on April 5, 2011 in the categories: Economic Development, Events, News
The past decade has seen great interest in information and communication technologies applied to international development, an endeavor sometimes abbreviated ICTD. Can mobile phones be used to improve rural healthcare? How do you design user interfaces for an illiterate migrant worker? What value is wireless technology to a farmer earning a dollar a day?
In this panel, four prominent thinkers active in ICTD debate the potential for electronic technologies to contribute to the socio-economic development of the world’s impoverished communities.
- Eric Brewer is a UC Berkeley professor who develops wireless technologies to connect rural communities.
- Megan Smith is vice president of new business development at Google and managing director of Google.org.
- Kentaro Toyama is co-founder of Microsoft Research India, and a computer scientist turned technology skeptic.
- Wayan Vota is a senior director at Inveneo, a non-profit that works to provide information technology to underserved communities of the developing world.
Digital Divide or Digital Bridge: Can Information Technology Alleviate Poverty?
Wednesday, April 6, 2011, 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm
School of Information
University of California, Berkeley
102 South Hall
Berkeley, CA 94720-4600
- Posted by Inveneo on January 27, 2010 in the categories: Events, News
The local ABC News affiliate interviewed Kristin Peterson of Inveneo around our preparations for responding to the Haiti earthquake. You can learn more about your actions at https://inveneo.org
