A great quote about the politics of software architecture from the Agile for Development conference, Aberdeen

We are very proud and excited to have received a grant from the Indigo Trust  to promote an open data standard for philanthropic funding.

I gave a talk to the students at Northbrook college about Aptivate's structure.

The Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU) has launched a major re-design of their site. ACU asked us to use our low-bandwidth expertise to design a click-able map as part of the new site.

A format for a multi-disciplinary conversation - two experts, on a sofa, in front of an audience.

We regularly allow ourselves to rely on information and communication technologies but these tools can be fragile and have many modes of failure.

I am very excited to have been invited by Mark Walsh to his training on the Meaning and Values of Work...

Last week ended with the battery shutting down. Because I wasn't working Monday or Tuesday I had 4 days to charge the battery back up. The weather has been ...

Started the day with a cloudy sky and just over 12 volts. The nights are drawing in and trying to read the monitor in a dark room is a strain on the eyes. I've been researching low power 12 volt LED lights...

When we do retrospectives we look at the "plusses" and what we'd like to change, the "deltas". It's a much more positive than "what went badly" which can turn in to an excuse to winge. In that spirit I thought I'd talk about some of the deltas of the solar power experiment.... nah, forget it, I'll just winge!

A cloudy day. This is one of the interesting things about taking responsibility for my electricity production - the awareness I am getting is modifying my behaviour...

It's the beginning of day four of my solar experiment and off to a good start. The sun is out this morning, bright blue skies, although the forecast is ...

Aptivate is partnering with DecisionLab, LondonCreativeLabs, FutureInFocus and Reos Partners to put on  The World's 1st FacilitationCamp.

FacilitationCamp is on Friday 20th and Saturday 21st of August. Book a ...

The next CrisisCamp work day in the UK is in Cambridge at Aptivate's offices in the Humanitarian Centre. For more details see http://wiki.crisiscommons.org/wiki/Cambridge

I'm going to be talking at Africa Gathering London about the reciprocal relationships between participation and IT.

13 years ago Jakob Nielsen wrote an important article stating that one of the most significant factors in web usability is speed. Now he has to say it again.

You probably know Moore's Law. I have a theory too, well... a "Random Idea" about progress in software.

The Samfya Resource Centre is a telecentre (Internet cafe) run by young women in Samfya, Zambia for other local young women - a component of Camfed's "CAMA" network. As part of our ongoing support for the Samfya Resource Centre, we have sent them robots.

We're getting ready for the second Crisis Camp London day, this Saturday, at the London Knowledge Lab. Considering how quickly last Saturday was put together we had a great turn out. We're hoping for, and expecting, an even larger turn out this time. If you are technical (eg. an IT project manager, a coder, a user experience person) or have relief experience and want to help Crisis Camp London support Haiti, then please come along. More details and a link to the registration inside...

Following in the example in the US, Crisis Camp has come to London!

The first "work day" will be Saturday 23rd January... that's tomorrow.

10am at the London Knowledge ...

Having one foot in the world of IT and another in facilitation I keep getting asked: "What's the difference between Open Spaces and BarCamps?" Here's how I described it to a good facilitator friend of mine (Julian from DecisionLab)...

There are two reasons why you should make your websites as small as possible. The first is usability. The second is global accessibility. Over the past 5 years the average web page has increased by 300%. Meanwhile, in developing country universities, we estimate the bandwidth available to an individual user will have increased by only 20-60% ...

Aptivate have launched a new site for developing and publishing Open Education Resources - particularly resources relevant to ICT training.

oer.aptivate.org

It is our intention to ...

Sitting in the audience of the Africa Gathering, a kind of unconference, I was struck by a thought - what would an untalk or unpresentation be like? (I wasn't the ...