 Author |
 Post
|
 |
|
Jennifer Corriero
Joined: Aug 30, 2000
Posts: 24 (view all)
Poster Rank:
Talkative
User is
Offline
 TIG Staff
Gender & Age: Female & 31
Country: Canada
Province/State: Ontario
City: Toronto
|
Committee Discussion Forum
March 30, 2008 - 10:09 PM
|
|
Let's use this discussion forum to share our ideas, discuss challenges and progress towards our common goals!
|
|
back to top |
link to this post
|
|
Johan Farid Khairuddin
Joined: Apr 17, 2007
Posts: 1 (view all)
Poster Rank:
Tongue-tied
User is
Offline
Gender & Age: Male, 31
Country: Malaysia
Province/State: Wilayah Persekutuan
City: Kuala Lumpur
|
Re: Committee Discussion Forum
April 14, 2008 - 10:14 PM
|
|
Hey Jen. Great to see you having started the thread, hoping the other youth ICT ambassadors will follow suit.
Am hitting India tomorrow and will return to speak to Indonesia over the weekend on ASTRO's involvement for youth in Asia this year -- am trying to solidify a proposal so that we are able to target clients/sponsors to assist us in bringing more young peopel to this year's global youth forum.
More soon, lets get it started!
JFK
|
|
back to top |
link to this post
|
|
Hugo
Joined: Mar 31, 2008
Posts: 3 (view all)
Poster Rank:
Tongue-tied
User is
Offline
Age: 34
Country: United States
|
Hugo Berkeley Strategy Thoughts
April 18, 2008 - 02:22 PM
|
|
First I want to thank Natasha (again) for all of the excellent work she put into the Strategic outline. I think it would be very helpful for the group to comment on the outline before our next conference call, so we can gauge the general sentiment in advance, rather than doing it all on the telephone.
To that end, I'm writing some of my thoughts, and hope that it may encourage others to do the same.
1) Program Initiatives: I think that there are a lot of interesting ideas in the strategic plan, particularly in the Goal Area 4; Program Initiatives. From my point of view, this is most important section of the document, and we might consider putting it at the top of our agenda, rather than at the bottom. The Program Initiatives are the 'meat and potatoes' of what the Committee is actually going to achieve, and as such, should provide the rational for all other considerations; branding, mission statement, media outreach, etc. I believe that in our next conference call, we would be well served by discussing which program initiatives we feel are most productive and realistically achieved, before turning our attention back to the broader questions self-definition.
2) SWOT Analysis: Looking at the SWOT Analysis, there are 2 major points that jump out at me. One is our greatest strength; we are an impressive international body with high-level recognition from the UN. The other is our greatest weakness; we have very limited resources. If we are to be successful as an organization, I believe that we need to correct this imbalance, by harnessing our connections and status to raise financial and in-kind resources. I think that this should be the primary initial focus of the organization.
|
|
back to top |
link to this post
|
|
Hugo
Joined: Mar 31, 2008
Posts: 3 (view all)
Poster Rank:
Tongue-tied
User is
Offline
Age: 34
Country: United States
|
Hugo Berkeley Strategy Thoughts: 2
April 18, 2008 - 02:23 PM
|
|
3) Mission: Having listened to the concerns of participants of the Youth Forum in Geneva, I think the primary need of young people working in the ICT for development field is support, principally financial. Everyone in Geneva was asking the same question - where can we find funding, even in small amounts?
I will reiterate my suggestion to Natasha here; I think our Committee should focus on answering that fundamental question by providing access to financial support. In my opinion, we can harness our greatest strength, our name, to convince major institutional and governmental funders to support our work as a quality-control access point to the world of Youth ICT for Development change-makers. There are numerous examples of organizations such as the one that I am proposing working in similar (though, importantly, distinct) fields;
The MacArthur Foundation gave The University of California a $50 million grant to run a 5-year competition for E-media and Digital Learning Initiatives (http://digitallearning.macfound.org). It is run along an application and prize basis.
The Knight News Foundation endowed a News Challenge Competition ($25 million over the next 5 years) for ICT innovations in news delivery techniques. (http://www.newschallenge.org/index_lang.html)
These are just a couple of high profile examples. There are thousands of similar competition type initiatives on all levels, that provide financial resources on a competitive basis to applicants.
I would like to propose that we direct our initial efforts to designing and fundraising for an online Youth ICT for Development Competition. If we are able to pull it off, we will transform our greatest weakness into our greatest strength. More importantly, I believe we will play a vital role in giving those already working and struggling in the field what they really want - access to tangible resources.
Best, Hugo 
|
|
back to top |
link to this post
|
|
Rajiv Ramakrishnan
Joined: Feb 5, 2008
Posts: 1 (view all)
Poster Rank:
Tongue-tied
User is
Offline
Age: 23
Country: United States
|
Re: Committee Discussion Forum
April 20, 2008 - 05:39 PM
|
|
Hi friends! First off, I want to say great job to Jen and Natasha for the TIG hub and the Strategic Plan framework. I agree with Hugo. The most important part of our operation has to be program initiatives. We need to identify ICT best practices and help development/ICT practitioners deploy their products and services to enterprising youth.
Hugo is also correct when he mentions finances as a critical part of our plan. That's why in our partnerships section (1.2), we need to include the private sector as well as grant making organizations. This committee has a lot of potential to be the centralized location for ICT pioneers. We can provide strategies and link young people with universities and firms who are developing new ways to use ICTs 4 D.
An important part of the SWOT analysis is the "lack of government relations". This is another area where we need to make inroads. This requires legitimacy. Unfortunately, to gain legitimacy, we need to be recognized by governments. There are ways to break this cycle, and that means working closely with universities, NGOs and even organizations like the World Bank.
|
|
back to top |
link to this post
|
|
Paddy Cosgrave
Joined: Apr 21, 2008
Posts: 3 (view all)
Poster Rank:
Tongue-tied
User is
Offline
Age: 29
Country: Ireland
Province/State: Dublin
City: Dublin
|
Re: Committee Discussion Forum
April 21, 2008 - 08:44 AM
|
|
Fantastic work guys.
I would strongly encourage everyone to have a look at:
http://www.changemakers.com/en-us/competitions
The matrices that that Ashoka develop online have profound real application and impact. In essence, Ashoka bring the innovations of a planet in any one particular area, to one point online. Thereafter, they develop a matrix of best practices and very often this has real world application globally.
Just a thought.
Paddy
|
|
back to top |
link to this post
|
|
Paddy Cosgrave
Joined: Apr 21, 2008
Posts: 3 (view all)
Poster Rank:
Tongue-tied
User is
Offline
Age: 29
Country: Ireland
Province/State: Dublin
City: Dublin
|
Re: Committee Discussion Forum
April 21, 2008 - 10:32 AM
|
|
The Vision
I like the vision. It is a fantastic work in progress. Could I suggest distilling the vision to something smaller, that is couched less in abstract language and more in tangible and imaginable terms. I will begin with a suggestion that I hope others can improve
"By the decades end, to put the world's best innovations and most transformational solutions in ICT and Development into the hands of any youth anywhere on our planet."
I think it is perhaps a given that we would provide supplementary support to youth and various stakeholders, but perhaps this vision could be changed, improved and expanded. I'll leave that up to you guys.
|
|
back to top |
link to this post
|
|
Paddy Cosgrave
Joined: Apr 21, 2008
Posts: 3 (view all)
Poster Rank:
Tongue-tied
User is
Offline
Age: 29
Country: Ireland
Province/State: Dublin
City: Dublin
|
Re: Committee Discussion Forum
April 21, 2008 - 10:33 AM
|
|
Launch - Catalyzing global awareness and fundraising
Perhaps we might consider the power of launching our vision and those behind it, the e-Leaders, with a leading business person and/or company and/or world leader. But to do that, we need a very simple vision - aside from being simple, it must be compelling, concrete, credible and emotive - abstract language will simply not do. So hopefully the above will help us move toward that end. Nevertheless, I think a 'big' launch might be worth considering - because if we want to make a real and lasting impact then we need to be heard and listened to all across the world. But in order to command the attention of a sizeable portion of the planet you need to enlist someone like Queen Rania, Bono or Bill Clinton or some company like Google, Facebook and Microsoft. However, we will not achieve anything close to an effective launch just by approaching these individuals and planning a launch on our own. The PR, branding and communications are on one level highly complex. For that reason, we would need to enlist the professional services of a leading global communications company, for example WPP, who we would enlist as a strategic partner. I would like to hear what you guys think? I am on very favourable terms with one of their leading MD's in Europe and will be meeting with him this Friday for about an hour.
|
|
back to top |
link to this post
|
|
Hugo
Joined: Mar 31, 2008
Posts: 3 (view all)
Poster Rank:
Tongue-tied
User is
Offline
Age: 34
Country: United States
|
Policy area focus
April 21, 2008 - 11:41 AM
|
|
Hi Guys -
can you email me directly if you are interested in helping with this area so that we can begin to collaborate.
Thanks, Hugo
|
|
back to top |
link to this post
|
|
|
Display posts from:
|
