Welcome to the RiOS news for May!

Craig Newmark of Craigslist Foundation at RiOS Seminar


Singapore Workshop
on ICTD in Asia


Paul Braund, Eric Brewer (TIER) and Dan Newman (Maplight) at UC Berkeley


RiOS iGUIDE launched in Malaysia

Last month, Paul joined the Advisory Board of Maplight.org. The important work done by Maplight in illuminating the connection between money and politics in the US has been recognized by leading academics, such as Lawrence Lessig. Paul will continue to advice Maplight on expanding its services, both locally and internationally. In addition, one of the student teams of our social entrepreneurship seminar at UC Berkeley’ School of Information focused on making Maplight’s important information more accessible to the website’s users and ultimately result in political action by informed citizens

Our trip to Singapore to attend the workshop on "ICTs and Development: Experiences from Asia" lead to some interesting meetings with government officials in the interactive digital media area area and top schools, such as Insead . Anke’s workshop paper on the corporate delivery of ICTs in rural India was well received and will be published in the fall edition of the journal Science, Technology and Society

Paul will actually return to Asia this month, to speak at the Annual Meeting and Global Forum of the UN-GAID that is held in conjunction with the 2008 World Congress on Information Technology (WCIT) in Kuala Lumpur. Paul will also attend the Global Knowledge Partnership's Forum on Social Entrepreneurship

Paul will talk about innovative ways to finance ICTD initiatives, drawing on research RiOS conducted on best ICTD practices in Silicon Valley for its iGUIDE, which will also be launched in Kuala Lumpur. The international audience is sure to be interested in this first-ever comprehensive resource guide and directory of ICTD initiatives in Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area. The iGUIDE is supported by Intel, Microsoft, Ncomputing and Internet Speech. Through the UN-GAID, the iGUIDE will serve as a blueprint for similar directories in other parts of the world.

There are also a number of occasions for local ICTD practitioner to mix and mingle (see the Event side box).

See you there!