Welcome to the RiOS news for April!

March was an exciting month for the ICTD community in the Bay Area.

The UN's Global Alliance for ICT and Development (UNDESA-GAID) hosted The UN meets Web 2.0 conference at its headquarters in New York. It was a follow-on event to "The UN meets Silicon Valley" conference hosted last year at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View by Intel, whose chairman Craig Barrett chairs the UN-GAID. There was a strong showing of Silicon Valley organizations and companies working in the area of ICT and Development.

One of the speakers was Kristin Peterson, Co-founder and Chief Development Officer, of Inveneo. Inveneo creates highly sustainable and affordable ICT infrastructure technologies designed specifically for organizations that provide vital services -- education, healthcare, economic development -- in remote and rural areas in the developing world.

Kristin presented Inveneo's work during the first panel, entitled "ICT Entrepreneurs: Creating Successful Initiatives." She shared the stage with Glenn Strachan from Wireless Macedonia, Dewayn Hendricks, the CEO of Untethered which provides connectivity in Tonga, Emdad Khan, another Silicon Valley entrepreneur who heads up Internet Speech and Amjad Umar from Fordham University to answer questions such as: What does it take to build successful entrepreneurial ICT initiatives? How should entrepreneurs approach planning and delivery of new ICT infrastructure and capabilities?

To read a brief interview we conducted with Kristin upon her return to San Francisco, click here.

Also in March, Paul spoke to an audience of students at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business on the topic of "Business and Management Models for Technology in the Developing World". His thoughts on projects such as the OLPC and the Intel Classmate PC were very well received by an enthusiastic audience that was part of the "Business and Technology for Sustainable Development" course of UC Berkeley's Management of Technology Program.

April will see the publication of the iGUIDE: ICTD Resources in Silicon Valley and the Bay Area, which was compiled by RiOS Institute, in partnership with the UN-GAID and UC Berkeley's School of Information. The iGUIDE is printed by the United Nations and will have its international launch during the UN-GAID's annual meeting in Kuala Lumpur, while we are working on a local party here.

At the end of April, we will be traveling to Singapore to attend a workshop on "ICTs and Development: Experiences from Asia" at the National University of Singapore. The workshop is co-organized by the Communications and New Media department and the Science, Technology and Society research cluster. Anke will present a paper on the corporate delivery of ICTD in India, based on her research of the Kuppam i-community that was implemented by HP's e-Inclusion program from 2002 to 2006.

See you afterwards!