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The thing about contingencies (in budgeting, planning, etc.) is that you cannot anticipate them. Likewise, you cannot anticipate their value (positive or negative). Yet, they are everywhere. Some markets have more pervasive contingencies than others. In an atmosphere where contingencies - such as delayed dues, or corruption - are inevitable, what kind of plan or strategy works?

The essence of neighborhood networks lies in the people who send and receive information that the networks host. The "people" here refers to residents, business owners, community representatives and anyone else who has a stake in the well-being of people coming by the neighborhood. The developers of the neighborhood network are arbitrary, so long as they are not directly involved with the information that is sent or received. The developers only play the role of facilitating the flow of information. 

Of course, the information system would need to be sourced in the neighborhood it represents. Rather than having a central and physical go-to location, the system would need to be accessible to all involved - residents and businesses - such that they can update information at any time. Then again, residents and businesses are likely to have different preferences. Some may prefer to update via the web, other via e-mail or phone or even in person. 

Hypothetically, a neighborhood network would consist of a flow of information to and from people who occupy it. The information system coordinating this flow might: House residential and business directory information; Enable residents and business owners to register, update or remove their details; Encourage contributions from occupants themselves; Provide businesses with value-added services, such as showcasing products; Facilitate the physical movement of goods and services across the neighborhood; Promote events targeting all neighborhood occupants; Host discussions about infrastructural concerns of all occupants; and/or Assist community-based organizations in mobilizing knowledge and human resources. The information system could be based on: Print media, ie: leaflets, newsletters, magazines, etc. Visual media, ie: photo essays, videos, TV channels, etc. Audio media, ie: CDs, podcasts, radio, etc. All three, ie: a website.  An iterative needs-assessment ...

A neighborhood network, I speculate, consists of information flows between those who live, work and/or pass through in a particular neighborhood.  Neighborhood networks can be useful because they can: Increase one's own general knowledge of surrounding people, businesses and events. Facilitate communication between demands and supplies. Create new avenues of marketing and promotion that yield loyal responses. One potential reason why a neighborhood network would not be desirable is in the case of neighbors conducting activities that put each other at physical or mental risk. 

Iterative design acknowledges that the world is constantly changing and so are its people. Shifting preferences, lifestyles and work ethics mean that initiatives relying on people need to be designed to accommodate changes. They need to suck up their pride and understand that sometimes, some things will fail. This type of design prescribes a curiosity for the unknown at all times and involves lots of questions on an hourly basis. It also calls for the embodiment and ownership of the design as changing in and of itself. (Thanks, Twaweza !)

When designing communication systems - or any system for that matter - it seems better to start with less rather than more. Adding more than what is seen as a basic requirement risks overestimating the value of what is actually needed. It also seems easier to build on something based on new needs, rather than taking out stuff that is never used (humans seems to like hoarding). 

I'm trying to brainstorm what kinds of analyses people want from news media and how these analyses can be useful to them. Some points of data for media analysis might be: Most frequent word in headlines Most frequent subject/topic in headlines Most frequent personality appearing in headlines Number of articles per day Diversity of topic areas covered per day Total number of people affected by each day's news Some factors influencing media critique might be: Truth: To what level can facts be verified? Setting: What is the geographic spread of reporting? Process: How was the information collected? Sources: Who or what was consulted to gather information? To my seemingly (and possibly intentionally) non-existent audience: Your feedback is welcome! Otherwise, more on this soon. 

Posted on Vijana FM | 30th September 2011 Amil Shivji is currently a 21-year-old Filmmaking student at York University in Canada. As a native of Tanzania, Amil has plans to work with film in East Africa, particularly with films that contain conscious messages. We caught up with him to ask him about his ideas and recommendations... 1. Compared to newspapers and radio, what is about films that interests you? Motion. The movement of images invokes a billion different emotions and allows varied perceptions. And at the same time a frame carries the power of a newspaper and the sound of a radio station. Juxtaposition of shots or certain image sequences tell an entire story and the best part is that it’s very personal. When I watch a film, I feel like I am having a conversation with the filmmaker. The shots are fragments of his/her visualization of the story and I am offered an insight into the filmmaker’s imagination. As opposed to newspaper and radio where I would be reading words or heari...

Cross-posted on Vijana FM | May 25, 2011 Have we ceased to read between the lines? Do opinion pieces in the media conflict with fact-based pieces? This is a short story to explore potential answers to these two questions. A short time ago in human history, three friends from different corners of the world decided to get involved with the printing press. Rashidi was an avid reader, and had loved to read written works of his friends Nur and Nick throughout their days in school. As well as reading everything else, Rashidi was especially interested in reading his two friends’ works because they seemed to compliment eachother well in their perspectives. Nur was also a big reader, but an even bigger writer. She was known for her acute representation of facts. Brought up by parents who both worked for the national archives, Nur knew her history well. She believed that telling stories with fair treatment to all subjects was essential to writing. She was less enthusiastic about o...

The counterpart can be downloaded here . Tracklist: 1. Stardust & Daftpunk: I feel like one more time (Arno Cost rework) 2. Morgan Page: Fight for you (Sultan & Ned Shepard mix) 3. Andy Duguid feat. Leah: Don't belong (Rasmus Farber club mix) Genre: Progressive vocal house Size: 18.1 MB / 19 minutes 47 Seconds

Finally set up some decks again! To get things warmed up, I put together a quick mix of three progressive house tracks: Deja Vu (Mix 1) . Tracklist: 1. 16 Bit Lolitas: In my room without Paris (Original mix) 2. John Dahlback: Kairo (Original mix) 3. Alex Kenji & Bass Kleph: Melocoton (Original mix) Genre: Progressive house Size: 15.6 MB / 17 minutes 07 Seconds

I've been giving more thought to a dormant project that is intended to create more transparency in academia in Tanzania. Originally, the idea was to do one thing well: Share published and unpublished academic works. But the idea grew: Questions arose about the validity of materials that present parts of formal education instead of entire curriculi, and about what resources teachers (not just students and researchers) could use. So, as of now, an efficient tool to make academia more transparent in Tanzania would need the following: An open archive of published and unpublished academic works; An open forum where these works can be discussed; An open platform to post materials for early childhood, primary, secondary, and tertiary education; and An open contribution protocol where - after a specific period over which materials will be collected - curriculi could be written through collaborative means. Still thinking about it. Drop us a line at Vijana FM if you have thoughts on this! (...

The necessary noise is now knocking on your nerves to numb down the deafening denials and distrust of your dominion. In short, TZhiphop is live :) Facebook updates here , Twitter updates here .

Crossposted on Vijana FM | March 4, 2011 Sir Howard Davies, who until recently was the director of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in the UK, has resigned from his post . His reasoning? That he had made judgement errors on two occasions when advising the LSE to accept donations from Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, Muammar Gaddafi’s son. Mr. Davies’ announcement comes just days after students at the LSE protested to the administration to investigate Saif’s previous records of postgraduate enrollment at the LSE from 2003. Saif is being accused of having plagiarized his doctrate , which he recieved in 2008. The accusations have also come with criticism towards LSE in accepting £1.5 million in 2009 from the so-called Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation. When I was growing up, the word “education” had a positive ring to it. It meant that you (or those paying your fees: Parents, grant makers, universities, corporations, e...

Cross-posted on Vijana FM | January 28, 2011 A lot of new terms have come our way in the last 15 years, and "social innovation" is a big one. Social innovation is described by the Said Business School as "new ideas that meet unmet needs". It consists of fresh solutions to problems within the following areas (also from the Said Business School report ), which are problems virtually experienced globally: Rising life expectancy Growing diversity of countries and cities Stark inequalities Rising incidence of long-term medical conditions Behavioural problems of affluence Difficult transitions to adulthood Measuring happiness "In each of these fields many of the dominant existing models simply do not work well enough. Often they are too inflexible and unimaginative. They may be fitted to past problems or bound by powerful interests. They may be provided by agencies that have become complacent or outdated. The result is unnecessary human suffering, and unreali...

Unlike Wordress, Blogger only has dynamic tags, whereas Wordpress has both dynamic tags (ie: "tags") and statis tags (ie: "categories"). So when I was reviewing all the tags I had used over the last 4 years for this blog, I realized that they were all over the place. So I spent some time in the last two days cleaning up my tag, thus the much smaller tag cloud on the sidebar. Makes it easier to browse the subjects I talk about :) That is, if anyone is out there...

To see source feeds: The RSS project .

Posted at Vijana FM on October 26, 2010 In the last two years, there has been a lot of talk about the SEACOM project , which links the coasts of East and South Africa. The project involved the immersion of undersea fibre optic cables that increase speeds and decrease costs for Internet Service Providers and users. We have discussed the SEACOM project on two occasions; when we mentioned the Nation Media Group's golden jubilee , and when we asked Mbwana Alliy five questions . There has therefore been a lot of excitement about the prospect of starting new goods and services based on the Internet that are especially for certain markets in Africa. Due the growth in the use of mobile phones, this excitement is further channeled into how mobile applications can be built, used, and developed over the Internet. If you are getting ideas about how to run a product or service on the Internet in Africa, it is probably wise to check out Internet World Stats (IWS) . The IWS website provides comp...

Tried the same thing as my last post, just a different day (today). In case you're wondering what my source for the words is, it is this RSS project that I've just shelved for about a year now. At the moment it is quite simple a self-refreshing page displaying 8 feeds. What would be nice is if a new wordle could be generated on the same page for everytime the feeds were refreshed (every 5 minutes). Hebu tujaribu.