Job Keeping Him Awake?

or may be he is shouting out something.

:-))

Break-out Session : Project

This was the first hands-on session of the conference that I attended, that is after I figured out what break-out groups 1a through 3b meant and whether I was in 3a or 3b. (Strangely, this confusion and sudden loss of direction reminded me of my first day in BITS). Anyway, it turned out to be 3a, a projects discussion moderated by Chandra Anil and Kiran Vissa.

The next hurdle was to figure out near which column 3a was seated...got that one!!! Me and my fellow volunteer, Jeeth, squeezed our feet into the circle and thus joined the group :-).

The ensuing discussion was very interesting and I learnt quite a bit. It was based on role-playing and open discussion, and hence interactive.

The first situation was about a village and us (the participants) being some NGO penetrating the village to do the good work we do. The question asked was - How would we enter the village and diagnose the problem that needs fixing. People shouted out various answers, the most relevant ones being - Interacting with the headman as he is one definite source of information about the needs, talking to other sections of the village (primarily the marginalized peoples) to get a feel for problems in each section. Kiran played the role of headman and Chandra was a dalit representative. We asked both of them what the problem is. Kiran, being the wily and political headman that he is ;-), told us that water supply was a big problem.

hmmm.. okay, he was talking about the higher-up's in the village and the conscientious NGO's that we were, we decided to talk to marginalized Chandra, who was tired of taking crap from the mukhiya and his homies. Chandra also said it was water-related problem but the real problem, as we NGO's discovered on further interrogation was that:
a) The dalits could take water only for 1 hour sometime in the afternoon while the mukhiya and his co-castists could avail 24 hour water supply from the well.
b) The land-owning and decision-making class could threaten the dalit workers with job loss if they accepted any water sharing plan from us.

Now the color of this issue has quickly turned from just water supply to water sharing divided along socio-economic constraints. Now Kiran, quickly switched his turban to that of AID ka mukhiya and gave us Rs. 50K in the NGO coffers and said we could do all we can within this amount. We again came up with various suggestions, including, timed water release, pooling water spouts so that it can reach more people etc.

So, thus went on this discussion and we ended up a list of possibilities on:
1. How an NGO can attain penetration of a village and into the minds of villagers.
2. How an NGO can discover the problem(s) by speaking to various class members.
3. How an NGO should be sensitive to ongoing political and socio-economic issues that might jeopardize their own as well as long term sustenance of the marginalized members.

The next case study was a village in Srikakulam where 30% of the houses did not have power supply, even though this village sat in a power grid. This was a very different kind of topic as we already knew the problem at hand and the NGOs had to discover the mind set of the villagers for not adopting electricity, which was accessible due to the grid.

These villagers used kerosene lamps for lighting. Our assumption was that the monthly amount spent on kerosene was to be same as that they will have to pay as electric bills. We did go about in circles for which Kiran and Chandra had good counter arguments. While it seemed straightforward, Kiran (who now played someone else, which I fail to recollect) decided to let us know about a crucial fact - that the AP EB people charged Rs 1500 for meter installation, that is Rs. 500 for the actual + Rs. 1000 as a "gift", which was evidently out of reach of these villagers. And no, giving the ECAAL $0 bill was not an option :-)

We talked about improving the economy and went off on those lines till someone came up with the bright idea of mobilizing the affected villagers to confront the EB people, demanding their right to get electricity at the Rs. 500 installation charges. This had to be a group confrontation against the EB to get press publicity as well as to get the attention of the EB and their superiors to the rampant corruption.

So this case study illustrated the relevance and importance of activism as a tool to solve the problem (strangely, this never came to AID Chapters for approval during the case study!). A useful footnote to this is that the NGO representing the village at the EB or a small subset of the villagers going to the EB is not a viable option.

The next thing heard after the closing words of this case study was the tom-tom by Dwiji telling the moderators that their time was up and had to wrap up for the next session inside the auditorium.

And thus ended my first activity-based session. My next activity-based session was the Pluralism session in which I was a silent observer. That session is not something I really would like to talk about now...may be later.

[Note: This entry is delayed by about 3 days as the author did not have time to do it during the conference.]

Mambo Jumbo... Jai or By

Most of AIDIndia.org subdomains have moved/are in the process of moving to the Open Source Mambo Server which uses the Php an open source web scripting language and RDBMS databases. Aid India uses MySql as backend database, which has an open source flavor.

AidIndia.org's subdomains such as the conference site and Tsunami Relief are based on Mambo and do provide a slick highly-customizable interface.

With Mambo, much of the boiler plate code is built by the Open Source project and all users have to know is to do some web-based editing of content and without having to get into the nitty-gritty of Php programming, CSS, HTML and any of the zillion techy acronym-based programs and tools.

Aidindia.org also supports cron so that activities like database backups and other timed activities can be implemented removing the need for human intervention (and thus eliminating the need of making a site the victim of human laxities).

In this session, Harsha and Priya (a bearded deep-voiced male, not a female!) showed off the customizability of Mambo and how features can be added, removed and en(dis)abled with a click of the mouse. The participants, though numbering a handful, asked several questions regarding general concepts and specific chapter site/Mambo-related ideas. One interesting question was about running Mambo server on the OS-that-shall-not-be-named, Windoze, which was ensued by a moment of hush from the audience and the presenters alike ;-). The answer is Mambo can be run on Windoze, though it is designed for the LAMP architecture. My suggestion was to run the Cygwin unix emulation layer for this OS.

The idea is great, works well for AidIndia and its utility is proven by the above sited sites. But I feel (and I am sure I am not alone when I say this) the session was not organized in an optimal and logical manner. We have sat through it for almost 40 mins and the common question was "How do I create a site for my chapter?". This question is left unanswered as I type; instead what is showing is the idea that has been beaten to death ever since the Great K & R introduced in the 1960's - creating a new page with "Hello World". Now I seriously doubt how a chapter representative is going to create a site for his chapter using this demo.

The session, though well-intended, fell far short of the audience's expectations of getting their site "up and running".

This has been the bane of much technological concepts with non-techy folks balking at techy folks for always trying to talk at a different level. The pet title of Mambo Jumbo seems to revert to the original mumbo-jumbo. (Well... let me sush, I do want to keep my job, so keep the covens going folks!)

Okay we are an hour into the presentation and there is so still no sight of a coherent how-to. And people are asking questions, lots of questions so that is good - AIDers are thinking as always.

Now we are talking about user levels and workflow - this is really cool. The author is a pee-on level, which is what I am on the Aidindia site, and my work will be approved by a Publisher level and then published. This is a great feature, really. A random user can not log into my backend. But don't despair, we each have user-ids and password that we can log into the front-end and do your thang. ;-) (Thanks for a good laugh Priya).

Another cool thing - Mambo also supports RSS and Atom feels. Chapter sites can aggregate news items from other sites.

Here are the Bytometer ratings:
1. Presenters' Enthusiasm - 7 bytes : out of 5 :-)
2. Audience Enthusiasm - 5 bytes
3. Presentation - 3 bytes and 1 nibble
4. Content - 2 bytes
5. Audience Understanding - hmmm, tough call...may be 1 bytes.

Good job with Mambo Harsha, Priya and Krishna. I think it is Mambo Jumbo Jai for Aidindia.

--
Closing update - a demo is offline and not part of this presentation

A Photo is worth a thousand words!

Conference photos available at Conference Gallery Page

Keynote by Dr. Ganesh Devy

Dr. Ganesh Devy delivered a very light-hearted but candid speech with mentions about the state of tribals in India.

What touched me about this gentleman is his simplicity and honesty...not just about what he knows, but of the fact that he also knows what he does not know. Very few people of his stature have the elegance to accept that.

One thing that Dr. Devy mentioned during his speech really moved me not for just the content of what he said but also due to the fact the he actually felt what he had to say - a kind word about us as a group of people, a body of enthusiastic volunteers and not a funding body. This one statement exuded feeling when he said that he did not accept funding from us because he wanted to deliver to us the kind words without compromising what he really feels - that we are a great group - by accepting funding. His words where honest, his gesture that he has not come to the conference with open palms but with folded palms as a tribute to our work.

I felt good, felt much appreciated, nay elated, and after many a such maudlin remark, I did not see any substance to the talk. I was interested in knowing, during the keynote about the current work as well as prospects between AID and Bhasha Tribal Academy - can we exchange organizational knowledge? have we a roadmap to achieve common ends in the long term? how can AID as an organization contribute more to the betterment of adivasis? From a keynote, I expected something of value other than a feeling of (over) achievement or extremely enthusiatic approval of our work. Yes, there was a smattering of other ideas and suggestions but not sufficient to hold one's interest or evoke people to think further about the subject being delivered.

Like Ravi mentioned in his closing remarks, we as organizations have a long way to go; I really wish Dr. Devy had elucidated a plausible path it in front of the packed auditorium.

And we finally made it here....

We reached Minneapolis at around 4;30 am CST (5:30 am EST), almost 14 hours after we started from Columbus, Ohio.

Immune to external disturbances - the endless miles of cars and trucks - and internal disturbances - Chitra, Ramki, Komudi, Leena, Sivaguru, Jeeth and Kartic compounded by different tastes in music and food - we made it finally here in one piece, exhausted to the core but filled with enthusiasm. [Ooops missed this..The external disturbances also included Nigamanth, Divya and Chandra (Anil) in their Jetta.]

After barely 3 hours of sleep, we made it to the first day of the conference, which started at 8:30 am with a sumptuous breakfast, with fruits, different breads, including the Kosher Challah and organic milk ;-)

We attended some "break-out sessions" following an introductory welcome speech by Srinath Chidambaram, a really senior AID Volunteer.

Kiran Vissa talks as I type this, giving an update on projects and admin groups. Lots of achievements discussed, even more questions being thrown at Kiran...an example of the instatiable inquisitiveness of AIDers.