Sunday, October 30, 2011
My First Eisenhower Meetings.....
On Thursday, Oct 27th, I
awoke from my Diwali haze and still hadn’t properly adjusted yet to the time
difference. After I finally
went to bed at 7am only to have to wake up at 10am, I was definitely feeling an
energy lull and was hoping to get some more rest before I officially started
meetings on Friday. However, I received
an urgent call stating that my meeting with the Ministry of Education was
granted for 3:00pm that day. “Wow!!” I
thought, “this was great!”. Since last
month, I had been wanting to get an appointment with the Indian Ministry of
Education to discuss the new $35 tablet that has come out of India in order to
address the digital divide and provide alternative ways to provide online
education in schools and universities. This
innovative and new device is a very progressive initiative coming from the
Indian Government.
N.K. Singh (Ministry of
Education)
My
first meeting in India, especially on this topic, went pretty well. I met with NK. Singh, a very quiet man, and
apparently the individual in charge of developing the concept of the $35
tablet. We spoke about how under his leadership, the Indian Government
started negotiations, about 4 years ago, with a company out of London to create
and manufacture the now Askash Tablet. It was developed to just provide the very
basics of applications for Indian youth and underserved people to access the
internet, get online educational content, and have another way to learn while
in the classroom and when at home. The
tablet has been stripped of the normal “bells and whistles” of mainstream tablets
such as the ipad or the android. This is
why the price was able to be so low at $35.
Mr. Singh and his associate also allowed me to test and play around with
one of the tablet. It was amazing. Some specs of the tablet - small, about the
size the size of an android, Has 2 USB ports, touch screen, can download
applications, basic in design, light in weight, has the same operating system
of the Android 2.2. I was very grateful
for the time they gave and the opportunity to “test” and actually physically
see India’s new “magic pill”. In the
end, of course I asked what were their intentions of taking this global and
testing the device in other Countries were similar education and broadband
initiatives were taking place. Their
response, “we want everyone to be able to have this product”. That was all I
needed to hear. We made action steps to
move conversations along and to connect with other Heads Of State in regards to
partnership and collaboration opportunities. Not bad.
On
Friday I met with two other organizations that were very interesting. One was
Digital Green and the other Western Union.
Digital
Green
I
had the chance to meet with Rikin Gandhi. He is the President and CEO of Digital
Green. DG is an organization that provides builds and deploys information and
communication technology to amplify the effectiveness of development efforts
around the world to affect sustained, social change. The Digital Green system
combines technology and social organization to improve the cost-effectiveness
and broaden the community participation of existing agricultural extension
systems. The unique components of the Digital Green system include (1) a
participatory process for local video production, (2) a human-mediated
instruction model for video dissemination and training, (3) a hardware and
software technology platform for exchanging data in areas with limited Internet
and electrical grid connectivity, and (4) an iterative model to progressively
better address the needs and interests of the community with analytical tools
and interactive phone-based feedback channels.
I met with
them to talk about ways in which our organizations in Philadelphia could
leverage some of their platforms to organize underserved communities and
provide alternative ways for underserved communities to adopt and share amongst
each other, the new technologies that are being deployed throughout broadband
initiatives in Philadelphia. Very good
meeting. Rikin is very ambitious,
passionate, and is one the rise as it pertains to deploying and engaging rural
Indians to adopt technology. Very
impressed.
Western Union
My
next meeting was with Kiran Shetty. I
know meeting with Western Union may seem a bit curious compared to my initiatives
with technologies. However, Western
Union is doing exactly what has been labeled as “The Indian Way” in business. Combining a way to provide services, reach
their bottom line in profits, but also making impact by empowering the community
through technology. They are engaging in a social mission of connecting rural
Indians to technology in order to transfer money, create bank accounts, and
begin to have ways for rural Indians, in particular women, to take charge of
their financial futures. One of the ways
is in offering services which allow for poorer communities to use mobile phones
in order to create and make financial transactions without starting bank
accounts. When speaking to Kiran, he
stated that he never thought of what they were doing as “social business”, but
after speaking with me, he got it. I
shared my company’s goals as doing the same and we spoke about ways to provide
the mobile technologies being used in rural India, within areas of
Philadelphia. A very good
conversation. Next steps, connections to
the software companies that are helping Western Union with such endeavors.
My
first impression in regards to this first slew of meetings was how well I was received and how sincerely open the Indian
Government and both Digital Green and Western Union, was to have further conversations and how
quickly they forwarded me additional information after the meetings. This is always a good sign . I was a bit nervous given that here I was,
never seen nor heard of before, and already was, for example, able to test the
device that was in the Global news not less than a month ago. I knew I was now going in the right
direction. I am glad I had information
about broadband initiatives taking place in Philadelphia and shared more
information about my new appointment to the FCC during all three meetings. That
has helped in validating why I was there and what I wanted to discuss
especially seeing ways for our countries to connect across shared visions of
education and providing access to “the people”.
Overall,
not a bad first week in India. Experienced a new cultural holiday in the most
authentic ways as possible, spent time with families, saw a device which has
the potential to change the world, and met with great people who were sincere
in hearing what I had to say and were engaged in my topics of conversations. A good start for the Fellowship! Let’s keep
it up! B
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