Announcing: Center for Justice, Law, and Development

Johannes Wheeldon, a fellow Law and Development practitioner and academic, is the Director of the Center for Justice, Law, and Development, a new resource for law and development, with the goal of promoting discussion between students, researchers, and practitioners. The center will focus initially on justice issues in the Former Soviet Union, the role and potential of diasporas in development, and more general trends in international development.

WSIS Forum 2010 open consultation: Call for participation

WSIS implementation is 5 years old! I've been keeping track of WSIS general happenings since the first Geneva WSIS in 2003. I'm impressed by the passionate movement in ICT4D, even though there are ideological wars, politicking, and the usual challenges in implementing an international agenda. I'll be interested to hear what some of the key issues are at this upcoming annual WSIS conference.

For the first time, too, WSIS is using an online social networking platform to promote discussion, walking the talk. I blogged about the new site, as well as their choice of software as a platform, earlier. 

Here's a reproduction of the call for participation from UNESCO. 

UNESCO, together with ITU, UNCTAD and UNDP, is organizing an open consultation for the upcoming World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Forum 2010. All individuals, networks and organizations interested in this issue are invited to participate in the three-fold process, consisting of an online discussion, a questionnaire and a review meeting.

Happy Anniversary- Nostalgic about Global Voices

This is a Global Voices post by my friend and colleague David Sasaki (whom I saw again just last month at the Development Summit). As author and outreach director for GV, this post can be found in his GV section but was originally published at http://www.el-oso.net. While Global Voices is not a Law or ICT network per se, I do subscribe to its law and technology feeds as part of my dose of global news in those areas. In light of my previous announcement of Global Voices upcoming 2010 Summit, I thought it is appropriate to include David's nostalgic observations from the inside, including about humble GV beginnings and some special folks who were there at the very first meeting in 2004. Very impressive and inspiring, and if 'pilot' projects can be scaled up and replicated, this must be a poster child. I'm not gawking at success- I can tell that much leadership, passion, coordination and hard work went on behind the scenes- I am curious at the business processes and management best practices that can be reproduced across all ICT4D projects globally to promote success. 


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Shamelessly reproduced from David's post on global voices here:


Five years ago I boarded a flight from San Diego to Boston to attend the 2004 Internet & Society conference at the Berkman Center. This was just a month after George Bush won the 2004 election and so there was an element of group therapy to many of the panel discussions. 2004 was the year when, according to Wired Magazine, the Internet invented Howard Dean. Dean's campaign was supposed to be the harbinger of a new era of net politics where the progressive grassroots took advantage of online tools like blogs and Meetup.com (this was before YouTube even existed) to bring about more enlightened, representative governance. Instead,according to the ever-snarky Register, “organized religion, not net religion, won it for Bush.”

NCSC's Court Technology Conference 2009 Materials now available

Last year's CTC Conference was a fairly typical trade conference, but the networking effect was certainly awesome- it reminded me of a typical eGovernance conference in Asia content wise. There might not be that much differences in the implementation of eGovernance projects in the US or in developing countries.  Many of the recurring themes I saw were:

• Leadership is crucial, and court managers needs to be involved with the internal IT staff as well as vendors (if any) in development 
• Technology strategic planning is crucial, and needs to be aligned to business goals and processes, but  IT managers, and sometimes, even the leaders of the organizations do not have the overall 'big picture' (ie vision, startegy and goals) of the organization, and/or of the IT projects
• Planning is a big process consisting of many layers of analysis, not just software.
• Selection of a good vendor and product is crucial!
• Design: new and consistently evolving technologies and standards complicate design and implementation, but keep scalability in mind
• Monitor project implementation
• Testing, testing, testing! Usability is important.
• Change management and cultural barriers must be addressed
• Training, training, training, on all levels

It was held from September 22-24, 2009 in Denver and it was a huge crowd at CTC 2009—the 25th anniversary edition of the national Court Technology Conference. If you are interested in court technology, access CTC 2009 conference presentations here.

Global Voices Summits- previous and upcoming (in May 2010)

I am truly impressed by Global Voices, having followed them since that one-day blogging conference at Harvard in 2004. As an organization, it has shown best practices in participation, transparency, vision, technology usage, and global networking. As Solana Larsen posted on the upcoming Global Voices 2010 Summit (Santiago, Chile in May 2010) website, these summits acts as an important cement to the growing and diverse virtual team. Moreover, it presents a stunning overview of how Global Voices has grown. You can check out their previous summits via these links- there are plenty of good resources within each one: 

December 2005

The first Global Voices Summit was in London, UK. It was a one-day meeting that brought together many contributors for the first time and cemented their partnership with Reuters.

December 2006

The second Summit was in Delhi, India and marked the beginning of Lingua and Rising Voices, two new projects.

June 2008

The third Summit was in Budapest, Hungary. With Global Voices Advocacy they brought together many of the leading online defenders of freedom of expression. They also took stock of accomplishments and discussed future directions.

May 2010

Web site: http://summit2010.globalvoicesonline.org/ (Keep checking it as they will be updating information on topics and speakers. )

The Global Voices Citizen Media Summit 2010 will be held in Santiago, Chile on May 6-7. The theme of the meeting is "Next generation citizen media, public access and citizen participation.”

Global Voices Online will gather with a diverse group of bloggers, activists, technologists, journalists from around the world for two days of public discussions and workshops. A two-day internal meeting for Global Voices editors, translators and contributors will follow the public gathering.

Call for Project proposals: Democracy and Human Rights in Asia, Deadline 3/19/10

Background

The May 18 Memorial Foundation is a non-profit organization established to commemorate the 1980 Gwangju Uprising by continuing the Uprising’s spirit of struggle and solidarity, contributing to the peaceful reunification of Korea, and working towards peace and human rights throughout the world. The Foundation carries out numerous projects in various fields, including organizing memorial events, establishing scholarships, fostering research, publishing materials, dispensing funds, building international solidarity, and awarding the Gwangju Prize for Human Rights. 

Symposium, "Copyleft vs. Copyright", Wake Forest School of Law, March 5 2010

Wake Forest School of Law's  IPLJ (Intellectual Property Law Journal)  presents Copyleft vs. Copyright: Artist and Author Rights in Tomorrow’s Digital Age on Friday, March 5, 2010

The topic of this year's Wake Forest School of Law Intellectual Property Law Journal symposium, "Copyleft vs. Copyright: Artist and Author Rights in Tomorrow’s Digital Age," will focus on how current copyright laws are applied to tomorrow’s technologies. The symposium will be held from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Friday, March 5. It is free and open to the public.

See here for more details: Copyleft vs. Copyright: Artist and Author Rights in Tomorrow’s Digital Age

Call for Application- Bridges Across Borders Southeast Asia International Legal Studies Internship 2010 May-August Program

I strongly encourage my students and all who are interested to apply- Bridges is a great organization. You may be eligible for academic credit, fellowships and/or financial aid and support depending on your university institution. Deadline for applications is March 1st, 2010. Late applications may still be considered depending on circumstance and available space in program.

Bridges Across Borders Southeast Asia (BABSEA) is currently accepting applications for its 2010 Legal Studies Internship Program. Entering into its 7th year, the BABSEA Legal Studies Internship Program offers an opportunity to make a real contribution to assisting others in overcoming the hardships and legal inequity in Southeast Asia while being involved in a remarkable experience of living and working in the region.