EirePreneur

Review: One Wild Life (amazing stories of social entrepreneurs)

Unfortunately I still haven't gotten around to reading Clare Mulvaney's new book One Wild Life but fellow Social Entrepreneur Dara Hogan, project leader at Fledglings Childcare, has. And wrote a terrific review which he has kindly allowed me to reprint in full here -

Review of "One Wild Life" by Clare Mulvany

This book is a “must read” for all social entrepreneurs!  Many of us will remember Clare as the excellent photographer who shot us (the 2008 SEI awardees) in Maynooth last September.  I must confess that I was surprised to learn that Clare had spent practically a whole year travelling around the world interviewing social entrepreneurs and writing them up for her book "One Wild Life".  It’s a series of short articles over 256 pages documenting the work of 35 social entrepreneurs (including 11 in Ireland) on 4 continents.  Clare didn’t get to South America – yet!

I have a surprisingly short concentration span so I loved Clare’s chosen format which is a mixture of overviews and detailed project reports interspersed with blog / diary extracts, travel notes and sectoral snapshots.  I also liked Clare’s short, third-person introduction to each project followed by a few pages comprising the words of the social entrepreneur (in the first person).  I was very glad that it was not the tired question and answer format that I expected to find.

My first impressions are the sheer variety and diversity of social enterprises that Clare has written up.  This is not unlike what we have in SEI in Ireland but, somehow, it is magnified by the geographic and the racial diversity as well as by the scale of the problems she saw at first-hand.  

Given that Clare spent lots of time in the Developing World (Africa and Asia), she reports on some social enterprises that, happily, are not needed in Ireland.  These include Kailash Satyarthi who set up Rugmark (and two other social enterprises) in India in his drive against child labour.  Later, in the US, Clare also met Nina Smith of Rugmark to learn about the Developed World side of the Rugmark social enterprise.  Clare reports that there are about 218 million child labourers in the world of whom about 22,000 children die each year in work-related activities.  In the US, Clare met Sarah Symons & John Berger of The Emancipation Network which fights child sex trafficking.  They used the equity in their house to finance their project saying "We are gambling - it is interim".  Now that’s what I call commitment!

In the health sector Clare interviewed Peter Mugyeni who is pioneering the fight against HIV/AIDS with his Joint Clinical Research Council in Uganda.  The global statistics are staggering – 33 million people living with HIV/AIDS of whom 3 million die each year with 2.7 million new infections per annum.  As a result of HIV/AIDS, the average life expectancy in sub-Saharan Africa (the most heavily-infected area) is 47 years.  The Republic of South Africa alone has 1,500 new HIV/AIDS infections per day.

In Cambodia, Clare wasn’t able to meet with Mechai Viravaida AKA Mr Condom.  However, she did write up his PDA (Population Development Association) project and his stunning results.  In the 8 years ending 1997, Mechai reduced Cambodian STD (Sexually-Transmitted Disease) infections from 410,000 to just 23,000!

The extent of child labour and the scale of HIV/AIDS pandemic present issues for social entrepreneurs of a magnitude that we in Ireland can only barely grasp.  For example, Clare documents the work of Nick Moon who, in 1992m installed 40,000 latrines in UN Refugee Agency camps in Somalia in order to earn a fee for his Kickstart project so that he could deploy new technologies in Africa.  At the peak Nick and his team were building 130 latrines per day and earning funds for Kickstart!

Clare's travel tales are cautionary and memorable too.  In Mombasa, a bad bout of food poisoning meant that Clare missed people by a few days after travelling all that way to meet them.  In Kenya, Clare opted for “mid-range accommodation” which turned out to be a brothel.  The place was filthy and Clare found a used condom between the sheets!  She went to sleep trying to muffle the sounds coming from the adjoining rooms.

Clare was moved to tears in Mumbai for the women led by Jyoti Mhapsekar of the Women’s Liberation Movement who worked sorting rubbish in appalling conditions (which had been much improved by Jyoti’s project).  In a chaotic Indian railway station, Clare had to waste 3½ hours in ten separate queues just to buy a train ticket!  Twice in her travels Clare lost her wallet and on both occasions it was returned safely and intact.

If, like both Clare and me, you have a fondness inspirational quotations then this book is a veritable treasure trove of them.  I’m sure that Ruairi McKiernan of Spunout in Galway is not the only one who can say "I nearly quit a million times".  Likewise we would all identify with Taddy Blecher of CIDA (the free South African university) when he said “being a social entrepreneur is unbelievably hard”.  In the same vein Kyle Zimmer of First Book found that in disadvantaged American neighbourhoods there was only one book per 300 children.  Kyle said "If this were easy work someone else would have done it....this is hard - really hard".  

Clare has done a lot of thinking along the way and her short conclusion outlining the top 10 lessons that she learned is a brilliant summary.  Her list of web resources is comprehensive as is her list of travel tips for anyone else heading off around the world.  As a photographer myself I was surprised that Clare used a compact digital and only bought a DSLR camera when she was well into the journey.  However, the lack of this technical resource is not evident in the excellent quality of the photography on nearly every page.  The child in me likes books with pictures and this one has many great shots.

One final quote is very relevant to Social Entrepreneurs Ireland when Clare quotes Jim Fruchterman of non-profit tech company Benetech who said "Networks are reciprocal - if you put something in you will get something back - that is their magic".  

I have only been able to touch on a handful of the projects that Clare documents in "One Wild Life".  Don’t miss this book – in it Clare has captured the essence of what we do.

--- Dara Hogan

We could build the Holodeck tomorrow

I got kind of excited when I suddenly realized how close we are to realizing a rudimentary version of Star Trek's Holodeck, so I duplicated our latest post on Daynuv below.

Though some of these technologies are in the early stages of development none of them are in the realm of science fiction. Now all we need to do is put them together - 

Cybercarpet / Cyberwalk / omni-directional treadmill

 

PLUS

Airborne Ultrasound Tactile Display

 

PLUS

Project Natal

 

PLUS

3Dvisor

 

PLUS

Opensim

EQUALS

World Builder

Of Grand Plans and smaller bytes 'n pieces

1) Congratulations to Ger Hartnett of CoClarity on winning the Innovation and Market Entry award at the LEAP Programme Showcase. And a big fat cheque!

2) The same Ger Hartnett started colating Startup Ireland Ideas based around the debate ensuing from the publication of Patrick Collison's Irish Times article - The Grand Plan. My own modest little proposal went as follows - 

What I’d like to see too is more €6,000-ish grant schemes like the level 1 awards made by Social Entrepreneurs Ireland each year. I was one recipient of such a grant last year and it gave me the opportunity to invest a lot of time getting my project off the ground.

Keith Kennedy is after announcing on Twitter that he is to receive a level 1 award through this year’s scheme. And I know that’s going to make a big difference to him in terms of the commitment he can give to his project idea. 

In some ways there’s not a lot you can do with €6k but in other ways there is. As many other alumni of Social Entrepreneurs Ireland have proven over the last few years. And access to the Social Entrepreneurs Ireland network is invaluable. 

I often wonder why us Tuesday-pushers don’t create a similar but crowdsourced grant scheme using Pledgebank or other crowdfunding service to fund (non-social) business ideas IQ-prize style by the group of people donating to the fund… and I do mean donating. We could then provide advice/feedback on an on-going basis in the same way Social Entrepreneurs Ireland do, through an on-line forum / network / twitter. I for one would be happily pledge €60 to such a fund as I’m sure would 100 others canvassed through Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and so on. In fact I’d be happy to make such a donation every couple of months. Anyone want to help make it happen?

3) Speaking of the IQ-prize, the shortlist has been announced. Congratulations to all who've made it this far and best of luck in the final round.

4) Coworking / hotdesking is an ongoing interest so when I came across a rather grand coworking space located in London, under the label of 'Private Members Club' I asked my twitter followers if there are any comparable locations in Ireland. And got surprising answers.

5) Alex O'Connor says - "These guys are helping Irish business think their way out of recession. Its a 'not for profit' initiative". I hate to be cynical but I don't like the focus of the seminars on one particular book and 3 hours of personal exercises.

Limerick Open Source meetup was great, next up July 1st

We (at Daynuv) attended our first Limerick Open Source meetup on Thursday evening and had a great chat with a 'different' bunch of people to our usual circle. I guess I've been going to so many Barcamps and OpenCoffees for the last few years and mingling with like-minded entrepreneurs that it was a nice change to talk with a group of (mainly) employees on Thursday night.

I don't know whether it's due to the recession or what but Limerick OpenCoffee has taken on a somewhat less relaxed tone lately so the Open Source meetup in the Marriot Hotel hit the right notes with me and I'm not just saying that because we were invited to demonstrate our Virtual Europe opensim.

So thanks again to Tim Bunce and here's looking forward to the next meetup on the 1st of July. If you're in the mid-west region I thoroughly recommend going along.

New 3Dcamp talks: IBM, interactive art, DIY multi-touch haptics, teaching with Lego robotics

The 3Dcamp site has more details now on 4 more great talks coming up on June 6th in University of Limerick. This is shaping into a really great event and you can still register (for free).

• Joanned Stanley from the IBM Innovation Centre on INNOV8
• Stephen Howell - Developing Interactive Art with Processing
• Brett Lawless - DIY Multi-Touch Haptic Interfaces
• David Higgins - Teaching with Lego Robotics 

Get the details at the site.

Bytes 'n Pieces

(1) I missed the Tuesday Push this week, which was for Robin Blandford's Decisions for Heroes. Whether it was the push or Robin's excellent press release the Dublin-based startup is getting lots of excellent coverage including from the Irish Times. I have no doubt that these guys are going to go very, very far.

(2) Limerick's Greenhouse Incubator is holding a Blogging and Social Media for Business seminar on June 13th 2009

(3) Howard Rheingold has never been to Dublin and is looking for a speaking invitation. Please someone give him one.

(4) The Irish Learning Technology Association held 'EdTech 2009 - the Irish Educational Technology Users' Conference in Dublin this week and I was sorry to miss it. But the Twitter stream for the event was an excellent substitute for being there. And also a terrific way of discovering and networking interesting Irish educators. Eugene O'Loughlin and Bernie Goldbach have extended reports.

3D animation, robotics, wii-mote hackery and more for 3Dcamp

I wrote previously about the presentations to be given by Mark Campbell - “3D: Learning for Life Sciences” and Ronan Skehill - “The Consequences of Locating Stuff” at upcoming 3Dcamp in University of Limerick. You can register to attend (free of charge) here.

And now further interesting talks have been registered, including -

1. Gavin Duffy - Using gaming technology to help archaeologists re-create Irelands ancient Christian sites

Last summer RTE requested the assistance of RealSIM to help them re-create 3 Irish ancient Christian sites they were to profile for a new 2 part documentary series called ‘Secrets of the Stones’. Remains from the sites and evidence as to how they may have looked ranged from very little to moderate. The comnplexity of the reconstructed buildings ranged from simple wooden huts to complex Romanesque Cistercian Abbeys. This talk will show how the interactive and immersive 3d experience helped the iterative site re-creation process and will show how our ancestors lived from the 5th to 12th centuries.

2. Alan O’Brien - “Google Sketchup”

Alan O’Brien of Viewsion - Irelands first Google Accredited Training centre for SketchUp - will give a general presentation on sketchup and how it can be applied to many different disiplines, including some upcoming community projects

3. David McKeown - “Wiimote interfacing and looking stupid while controlling a robot”.

Founder of Robots.ie and with a background in Mechanical Engineering David will speak about controlling Google Earth, CAD software, e.t.c., with a wiimote wand.

4. Stephen Howell - various talks and workshops

Stephen Howell is a Lecturer in Computing at I.T. Tallaght and he, and a few of his students, will deliver talks and workshops on topics such as programming inProcessing, thematic cartography development, wiimote hacks, DIY touch screen hacks, lego programming, XNA development and camera based game interactions.

5.  Carlo Maiolini - AVATAR: a 3d museum exhibit

“Avatar” is a peculiar experiment of virtual exhibition about virtual worlds. It aims to foster a discussion on the social and cultural implications of these three dimensional worlds in the general public. A video will be shown to illustrate the format and the experience that the “Avatar” exhibition offered to the visitors. It will follow a brief talk by the curator reporting about the reactions from the audience to the use of real time 3D for this museum exhibit.

3Dcamp 6th June - new talks registered

Two new interesting talks have been registered for 3Dcamp on June 6th at University of Limerick -

• Mark Campbell is Creative Director at eMedia. eMedia is a Galway-based, award-winning, 3D multimedia production company specialising in 3D Medical animations and eLearning for Life Science Organisations.In his presentation - 3D: Learning for Life Sciences - Mark will showcase examples of their work to date as well as talk a little about the current R&D activities in eMedia. The talk should be last approx. 20 mins with 10 mins for Q&A afterwards. You can follow Mark on Twitter here. 

• Ronan Skehill is the founder of YourPinPoints.com. Launched in 2008, YourPinPoints is an online service that looks up a business name, address or place and sends the location to a smartphone on any network.Location Based Services today represent only the beginning of a series of technological innovations that can potentially impact society in many ways at various scales, ranging from new modes of business operations to the possible invasion of personal privacy. In his talk - The Consequences of Locating Stuff - Ronan will discuss these issues. You can follow Ronan on Twitter here.  

Remember, 3Dcamp is a free event so register to attend today!

Report from ICT in Education at Tipperary Institute

Last Saturday I attended the ICT in Education conference at Tipperary Institute for my first time and have to say it was one of the best events I've been to in a long time. We - Daynuv - were there primarily to provide virtual presence for Daithi O'Murchu's keynote address but I thoroughly enjoyed all the talks and workshops I attended, in particular those dealing with introductory programming options for children. Indeed the Scratch workshop with John Hartery was a highlight for me --

"It was clear after 5 minutes that John is a gifted teacher as he had every attendee happily programming the cutesy Scratch mascot to jump and dance across the screen in response to various keyboard and mouse inputs. I was genuinely blown away by the capabilities of this application and started day-dreaming about the difference it could have made to my path through 3rd level education. In CBS Tramore John uses Scratch as in introduction to programming and then progresses to Alice followed by BlueJ, the common denominator again being the emphasis on visual development environments. For anyone wishing to investigate further John has kindly published his course notes on Moodle."

Read the full report here.

ICT in Education conference this Saturday at Tipperary Institutue

I'll be attending the ICT in Education conference at Tipperary Institute this Saturday 16th May and look forward to hearing some great talks and meeting really interesting people. Check out the full programme to see the full list of talks and workshops.