August 2006
6 posts
2 tags
Trying to install WindowsXP in Ghana - not a...
One day my Ghanian friend asked me to look at her PC. She wanted to install new language training software, and the PC sound board did not work properly. I noticed that the sound drivers were not correctly installed, and decided to reinstall WindowsXP. At the end of the installation process, Windows asked me for my authorization code. I was working on an 18 month old HP Pavilion that my friend had...
4 tags
Organizing a Public Transportation System Through...
On a hot and steamy Thursday morning last July I went with my Ghanaian friend to the “37” Trotro hub in Accra, to learn more about how the Trotro system operates. The Trotro hub is a huge walled-in place of dusty mud, overcrowded with people, little buses, and taxis. Like ants coming and going to their hive on ant roads, hundreds of Trotros enter in a never-ending stream the huge place, while at...
3 tags
How a self-organizing Community takes care of palm...
The husband of my friend, Ghanaian by birth, had recently started an oil palm tree plantation. On about 100 hectares of land he had planted 16,000 palm trees, complemented by a pig barn, a duck pond, and goats and chickens. Of course he could not do all this work by himself, but he needed lots of help. To take care of his farm, he initially hired about 50 workers. The most labor-intensive part was...
3 tags
Internet Cafes for Ghanaian Schools
For the last 5 years a group of friends and I have been working on getting computers to schools in Africa. So far we have shipped a few hundred used computers from Switzerland to Kenya and equipped a school in Nigeria. Now we would like to extend our project to Ghana. The goal of our project is to create learning/innovation communities between Ghanaian middle school students and Western middle...
2 tags
Who will be the next US President?
Using our TeCFlow software tool to do coolhunting, I recently checked out the Web buzz on different presidential candidates. The first thing I did was looking at the latest poll results on various US Presidential contenders. Here they are: As you can see, Hillary Clinton is the clear leader for the Democrats, while Rudi Giuliani and Condolezza Rice are tied for the Republicans. Using TeCFlow ...
3 tags
Swarm Creativity in Ghana
In summer 2006 I was visiting an old friend in Ghana. There I encountered amazing examples of swarm creativity and self-organization entirely outside of the realm of the Internet. It already began when I was picked up at the airport of Accra by my friend and her husband. When we drove back to their house I noticed that the streets were filled with small vans of all types, ages, and makes, starting...
