<TITLE: Global Challenges of eDevelopment Conference 1
ACADEMIC DOMAIN: technology
DISCIPLINE: information sciences
EVENT TYPE: conference discussion
FILE ID: CDIS08A
NOTES: session includes presentations CPRE08A-F/H, (CDIS08B and CPRE08I/L/P are part of the same conference)

RECORDING DURATION: 51 min 46 sec

RECORDING DATE: 14.3.2005

NUMBER OF PARTICIPANTS: circa 40

NUMBER OF SPEAKERS: 21

S1: NATIVE-SPEAKER STATUS: Spanish; ACADEMIC ROLE: junior staff; GENDER: male; AGE: 31-50

S2: NATIVE-SPEAKER STATUS: Finnish; ACADEMIC ROLE: other; GENDER: female; AGE: 31-50

S3: NATIVE-SPEAKER STATUS: Finnish; ACADEMIC ROLE: other; GENDER: female; AGE: 51-over

S4: NATIVE-SPEAKER STATUS: Finnish; ACADEMIC ROLE: senior staff; GENDER: female; AGE: 51-over

NS5: NATIVE-SPEAKER STATUS: English (Australia); ACADEMIC ROLE: senior staff; GENDER: female; AGE: 31-50

S6: NATIVE-SPEAKER STATUS: Uzbek; ACADEMIC ROLE: other; GENDER: male; AGE: 31-50

S7: NATIVE-SPEAKER STATUS: Finnish; ACADEMIC ROLE: senior staff; GENDER: male; AGE: 31-50

S8: NATIVE-SPEAKER STATUS: Finnish; ACADEMIC ROLE: other; GENDER: male; AGE: 51-over

S9: NATIVE-SPEAKER STATUS: Finnish; ACADEMIC ROLE: other; GENDER: female; AGE: 51-over

S10: NATIVE-SPEAKER STATUS: Bengali, Hindi; ACADEMIC ROLE: research student; GENDER: male; AGE: 24-30

S11: NATIVE-SPEAKER STATUS: Finnish; ACADEMIC ROLE: research student; GENDER: male; AGE: 24-30

S12: NATIVE-SPEAKER STATUS: unknown; ACADEMIC ROLE: unknown; GENDER: male; AGE: unknown

S13: NATIVE-SPEAKER STATUS: Bengali; ACADEMIC ROLE: senior staff; GENDER: male; AGE: 31-50

S14: NATIVE-SPEAKER STATUS: Romanian; ACADEMIC ROLE: research student; GENDER: male; AGE: 24-30

S15: NATIVE-SPEAKER STATUS: unknown; ACADEMIC ROLE: unknown; GENDER: male; AGE: unknown

NS16: NATIVE-SPEAKER STATUS: English (New Zealand); ACADEMIC ROLE: senior staff; GENDER: male; AGE: 51-over

S17: NATIVE-SPEAKER STATUS: Japanese; ACADEMIC ROLE: other; GENDER: male; AGE: 31-50

S18: NATIVE-SPEAKER STATUS: Finnish; ACADEMIC ROLE: senior staff; GENDER: male; AGE: 31-50

S19: NATIVE-SPEAKER STATUS: unknown; ACADEMIC ROLE: unknown; GENDER: male; AGE: unknown

S20: NATIVE-SPEAKER STATUS: unknown; ACADEMIC ROLE: unknown; GENDER: male; AGE: unknown

S21: NATIVE-SPEAKER STATUS: unknown; ACADEMIC ROLE: unknown; GENDER: male; AGE: unknown

SU: unidentified speaker

SS: several simultaneous speakers>



<PRESENTATION CPRE08A by S1>

<APPLAUSE>
<S4> er thank you <S1> thank [you] </S1> [and] er would somebody like to comment or <COUGH> we have time for a few questions yes </S4>
<NS5> <NAME S1> could you describe some of the projects that the communities are er involved in please </NS5>
<S1> the what kind of communities [or] </S1>
<NS5> [oh] the erm kind of projects that are coming [out] </NS5>
<S1> [the] the the projects try to to create a rural virtual er community but not er only in this erm site because we we have a mix er for example we have a cultural virtual community with the people that put er in the in the cultural site er many news about cultural events in all these er small village and we have in this er a a concen- a virtual concentration of this information with 100 of er people put er put in er news all the days er with a high li- er level of life in this and mhm we try to establish another practical virtual rural communities but with a (xx) reference in in a mixed [view mhm] </S1>
<NS5> [okay thanks] thanks </NS5>
<S4> [yes] </S4>
<S6> [<COUGH>] er what could you tell tell me please er about the problems you faced during the realisation of this pro- this this project </S6>
<S1> the problems around the </S1>
<S6> er did you face any problems and could you tell us about the [problems] </S6>
<S1> [y- yes] we got w- we have er many problems for er right to this point but the one of the good things of this project it's not involved in a in a short logical time like another projects that have only one year two years this project is in a continuous process of revision and at the first moment we have many problems with the trainers because we not have a a special team of trainers that give different orientation and er different methodology of teaching in different village and er obtain bad results at the first moment but er a right to the idea to have our er specialist er er team er in training and a right to er give a mhm a special methodology for this project and with this kind of orientation a right to a better solutions </S1>
<S2> i have also a question for you erm i was interested about who actually used the virtual context you gathered to the network <S1> er er [er] </S1> [who] are the customers to say </S2>
<S1> the er what is the virtual context or [or or or what] </S1>
<S2> [the your your] services </S2>
<S1> n- n- er er we we have ha- a sp- a specialised team er for example one of my colleagues here is the coordinator to the virtual er environment and er is a peop- the person that er coordinate information er give her encourage and support to the people for maintain the activity er no- normally er is necessary for er begin the activity of a virtual sphere er a a person that er give support to the others er i think that's is necessary this er have this kind of centre because i in my research in my time of researching virtual communities in all the cases is necessary one person or or a small team that coordinates to the others and maintain a very short er time and very dynamic communication with the the others people </S1>
<S2> any other questions or comments </S2>
<S4> okay thank you shall we move i- move somebody knows the direction i don't @know@ </S4>
<CHANGE OF VENUE, TRACK CHANGE>

<PRESENTATION CPRE08B by S3>

<APPLAUSE>
<S4> thank you <NAME S3> and just a few and short questions or comments yes </S4>
<S11> er wha- what are the er actual needs of of people in in the costa rica (xx) what did people use these er skills they learned in their business for </S11>
<S3> you mean what happened after we left tr- <S11> yeah </S11> after the training well they usually one thing was marketing , some of these women entrepreneurs lacked er access to marketing and it's like i said erm , they developed their own website which is the very simple basic website but that was one tool i mean real tool for marketing their products so then the other one er was that they were able to find information about markets one person was designing erm jewellery and and she had she travelled three times a year to california to sell her products she had no internet access but she had a good market potential market in california but she had to travel three times a year there now what she did she had a available to study the market you know er meaning first designs and then then erm different designs that she could actually use from all over the world through internet and then then she was able to er sell her products also via internet so erm those two that was that's just one example erm so marketing erm and like i said networking women started to communicate around the country erm after the course and the third one was simple er use of excel to manage your business so er in other words ho- what are my daily expenses to run my business what is my income and then summary of that so just basic this is very basic uncomplicated training and er i'm sure there are zillions of good ones but but , i think if you keep it simple you have a chance if you're complicated , @you are in trouble@ @@ </S3>
<S4> yes </S4>
<S12> i do have a question regarding religion keeping in mind that catholicism is so deeply rooted in nicaragua and in costa rica and in those latin american countries did you feel that internet was sort of a challenge (of word) religion in there and isn't it seen as a contradiction since it's so narrow , <S3> [it] </S3> [and] you're just going there so </S12>
<S3> your question's about is about relig- religious [aspect] <S12> [yeah] yeah </S12> er no <S12> [uh-huh] </S12> [no] no that wasn't an issue we had other issues but not that , and erm i just wanna mention that one of the most exotic erm participant i mean kinds of business in in terms of that was two women actually one woman was running a garage repairing cars , and er and the other one was two women running a business to erm er it was a machine elec- electronic machine machine repair store so they fixed in san jose area er refrigerators stoves erm toasters you name it and they had a little database to run their little business so exotic ones to me i couldn't <S4> [o-] </S4> [do] it @@ </S3>
<SS> @@ </SS>
<S4> okay only only one question then we have to move on </S4>
<S13> as a way of to increase the knowledge the application of er IT business did you find er any implications that (most) women are empowered not only er in terms of the economic er advancement but also in terms of making inroads to the local chamber of commerce for example in a way of er you know er seeking membership through election or forming networks er of their fellow er other business er friends and so on </S13>
<S3> thank you so much this question comes from a man and i forgot the most @important thing@ the the outcome of the and and thank you for your question yes indeed er i participated myself erm er in a , like four , sessions after en- in four groups after ending the 50 hour so 200 women okay i i in different time slots and do you think so i really appreciate the question erm do you think it was the that i learned these skills or or i learned my run my business or or erm i know more about credit sources yes all of that but the most important issue was exactly what you said so thank you it was the empowerment they just felt that it's like they as a group they can network they have more power as a group to er addresses your access to low credit er low er rate credit for example because they usually need very small credit so exactly the empower the the empowerment impact was probably the very key result of this training yes indeed and it came up again and again and again okay @@ </S3>
<S2> yes thank you </S2>
<S3> thank you i need to get my erm </S3>
<S4> okay <S3> thank you </S3> yes <COUGH> thank you very much and we have to move on to the next one er which is <NAME S7> er and it's about er people first approach or network </S4>
<S7> yeah well i think the people will come first when it comes to technology <SS> @@ </SS> in this case </S7>

<PRESENTATION CPRE08C by S7>

<APPLAUSE>
<S7> yeah </S7>
<S14> er so er one question is er could you tell us what are typical distances among these islands and why was the U-F radio technology chosen did you consider something as like maybe wi-fi or some V-SAT satellite <S7> [yeah] </S7> [or] something like that [would would] </S14>
<S7> [the distances] er vary of course but erm er they are quite great several hundred kilometres from one island to another or even 1000 kilometre and so on so distances are great but er why high frequency radio because it's a robust technology low-end technology and it already exists er in the islands there are these transmitters people can use them they are usually owned by say provincional administrations and so on so people have been using these H-F radios for basically d- d- for decades so there is no sort of learning curve related with them </S7>
<S14> mhm yeah so have you er considered some maybe more expensive technologies that would provide broadband or [(xx) V-SAT radios should do it] </S14>
<S7> [oh yeah yeah so that's] er what this distance learning initiative is actually planning to put up er to establish erm satellite operated broadband connections to certain schools and certain er islands not everywhere but in certain places where they can start developing distance learning er er er things say er invite er students from a larger region to participate in these schools and er so on but the- they will also get this broadband also er er this er what's it called this er er wireless er net but not W-LAN but this er <S15> [wirenet] </S15> [with] just more extension GAN what's it called </S7>
<S14> wirenet </S14>
<S7> er W- </S7>
<S15> that's er with a 50 kilometre [(range)] </S15>
<S7> [something] like that yeah there there are plans er to er try that especially on er more densely populated areas so for guadalcanal certain areas in guadalcanal er er and i think also on malaita so these are hi-tech things that are expensive er it's also a matter of getting the finances right and these people in the solomons they really most of they live outside or in the margins of er money economy even today er there the businesses that used to be there they've most mostly collapsed during this ethnic crisis and only very few of them have been able to recuperate from this crisis situation so er there's very little money around , yeah </S7>
<S2> okay </S2>
<S11> <COUGH> what do you exactly mean when you say that er through the through the use of ICT these people who are who have migrated somewhere else can er kind of participate or or contribute to the communities </S11>
<S7> yeah well er there are all sorts of s- say kind of success stories ca- that can be found for example from the PF-net website but i also have my friend's experience to relate to in this you know erm when the e-mail stations have been opened er these local villagers have been able to er send e-mails to these lo- long lost relatives they have their e-mail addresses sure they they have the addresses but they they haven't had the means to contact them and now that they've been able to establish re-establish contacts with these migrants the migrants have been more than willing to participate they're really anxious to take part in things happening in the village they organise all sorts of arrangements related with fees funerals transport money remittances and so on through the e-mail system so it really has a very concrete causal effects on the everyday lives in these villages where stations are located er let me point out also that not only in the wi- villages where er these stations are located they actually service a much wider region around them er people might travel 20 or 30 30 kilometres or even more just to access these e-mail stations and send mails receive mails , so communication is so important in this kinship-based communality and when new technol- new technology offers an improvement in this basic communal need to communicate there is no resistance whatsoever nothing people are just oh yes [thank you very much] </S7>
<SS> [@@] </SS>
<S2> i still have one <S7> [yeah] </S7> [question] concerning this matter erm you said er the communities they are kind of isolated <S7> yeah </S7> in the in the area i mean disparate er islands i was just wondering er has this erm thing somehow involved also the outsiders taking part of the community and t- taking part of the </S2>
<S7> yeah basically i was kind of outlining that in the translocalisation <S2> [yeah] </S2> [thing] because this is sort of social composite that allows for er say cultural culturally marginal people to participate in this sort of er translocality and er this kind of translocal identity it it's also kind of a situation where er say kids from multicultural marriages who used to be margina- marginalised within erm the ethnic community er have kind of a found a way to participate in a looser com- composition er looser social formation but it's still kind of a real and e- effective nevertheless </S7>
<S4> thank you @@ <S7> okay [thank you] </S7> [i guess we] have to just er move on because er there are lots of presentations still and soon w- er we need a cup of coffee but not not yet i think we can @@ still have one presentation here and it's gonna be about er open access village er telecentre approach </S4>
<S14> i'm gonna do the second part i'm gonna stay there </S14>
<S4> uh-huh okay thank you </S4>
<P:06>
<S10> er <COUGH> so er er can everybody hear me somewhat [er this] </S10>
<S2> [you can use the] microphone </S2>
<S10> i i prefer to walk around <S2> [okay] </S2> [but] if it gets bad then you can start squinting at me and so i know that you can't hear me or something like that okay it's got bad already were you squinting oh okay <SS> [@@] </SS> [i'll just @@] (xx) </S10>

<PRESENTATION CPRE08D by S10>


<PRESENTATION CPRE08E by S14>

<APPLAUSE>
<S10> we have many copies of the paper in case anybody wants them so </S10>
<S2> thanks </S2>
<S4> thank you questions a few </S4>
<S3> could i have a copy of the paper </S3>
<S14> oh yeah sure </S14>
<S10> no questions </S10>
<S7> well i was just wondering about those erm er division of the bandwidth er which you were er <S14> [right yes] </S14> [presenting there] in the end you know e-mail doesn't consume much bandwidth </S7>
<S14> that is correct yes </S14>
<S10> [even though you got] </S10>
<S7> [so you cannot really] count the number of e-mails from that or do you do you do you have a calculus for that </S7>
<S14> i guess we could find out you can definitely see i don't know maybe an e-mail would be around one K one kilobyte and then if you look exactly what is there you can see what the number of e-mails would be in terms of value the e-mail was around 10 per cent of it which was actually quite important we would expect it to be lower because it's only text-based and so on but it was around 10 per cent which is fairly impressive while education for example was two per cent </S14>
<S2> i have one question <S14> sure </S14> er you described about the er good participating figures for the education <S10> [sorry] </S10> [so i] you described that in the region of of kerala you have a very high er participating figures for taking part of the basic education <S10> yeah </S10> so what are the the basic reasons for that </S2>
<S10> well this this this is a long story <S2> [(yeah)] </S2> [by itself] but the short short version of this is that er that that state has had a communist government it's a freely elected communist government for many many years and even before the communist government the local kings were very much inclined towards education so even before the rest of india got started getting worried about education they had been doing it in kerala at least in the primary [education setting] </S10>
<S2> [mhm-hm mhm-hm] </S2>
<P:07>
<S4> er [okay] </S4>
<S10> [did you have a] question </S10>
<S4> er if you make it short @@ </S4>
<NS16> yeah you said that the er initiative came from grass-roots and yet it was a model model usage after and i was wondering whether there was a a sense of (xx) and you also said i think there's very high unemployment rate in the state do you think that that there might have been some sort of idea that maybe the computer could somehow solve some structural problems in other words a a faith in the in the rhetoric around computers or operators </NS16>
<S10> sort of yeah that was definitely the idea behind why this thing happened at all because the so there's very high unemployment rate people are migrating (also) so they figured that the one way that we can develop because the industry is not going to develop here is we start doing technology kind of stuff and there's also that around the same period remember that india the rest of southern india is becoming very big on the software boom so there was this idea that er yeah </S10>
<S4> okay er thank you and er now i er truly wish we can have a cup of coffee er and er if the cafe is open er a coffee break of 15 minutes so please come back er 10 past </S4>
<15 MINUTE COFFEE BREAK, TRACK CHANGE>
<S4> er i have tried to count how many presentations we do have i guess @@ there might be four of them so er it's quite okay we can do it so that we finish at six o'clock er and no later and er the first we have now is by <NAME S17> and it's about PC kiosks but before that there's a practical announcement of like that </S4>
<S2> yes just to remind you that whoever have received this kind of er , paper please fill it up because it's for the the <SU> okay  </SU> er (xx) for research so please </S2>
<S4> okay </S4>
<S17> okay thank you </S17>
<S4> please </S4>

<PRESENTATION CPRE08F by S17>

<APPLAUSE>
<S4> questions <P:06> yeah </S4>
<S9> i'm representing libraries and i'm very interested to know from all these projects if you have er investigated the e- existing i- infrastructure in the areas where you have had these kiosks and other IT centres er if it's not very sustainable model what you have been er e- had now so have you had any any experiences of having them for instance in libraries local small local libraries </S9>
<S17> so er my experience in india with libraries is that there aren't any @@ </S17>
<S9> okay </S9>
<NS5> [seriously] </NS5>
<S17> [erm] yeah in fact i have yet to run into a single one in a village for a particular reason er it's possible they're associated with schools i don't know (<NAME S14>) have you seen anything else </S17>
<S9> that that's what i wanted to know if <S17> [yeah] </S17> [there] is any </S9>
<S7> yeah the same applies for the solomon islands also there aren't any libraries except in the capital city </S7>
<SU> okay yeah </SU>
<S17> yes sir </S17>
<S7> er i'd like to ask you you probably have heard of this erm er indian erm concept of a a computer called simputer <S17> yes </S17> so i suppose it's already been launched er er have you had any experiences on that are are these simputers being used in these kiosks or or or are they spreading out what kind of experiences have there been </S7>
<S17> er so they've run a pilot project and i as far as i know the pilot projects for rural areas has not gone beyond that particular pilot project and erm i've met with both there's two companies that are running simputers and i've met with the CEOs of both companies and they are both going in two slightly different directions so one issue that they ran into was despite the fact that the original simputer was meant to be designed to be very low cost they were never able to get the cost below a point where it became attractive for er er use in a in the scenarios they were envisioning and so they both sort of switched directions er er encore is now trying to provide a low-cost i would i would call it sub-PC something a little bit less than a PC but that has much many of fu- functions of a PC and er the other er company picobeta has decided that they're gonna focus on the U-I and their selling point now is that the U-I that they designed is far more e- er si- er simple to use than other PDA devices but in both cases they've run against this problem which is that there's a lower bound on the hardware cost for their devices and they haven't been able to go lower then of course what was what they want </S17>
<S10> [well] </S10>
<S4> [so when] oh @@ </S4>
<S10> we've done a pretty big study with simputer working if you want i can send you a link to that </S10>
<S7> okay yeah </S7>
<S4> okay er short question and short answer please yeah </S4>
<S8> well i just wanted to support the lady there , i have been only three weeks to india but i met a lot of librarians indian @librarians@ so there we cannot leave it like that and and just with a smile the question of libraries it's it's central </S8>
<S4> mhm-hm [yeah i so i agree yeah] </S4>
<S8> [it was another question it wasn't the people] </S8>
<S17> [yes so er i i'm] sure there are libraries in the universities but i as far as i know there are no stand-alone libraries <S4> [mhm-hm] </S4> [in er] rural areas there's no there hasn't been yet a push to put libraries into er into rural areas </S17>
<S4> thank you </S4>
<S17> thank you </S17>
<S4> yeah er the next speaker should be <NAME> but er she wasn't able to come today her paper is included in the copies and er the next one is er martha or </S4>
<NS5> sorry </NS5>
<S4> no [sorry] </S4>
<NS5> [<NAME NS5>] </NS5>
<S4> mhm </S4>
<NS5> <NAME NS5> </NS5>
<S4> mhm , er <NAME NS5> yeah @@ please </S4>
<PREPARING POWERPOINT, ONE MINUTE DELETED>

<NATIVE SPEAKER PRESENTATION CPRE08G by NS5, NOT TRANSCRIBED>

<APPLAUSE>
<S4> er comments questions please <P:08> [yeah] </S4>
<S2> [if] no-one else has any [questions i was just wondering @@] </S2>
<NS5> [just as i oh @@] </NS5>
<S2> er have you researched or found anything any information about has any er companies used memes as as a means of marketing yet </S2>
<NS5> yes marketing is a <S2> [yeah yeah] </S2> [huge use] of memes and they do talk about memes er very explicitly er in ord- in fact they sort of talk about three main uses for memes one is marketing and advertising erm the other is oh no i've gone blank but that that's certainly erm a very very important er angle on it and oh yeah yes definitely definitely yeah <NAME S18> </NS5>
<S18> good and thank thank you <NAME NS5> thanks for the presentation <COUGH> one er <COUGH> one question er concerning the use of the computers and other stuff in in the classrooms we made some er couple of surveys in finland and er based on those those results i'd say that er one of the main reasons for not using computers and other technologies in the classroom is that er s- er teachers themselves don't feel that they know these technologies too so well that they could teach with them or or you know use them <NS5> in </NS5> in different ways <NS5> [yes] </NS5> [so] what do you think about that what's the case in in er in the [US] </S18>
<NS5> [it] it's exactly the same in the in the united states and the teachers feel A they don't have enough time in the curriculum to er spend on computers because they have to book the lab the computer lab or er often the con- the computers themselves are broken down or i mean there's all sorts of management sorts of issues that check into that as well as them saying erm oh i'm not technologically literate or erm the kids know more than i do so the- i'll let them do do what they like outside of school or erm erm , you know si- similar things to what you were saying and it seems to me that if we're going to take seriously the use of new technologies in schools that we actually need to give er teachers computers in their homes so let them use them at home for all sorts of real purposes er for a year perhaps until they are actually expected to use them in the classroom so they find out well oh i found it useful to use computers this way er i i'm comfortable with that with my students erm er and that so that's that's one er one one of the ways i've been thinking about how it is we can get teachers to use technology more effectively in classrooms as well i think the other thing too is , that that's really quite limiting er again is is the contradiction in school policy when it says er we we do focus on ICT erm information communication technologies and yet there and their policy say er the technology in school is going to open up erm student access to e- experts and they can e-mail people all around the world and they can er do this with com- and yet that when it comes to security and things like that they shut the whole thing down and students can't have e-mail access they they block erm they block access to yahoo dot com and hotmail dot com they erm they do strange things like one class will have one e-mail er which nobody uses e-mail like that at all so they're actually learning fake uses of of e-mail and other sorts of communication practices in schools i think teachers are really caught in a very difficult bind erm and i'd like to think that memes have some way of perhaps opening that up in terms of erm , looking at particularly multi-mediating er multi er mutating multi-medium memes and er participating in or erm following following how ideas have taken up in weblogs and reading weblogs and er just participating online is a social practice rather than thinking oh i have to master powerpoint or i have to master erm excel and those sort of things i don't did you have what did you come up within the study </NS5>
<S18> no i'm i'm [you know] </S18>
<NS5> [you @still@] </NS5>
<S18> (disable) yeah </S18>
<NS5> yeah it's a tough one <S18> mhm </S18> it's a tough one </NS5>
<S19> i've just a question trying to understand the term [memes] <NS5> [meme] mhm </NS5> er you had the phrase successful memes <NS5> yeah  </NS5> there's a there's a me- is there an unsuccessful meme or is </S19>
<NS5> yeah one [that doesn't] </NS5>
<S19> [you] have a meme <NS5> yeah </NS5> it must be successful in terms of [(xx) spread or or] </S19>
<NS5> [er that's a good point mhm] </NS5>
<S19> because if it <NS5> [yeah] </NS5> [if it] doesn't require the level of success <NS5> mhm </NS5> i mean did it require being on the internet does it <NS5> [no] </NS5> [how] much do we have <NS5> no </NS5> then therefore can anything be a meme [in a context thank you] </S19>
<NS5> [and this is @yeah@] and this is where it starts to fall apart in lots of ways and certainly the er memetics er literature has been taken up mostly with arguments rather than er documenting actual memes and that kind of thing so that some people make the claim that all knowledge is a meme but i i think that's sort of well why use meme then why not just use knowledge as the word to describe it and other people say no it's much more to do with very specific identifiable er trends and shared ideas and that kind of thing but when i do- that line between when a meme is successful and not successful is a really blurred one it seems to me i think you know i've a small group of friends we see this in the playgrounds of erm er schools where th- er a word a word will take on and it'll be the latest thing like filthy to say something good and that'll last for a few weeks and then it'll die away so i think small-scale memes wouldn't count as successful memes in a larger sense erm certainly in the work that i'm doing with <NAME> we're we're talking about memes er for us successful memes are ones that get reported in the newspaper and have and make it into mainstream reporting and not just erm occurring on the internet but again you know it's arguable what counts as successful and what counts as not successful but it's a good question it's a good question . thanks very much </NS5>
<S4> thank you and then er our last presentation of today is about fiji and the speaker , yeah please <NAME S13> , yeah @@ </S4>

<PRESENTATION CPRE08H by S13>

<APPLAUSE>
<S4> comments questions yes <S7> mhm </S7> okay </S4>
<S7> yes thank you very much for this interesting presentation i was just wondering erm er er about the concept of poverty er in fiji you know it reveals itself very differently when you look at the people er say of the slum-dwellers in suva and when you look at those people er in the rural areas who live in the margins of money economy as such the poverty is very different in the sense that er those rural er dwellers they can rely upon the social networks they have gardens to grow their food and they can er get also the (remittances) from friends er in ways that don't exist in in suva </S7>
<S13> (xx) absolutely </S13>
<S7> and er i was just wondering whether it would be feasible to er figure out different kinds of strategies er in terms of ICT to deal with the poverty in the countryside and to address issues in suva which is a case in <S13> [yeah] </S13> [in] itself </S7>
<S13> yeah of course this is er this is a i think thank you for your question this is very critical in terms of er expanding the scope of your research in future er those kind of content analyses and empirical surveys but er having said that you see er although er although you're talking about the social network the safety net exist in the rural areas but it's unlike solomon it's a mu- multiethnic country the indians don't have the social net that the fijians have that is the er the difference the secondly the urban slum-dwellers in suva actually er you know (xx) because they they are coming in thousands to suva and latoka and all those big cities er recently there is a train of people going out of fiji to kuwait and other places even in iraq er despite the (xx) and all those problems in in that country so there is this degree of poverty that is pushing people rural urban and then fiji out do you see that there is a push and pull factor the demonstration effect in suva and we have visited some slums we have found that actually the safety net as you said correctly is not there even within fiji communities looking for jobs because of government is one of the leading er job was one one of the leading job providers because of recent withdrawal of quota from fiji and other less developed countries many governments in i mean government industries are closing and that is creating a huge problem even for the slum-dwellers in suva but as you said you need er another research er er set of er you know er interventions to to measure these er diversities in poverty in those two contexts [please] </S13>
<S4> [yes] please </S4>
<S20> er thank you very much for the the interesting presentation er some comments and then a question from the UN perspective erm i think here we are discussing a missing link between er information technology and and er poverty reduction er we still need lot of research and and and and discussion on this issue UN ICT task force has started this process and some other agencies in the UN er framework but still we are very much in the beginning to er clarify the role of er information technology as an enabler of a development as an accelerator and innovator and so on erm so er , this is a very very important and er <S13> [sure] </S13> [and] and er topic to to to do to be discussed , then a question erm when you implemented this national e-governance er project did you have er mhm er international er partners in in in that task er a lot of experience has been achieved er internationally there are successes and failures er in impleme- implementing e-governance er projects er did you have partnerships [for that] </S20>
<S13> [i i i] i'm not really frankly speaking i'm not really aware of that er in specific but what we i can tell it's fiji's development partners basically largely is australia and new zealand two neighbouring er economically very developed countries and australia is probably er providing 70 per cent of fiji's development er funding in in different sectors including governance and i would imagine e-governance is is is one of disappointments in that governance funding , but i i i don't know whether er there is any er policy suggestion from these funders like australia and new zealand er with these practices in the international context but as as you said ideally that should be that should be the policy intervention by donors </S13>
<S21> yeah er you said that the er the economic growth is about five per cent there and the at the same time the er poverty grows did i understood right that the er ine- inequality grows at grows er in the in the [island] </S21>
<S13> [yeah absolutely] that's the b- that's the that's the actual impact of it you see this there is no trickle-down of this growth growth is growth is actually benefiting the rich already the monopolised corporate sectors and so on , if there was a di- redistribution of these er economic achievements then there would not this there would not be this inward and outward migration from fiji that's one solid indicator of that </S13>
<P:06>
<S7> well just out of curiosity i'd like to ask <S13> please </S13> er because er within fiji there's also this er community of rotuma which is ethnically ethnically a little bit distinct from the rest of mhm the fiji they are more polynese and oriented and they had this er er er internet sort of a network functioning since the mid 19s er 90s er the there is this website maintained by professor R howard from hawaii and so on and quite a few of the rotumans live as migrants in australia and new zealand USA and so on and they they have been able to establish this er in a i think in a very real sense a a virtual rotuma in the internet er by exploiting this website er that they have and has this had any impact on the rest of fiji at all or is this happening all in isolation from the other developments in fiji because i know that the rotumans don't have much say in the fiji daily politics </S7>
<S13> the rotumans is because they live far away from the mainland you see that's the that's the one reason but rotumans are highly educated at the same the chief justice of fiji is currently a rotuman er one of very few er very leading physicians doctors are also rotumans er fiji's er racial er structure is very interesting you know that er the whole south pacific is er divided into three races the polynesians the micronesians and melanesians fiji mainstream are all melanesians skin is black indians are brown the rotumans are white because they belo- they they belong to polynesia because the rotuma is close to international @dateline@ therefore this interesting diversity in terms of race is there but rotumans although you have observed correctly that there are quite a number of rotuman diaspora living outside fiji and they're networking through er er this kind of internet and all that er alongside that the fijians living in the US the mainstream fijians not indian fijians but the fijians they're also developing their networks living in different cities this is a new development actually but i don't really know as to how they'll be linking fiji in terms of development in terms of lobbying for er funding from the west and so on but sure there have er this is a new development and they are organising their forums er as diaspora outside fiji </S13>
<S14> er you were s- er saying about digital divide between the disadvantaged and the so i was just wondering what's the size of different communities i mean how what's the percentage of the population the (xx) dwellers or disadvantaged what's the percentage of that er one basically have access to I to ICT [and] </S14>
<S13> [these] i tried to look out of the human development report 2003 unfortunately the poverty data in terms of the community er division is is missing on the fiji's er on the fiji's line so i couldn't really access any data not from the government sources er as well but er largely speaking er among the 40 per cent indians you can imagine 30 per cent are quite well-off those who live in the cities because they control economy among the 60 per cent fijians actually fijians er dominate politics and governance in the present cabinet there is no no indian at all all fijians and the country is actually heading to more ethnic sort of er er conflicts you know although the you know previously the coup in 1987 and the attempted coup in 2000 were all on ethnic er e- ethnic lines basically ethnicity instigated fiji military to attempt to attempt those coups successfully one in 87 and unsuccessfully in 2000 so among the fijians the number would be little less but among the indians the marginalised population the number would be a little more since the indians are no longer able to renew the lands because this is another story in fiji land is a crown land no land is private land and the chief the lo- the local chiefs actually control land in terms of leasing it out to people of their choice so they're not leasing it out to the indians they're not renewing the lease agreements anymore so indians in the rural areas those were very successful farmers in the last 50 60 years the second generation and third generation in- indians because the first gene- first generation were all labourers starting from second generation up to third and fourth who are now the fourth they had made huge success in terms of er agricultural development in fiji so they are the farmers very skilled so they are getting marginalised because of this land issue basically speaking and this is so much a problem now that they're even thinking of er thinking of er constitutional amendment on on land reforms but which is very unlikely you know because the the fijian er the fijian community in politics is absolutely against any sort of land reform , yes please </S13>
<NS16> just a a question there how should the e-governance idea (xx) erm going back to what <NAME NS5> was saying about the person who generated the meme about sweat-shop in relation to nike er whether that would count as an example of participation in e-governance for example that kind of activity because one of the things i think was interesting about er a- and not surprising about that meme it came from if you like a it didn't come from the person who worked in a sweat-shop it came presumably from an educated er probably middle-class or or more er white north north american let's say er the question i guess for me is what , might have been like for e-governance in terms of the of the terms you just spelled out that land issue around landless er landless indian er rural-dwelling labourers for example in fiji er e-governance er meme e- exploitation of the concept of meme for example following er international opposition or trying to generate that or whatever to get the issue er beyond for example the local context in other words i i think that that coming back to the to the concept of the memes and to to some powerful uses for example of the internet it has a lot to do with things that poor people certainly do not have in in many instances how does one get this kind of thing going in order to put er some power if you like into the concept of e-governance so it doesn't just mean things like voting or commenting on issues that people in positions of power or privilege let's say have determined are going to be the issues of the day so er er this this to me as a concept of development about grass-roots work in mobilising er local people to be able to use this forum in powerful ways where you it seems to me to be er an education issue development issue er and and something that that that i think all of us may need to think about in terms of of our involvement in these sorts of debates and and involvement with the issues </NS16>
<S13> i think a very fascinating comment you know what i can say with my limited understanding of the situation in fiji is you need catalysts to do those kind of jobs and er the people who are discontent with the state policies not only with regard to e-governance and poverty but the whole range of er ethnic er you know er er issues and so on and the discrimination the policies that er goes against largely against the indo-fijians and rotumans for example and so on pushing people out of country if the people are not resisting that widely migrating out of fiji if you look at the immigration records you will find all the people who have potentials to go abroad they're all leaving either to australia or to new zealand some to US and north and canada and so on now there is a lack of those kind of activists you know mobilising opinion doing something er doing something really pragmatic you you have a lack of er you have a lack of institutions supporting those kind of individual activists as well not the (charge) not the NGOs there's a very er inactive group the (charges) are the (charge) organisations are and basically if you only go to them i mean when we approach them they are not very keen to talk about e-governance until we until we manage to er motivate them that this is @purely an academic@ issue this is a problem there so you have problem of energy problem of even there are good quality students coming out of university where i'm teaching and somehow they are very passive maybe it's something to do with the islanders maybe something to do with their er living styles because they live in plenty of resources but don't really wa- need to do hard work in order to survive in other other words so that's something to do with the i think the with the the set of mind you know the- the- there is a there is a (xx) of of of er real catalysts of the changes and (xx) if you like those who can take on those kind of meme-model and do something now the second part of my responsibi- this diaspora the frustrated fijians leaving fiji they actually they started leaving fiji in the last 13 14 years since the last coup in 87 might do something differently but whether they they s- they still hold the sense of belongingness to fiji is a different question whether they'll do it out of the way because they're all having good lives in australia and new zealand and so on so it's the diaspora that might be a potential er catalyst for change okay [thank you very much thank you] </S13>
<S4> [thank you thank you] er <APPLAUSE> er thank you for everyone i guess we are coming to to the end of this er (session) and i think that we have er touched very very very important and essential issues and er let's keep on doing it thank you </S4>
<S2> and before we all go er if you remember there is a reception er on the same place as we we er had lunch so pleased to meet you there in er 10 minutes so reception starts at six o'clock </S2>
