Dan Morris

Dan Morris is director of strategy and development for EA Entertainment, driving IP-extension initiatives for Electronic Arts franchises across a wide variety of traditional and emerging media. Prior to that he served as general manager and publisher at Future US, where he managed official media partnerships with SCEA and Nintendo and led the development of innovative digital-media offerings such as QORE for PlayStation Network. He was previously a journalist and editor, including a stint as editor-in-chief of PC Gamer.

Chelsea Seale

Chelsea is COO of Samasource, a social business that connects women,youth, and refugees living in poverty to microwork — small, computer-based tasks that build skills and generate life-changing income.   She joins Samasource after a career in financial services at Goldman Sachs and more recently at Amber Capital, a New York-based hedge fund. Through her involvement with Orphans of Rwanda previously she witnessed firsthand the great potential in the youth of underdeveloped regions when they were given an opportunity to succeed.

No stranger to high-octane work environments, at Samasource, she aims to ensure the procedural efficiency of this ambitious organization and help bring digital work to the next billion living in poverty. Chelsea holds a B.A. in Political Science from Brown University.

Anne Shongwe

Anne is the Founder and CEO of Afroes Transformational Multi-Media & Consulting.  Afroes is a social enterprise that creates and deploys innovative interactive digital and media technology dialogue solutions rooted in Africa’s rich heritage. The core mission of Afroes is to inspire the conversations and actions of Africans with digital or face-to-face dialogue on hope and possibility.

Prior to establishing Afroes, Anne has been an International Development professional with over 20 years of social and economic development experience working with the United Nations and Management Consulting firms across Africa, Asia and the United States. Anne is committed to Africa’s agenda for transformation in partnership with Africa’s citizens and global partners and has a proven track record in providing innovative strategy and policy solutions to countries including high-level advisory services to Governments and their Cabinets.

Following her departure after 15 years with the United Nations, Anne was selected to co-author and facilitate the development of the Long-term Strategy for Africa’s Conference of Ministers of Public Service in October 2008. Anne continues to provide innovative development solutions to countries and organizations working on Africa. She has a Bachelor of Arts degree from St. Lawrence University, New York, a Masters degree in International Development from The American University, Washington DC and a post-graduate Certificate in Management Development from Jones International University in conjunction with the UNDP.

Steve Vosloo

Steve is the fellow for 21st Century Learning at the Shuttleworth Foundation in Cape Town. He firmly believes that mobile phones, games and digital media are the future of Africa’s education.  Steve currently leads the m4lit (mobiles for literacy) project, which has demonstrated the enormous potential of mobile publishing to support teen reading and writing in South Africa. In 2007 Steve was a research fellow at Stanford University, where he researched youth and digital media.

]]> http://blog.urgentevoke.net/2010/05/16/mentors-and-now-there-are-20/feed/ 4 http://blog.urgentevoke.net/2010/04/29/mentors-bring-ik-hexayurts-digital-culture-and-youth-employment/ http://blog.urgentevoke.net/2010/04/29/mentors-bring-ik-hexayurts-digital-culture-and-youth-employment/#comments Thu, 29 Apr 2010 01:25:09 +0000 Robert Hawkins http://blog.urgentevoke.net/?p=550 This weeks Mentors bring an incredible diversity of expertise and experience to the EVOKE network.  An expert in Indigenous Knowledge and ways to infuse innovation into organizations; an infrastructure innovator who implements viable solutions in the world’s toughest environments; a technologist, artist and community organizer who supports digital culture to bring us together; and an innovator who has brought “venture-like” approaches to social innovations around the world.  Please join me in welcoming Nicolas Gorjestani, Vinay Gupta, Josette Melchor, and Jamie McAuliffe to the EVOKE network.  They will join our other 12 mentors introduced here and here and here.

Nicolas Gorjestani

Nicolas Gorjestani is a former Chief Knowledge & Learning Officer at the World Bank.  An economist by training, Mr. Gorjestani had held a variety of senior staff and management positions at the World Bank for more than three decades, before retiring in July 2007.  Among his various positions, Mr. Gorjestani pioneered and was Program Director of the World Bank’s Indigenous Knowledge for Development Program.  A global thought leader on organizational knowledge and development learning themes Mr. Gorjestani now devotes his time to advising, lecturing and writing on development strategy, knowledge ecology, learning, and innovation issues.  He is currently a Senior Adviser/Consultant at the World Bank and an Adjunct Professor in Knowledge Ecology at the Polytechnic University in Hong Kong.  He is also Director of the Global Indigenous Knowledge and Innovation Partnership’s Secretariat, a recently established advocacy group of former Heads of State and other eminent global personalities to promote the integration of traditional knowledge systems and grassroots innovation in development programs.  Mr. Gorjestani has published extensively in the areas of knowledge, learning, and development, and has lectured at and contributed papers at several international conferences and centers of excellence.

Vinay Gupta

Vinay Gupta of the Hexayurt Project (see EVOKE episode 7)is a designer and innovator focused on how we can use simple technical education paired and combined with advanced know-how to solve the world’s problems on a budget we can all afford.   To learn more about Vinay check out his EVOKE profile and blog.

Josette Melchor

Josette Melchor is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Gray Area Foundation For The Arts (GAFFTA), a San Francisco-based nonprofit organization dedicated to building social consciousness through digital culture. She is a social entrepreneur, curator, and community organizer. Currently her efforts are focused on making digital culture accessible, substantive, and inspiring, she aims to help realize the greatest power of technology: to bring us closer, faster

GAFFTA’s direction is influenced by Melchor’s previous projects Gray Area Gallery (2005–2008) and Gray Area Beacon, a new media arts program that she founded in 2008 with Silicon Valley Executive Peter Hirshberg. She has facilitated many large- and small-scale events up and down the west coast including notable pioneering media artists, Aaron Koblin, Camille Utterback, and C.E.B. Reas.

Jamie McAullife

Jamie McAuliffe is President and CEO-designate of Education for Employment Foundation (EFE) an international nonprofit dedicated to providing meaningful employment opportunities for vulnerable youth in the Middle East and North Africa.  Jamie has close to two decades of experience in the worlds of social and business entrepreneurship.  Prior to joining EFE , Jamie was a Portfolio Manager at the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation (EMCF).  As one of EMCF’s first portfolio managers, Jamie was instrumental in developing and implementing EMCF’s pioneering grantmaking approach.  This “venture-like” approach aims to find and select the highest-performing youth nonprofits and then helps them (with grants and best-in-class non-financial supports) to expand their services to reach hundreds of thousands of vulnerable youth across the United States.

Before working with EMCF, Jamie was based in Brazil with the OTF Group, formerly of Monitor Consulting, where he worked with small and medium-sized businesses to develop their strategy and competitiveness expertise.  Prior to that, Jamie worked for Ashoka Innovators for the Public where he launched new program strategies to support leading social entrepreneurs in the United States and around the world.   Jamie earned an M.A. in International Economics and Latin American Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from Georgetown University.

Anil Gupta

Anil is the Executive Vice Chair of the India National Innovation Foundation, and the founder of the Honey Bee Network.  He is a member of the National Biodiversity Authority and the newly set up National Innovation Council, Chaired by adviser to Prime Minister.  He is also a Visiting Professor of Innovation Management in Emerging Markets at the European Business School, Berlin.

Anil is committed to the expansion of global as well as local space for grassroots innovators to ensure recognition, respect and reward for them; blending excellence in formal and informal science; protection of intellectual property rights of the innovators but also expanding open source as a part of ‘technology commons’; ethical issues in conservation and prospecting of biodiversity; linking innovations, investments and enterprise; creating knowledge network at different levels for augmenting grassroots green innovations and inventions in informal and formal sector; and helping organizations become more creative and innovative from bottom up and by learning from grassroots  innovations.

Erik Hersman

Erik is the co-founder of Ushahidi (which means “testimony” in Swahili), a web application created to map the reported incidents of violence happening during the post-election crisis in Kenya.  Ushahidi has been used for disasters in Haiti and Chile, by media organizations such as Al Jazeera and the Washington Post, for election monitoring in India, Afghanistan, Namibia and Mexico, and for multiple other uses around the world.

Erik is also the founder of AfriGadget, a multi-author website that showcases stories of Africans solving everyday problems with little more than their creativity and ingenuity.  Fascinated by micro-entrepreneurs, gadgets and improvisation, he is proving that technology is changing Africa – daily.

In early 2010, Erik helped launch the new iHub (innovation hub) in Nairobi.  It’s an open space for the technologists, investors, tech companies and hackers in Nairobi. This space is a tech community facility with a focus on young entrepreneurs, web and mobile phone programmers and designers. It is part open community workspace (co-working), part vector for investors and VCs and part incubator.

Raised in Sudan and Kenya, Erik brings unique energy and insight to the world of technology and innovation – bridging the gap between Africa and Silicon Valley.  An avid blogger Erik writes two different technology blogs including: AfriGadget and WhiteAfrican.  One dedicated to low-tech African ingenuity, and the other to high-tech mobile and web changes happening throughout Africa.

Joseph Nsengimana

Joseph is the Director of Corporate Affairs and Strategic Alliances in Africa for Intel Corporation; the leading Manufacturer of computer, networking and communications products in the world.  In this capacity Joseph works with governments and the development community to promote the use of ICT to fast track economic development throughout Africa.  Before relocating to South Africa in 2008 to take up his current post, Joseph spent over fourteen years designing Microprocessors in the US.  He has worked on virtually every Intel Microprocessor family in the last decade.

Praful Patel

Praful Patel is the President of Centennial Africa and Middle East and former World Bank Vice President, South Asia.

A Ugandan national, Praful was born in Nairobi, Kenya.  He completed his higher education at the University of Nairobi in Kenya, Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Denmark and later at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the USA. He is also a graduate of the Harvard University Executive Development Program.

During his career at the World Bank Praful covered different programs including poverty reduction, regional integration, infrastructure, private sector, capacity building, financial sector including microcredit and macro-economic management.  Praful retired from the World Bank in August 2008 and continues to be based in Washington DC, working as a Development Specialist and as President of Centennial Africa and Middle East, part of the Centennial Group (a global strategic advisory group and convener of regular Emerging Markets Forums). Principal focus of Praful’s professional activities is Africa and South-South collaboration.

Sebastian Barajas

Sebastian Barajas founded Learningworks in 2001. Learningworks is a consulting firm in Individual and organizational learning and change management processes for large companies. Learningworks has few but significant clients such as La Caixa (large financial institution in Spain), Deutsche Bank, Bankinter (a medium size but very innovative and profitable Bank) and Endesa (Largest electric Utility in Spain).

Sebastian is also a partner at SEISA (Servicios Económicos Internacionales). Seisa ia a small specialized firm in corporate finance. Their projects span from mergers and acquisitions to project finance and financial planning to companies in the Spanish middle market (from 10 to 100 million €).

Intelectium is his most recent initiative which develops two types of projects. On one hand they advise new ventures in the process of Investment Readiness, helping companies to find the funds (equity or debt) to finance their expansion and growth. On the other hand they have systematized the processes that allow a company to manage innovation.

Paul Gabie

Paul Gabie is a Senior Vice President and the head of education investing at Orient Global, a Singapore-based multi-billion dollar private investment organisation.  In this role, he is responsible for Orient’s work to enhance the quality and availability of education in the developing world.  For the past two years, Paul has led the incubation and early growth of India’s first chain of truly affordable private schools.

Prior to joining Orient, Paul practiced law at Shearman & Sterling LLP in New York.  In his practice, Paul represented clients on project financings and mergers & acquisitions in a range of developing economies.  He is an emerging markets and development specialist with experience in Latin America, the Middle East, West Africa and South Asia.

Vis Naidoo

Vis Naidoo is currently the Citizenship Lead at Microsoft South Africa. This is Microsoft’s corporate social investment arm that is focused on supporting education, skills development and innovation in South Africa, Swaziland and Lesotho.

Vis was previously the CEO of Mindset Network, a non-profit organisation that creates, sources and distributes educational content on a mass scale across Southern Africa using satellite and broadcast technology.

For five years prior to joining Mindset, Vis was based in Vancouver, Canada working at the Commonwealth of Learning (COL), an inter-governmental agency focused on promoting the use of distance education and ICTs to support education and socio-economic development.

Vis Naidoo is well known both in Southern Africa and internationally. Vis has vast experience in the management of not-for-profit development organisations, government and management of projects implemented at local, national and regional levels.

Bill Purves

Bill Purves is a Professor Emeritus of Biology as well as founder and former Chair of the Department of Biology at Harvey Mudd College.  His undergraduate work was at Caltech, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees are from Yale University.

A fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Bill has served as Head of the Life Sciences Group at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, and as Chair of the Department of Biological Sciences, University of California, Santa Barbara, where he won the Harold J. Plous Award for teaching excellence.  His research interests focused on the hormonal regulation of plant growth.

Bill was a co-founder and Scientific Director of The Mona Group LLC, which made multimedia products for science education.  He has consulted on education and training for Motorola, Edvotek, Sinauer Associates and other companies, as well as for Socratic Arts and Engines for Education.  Most recently he has participated in the development of grandparentgames.com and the Virtual International Science and Technology Academy (VISTA).

May 19^th is the deadline for submission of your EVOKATION – one week after the end of gameplay.  We will select up to 20 EVOKE agents to receive a mentorship – based on your EVOKATION (see EVOKATION guidelines here).  The Mentorship will take place during the June-August timeframe and interaction with your mentors will be via email, chat, skype, and other online communications.  Your mentor may also design a special mission for you to undertake during this time period as part of their own social innovation project – more on this later.  This will be your opportunity to get some firsthand experience collaborating with an amazing social innovator.  So, start preparing your EVOKATIONS now!

I am pleased to introduce you four of our mentors – Jessica Lin, Derek Lomas, Roger Schank, and Ethan Zuckerman.  We will be revealing more mentors over the coming weeks – so stay tuned!

Jessica Lin

Jessica Lin is a graduate of Harvard University, where she studied Government, African Studies, and Swahili. Her endeavors focus on social enterprise and community-based technology projects in sub-Saharan Africa. Jessica is a co-founder of sOccket, a soccer ball that stores energy from game play to charge batteries and lights. She is currently a fellow at The Laboratory at Harvard, a new platform for idea experimentation and exhibition in the arts and sciences.

Derek Lomas

Derek Lomas is a PhD student in the Human-Computer Interactions Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, where he is researching the underpinnings of fun and learning within commercial video games and helping to develop new design processes for building effective computer-aided learning games.  Lomas is a co-founder of the Playpower Foundation, which recently received support from the MacArthur Foundation to further its goals of building affordable, effective and fun learning games to improve education around the world.  Lomas received his Master of Fine Arts degree in Visual Arts from UC San Diego and his BA in Cognitive Science from Yale University.

Roger Schank

Roger Schank (www.rogerschank.com) is one of the world’s leading visionaries in artificial intelligence, learning theory, cognitive science, and the building of virtual learning environments. He is CEO of Socratic Arts, a company whose goal is to design and implement learning-by-doing, story-centered curricula in schools, universities, and corporations.

Ethan Zuckerman

Ethan is an activist, blogger and geek, living in Western Massachusetts and working in Cambridge as a senior researcher at the Berkman Center. As co-founder of Global Voices, he is interested in ways that citizen’s media can address longstanding biases in the news media. Before working at the Berkman, he helped found Geekcorps, a non-profit organization that shipped geeks to the developing world to run Internet technology trainings. Prior to that, he was part of the team that founded Tripod, one of the early online community companies. When not blogging, researching or making trouble, Ethan helps out with Ushaidi, PenPlusBytes, Open Society Institute’s US Programs board and other fun technology and development projects.  His personal blog is “My Heart’s in Accra…” , and you can find him on Twitter as @ethanz.

Our recruiting campaign has been successful. One week in, there are more than 8,671 new agents in the network! We have agents embedded in dozens of countries on 6 continents, representing a wide spectrum of knowledge, experience and cultures. This is a tremendous expansion of our reach and human capital. We are very fortunate in this regard, but I would like to ask for your help on two issues:

1) If you know of any potential agents on the continent of Antarctica, I urge you to recruit them to EVOKE. We require better coverage and analysis of the critical south polar region.

2) If an enterprising agent or team can compile a list of all the countries represented by one or more agents in EVOKE in a comment on this blog entry, I would be very grateful for their analysis.

The network is finding its voice. In support of the initial LEARN, ACT and IMAGINE missions, together we have posted over 3,235 blog entries, 1,099 photos and 278 videos. Our agents have impressively committed to shadowing over 300 unique social innovators in fields ranging from clean water to microfinance, working around the world from the South Bronx to South Africa. The range and scope of your ideas is large and growing, quite literally by the minute. This is wonderful progress! However, amid the great outpouring of your evidence, I observe that there are many agents whose voices we have not yet heard.

We are weaving a fabric of connections. Through thousands of comments, forum posts and messages that are flowing in the community like a deep, strong river. Through friendships, collaborations and challenges, and through generous sharing of your power votes to recognize each others’ contributions. Many of you are skilled communicators and social collaborators, highly visible and engaged; but also there are many agents who have yet to activate their powers. Again I will ask for your help:

3) EVOKE thrives on diversity of knowledge, experience and perspective; help us strengthen the network by opening yourself to new connections and new voices. Set a positive example by listening carefully for the hidden signals in between the lines. Step out of your comfortable shoes. Not all of us are seasoned ARG veterans and social media pioneers. Not all have broadband access. Not all are familiar with the customs and conventions of the so-called Ning platform. So see with new eyes. Listen with different ears. Value the subtle alongside the spectacular.

We are superstructing, building capabilities, infrastructure and tools. Did you know that we have guilds? A library, a reading group and a map? And Twitter lists, wikis, even games-within-games. Powerful developments! (But given the ongoing presence of CX I caution you to be vigilant as always).

We are bringing the world to the game, and the game to the world. Agents are doing more than just talking about social innovation. We are moving out into the world to understand, learn and document our firsthand experiences, like Agent Falconer in the Lynedoch Ecovillage. We are making contact with social innovators, and they are responding. Did you know that Agent Araguz received a message from visionary educator Roger Schank, that Agent Beare connected with Eve Annecke of the Sustainability Institute, and Agent Trott exchanged email with Derek Lomas of Playpower? And you, have you gone out, reached out, made contact?

So here is my conclusion, to Agent DeBello and to each of you. EVOKE is becoming…something more. Something greater than the sum of its parts. Here is what I believe: the network is coming alive. In the coming weeks, something amazing is going to happen. To us. Through us. Watch for it. And prepare.