Hi SM,
Thank you for the sum-up. I was taking more time writing the blog
article[1].
On Mon, May 18, 2015 at 5:14 PM, S Moonesamy <sm+mu_at_elandsys.com> wrote:
>
> I attended the Telecommunications and ICTs: Drivers of innovation workshop
> as a representative of the Mauritius Internet Users. The workshop was held
> on the occasion of the World Telecommunications and Information Society Day
> 2015. The Executive Director of the Mauritius Research Council gave a
> presentation about "innovation in the knowledge economy". He covered wind
> farms, ocean research (
> https://twitter.com/IshSookun/status/600192071639683072 ) etc. He also
> mentioned that the Mauritius Research Council provided funding for several
> research projects. Ish commented that there was a person in Mauritius who
> has developed open source software and asked whether funding would be
> available for such projects. The reply was that the stakeholders already
> include such people working on those type of projects. I commented that
> IPR was used, outside Mauritius, to measure innovation. The Executive
> Director responded that there hasn't been much IPR from the projects. Is
> the approach to innovation a failure?
>
You proclaimed the Mauritius Research Council a "failure" as the Executive
Director could not convince you the opposite. I agree with your reaction
to his answer although I would have used a more diplomatic approach.
>
> There was a presentation from Dr P.C. Catherine, Lecturer at the
> University of Technology about smart cities sub-saharan Africa. He talked
> about urbanization in that region. He also mentioned that The university
> has received funding from Horizon 2020 for a project in Quatre Bornes, one
> in Maputo and the last one in Nairobi.
>
I do not agree with comparing rural Mauritius to rural Africa. I don't
think people in Mauritius will flock to the towns within the next 3 years
just because they do not have FTTH in villages.
> After lunch, there was a presentation about Innovative Public service and
> ICT. Ish noticed that he could not sign in on m.govmu.org as the Google
> CAPTCHA was missing in the mobile version of the web site. He asked the
> Acting Director of the Central Informatics Bureau about that. He will
> probbaly comment about that on his blog. He also pointed out that the
> forums and blogs on govmu.org are not being used and asked whether there
> has been any study before the web site was designed. I commented that
> there was some discussion on the Mauritius Internet Users mailing list
> about the government web site and pointed out that it was based on
> nostalgic web design. I asked whether there were any standards for
> government web sites. The reply was that they are mentioned as part of the
> tender process. I clarified that I was referring to technical
> specifications, i.e. it was not about the quality of the web site.
>
The Acting Director of the Central Informatics Bureau was acting dumb in
front of my question. It was clear that he was evading the same. Asking me
to call the "tech team" when I have issues with govmu.org isn't a helpful
answer in a workshop. I don't want to phone the Government Call Centre and
explain tech problems to non-tech people.
I have published screenshots on my blog article showing the mobile Captcha
issue. Anyone can reproduce the same by logging to the Government Web
Portal using a mobile phone.
>
> There was a presentation by the Director of the MSIRI in which he talked
> about the usage of Geographic Information System at the MSIRI and the
> software developed for providing information to the agricultural sector.
> The last presentation was about seven ways to boost innovation for a SMART
> Mauritius.
>
Mr Ben Mann from IBM UK mentioned about "local Bluemix" when replying my
question about "latency" with services such as Google Cloud, Amazon Web
Services and Microsoft Azure. Bluemix is an IBM Cloud alternative offering
Software as a Service, Infrastructure as a Service etc. He did not
elaborate on the technicalities of a "local Bluemix" but the mention itself
is a good start.
>
> Ish explained about the 100 Mbps (local access) initiative during an
> informal conversation. I had an informal conversation about whether there
> was data which could be made available from the Geographic Information
> System.
>
It was great to speak about 100 Mbps local access with some telecom
people. Folks who shared the lunch table with us (SM and I) gladly
expressed their opinion on the matter.
>
> I would like to thank the Linux User Group Meta for extending an
> invitation to the Mauritius Internet Users for this workshop. I would also
> like to thank the National Computer Board for the nice lunch.
>
>
It's rare to find SM appreciating a meal :-) I should have caught that on
camera.
[1]
http://hacklog.in/world-telecommunication-information-society-day-2015/
Regards,
--
Ish Sookun
- Geek by birth, Linux by choice.
- I blog at HACKLOG.in.
https://twitter.com/IshSookun ^^ Do you tweet?
Received on Mon May 18 2015 - 16:54:51 PST