Everyone is invited to the "Wireless Rural Connectivity Conference and
Hands-on Workshop" Nov 15, 2006 in Lahore. Registration is free and open to
all but nominations with name, contact address and phone; organization
should reach the President P@SHA Ms. Jehan Ara at jehan@cyber. net.pk or
jehan@wiredet. com as soon as possible. If anyone wishes to participate in
this initiative, we would welcome the support with the possibility of
identifying a town or village in Lahore that can be utilized for a hands-on
workshop. Please also inform as many people as you can so that we have a
good turnout and a larger number of people benefit. NGOs, technology people,
government reps, students etc all need to be a part of this.
READ BELOW THIS LINE:
Wireless Rural Connectivity Conference and Hands-on Workshop Nov 15, 2006 in
Lahore - Everyone is invited!
P@SHA (Pakistan Software Houses Association) is planning a Rural Networking
conference and Hands-on Workshop on Nov 15, 2006 in Lahore in collaboration
with Cisco Systems and the Punjab IT Board. The intent is to have a one day
conference followed by a hands-on workshop and actually deployment in one of
the towns or villages close to Lahore if an effort can be identified that
will benefit and can benefit from local support for the first 3 months while
they are learning the ropes. BytesForAll Network South Asia is spreading the
word to all corners of the country.
INTERNATIONAL SPEAKERS
Jim Forster
Co-author of the book "Wireless Networking for the Developing World" and
Cisco's 30th employee (they now number in the tens of thousands) is coming
to Lahore at our request for the Keynote address and to be part of several
panels.
Malcolm Maston
An entrepreneur in the telecoms and IT sectors. In the early 1980's he was a
pioneer of the UK broadband industry and eventually sold his interests to
the US RBOC, Pacific Telesis. As a result of this experience, he began to
develop and enunciate the principles for the emerging digital world of an
OPLAN (open public local access network) as the "4th Utility". He then
formed COLT Telecoms as an OPLAN - Europe's first all-fibre public
telecommunications network but exited the Company when it abandoned the
'open' strategy. Since then he has promoted the OPLAN concept consistently
around the world - doing so now in the name of the OPLAN Foundation
(www.oplan.org) which he founded in 2005 as a not-for-profit body dedicated
to 'opening minds to open networks'. In late 2004, The OPLAN Foundation was
appointed to advise the World Bank on the relevance of 'open access' for the
developing world. He is an advisor to various European cities developing
their own OPLAN strategies and has written widely on the topic for bodies
such as the Institute of Economic Affairs and the Technical University,
Delft, Netherlands. Educated at the University of Nottingham and the Harvard
Business School, he serves on the boards of various private companies
including OpenPlanet Ltd. (www.open-planet. net ) which partners cities and
communities to develop their own OPLANs - serving citizens above all others.
Bjarke Nielsen
An educational leader at DIIRWB (Djursland International Institute of Rural
Wireless Broadband) and he founded the DjurslandS.net, one of the World's
biggest non-commercial rural wireless networks, connecting rural schools,
-institutions, -firms and -up to now more than 5000 rural households to the
Internet.
DIIRWB
Is an institute for training builders of cheap rural wireless broadband,
based on the experience of establishing and running of the DjurslandS.net .
DIIRWB is a cooperation of the "Computer Support Community of Djursland" and
"the Grenaa Technical School".
Bjarke
Founded the Computer Support Community of Djursland in 1993 and has
been its chairman ever since. He is also the chairman of GrenaaS.net, the
area-network of Grenaa, the largest city on Djursland. He also chairs all
pilot projects on rural wireless networks in the EU-funded "Baltic Rural
Broadband Project" in the countries around the Baltic sea in Northern
Europe, and are also project-responsible for the Danish part called
"Networking Djursland". He is a member of the EU-funded think-tank or
advisory-board on "Broadband Access, Innovation & Regional Development" for
the North SeaArea. He is also one of the trendsetting coordinators of the
World Summits on Free Information Infrastructures.
Other speakers include:
Malcolm Bjarke - Open networks advocate from the UK
Corinna"Elektra" Aichele.
Elektra's main interests include autonomous power systems and wireless
communication (antennas, wireless long shots, mesh networking).
Shemadeasmall Linux distro based on slack-ware geared to wireless mesh
networking.
Sebastian Büttrich (http://wire. less.dk/) is a generalist in technology with
a background in scientific programming and physics. Originally from Berlin,
Germany, he worked with IconMedialab in Copenhagen from 1997 until 2002.
HeholdsaPh.D. in quantum physics from the Technical University of Berlin.
His physics background includes fields like RF and microwave spectroscopy,
photo voltaic systems, and advanced maths. He is also a performing and
recording musician.
Vickram Crishna & Dr. Arun Mehta
Internet activists and Community Radio specialists. They have helped set up
WiFi Networks in rural areas of India
LET'S BENEFIT TOGETHER
This is a team of individuals who each, in their own field, are actively
participating in the ever-expanding Internet by pushing its reach farther
than ever before. The massive popularity of wireless networking has caused
equipment costs to continually plummet, while equipment capabilities
continue to sharply increase. The following experts will be visiting
Pakistan for the conference and hands-on workshop.
By taking advantage of this state of affairs, people can finally begin to
have a stake in building their own communications infrastructure. This is
not only possible, but has been done. This team intends to provide the
information and talk about the tools that are needed to start a network
project in our local community.
Wireless infrastructure can be built for very little cost compared to
traditional wired alternatives. But building wireless networks is only
partly about saving money. By providing people in your local community with
cheaper and easier access to information, they will directly benefit from
what the Internet has to offer. The time and effort saved by having access
to the global network of information translates into wealth on a local
scale, as more work can be done in less time and with less effort.
Let's take advantage of this team being here and if any of you can identify
an effort close to Lahore where deployment can take place right away, these
people can actually show hands-on how it's done. We will also have local
Pakistani experts present who can help expand this initiative into a mass
effort.
If any of you wish to participate in this initiative, we would welcome the
support. Please also inform as many people as you can so that we have a good
turnout and a larger number of people benefit. NGOs, technology people,
government reps, students etc all need to be a part of this.
At BytesForAll, we are already spreading the word to relevant people and
wish all the success to this event.
ABOUT JEHAN ARA
Ms. Jehan Ara, President of P@SHA (Pakistan Software Houses Association) , is
an active Bytesforall. org admin member as well as part of Pakistan ICT
Policy Monitor Network. She is known to be always very keen on bringing ICT
revolution into mainstream development agenda and see it contributing for
people's good.
In an email conversation Jehan informed that for this event she took
advantage of a major connectivity Summit called AirJaldi Summit
http://summit. airjaldi. com/ held in neighboring country India (in
Dharamsala). At the summit, she was able to convince some globally renowned
leading experts in the field to spare some more time and make a side trip to
Pakistan for a wireless networking event to be organized in Lahore on 15-16
November 2006.
Copyright C. PakSEF 2002 - 2006
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