Peter Van Dijck’s Guide to Ease

Akshaya, a project in India that I visited and blogged about extensively, wins the ARS Electronica PRIX for digital communities (via Dina).

1. Six days with the Akshaya project: day 1: overview
2. Day 2: technology
3. Day 3: entrepreneurs
4. Day 4: promotion
5. Day 5: training
6. Day 6: conclusions

In the past 5 days, I have tried to describe the project, mostly from a tactical level: how did they do things? I didn’t speak much with the strategic people, and I hardly spoke to any users. Today, I’ll talk a little bit about possible conclusions and lessons.
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1. Six days with the Akshaya project: day 1: overview
2. Day 2: technology
3. Day 3: entrepreneurs
4. Day 4: promotion
5. Day 5: training
6. Day 6: conclusions

Once people were convinced the training could be worthwhile, it took a few months for each entrepreneur to train one person in each of the families they were responsible for. Each center trained between 1000 and 3000 people. Most centers used two or three trainers to get the job done, and many centers stayed open late to accomodate working people - rishaw drivers, fishermen, farmers, businessmen, housewives.
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1. Six days with the Akshaya project: day 1: overview
2. Day 2: technology
3. Day 3: entrepreneurs
4. Day 4: promotion
5. Day 5: training
6. Day 6: conclusions

The Akshaya project was rolled out in Malappuram in the southern state of Kerala, one of the more backward and conservative regions of India. The population is largely muslim, has little education and is mostly rural.
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Poorbuthappy guide to India | Holy men, immodium and technology.: I’m starting a discussion about India. The site still needs work, but the basics are there…

1. Six days with the Akshaya project: day 1: overview
2. Day 2: technology
3. Day 3: entrepreneurs
4. Day 4: promotion
5. Day 5: training
6. Day 6: conclusions

The Akshaya project uses an interesting business model: local entrepreneurs run individual Aksaya centers, and are expected to become profitable by themselves. This way the project won’t die of lack of funds once the initial interest or funding dries out. Sustainability.
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1. Six days with the Akshaya project: day 1: overview
2. Day 2: technology
3. Day 3: entrepreneurs
4. Day 4: promotion
5. Day 5: training
6. Day 6: conclusions

The Akshaya project uses a combination of various wireless technologies to provide internet access to 3,500 square kilometers of rural areas in the rugged terrains of Malappuram, a hilly district in the Kerala state of India.
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1. Six days with the Akshaya project: day 1: overview
2. Day 2: technology
3. Day 3: entrepreneurs
4. Day 4: promotion
5. Day 5: training
6. Day 6: conclusions

The Akshaya project, launched in December 2002, has rolled out complete internet access in all of the villages of one of the more backward areas of India using a mix of wireless technologies, and successfully trained one member in each of the region’s 750,000 households to use the computer. The team is now creating an innovative business model to ensure sustainability. Even though it is still only starting, it is widely considered a success story of using technology for rural development.

Over the following week, each day I will write about a different aspect of the project.
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My trip to India is a good opportunity to experiment with videoblogging on the road. I’m just jotting down some thoughts here, I might expand on this post in the future. You can see all my India trip posts, including videoposts, here.

I took a small digital photocamera that fits in my pocket and also takes short videos, and an Apacer stand-alone CD writer that lets me write my memory card to CD. This way I can take a lot of movies (a day of movietaking - 20 or 30 short movies - fills up my 256M memory card). I just save them to CD and then empty the memory card.

At first I posted individual short movies. However, they were too short, my fan (there’s only 1) complained he wanted to see larger movies. And in fact, I tend to take a few movies if something interesting is going on.

I’ve settled on a process of finding a computer with Win XP, using Moviemaker to join those few related movies together. I don’t really “edit”, I just throw them together and save the movie, which also optimizes it. I don’t even review the movie - it takes too much time and I’d rather not spend my entire trip locked up in an internet cafe.

I tend to rent 2 computers at the time in the internet cafe, so I can use 1 computer to work with Moviemaker, and the other to do my emailing meanwhile. Moviemaker takes some time (can be 15 minutes) when importing movies from CD, and when optimizing movies. So I just spend that time on the other computer.

Then I send the movie to my friend’s Gmail address who ftp’s it to my website. I should be able to ftp it myself to my site, but I haven’t figured out how that works yet.

When my friend lets me know the videos (I usually sent 10 at the same time) are online, I create posts for them in my blogging software. I spread out the dates of the posts so one movie a day gets posted, instead of 10 movies and then 2 weeks of silence.

A disadvantage of this technique is that my movies end up in a proprietary Windows format that doesn’t play nice with anybody else’s formats. But it’s the only easy way I found to edit and optimize on the road. Win XP computers aren’t in every internet cafe, but I could usually find one. And after optimizing, most internet cafes have enough bandwidth to upload a few movies.

Windows Moviemaker works well. It’s very easy to use, and I only need to put a few movies together, so no problems there. It comes installed by default together with Windows XP. And it optimizes movies quite well if you choose Save Movie. I choose the highest quality, which still produces files that are usually below 1 Meg for my short movies.

My tiny camera is a Canon Powershot SD100 - I bought it last year for about US$300. It’s stainless steel body sets it apart from other digital cameras. The memory card cost US$70 then, now they’re much cheaper. It works great for taking videos - its size means I almost always carry it with me (except on the beach and when partying), so I can take a quick video whenever something interesting happens.

Questions and comments welcome. I’m sure there are other practical techniques for videoblogging while on the road.

Steph emailed me, turns out she also has some India videos on her blog.

This guy is trying to explain the difference between Indian and British English (Windows Media movie, about half a Meg). Afterwards I took the bus.

International phonecalls are easy (Windows Media movie, about half a Meg), little telephone boots are literally everywhere (even in the smallest village). It’s affordable too, a 30 minute call to the USA costs about 7 US$. Internet cafes are also in a lot of places (though you can spend days without finding one), this one is in Mysore.

I love to take pictures of cows, they have great shapes that catch the light in always interesting ways. Big eyes, too. I’m not sure if this activity was any weirder to the locals than many of the other stuff tourists do in India (Windows Media Video, about half a Meg).

Monkeying around in Mysore (Windows Media movie, about half a Meg).

When you spend a lot of time on buses, you get bored and take a lot of movies of busrides (Windows Media Movie, about half a Meg).

The covered market in Mysore is beautiful (Windows Media movie, about half a Meg). Here are some more scenes from Mysore.

A lovely mail prepared in the train station (Windows Media Video, about half a Meg). This was a good eat, we had Masala Dosa (spicy pancake).

Mumbai (previously known as Bombay) is a busy bustling city. A lot of cars and there is also a crazy funky beach where lots of people with kids gather (Windows Media movies, about half a Meg each).

A beautiful little shrine on a hill in Goa (Windows Media movie, about half a Meg).

There are a bunch of tibetan settlements around Mysore (South India) - the Indian governement was nice to the refugees when the Chinese started fucking up Tibet. It’s hard to legally visit (you need a bunch of slow paperwork), and I didn’t want to get anyone in trouble by illegaly visiting (which supposedly is easy), so I didn’t go. I filmed some tibetans in the internet cafe (Windows Media Video, about a Meg) in Mysore.

Indian trains are a must (Windows Media movie, about half a Meg). Second class tends to get crazy, this is in first class (I think).

a portrait (Windows Media movie, about half a Meg).

Fishermen in Goa bringing in Sardines (Windows Media movie, about half a Meg). You can see the sardine schools swimming (they’re dark spots in the water), so the fishermen just get in the water with a net, find the sardines and then catch a load like this one.

I like cows (Windows Media movie, about half a Meg).

more getting around movies, on a bike and on the bus(Windows Media movies, about half a Meg each).

India is a country of many forts (Windows Media movie, about half a Meg).

Goa is a great place to hang out on the beach, this was an evening in one of the beach cafes (Windows Media movie, about half a Meg) in which we were wondering about the origin of chess (it does come from India), so one of the guys ran to the nearby internet cafe and googled it.

Half of the fun in India is getting around (Windows Media movie, about half a Meg). The movie shows a trip in a motorised riskshaw (3-weeler).

I’ve had to switch to the proprietary Windows Video format for reasons I’ll explain in detail in a future post about videoblogging on the road. For the record, the internet cafe I’m in currently is fast but doesn’t allow heavy uploads because they get charged for that.

Anyway, here’s the first of the Windows Movies: sometimes the selling gets to be a bit much (Windows Media movie, about half a Meg).

Gmail requires IE5.5+ which means I can’t access it from 70% of the computers here in internet cafes in India who still use IE5.0.

I am writing some stuff on the road (different internet cafes every time) and I find myself longing for solutions that support writing on the road. I write in WordPress - not bad, but not perfect either. Any suggestions. The perfect thing would be a lightweight keyboard with a memory of its own (and some kind of preview) that I could use to write anywhere and then plug into a computer to transfer the text whenever I visit an internet cafe…

Ah Bangalore. The pizza! The cheap books! The proper coffee! The copied western atmosphere! After a few weeks of roughing it in South India, Bangalore, usually described as a place where there’s not much interesting for the traveler, is a true joy.

Here are some random thoughts about the sharing of stories since I am at a computer anyway. I might add pictures to this post later.

I was visiting a temple this afternoon, filled with extremely elaborate detail. You can walk around it and read stories of the kings that built it, it’s like a kind of elongated comic book. The temple was used for ceremonies that probably (I’m guessing here since that’s what ceremonies in temples and churches seem to do) were basically about telling the stories of the religion and rulers.

So temples are for telling stories.

They’re really efficient since you can build a temple with a story on it, and the story will be told millenia afterwards if the temple survives. Your story survives. And many temples do survive, despite the destroying of temples and churches by competing religions as has happened in Europe, India and all over the world.

I saw tourists (Indians and foreigners) walking around the temple, reading the same, 1500-year old story. Stories are important because they explain the world, and in that way contain values and such.

Then I had to think about pictures. I remember visiting my girlfriends family, and 3 generations were standing around a photoalbum, and the stories of the family were being retold. I’m sure you’ve experienced the same thing.

Photoalbums are another medium that lets us tell the stories of our families, and in that way convey the values of our families as well.

An important element of these stories is their construction by the way: they are constructed by the entire family, watching pictures together. This way, it’s a kind of democratic process that creates the stories of the family.

I’m fascinated by digital pictures. What will be the social constructions around those artifacts that will let us use them to share our stories? Emailing them just doesn’t cut it. Microsofts Photostory is a good attempt, but not good enough. Printing them out also somehow doesn’t cut it - it’s not truly part of the media. So I’m curious to see what happens.

Comments? I’ll add links and pictures later.

My survey of internet cafes in India continues, I’m still in Mysore. A small internet place has 4 computers and DSL access, about 126,000 Kbps. About 50 USc/hour to use it, the same as in most places. I have pictures, but no easy way of uploading them right now. (It’s optimizing them that’s really the problem.) Interestingly, the person who runs it is a woman, and there are 2 women using computers and 1 guy (and me).

Videopost inside…
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Most computers here in India do NOT seem to have Quicktime installed. I guess they don’t watch movie trailers? Ah of course, they don’t have broadband. Most computers run anything from Win 95 to Win XP. A “copied” WinXP CD + serial costs between 5 and 10 US$.

Videopost inside…
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Videopost inside…
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Rural India: not as simple as we think: ” over 30% of rural households had at least one bank account.”

The Worldchanging article asks about cellphones. I am in Malappuram now, where 60% of households has a person working in a Gulf country. They’re mostly muslim. Malappuram has the highest density of cellphone penetration I’ve been told: they bring them from the Gulf states (where they’re cheaper) as presents.