A slide from Day 3, Room 1. Nicolas di Tada, Martin Verzilli, and Ary Borenszweig from InSTEDD share their experiences on designing the text interface over SMS.
More slides on Slideshare.net group: Mekong ICT Camp 2010. Add your slides there! 
Vietnamese DTINews published two reports on Mekong ICT Camp 2010.
A new age in news
— on information age, citizen journalism, and online piracy.
Mekong ICT Camp 2010 connecting experts, media, and tech industry
— reports overview of the camp, its philosophy, voices from participants.
Twitting and following the Camp by the #mkict hashtag.
@melinachan maintains an mkict list.
Laurence Millar will give out a kickstart keynote for Mekong ICT Camp 2010.
Laurence Millar is an independent advisor in the use of ICT by governments, and Editor at Large for FutureGov magazine. His career has included work in the public and private sector, in the UK, USA, Asia and New Zealand. From 2004, he led the New Zealand e-government programme providing leadership in strategy and policy, establishing a foundation of shared infrastructure, and maintaining oversight of government ICT investment; he finished in the role of NZ Government CIO on 1 May 2009.
He has written and spoken extensively about the importance of open government to strengthen trust between government and the people. He believes passionately in the power of open government data to support a more effective dialog between citizens, businesses, civil society (NGOs) and government
Governments in USA, UK, Australia and New Zealand, as well as international oragnizations such as the World Bank have all launched catalogs of data that is available for reuse. There is a growing collection of freely available software tools (such as Gapminder, Many Eyes, and Swivel) being used by engaged citizens in the community and businesses. In addition, communities around the world are developing applications to provide better insight into the business of government.
Open government data and citizen-led measurement provide a focus to improve understanding of government performance, increase transparency, strengthen trust in government, and deliver better value to citizens.
You can read more of his opinions at www.gvg.net.nz
It’s now not possible to have more people stay in the Camp. We just don’t have any bed left.
What we can do is suggest you an accom nearby, Baan Plaidoi (reservation), it’s 15 mins drive to the Camp.
Or an accom in the city: Holiday Garden (reservation) and Chiang Mai Flora (info [at] chiangmaiflora.com). Or any place in that Huay Keaw or Nimmanhemin areas). Some instructors stay in Holiday Garden. Chiang Mai Flora is near BarCamp venue on June 12.
We will provide local transportation between these accommodations and the Camp daily.
See this map to make your decisions: Mekong ICT Camp map.
Kinyei team, Justin Lorenzon and Melina Chan, will run several sessions in this coming Mekong ICT Camp 2 on SMS for agricultural applications, SMS gateway, running a cause using social media, and online fund raising.
Justin shares his thoughts on ICT for Mekong development:
Disruptive ICT, such as technology that enables grassroots social movements and high value social networks under difficult geographic or political conditions, comprise the most powerful tools available today for communities to achieve their own development. We believe that the Mekong region represents perfect grounds for ICT to operate for social betterment, combining an emerging connected youth with huge opportunities and needs for social change.
Kinyei supports local, primarily youth-led social projects and enterprises with business coaching, social media training, and technology services. Exploring innovative volunteer engagement models and social media platforms, we aim to introduce projects to the global conversation, leveraging the support, ideas and engagement of supporters of social change worldwide.
Coming from a background in enterprise information management systems, Justin has been working with IT in Cambodia for about 2 years. In 2001 he came to develop IT programmes and infrastructure for some rural universities, and do some software engineering capacity building in Phnom Penh. More recently, he’s been working with Kinyei to try and find ways of using IT to connect local social projects and enterprises with the global community. Justin is also currently working on an ACIAR funded project to develop a social-networky agriculture sector support service over SMS.
Melina has a background in business and entrepreneurship, but has always been passionate about projects emerging from grassroots communities. Relocating to Battambang, Cambodia with the AusAid Youth Ambassadors program in 2008, she has worked with local NGOs, social projects and businesses, most recently with Kinyei organisation. She is also interested in emergent event formats and runs the cross-discipline “Trampoline” unconference in Australia.
Tharum Bun wrote this small piece for us.
While Mekong ICT Camp’s hope of educating new generation of technologists and citizen-journalists to enhance their capacity so that they can contribute more to their communities, the week-long workshop is essentially an opportunity that enables people from the region to gather to exchange their skills, knowledge, in particular culture. The 2008 camp in Chonburi Province’s Thammasat University Learning Resort, has more or less inspired participants to go beyond what they learned.
– Tharum Bun, a 2008 Mekong ICT camper
Tharum Bun is journalist and digital media specialist. He writes as a freelancer for Asian Correspondent, a web-based newspaper that focuses on Asia; he also covers news stories for The Phnom Penh Post, Cambodia’s oldest English newspaper. In digital media, he advises news organizations to make the most of web technologies, building and engaging targeted audience.
Timetable for 2010 Camp is now available [pdf]. While we say it’s a draft
version, the actual one, that we going to have during June 7-12, will be more or less identical to this version.
Noted that while in the timetable stated that we have three tracks (information-management, communication-advocacy, technology-infrastructure) in three rooms, this 2010 Camp will have one spare room for any ad-hoc session. So in total we will actually have four rooms, three planned and one ad-hoc.
As always emphasized, we encouraged everybody to present their ideas or host their own sessions during Mekong ICT Camp and also in BarCamp Chiang Mai a day after. Some of the BarCampers always registered are include those from Sierra Leone, Hong Kong, Kolkata, Yangon, Hamburg, Knaresborough, and Chittagong. This is YOUR international chance.
Now we working hard on collaborating with all participants regarding traveling tickets and documents. If anyone of you haven’t reply back e-mails from our logistic staff Nattawaj Kijratanakoson yet (email: mekongict [at] mekongict.org), please do it so hurry – or we will have to give up your place.
Btw, we would like to thank you all of our sponsors: Open Society Institute, ThaiHealth Global Link Initiative Program, Thailand Ministry of ICT, Internews, Siam Commercial Bank, Friedrich Naumann Foundation, Southeast Asian Center for e-Media, Thailand Software Industry Promotion Agency, 3BB Broadband, Bank of Thailand, and Thailand Convention & Exhibition Bureau, who made this coming 2010 Camp possible.
See you in Chiang Mai.
We confirmed the plan for Mekong ICT Camp.
The Camp will be held on June 7-12, 2010, in Chiang Mai.
Situation in Bangkok is calmed down. Chiang Mai is safe. Camp venue and transportation are unaffected. We continue our plan for the camp — no change.
Of your interest, news about general situation in Thailand can be read from many news outlets, for English-language ones they include CNN – Thailand, BBC Asia-Pacific, The Independent [UK] – Asia, Times Online [UK] – Asia, and Aljazeera – Asia-Pacific. You can also follow this “bangkok-redshirt-protest” list by @timokl1, a German lives in Bangkok, and this “conflict-in-bangkok” list by @emjacobi of Digital Democracy.
