|
|
FUNREDES : WHAT'S NEW? : 1999
News from 1999
Methodology and Social Impact of the Information and Comunication Technologies in America
1999-12-14
see the full story
Funredes Hosts a Wide Variety of Virtual Communities - See Them Here
1999-11-30
see the full story
A Study of Languages, Culture and the Internet: Between 1996 and 1998, Funredes performed a study on the topic of languages and culture. The results of this study are available in English, French and Spanish
1999-11-26
see the full story
Funredes Prepares for New Website Launch
1999-09-13
see the full story
Funredes in the Media
1999-08-02
A pamphlet has been published in Spanish, completing the presentation already available in French.
The written press mentioned Funredes on various occasions: the MISTICA project (specifically the Dominican national press), the study on "languages and cultures" (French, Spanish press, etc.)
Several Dominican TV channels reported on the Samaná meeting organized in the framework of the MISTICA project.
Recent Services Provided
1999-08-01
Funredes is a non-profit association. However, as there is no philanthropic support that would help its actions, money for the stationary expenses (i.e. office rent) and wages come from contracts. Our principle is to maintain "mutual profit relationships" with enterprises and therefore we do not compete with them on their market. However, we propose our services (mainly web site construction and hosting, and seminaries on the information society) to non-profit entities: other NGO, cooperation agencies, etc.
civicus-alc: web site and Latino-American electronic conferences. It is part of the CIVICUS NGO that gathers actors of the global civil society (partially private access).
enda-caribe: improvement of the site of the NGO enda-caribe, and training of its webdesigners.
French Embassy: from the content provided by the Embassy, we developed the graphic presentation of this site, which we host as well.
UL: Funredes organized the electronic library of the Latin Union (private access).
Nesst: the Nesst ONG (The Nonprofit Enterprise and Self-Sustainability Team) is hosted on the Funredes server.
latest news: Funredes has signed an agreement with the Orientation portal for the license in Dominican Republic. To honour this contract, we shall create a special structure: Telesinergia, C por A.
Recent Publications and Research
1999-08-01
We have translated into English the latest edition of the study dedicated to the place of the Latin languages and cultures on the Internet.
Funredes presented three abstracts to answer the call for papers launched by the Internet Society for its INET'99 conference. Two of them were presented as articles ("Users Training: A Crucial but Ignored Issue in Remote Collaborative Environments", by Daniel Pimienta and Catherine Dhaussy, and "Web Conferencing Systems Are Not Providing Virtual Communities with Proactivity: Some Methodology Is Required!", by the same authors in cooperation with Franck Fourmental, Ricardo Gómez, Senaida Jansen and Marina Urquidi), while the last one remained at the stage of abstract ("Measuring Languages in the Internet: A Methodology Based on Counting Word Occurrences With Search Engines", by Daniel Pimienta and Daniel Prado). However, none of these papers has been chosen for INET sessions.
Daniel Pimienta participated in the writing of a document expressing a common position of several networks in Latin America and in the Caribbean on the NCDNHC ("Non-Commercial Domain Name Holders Constituency").
In addition to MISTICA, Funredes members actively participate in various electronic conferences.
Updates to Our Website
1999-07-31
Until last October, our work had been progressing according to the free time we could get; the result is mentionned in the last "what's new?". Since then, we have tried to hold to our commitments, but unpredicted events, linked to human and technical resources, have slowed down our work.
However, we started, and sometimes even finalized, several projects:
end of October: publication of the page "what's new at Funredes" in Spanish, French, and English
November: partial revision of the French home page
November: introduction of an on-line synthesis about Funredes (French version only)
November and December: formal revision (spelling and basic presentation) of various pages in French
publication of several vacancies available in our NGO
December: updating of the French version of the pages dedicated to Funredes Internet professional seminars (version in French)
December: nearly complete update of the French version of Funredes reference documents (version in English also available)
presentation of our staff in the Dominican Republic, with links towards the personal pages of each employee (French version only)
edition of "Education for the Democracy", by José Bernardo Toro. The article was put on-line on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Right. The article is available in Spanish only.
introduction of an improved version of the Funredes logo on the home page; the picture will be finished in the following months.
Web design contest (see the following point)
new presentation of the site dedicated to the project on Latin languages and cultures on the Internet, and translation into English of the studies led last year
during this period, an important work of preparation (diagnosis, studies, restructuring documentation, recommendations, etc.) has also been conducted.
Web Design Contest
1999-07-31
To improve the appearance of its web site, Funredes decided by the end of December to launch a contest designed to collect some aesthetic proposals for a revision of the page design. From December 23, 1998 to January 31, 1999, 11 candidates sent their works. The results, ratified on April 1st, 1999, allow Funredes to have a graphic chart from which it can now start to recast its site. at least as far as the appearance of its pages is concerned.
Present Situation
Much remains to be done to fill the gaps and to answer the paradoxes of the Funredes presence on the Web: the content of the site tends to become old, new components have not been sufficiently integrated, the modernity of methods sometimes collides with technical resources, etc.
However, visitors continue to come, as shown by the statistics: our server's pages receive currently more than 3000 "hits" per day and this figure is in constant increase.
Perspectives
It becomes imperative to improve radically the whole funredes.org in order to answer to the expectations of both new and old visitors. Moreover, we want to offer a harmonious picture between the projects we are able to realize externally and our own server.
Perspectives are not bad, especially as the recruitment process we have been leading for several months (see human ressources) is bearing fruits:
on the technical level: on the one hand, with the arrival of two professionals of the field -a Cuban technician due to arrive soon, and a young French who will join us in November- a computer team of international quality is being created. On the other hand, a program of cooperation with the IDRC (Unganisha) should enable us to train a Dominican system administrator, and therefore help us to reinforce our department.
on the aesthetics level: Mike Field, a young Canadian intern financed by the IISD, has joined us in mid-June. He will be working at least half-time on the Funredes site for six months
as far as the structure and the maintenance are concerned, the arrival of Olivier Kuhn, a French information specialist specialized in the domain of NTIC, should lead to the improvement of the architecture, of the access to information and of the site ergonomics.
Expansion Within Funredes
1999-07-31
The recruiting process had lasted from November 24 to December 14 1998 (except for the position of network administrator, that was closing later), and took the form of classifieds published on the Funredes web site. The underlying "philosophy" of that effort was to look for "young professionals" that would be interested an experience on the field. We were looking for professionals either from Latin America (Cuba, Venezuela, Mexico...), or from an industrialized country. Initially, it was planned to have every new "international" employee work along with one young Dominican having the incentive and faculties to receive a complementary training.
The job offers were as follows:
System Administration (Unix based Internet server)
Human Resources Management (Personnel supervisor)
Information and Documentation (esp. for an activity linked to a specific e-conf methodology)
Translation English-French-Spanish (esp. for an activity linked to a specific e-conf methodology)
Electronic Conference Facilitation
Web Authoring
Graphics Design
Internet Applications Programming (Java or equivalent, database, CGI-bin, etc.)
Public Relations and Communication
We have eventually received more than 150 answers and selected a third for a second stage of selection. The quasi-totality of the exchanges has been achieved by electronic mail, and apart from some telephone conversations and some pictures available on the Web, we didn't know anything about the physical characteristics of newcomers -however, these have been easily identified on their arrival at the airport :-)
Finally, a dozen of active youngsters (of 21 at 35 years, average of age 26) has been selected. The details concerning the new staff are presented in the following point.
New Arrivals and Departures in Funredes
1999-07-31
It is important to specify that the Internet hiring process makes the trial period particularly important. We are now mentioning the newcomers who remained beyond the three initial months of the trial period.
Wilson Taveras: Dominican trainee hired on contractual basis from November 15th 1998 to January 15th 1999 to manage the Funredes lists. He put some order in the lists and therefore got a training in a field that was new for him.
Olivier Kuhn: biblioteconomist and ICT information officer, he joined Funredes February 2nd to work on informational and graphic design (web editing, booklets, logo...) and has the ambition to participate in the management of various projects (MISTICA, CARITIC...), to participate in the reflection on the "Internet and development", and to lead training actions.
Guensly Joseph: Haitian Dominican hired on February 11th as a trainee. He intends to get a training in computer graphics and has been since mid-May an employee in the group of edition of the Funredes web site. He will continue with training in this field (HTML, Java, graphics, etc.); he might head thereafter toward activities more bound to documentation.
Alexandra Bonnamy: joined Funredes on March 19th. It is her first job, after having studied in France Language studies and Hispanic civilizations and information and enterprise documentation. Mainly within the EMEC group, Alexandra Bonnamy will take care of aspects bound to translation and documentation.
Gaëtan Inimod: Martinican programmer specialized in electronic edition, IHM and educational engineering who came to Funredes for a mission of three weeks in May. The objective of his mission was to give technical support in system administration, to contribute to reflections concerning the electronic edition and to participate to the Samaná conference.
Cyril Boudou: from April 20th by June 7th he did his final compulsory internship, necessary for his IUT degree in socio-cultural animation, in the "Management of the humanitarian action and help to the development" (Academic Institute of Technology Michel of Montaigne, University of Bordeaux III).
Ivan D. Kulis: after studies in economics in Zagreb (Croatia), in modern languages at the university of Parma (Italy), and in development studies at the London School of Economics (United Kingdom), he joined Funredes on April 28th to work on topics relative to the Caribbean culture. Since his arrival, Ivan Kulis has been integrated within the EMEC group; he also participates in the CARIBCAD project.
Mike Field: during the six months of his internship, from June 9th to December 10th, according to an agreement with the IISD, he works half time on renovation of the structure and the aesthetics of the Funredes web site. The rest of his time is dedicated to various projects involving the HTML programming.
Joelle Leboeuf: with a master's degree in English and trained in documentation technics, she arrived on June 15th. After having already worked in Dominican Republic -at the Santiago historic archives- Joelle Leboeuf joins Funredes to work mainly as a translator and information specialist.
Funredes has just welcomed in its team two young Dominican trainees, Oscar Rojas and Javier Valdez, who study, respectively, in data processing at the UASD (Autonomous University of Santo Domingo) and in civil engineering at the UNPHU (University national Pedro Henríquez Ureña).
News of Our Projects
1999-07-31
CARIBCAD
CARIBCAD is a project that has begun in September 1997. The general presentation in English is available at http://funredes.org/caribcad.
Since October 1998, we have brought some important graphic improvements to the web site. Moreover, Funredes organizes regularly coordination meetings with the Dominican partners (University PUCMM and CAO-DAO TecAm office). Finally, we have offered a framework to the technical meetings that took place between the Dominican team and the Technical University of Delft in April.
In this project Funredes is on the one hand in charge of the communication between partners and of the local coordination of the project. On the other hand, it is also in charge of the diffusion of results and the setting up of a web site that should permit subcontracting of CAD jobs. We have already produced:
an report on the possibilities of use of e-commerce in the project
a set of propositions concerning elements required for the setting up of a subcontracting site
The following weeks and months will be dedicated to the setting up of a web site model aiming to present offers for subcontracting. Moreover, it will develop an adequate model through which the CAD suppliers will be able to answer these calls.
MISTICA
MISTICA (Methodology and Social Impact of Information and Communication Technologies in America) is a FUNREDES project financed by the International Development Research Center (IDRC) and the Foundation for the Human Progress (FPH). Intended to last for two years, the project revolves around two axes: around the reinforcing of actors who deal with the NICT in Latin America and the Caribbean, and around the experimentation of a methodology designed for the communication inside virtual communities.
The public part began in February 1999, by the creation of a discussion list; since then, we have organized an international meeting at Samaná and improved in the development of the project. We have the following aims by the end of the summer: finishing the complete renovation of the web site project, opening of a "clearinghouse" (site of reference concerning the available resources on the topic) and introduction of the EMEC methodology (multilingual electronic conference management, see the presentation) in the diffusion list. Moreover, we have launched a call for proposals in order to fund some pilot applications.
Expansion
In October, once the last members will be integrated within the team, Funredes should be complete. Therefore, the internal "expansion" project is not in an active phase. However, spontaneous candidacies (especially from Portuguese-speaking people :-) !) are welcome, and are to be sent to expansion@funredes.org.
CARITIC
Status: project accepted, but not yet begun. The title of the project means "Caribbean: Integration, Technologies of Information and Cooperation". This project aims to manage actions in the field of ICT for the Caribbean integration in the context of cooperation. A first presentation will be available soon at http://funredes.org/caritic. Forums will be opened, as well as a reference site on the Caribbean cooperation.
Formulated projects
PREDESTICAR la salud: project on the prevention of natural disasters in the Caribbean area.
News of Our Conferences
1999-07-31
On the occasion of the fortnight of the French speaking countries AUF-REHRED in Haiti, Daniel Pimienta intervened at the French institute of Port-Au-Prince on the opening day (March 15th) on the theme "A Space in the Internet for non-US languages and cultures? The case of the Latin World".
Amauris Espinal went to Panamá from the January 12th to 15th on the first Central American conference on network security. The objective of this seminar was to offer Central America and Caribbean system administrators an intensive -theoretical as well as practical- teaching in the field of computer network security.
Keysi Guerrero participated in Merida (Venezuela) on a training seminar organized by the Internet Society from June 14th to June 19th, to deepen her competencies in HTML edition and programming.
The RDDH has organized a meeting in Port-Au-Prince (Haiti) on June 2nd 1999, in order to attempt to solve the situation provoked by mistakes of the IANA in 1997 in the Top Level Domain (TLD) .ht. Daniel Pimienta participated to this meeting; its results are available at: http://funredes.org/funredes/ht-tld.html.
From June 21st to 25th Catherine Dhaussy attended at San Jose (United States) the Internet Society INET'99 conference. A partial account (in French) can be read on the ISOC-France site, at http://www.isoc.asso.fr/serv/inet/inet1999.htm. It is also possible to download a full version at http://funredes.org/catherine/inet99/CRinet99.rtf (95K).
Fracture numérique, fracture sociale, fracture de paradigme (Espagnol), Daniel Pimienta, 7/2007
1999-06-15
see the full story
|
