Dear Colleagues, I wanted to give you a brief update on the Jhai PC and communication system. There is also new and thorough information, including a Powerpoint show, at <www.jhai.org/jhai_remoteIT.htm>
* We have seven (7) working open-source, open-design, low-power, rugged Jhai PC v.1.6's at present. All are fully tested on a network. Altogether our Jhai PCs have run over eight months constantly without crashing. * I go to the Navajo Nation on June 7 to present at a board meeting of the Window Rock Unified School District. We begin implementation of of our proof of concept of the Jhai PC and communication system on June 8, God willing. - We will ship the antennas that go on the roof of their school and access points to Sawmill today for the district's test and use. - We have developed a .uml report (a special engineering report that describes all software and hardware components and is almost infinitely flexible in terms of relating one piece of data to another), a users document, an assembly document, an easily transferable version of the open source software, a bill of materials, and drawings. - We have all the power and network components on hand or (in the case of the solar equipment) locally sourced. - We have developed technical support staff, backup staff, methods, training, and documentation for both hardware and software. - We have already secured consent from the village and cooperation from the Tribe's telecom commission. - We will implement a network with four machines on the electrical grid and one machine on solar. - We'll make a phone call to Kevin Fagan of the San Francisco Chronicle as soon as we set up at his request. Kevin wrote a series of stories about us in 2003. * We remain in a careful preparation phase on agreements with Datamation Foundation Trust in India, Gems of the Earth in Brazil, and Amity Foundation in China. I will announce agreements as they are finalized. We are in an earlier stage of discussion with several programs and one network, the Women's International Leadership Programme associated with the Desmond Tutu Peace Centre and Glenda Wildschudt, to do a beta in the Southern part of Africa. * We are in a long-term partnership with Teachers without Borders (TWOB) and Cisco Foundation extending at least to the end of 2006. We have funding from Intel targeted for the Navajo proof of concept. We are in the beginning stages of discussions with Intel and other IT companies on potential long term partnership relationships. We welcome further conversations. We are searching for partners to help us develop a one card version of the Jhai PC and for joint field testing. * Amity Foundation's <www.amityfoundation.org.cn> General Secretary is visiting us on June 6. Jhai will seek a meeting of the minds. If we are successful in this work, Amity's implementation will be historic. Representatives from IT companies will be on hand for a get-acquainted dinner. * The original village, Phon Kham, Lao PDR, is seeking permission through their own efforts for an IT implementation there. We are also exploring the possibility of an implementation of the Jhai PC and communication system in Laos with remote coffee growers. * We are pursuing the design of a website that will allow end-users and their implementing organizations (initially) to communicate among themselves with the help of translation services, seamlessly and securely. This website will quickly be open to people seeking to implement low power IT solutions of any kind as well. It will work for people with Pentium One or equivalent computers or better. It will link to site(s) where people are networking, especially in an open design way, on low power and alternative power engineering solutions and inventions for technological innovations. At the moment I find this site useful and it might be linked to on our new site (still, as I said, in the design stage): <http://www.peswiki.com> By the way, the Fair Trade people are coming to certify the Jhai Coffee Farmers Cooperative's coffee this month according to the last report from them. The coffee is so good! It is for sale through Thanksgiving Coffee <http://www.thanksgivingcoffee.com/> and our website at <http://www.jhaicoffee.com/> We've had a pretty good year, I think. I know we have worked very hard and we have very good relationships, now, on all continents. I think this is going to be the make-or-break year for Jhai. I am confident we will be able to help local folks solve their computing and communication problems in a sustainable way. I expect we will set up a virtual consulting firm that makes sense for end-users, computer companies, and funding agencies. I believe this work will garner worldwide support and publicity, especially since we will be doing all this on an open-source, open-design basis. I am eager for any feedback you might give us and any advice you have for us. I hope you see fit to fund us and help us. Donations can be given through our <website http://www.jhai.org/> or through the address below. Every little bit helps. If you are a funding agency that has been waiting for us to 'show you the money' ... here we are. If you would like to partner with us, please be patient and I will get back to every one of you. If you are press, please send your inquiries to our coordinators, Jesse Thorn at <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> and Earl Mardle at <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> or to me. We appreciate your help very much. My goal is to give this gift to Navajo families before my 62nd birthday on June 22. We expect to begin the next implementation, a beta, by the end of the year, God willing. I feel like I'm under orders from Sgt. Friday of the old Dragnet TV series who used to say: 'just the facts, sir'. This is not exactly my usual way of doing things. I have worked with lower income communities, now, for 35 years. One thing I know: nobody, except religious hermits, likes to be poor...and I am not certain that hermits like it either. At the same time, just about everybody believes in and feels a need to keep their traditions. What we are offering through this, now, three year exercise are: * a way for rural poor people to keep their traditions and * communicate and do deals with people in their Diasporas and * use computing power in the ways they choose, including making a little more money in ways that they choose and that empowers themselves and * a method - that has worked for us in ALL our programs - to plan carefully these efforts as businesses that cover ALL costs, including replacement. What we do is respectful and grounded work with grounded people using cutting edge technology. Jane Ellice Hopkins once said, "Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains." Well, I'm pretty sure we are not geniuses (Lee Felsenstein excepted), but I can tell you this process to date has involved at least a million details and has been very painful at times. We've done our best, that we know ... and we are here, now, thanks to you. Please join us as you can ... through cooperation and through gifts of time and money. Yours, in Peace, Lee ------------------------------------ Lee Thorn chair, Jhai Foundation 350 Townsend St., Ste. 309 San Francisco, CA 94112 1 415 344 0360 www.jhai.org [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------ ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: <http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/>
