Georgia’s #Futurespotters 2nd bi-weekly took place May 6th! There were several different topics touched upon, such as the upcoming #twitterstorm on Monday, horizon2020 and linking decision makers with civil society.
Linking Civil Society with Decision Makers and each other
@Khatuna started with explaining UNDPs current ideas; how to facilitate for these new interesting innovative ideas, projects and organizations. Basically, UNDP is wondering how they can create a mechanism or a way to get the ideas on board: how could UNDP could facilitate for projects that are innovative? An idea that was brought up was linking civil society with the right decision makers and with each other. Not only on an individual bases, but perhaps on a broader scale: organizing fairs for civil society. These are just ideas thus far, but it does link great with what came out of the Georgia workshop: many of the participants had as challenges that they are unable to get the government on board, to see actual change happen.
@Elene Margvelashvili added to this discussion that although they have good contacts at the right institutions, there is, for example at tbilisi city hall, not one person responsible for communications with civil society. So for every problem, they are directed to another department, and the departments don’t work well together. It would be great if we could convince the municipalities to organize this more smoothly. Something which perhaps UNDP can help with.
Another issue which was raised was the fact that the ‘old’ institutions are frowning upon meeting in a not office space. From having conferences not in a fancy hotel but in a cafe, to having brainstorming sessions in unconventional locations. The idea that creativity might be blocked by fancy-schmancy surroundings seems not have landed with your ordinary donors, NGOs and government institutions. A good way to change their views is to probably show how beneficial an out of the box location can be!
Horizon2020 and Open Source Software
Then there is the Horizon2020 topic which was discussed in response to @Alberto’s post about open source software and digital literacy: “We could try and teach people to install Linux, and then teach other, who would teach others”
@ericnbarrett, Jumpstart, was very excited about the idea and added:
“What do you think about the model of having local, in our case Georgian, people who have experience in using various technologies such as Linux, open-source packages, etc. responding to local lack of knowledge/expertise? For example, we have set up a local group with the Georgian School of Journalism to share our experience in data journalism around a MOOC, but the possibilities are endless (Linux, design, data collection/analysis, etc). These groups are made up of volunteers (we are volunteers).”
I guess we should set up a discussion about this on the platform, I believe it could be a great project! And to add to that, perhaps we should not only focus on youth, but add governmental institutions to this. Khatuna mentioned there is currently a similar project happening at the Georgian Ministry of Justice, but based on the experience of civil society in Georgia, Governmental institutions often don’t do certain things, because it is too costly. However, when shown that these issues could be tackled with open software or innovative approaches (such as Elva’s air quality project), they are much more inclined to work on it. Let’s brainstorm some more about this topic!
We also came back to the idea of creating an app to report Election fraud (as the elections will be this June already!). Inge and Eric agreed to work together on this, using Open Kit Data, gathering data using mobile phones and summarizing this data online in real time.
OpenStreet Map Georgia
Abother project which was mentioned and should be on the platform as well is openstreet map georgia. It is organized by jeff Haack and they will have a mapping party on Saturday the 17th: “Maps and Beer, what could be more fun!? We’ll meet up at a pub, get organized, and go out for some urban mapping. Then return to the pub for beers and editing. We’ll map a chunk of Tbilisi, get to know each other, and learn more about mapping and OpenStreetMap along the way.” Anyone interested should join!
Our final topic related to Iare Pekhit. As they are a start-up they are facing many challenges. One of the issues was the fact that they have only one Netbook. When Elene mentioned this, Eric right away jumped in and said Jumpstart would donate two netbooks to Iare Pekhit! Another reason why linking innovators, NGOs and social movements with one and each other: we can actually help each other in so many ways!
Funding is another issues, as they only have funding for the next 3 months, so they are worried about this. If anyone has some ideas how we can help them out, that would be great.
They are also thinking of creating a membership and a board: either a board of review, or a board of directors. Eric said that a board of review really works well for jumpstart: what project works and what doesn’t, trying to get the harsh truth.
Elene also mentioned that they desperately need an action plan. Below are the topics that they are currently working on and could use anyone’s input/help:
“We want to identify upcoming pedestrian unfriendly locations on a daily bases”
One way to tackle this issue could be by working with openstreet map georgia. If Iare pekhit would like, they could also record pedestrian issues, then you can ask all those people who are active for open street map, to also look at these things. The good thing of this is that changes will also be documented over time: improvements and deterioration, etc.
We had some really good positive outcomes for our second bi-weekly meeting:
- Georgia's \#futurespotters need to be linked with decisionmakers, UNDP is already thinking about how to do this
- Inge and Eric will be working together on an election monitoring app.
- Jumpstart is very interested in the Horizon2020 program: teaching open-source software in georgia.
- Iare Pekhit has 2 new netbooks and will contact openstreet maps Georgia!
And not to forget, jumpstart is organizing the “Hack Me Some Land Registration” event, where they will try to answer the following questions: One of the most important parts of this event will be deciding how to use this information. What ideas do you have? What types of analysis will this allow us to conduct that we can’t now? What will this data shed light on that we need to know in a society governed in a transparent way? What data can we combine this with to do more advanced analysis? company registry data? party finance data? procurement data? What makes sense? How can we then communicate this data? visualize it?
@Boris, @Ninutsa Nanitashvili, @Cristina_Maza, @Mamaduka, @Heather Y, and anyone else I forgot to ping here: please see where you can join in! Perhaps at the openstreet map event and the land registration event? Volunteers are needed! Or if you have any other way you could share your social capital: great!