Liechtensteinischen Development Service (LED) Visit
| July 14th, 2009Finaly I visited the Liechtenstein Development Service (Liechtenstein Entwicklungs Dienst LED) and talked with Rudolf Batliner on Wednesday, July 1st 2009 in Schaan, Liechtenstein.
Liechtenstein Development Service / Liechtenstein Entwicklungs Dienst
During the visit Rudolf Batliner told me about current LED engagements related to internet and computing.
Infonet-Biovison Project
LED is financially supporting the “BioVision” foundation (Stiftung) to build a knowledge base for enviromental agricultre for farmers in East Africa. The goal is to give farmers easy access to important agricultral farming information. The project did setup an internet platform at http://www.infonet-biovision.org. The concern that the people will simply not have Internet connectivity to access the platform was dismissed when they found out, that even in the most remote areas people had access to the Internet if they wanted to. Due to the good graphical, visual navigation of the platform it was a great surprise was, that the farmers woman had no difficulties finding all their required information on the platform.
Another positive surprise was the good feedback the project received from their users, the farmers. A good example is a woman that suggested that it would make sense to take a picture of a problematic plant, send via their mobile phone (MMS) to the platform and to then receive problem solving suggestions via email 10 minutes later. This one feedback was evaluated but was put onhold because of current technical challenges but it demonstrates the engagement of the platform users.
Along the online information the project produced an offline version in the form of a CD/DVD. To further bring the agricultural information to the target audience the proejct created a paper based monthly magazine called TOF. Interestingly only groups of about 6-7 farmers can get the magazine. This overcomes the literal (reading skills) limitation of some farmers. This causes farmers to explain to their peer farmers the content and promotes agricultural discussions within the group. The magazines and CD/DVDs are distributed at farmer markets. Yet another project is the TOF Radio with agricultural information news. The radio based knowlege transfer triggerd an increase in the paper an online based information platform.
Rudolf Batliner made clear to me, that those farmers farm to survive, not to maximise their standard of living but to simply survive from one day to the next. Due to this fact the farmers do not have the time to think long term or to experiment with new technology. Esay accessible knowledge is the basis of the project.
From books to electronic information resources
Books and Libraries are the default knowledge database for schools. But books do not scale very good as they are expensive, difficult to distribute, soon outdated, and partly just not available. To move forward from paper based books to electronic forms of knowledge is a key factor. The project bought 50 laptops through the medicor Stiftung. I smiled when Rudolf Batliner pointed out, that they did not want to distribute commercial software along the laptops but Open Source Software. Open Source Software has zero software licence costs and a culture of openness and sharing of information. Regarding the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project Rudolf Batliner mentioned, that the Bio-Vision project hand out OLPC laptops to kids and as a gift to their farming parents, they provide the offline version of the argricultural Infonet Biovision content. It was also clear, that this information must be freely available for all people, they must have the right to distribute the information to their friends and neighbouring farmers.
I want to thank Rudolf Batliner for his time and I hope that I can contribute to the LED with my Free and Open Source Software passion and knowledge.
