Interactive, Fun, & Practical “Smart Technology for Smarter Business” Seminars in Bahrain & Morocco
2nd March 2007
The Smart Technology for a Smarter Business Program is a highly practical training curriculum that enables small business owners and managers to build smarter businesses with technology. Unlike traditional training experiences that focus on either technology or business, the program targets the integration of both. Multi-faceted, innovative, and experiential, the program addresses 19 different business topics, in 5 different languages, and includes case scenarios, virtual entrepreneurs, technology demos and activities, facilitated discussions, and computer-based simulations. It introduces up-to-date technologies in the marketplace that are accessible worldwide. Read the rest of this entry »
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In November 2006, IESC’s Access to International Markets through Information Technology (AIM-IT) program sponsored seventeen Lebanese ICT companies in exhibiting and participating in the Gulf Information Technology Exhibition (GITEX). The 26th edition of GITEX, one of the largest ICT exhibitions in the world, was held at the Dubai International Convention and Exhibition Centre.
Moussa Keita, a Malian and 2004 Geekcorps volunteer, has been awarded a highly coveted fellowship to attend the TEDGlobal Conference in Arusha, Tanzania in June. The annual conference is an invite-only event with attendees who are luminaries from the worlds of technology, entertainment and design.
Geekcorps Mali’s most resounding skills-transfer success was with local volunteer Moussa Keita and BottleNet. By training Moussa to install the WiFi technology across Mali, Geekcorps Mali helped him launch his own enterprise. That company, Zirasun, now provides a variety of technology services as it too passes on technology skills. 
Cybertigi, based in Mali, is a project aimed at extending the ICT services available in relatively urban centers outward to village sized (and smaller) communities. The goal is to design and build a system which addresses the basic communication demands of rural communities, and construct it in such a way that it can be an autonomous, entrepreneur-based, and commercially viable system shortly after its implementation.
The Geekcorps BottleNet Antenna is a low-cost antenna that can be used for television and WiFi. The antenna uses materials that are easily available in Mali, including plastic water bottles, used motorcycle parts, window screen cuttings and coaxial cables. This approach minimizes the technical skills needed to build the antennas and significantly reduces costs.
Aboubacrine Touré admits to having become somewhat of a local celebrity in Bourem Inaly, a remote community about 30 kilometers west of Tombouctou on the Niger river in northern Mali. While he is the director of the local community radio station, Radio Beeray (Respect), he is best known throughout the region as the host of Journal of Journals, a weekly radio news program that airs every Sunday night.
In the village of Bourem Inaly, Mali there are over 120 television sets powered by 12-volt car batteries, but there is almost nothing to watch. With its CanTV project, Geekcorps has helped the local radio station stream video content to the local community over WiFi. The radio station, which rents these units out, benefits from a new monthly revenue stream while the villagers benefit with an improved source of news and entertainment.
IESC Geekcorps staff and volunteers in Mali designed a Desert PC to withstand a high heat, high dust, low electricity environment. It is the first rugged PC custom built from available parts to survive the harsh desert environment of northern Mali and provide affordable Internet access for a remote community there. While the individual technologies used to build it are not new, the configuration, location, and application are new and unique. 
“Juba was already in bad shape when I left,” said Lado Kenyi, who fled his home in Juba, Sudan, in 1991 during the Sudanese civil war. He hasn’t visited Sudan since then and wanted to return to his motherland, but not just to visit family; he wanted to do something more substantial to help Sudan.
