Portals on the brain
Posted on June 15, 2008 | Filed Under IWP, Conf, Wkshop, Training, News, Software
Several Knowledge Portals are springing up in different domains. It is interesting to see these. Here is information about some:
1.) The Water Portal was invited to a brainstorming meeting for a AYUSH (Ayurveda, Yoga & Naturopathy,Unani, Siddha, Homoepathy) Portal. The effort is being lead by FRLHT (www.frlht.org) and C-DAC, Pune. The brainstorming was very lively with much input from different particapants — government, NGO, industry, research. All good wishes to them. Photo above is from that session.
2.) National Knowledge Commission had a discussion of the Knowledge Portals that they have been trying to push. The attendees included ourselves, Center for Science and Environment which will be launching the Environment Portal www.indiaenvironmentportal.org, soon, ATREE which is working on a biodiversity Portal, Azim Premji Foundation which is working on a Teacher Training Portal, Apollo Hospitals on a Health Portal, and representatives from FICCI and Entrepreneurship Development Institute which are also involved in Portal efforts. Much animated discussion there too.
3.) In July, www.indg.in, India Development Gateway will be launched at a function in New Delhi by the President. Our best wishes to them ! and the Water Portal is planning to have a booth there.
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Water Portal — consultation in New Delhi
Posted on May 24, 2008 | Filed Under Arghyam, IWP, Conf, Wkshop, Training, Announcements, Indian Languages, Software, Volunteer
The Water Portal is planning an informal consultation with users and stakeholders on Saturday May 31st in New Delhi.
Date/Time: The meeting will be between 3:00 and 5:30pm on Saturday May 31st. The Solution Exchange Water Community has very kindly offered to facilitate the meeting at their offices :
UN Conference Hall
UN Building
55 Lodhi Road
New Delhi – 3
Landmark: Opposite India International Center Main Building
Agenda:
1.) To hear from users of the Portal about what they find useful on the Portal, and what we should work on to enhance the value of the Portal.
2.) To communicate new initiatives we are working on already, and get your feedback and suggestions for them. These include launching a Hindi version of the Portal soon (and after that more languages) and the use of other dissemination mechanisms including mobile phone and village kiosks
3.) An introduction to the Solution Exchange Water Community, an online community for sharing of experiences and knowledge.
4.) Sharada Prasad, India Water Portal staff member has been travelling on mobike across the country in the cause of water (see http://www.indiawaterportal.org/k2k). He will join us and share his photos and experiences from across the country. It will surely be an interesting discussion!
The event is open to the public, but please mail us (portal@arghyam.org) to let us know if you are coming in order to get an estimate of the size of the group. We look forward to hearing back from you and meeting up in New Delhi !
We request you to forward this mail to others who might be interested. For clarifications you could contact me at vijay@arghyam.org or 0-98801 37097
A request: As the Water Portal is an open platform for sharing of data and knowledge, we request you to bring with you useful data or other material that could be added to the Portal. It could be in soft- or hardcopy format.
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Listing of online communities - your input required !
Posted on May 18, 2008 | Filed Under Software, River Watch
We are starting a listing of water online groups / mailing lists. The first few are below, we request you to add comments with more listings, so that we can have a comprehensive listing.
=== On an earlier blog posting, C.P.Kumar of the National Institute of Hydrology posted an extensive collection of links and egroups on Hydrology:
http://www.indiawaterportal.org/blog/index.php/2007/11/15/hydrology-links/
=== “Ecological Sanitation in South Asia” is a recently started group for Ecosan adopters in South Asia
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ecosan-share-sa/
===”Ecosanres” : An international community on Ecological Sanitation. Quoting from the description:
Discussion and news within the Sida-sponsored EcoSanRes Programme managed by the Stockholm Environment Institute. Topical discussions dealing with various aspects of sustainable sanitation, the ecosan loop - hygiene, agriculture, sanitation, environment, policy, methodology, training, knowledge networks, regional activities, social acceptance, etc.
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/ecosanres/
=== Solution Exchange is a UN initiative for peer sharing of experience and resources. There are various communities, including a water community
http://www.solutionexchange-un.net.in
=== WaterWatch: Large audience high traffic group following water issues primarily in India and South Asia:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WaterWatch
=== WES-Net is a network of water and sanitation professionals in India
http://www.wesnetindia.org
=== Network of Indian River Basin Initiatives
http://groups.google.com/group/NIRBI
==== Uttarakhand River Action Network, recently formed as part of the Uttarakhand Nadi Bachao Andolan
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And He’s Off !!
Posted on April 24, 2008 | Filed Under Arghyam, IWP, News, Software
Sharada Prasad is leaving for his all-India trip in a couple of days.
Here’s a message from him on the occasion. Follow his trip on http://www.indiawaterportal.org/k2k
======
Hello Friends,
The day is almost here. I would be taking off on Saturday, 26th April at 9:00AM from Madivala Lake. The co-ordinates are 12.908700, 77.614846
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=12.908700,+77.614846&ie=UTF8&z=16&iwloc=addr
It will be a very informal ceremony. I will request you all to make it to the event to the extent possible. Please note that I need to leave exactly at 9:00AM just to reach Pondicherry in time for the first community interaction scheduled at around 17:00hrs.
In any case - here are the few words for people (Sripad and Lokesh) who started planning with me for the trip and for some or the other reasons will not be able to join me on this trip - I will surely miss you all. Without your ideas and support, I would have not thought of doing it.
Thanks to Ashwini Manjunath, Anand Alur, Nandini, Padmini, Ashok, Somashekhar, Lakshmi, Tulasi, Ranganath and many others who helped me get the right gear required for the trip.
Special thanks to Prashanth Pillai, Navroze Contractor, Raghavendra P and Srivatsa for the last minute help and support and to Santosh and Manju Moms for continuous encouragement.
I will be available on this BSNL number - +91 9480447094 . Leave a message. I will call you people back. I would be accessing internet intermittently. You can also leave a message with Manikeswari at my office on +91 - 080 - 41698941. She will convey the message the moment I am on network.
You can follow me on twitter - http://twitter.com/sharadaprasad . I will be updating my lat-long almost every two hours (you need to paste them into Google Maps search box to get my latest location). Depending upon the internet connection, I would be updating blogs, GPS tracks and photographs on http://www.indiawaterportal.org/k2k/ Please follow my ride there and leave your comments.
I am deeply indebted to Arghyam for the financial and logistic support and to its partners and friends for helping me with community interaction.
I will keep you guys posted.
So long, my friends.
Regards,
Sharada
========
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“Safe Drinking Water in Rural Areas” - confererence
Posted on April 21, 2008 | Filed Under Conf, Wkshop, Training, Announcements, Software
The Safe Drinking Water in Rural Areas conference was organised by Water Aid between 8-10 April in New Delhi. The conference covered several important areas including quality monitoring and GIS, legislation, arsenic and fluoride contamination and field testing kits.
Details of the conference including the draft recommendations are available at the WaterAid site:
http://www.wateraid.org/india/news/6561.asp
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PulseWire - bringing women together globally
Posted on February 17, 2008 | Filed Under Announcements, Software, Guest Posts
Forwarded to us by Ramya Ramanathan
=====
World Pulse, a global media organization covering world issues through women’s eyes has launched a new interactive global website called PulseWire, www.pulsewire.net, which enables women worldwide to speak for themselves to the world and connect to solve global problems. We are beginning our founding community by featuring and connecting the voices of top leaders in three areas that greatly impact women and girls: water sustainability, human trafficking & gender-based violence and HIV/AIDS. Take advantage of this special opportunity to be a founding online community member on PulseWire.
On PulseWire you can:
Connect with other like-minded folks in the PulseWire community, potential donors or investors by creating your own profile and journal; a perfect space to tell the community about your programs or business idea.
Exchange goods and services and post or find jobs, volunteers, scholarship/grant opportunities, resources and events on a global online bulletin board.
Build groups, working models, blueprints and best practices in a collaborative space.
To join the community log on to http://beta.pulsewire.net and enter the password: voices . Please note that PulseWire is not currently live to the public. The PulseWire team is testing the site with key voices like yourself and gathering feedback to make it a site that keeps growing and thriving.
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Volunteer task — photo repository
Posted on January 22, 2008 | Filed Under IWP, Software, Audio-Video, RWH, Volunteer
Its an obviously useful thing for India Water Portal to have a photo repository with a free-use-with-acknowledgement license of some sort. But we have not had the opportunity to think through all the details on this. What is the best way to create this (Google Picasa, Flickr or some other tool) ? What are the details of the copyright that we would use. How would users upload their photos ? Things like that.
If someone can help us on this, please contact us at portal@arghyam.org
Vijay Krishna
India Water Portal team
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Training program on Data Analysis using the SPSS package
Posted on November 18, 2007 | Filed Under Conf, Wkshop, Training, Announcements, Software
NOTE FROM THE WATER PORTAL STAFF
===================================
WE CANNOT RESPOND TO REQUESTS FOR MORE INFORMATION OURSELVES, YOU HAVE TO CONTACT SAMBODHI COMMUNICATIONS at HTTP://WWW.SAMBODHI.IN FOR MORE INFORMATION — THANK YOU !!!
=====
“Greetings from Sambodhi Research & Communications!
I write to share with you the details of a training programme being organised by us.
The programme titled ‘Basic & Advanced Data Analysis using SPSS‘ is to be held at New Delhi from 27-30 November 2007. The training is aimed at informing and capacitating practitioners and researchers to the use of SPSS for informed decision-making. This is going to be our sixth offering of this module.
Sambodhi’s previous programmes in this series have been subscribed by personnel from leading development organizations and projects including Action Aid, APMAS, BBC WST, CARE India, CRY, EHA, IFAD, MPRLP, Naandi Foundation, Oxfam GB, SKS Microfinance, UNICEF, UNDP, WaterAid (India) and Winrock International (India) as well as independent professionals.
Flyer for the programme containing more details is attached
”
www.sambodhi.co.in
======
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2007/2008 UN Human Development Report
Posted on November 18, 2007 | Filed Under Announcements, News, Software
The report will focus on “Fighting Climate Change: Human Solidarity in a Divided Role”
Along with the release of the report, the website will introduce a carbon footprint calculator for individuals
The report will be released on 27th November 2007.
More at : http://hdr.undp.org/en/
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Software tool for groundwater budgeting
Posted on October 22, 2007 | Filed Under Announcements, Software
Mr. R.V. Rama Mohan of Center for World Solidarity has come up with freeware (an Excel spreadsheet) to calculate the groundwater extraction vs. recharge in an area. He has made the software available to the public and is soliciting feedback. Comments may be sent to rvrm2@yahoo.com and we would also be interested in hearing the same at portal@arghyam.org
Click here to view the spreadsheet (rightclick to download the spreadsheet)
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