for W3c validation

Robert Steele was the KeyTone speaker and had a very thought provoking presentation. Definitely thinking outside the box — his main point was “Open everything”; government, bandwidth, education, etc. I’ll come back to his presentation later because there is no way I can quickly put all my thoughts together on all the topics he touched — there was way too much to think about. Steele really believes that the future depends on the resilency of neighborhoods.

Darren Barefoot talked about doing good in a systematic way — and since he is a geek like the rest of us at Gnomedex, he focused on doing good using technology. Darren felt he needs a “currency to evaluate good” – and named it the stacey, and measured everything in his presentation in terms of “stacies”.

Here are some tech projects you can participate in to do “good” —

• nabuur.com – crowdsourcing across the globe. Connecting neighbors and villages.
• Icouldbe.org – mentoring the next generation
• Geekcorps – helping geeks help those in need.
• Moulinwiki.org – taking wikipedia content off the internet and bring information to people with computers, but not internet
• NothingButNets.net – $10 buys a mosquito net to help prevent malaria. 826,000 nets have been bought to date.
• GiveMeaning – Allows you to raise funds for any cause. 100 must vote for it before you can raise money for your cause.

He also talked a bit about happiness & showed the satisfaction of life map on wikipedia. GetaFirstLife has been seen by 600,000 people. And they laughed for an average of 15 seconds each.

If you want to have a major impact, build infrastructure. Help others do good.

For those looking to really connect with others who want to use the internet to help the developing world (and the world in general) — check out WebofChange, a conference that is taking place September 19-23 on Cortes Island, BC.

Sorry if my notes don’t totally make sense.