AT THE CENTER
The electronic newsletter of the
Silicon Valley World Internet Center
Thursday, January 20, 2005
Past copies
of Newsletters and Directions
to the Center are available on the Web site.
All programs
are held at the Center unless otherwise noted.
To join our
community, click on this link: http://center.infopoint.com/join.php
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GREETINGS FROM DR.
SUSAN DUGGAN, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER OF THE SILICON VALLEY WORLD
INTERNET CENTER!
More information below.
********
SUMMARY: HOLIDAY POWER
PUB & PANEL: THURSDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2004
"eSUCCESSES IN SOUTH AFRICA: LEVERAGING TECHNOLOGY
FOR ADVANCEMENT"
Panelists included:
Dr. Joachim Schaper, Vice President Americas, SAP Research Center
&
Mr. Jay Visvanathan, Market Development Manager, Higher Education,
Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Summary and links below.
********
WORLD INTERNET CENTER'S GALA: NEW DATE
TO BE ANNOUNCED SOON!!! GALA WILL NOT BE HELD ON JANUARY 20, BUT
IN APRIL!!!
More information to follow in upcoming newsletters.
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GREETINGS FROM
DR. SUSAN DUGGAN, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER OF THE SILICON VALLEY
WORLD INTERNET CENTER!
Happy New Year! We wish you all the best of good health, prosperity,
and collaborative creativity for 2005!
We wrapped up a very interesting year of collaboration with a session
on leveraging high technology solutions for the advancement of education
and economic development in South Africa. More on that fascinating
session, below. In review of the activities at the World Internet
Center in 2004, we would like to share the breadth of topics tackled
by our clients and members of our community of innovators. Last
year, the sessions at the World Internet Center covered some of
the following areas of high tech advancement:
- The IPv6 vs. EPC Debate and the Promise of RFID in SCM
- Ubiquitous Computing
- Sensor Networks for Homeland Security
- Nanotechnology and its convergence with IT
- Extended Manufacturing Models
- Cross-cultural Adaptation for Enterprise-level Software
- Searchable Email
- Advances in Supply Chain Management
- Innovations for Multi-Channel Access to Enterprise systems
- Smart Items Leveraged for Safety in the Oil Industry
- Semantic Web
- Open Source
- Airline Security Models and eBusiness Advances
- End-user Process Modeling
- The Future of Analytics
- Leveraging eLearning Models for Education in Developing Countries
All of these topics were driven by one or several of our clients
and sponsors interested in advancing Internet-related products and
markets through either select, multi-corporate or internal think
tank sessions or through open discussions with the rich community
of innovators associating with the World Internet Center.
We expect a similarly broad array of topics to fill the Center's
calendar for 2005 and encourage individuals, corporations, government
representatives, and other organizations to engage in this very
much-needed dialogue to advance innovation in our industry.
JOIN US AT THE WORLD INTERNET CENTER
as a sponsor of an event, a series, or of the Center, itself. Join
us also, as an on-going participant at our many public-oriented
sessions, including our famous Power Pubs! We look to you as the
source of inspiration for the next generation of innovation in the
Internet space. For more information on the Center's services, click
here.
We look forward to seeing you in 2005!
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SPECIAL HOLIDAY
POWER PUB & PANEL: THURSDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2004
"eSUCCESSES IN SOUTH AFRICA: LEVERAGING TECHNOLOGY
FOR ADVANCEMENT"
Panelists included:
Dr. Joachim Schaper, Vice President Americas, SAP Research Center
&
Mr. Jay Visvanathan, Market Development Manager, Higher Education,
Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Summary and links below.
The World Internet Center was pleased to convene a savvy group
of technology and education innovators around the topic of leveraging
high technology for the advancement of education and economic development
in the developing world, with a specific emphasis on South Africa.
Over 80 attendees participated in this special Holiday Pub and Panel,
which was sponsored by SAP Research, one of the Center's Corporate
Sponsors. High tech representatives from the stalwarts of the Valley
included SAP, Sun, HP, Apple, Network Appliance, IBM, and Adobe.
Many smaller companies interested in providing last-mile connectivity
in rural areas attended, as well. Additionally, we were pleased
to draw representatives from the famous NetDay organization, as
well as from SRI Consulting Business Intelligence, the Monterey
Bay International Trade Association (which is doing work with South
Africa), and from Stanford University's Center for African Studies.
Our special guest was Mr. Simphiwe Mdingi, the Vice Consul from
the South African Consulate, who came up from Los Angeles specifically
to share ideas with our community about the reality of contributing
to emerging markets through technology-based educational initiatives.
The panel consisted of presentations from Dr. Joachim Schaper,
Vice President, Americas, for SAP Research and from Mr. Jay Visvanathan,
Market Development Manager for Higher Education at Sun Microsystems.
You may access their respective presentations on the Center's
Web site:
- Click here.
- Scroll down to the "*December 9, 2004, Power Pub & Panel" and
select.
- You will see links to the presentations in PDF format.
Dr. Schaper summarized SAP's contributions to the Africa Drive
Project (http://www.adp.org.za).
The Africa Drive Project (ADP) is a research and development project
designed to spearhead the use of "blended learning" (i.e., eLearning
complemented with face-to-face instruction) in rural and urban areas
challenged by insufficiently trained teachers, health and environmental
problems, and access to up-to-date instructional content and pedagogical
strategies. The goal is to provide in-service teacher education
in content areas integral to the future economic and medical health
of South Africa, including the sciences, mathematics, information
technology, as well as support for the educator as a mentor to students
in the areas of AIDS/HIV and Tuberculosis education and environmental
conservation. The project is meant to inform an African Continent
policy and strategy on the rollout of appropriate education and
training methodologies to educators, and thus to graduates, ultimately
in all nine Provinces of South Africa and the Southern African Development
Region (SADC) countries, and to Africa, at large. The initial deployment
of this university-based certificate program will be in the North
West Province due to the active participation of the North-West
Education Department and the University, as well as the existence
of a sound communications backbone and an applicable rural/urban
school mix. The collaboration between the high tech community, universities,
high schools, international funding organizations, and local governments
serves as a great example of the power of "coopetition" in this
highly competitive emerging market space. SAP, Siemens Business
Solutions, Network Appliance have all contributed to the success
in working with a provincial government in Africa to bring this
project together.
Mr. Jay Visvanathan of Sun Microsystems, underlined several international
initiatives which Sun is supporting for long-term economic development.
These included their "Global Education Learning Community" (GELC)
which is bringing leading-edge content to a broad community for
free or very little cost. He also addressed Sun's work in building
a "Digital Campus" which would be built on top of an existing campus,
such as MIT, to make a tremendous amount of content available to
a global community for little cost or for free. He also underlined
the African Information Management (AIMs) initiative and the African
Institute of Science and Technology (AIST), both of which are addressed
more fully in his presentation which may be accessed through the
World Internet Center's website by clicking here.
The audience members raised several pertinent issues and questions,
summarized below:
- "Technology is not our savior." How do we apply "open source,"
as a philosophy to education at the content level?
- What is the likelihood of sustainability for projects like
the Africa Drive Project? How can we plan for success?
- What is the infrastructure for voice in data in rural areas,
like the one being addressed by the African Drive Project in South
Africa? In other words, how do we deliver multi-media courses
over two telephone lines?
We thank SAP Research, as a Corporate Sponsor of the World Internet
Center, for their continued support of publicly-oriented sessions
such as the Holiday Pub and Panel on December 9th.
ABOUT THE PANELISTS
ABOUT JOACHIM SCHAPER
Joachim Schaper is Vice President Americas for SAP Research Center,
guiding 6 research programs. He is tasked with building up corporate
research and focusing on the following research programs: eLearning,
Smart Items, Mobile Computing, Technology for Application Integration
and Advanced Customer Interfaces. Previous to his role with the
Research Center, Dr. Schaper was Manager of the European Research
Center, CEC Karlsruhe.
Prior to working at SAP, Dr. Schaper was a member of the research
team at the European Applied Research Center (EARC) of Digital Equipment
GmbH. There, he was responsible for user interfaces and object-oriented
modeling and programming of teaching and learning systems. Following
his research at EARC, he took a position as project manager for
a four-year research program with Deutsche Telekom AG to develop
broadband multimedia teleservices in association with other research
institutes and system manufacturers.
Since 2001, Dr. Schaper has been a member of the advisory board
of DFKI and FZI, as well as a member of the advisory group for IST
and of various SMEs. In addition, he has been the Mini-Track chair
of the HICSS conference regarding "Next Generation Learning Platforms."
Dr. Schaper received his doctorate and computer science degree both
from the Technical University Karlsruhe.
ABOUT JAY VISVANATHAN
Jay Visvanathan's role at Sun Microsystems as Market Development
Manager is to promote open architectures and Sun technologies in
higher education. His special emphasis is on usage of Sun products
in administrative computing and deployment of Web-based services.
He is also responsible for driving revenues for Sun in the market
for portal-based service provisioning.
Mr. Visvanathan drives market strategy to meet the above charter
and implements this strategy worldwide through Sun's Education field
organizations. One of the important ways that he accomplishes mindshare
and market share for Sun in higher education is to partner with
best-of-breed software vendors and systems integrators to ensure
that Sun is the platform of choice for their applications. Mr. Visvanathan
has also established Centers of Excellence at various universities,
each highlighting Sun and partner technologies. In addition, he
is also driving the implementation of reference architectures for
higher education. These are integrated product stacks (from Sun
and partners) that are engineered to take cost and complexity out
of IT infrastructures.
Mr. Visvanathan has been with Sun for 18 years in various roles
in Finance, Customer Service and Marketing. He has extensive experience
in customer relationship management, marketing and selling to Service
Providers, and a track record in managing partners to provide superior
service to customers. Before his tenure with Sun, he was a Financial
Analyst with Intel Corporation for 3 years. Mr. Visvanathan holds
a CPA and obtained his MBA from Case Western Reserve University.
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The Silicon Valley World Internet Center thanks its Corporate Sponsors
and Knowledge Network Partners for their continuing support:
CORPORATE
SPONSORS
SAP http://www.sap.com/
KNOWLEDGE
NETWORK PARTNERS
Halleck http://www.halleck.com
IC Growth, Inc. http://www.icgrowth.com
Market Wire http://www.marketwire.com
Incucomm http://www.incucomm.com
Xterprise http://www.xterprise.com
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To join our
community, click on this link: http://center.infopoint.com/join.php
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