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Days in Pitigliano

Am Anfang der Ferien 2006 ist Matilde eine Woche in der "casa di campagna" von Luis Familie gewesen.

Wie man sieht, haben sich die Teens vergnuegt. Bei dieser Gelegenheit habe ich herausgefunden, dass Luis der Bruder von Laura Hein ist, eine meine Schuelerinnen aus dem Jahrgang von Marianna.

Frieden mit meinem Friseur

Matilde hat Frieden mit meinem Friseur gemacht. Der Grund ist documentiert in diesem Foto:

The rich, the poor and the growing gap between them

"AMERICANS do not go in for envy. The gap between rich and poor is bigger than in any other advanced country, but most people are unconcerned. Whereas Europeans fret about the way the economic pie is divided, Americans want to join the rich, not soak them. Eight out of ten, more than anywhere else, believe that though you may start poor, if you work hard, you can make pots of money. It is a central part of the American Dream.

The political consensus, therefore, has sought to pursue economic growth rather than the redistribution of income"

CGIAR and FAO Working together in Knowledge Sharing

It is only through the transfer and exchange of knowledge , both explicit and tacit, that research organizations can really have an impact on the global issues that are facing mankind in the third millennium. Towards this end, the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations and the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) have joined forces, working collaboratively on several projects.

On what the new AGRIS initiative should concentrate

From the Discussion in the AGRIS ADVOCACY Taskforce

Dear Colleagues,

Meeting with Kevin Painting

I met today Kevin Painting from CTA to get briefed about CTAs RSS project and to brief Kevin about the AGRIS Content Management Taskforce. Main points
- Kevin will write a short report to the AGRIS content managment group about the CTA RSS project. This is a project about aggregating and selecting feeds. They have done a tender and are evaluating the tender at the moment. I briefed Kevin about our project of a high level description of working with feeds and the pilot on Early Warning Systems discussed in Nairobi

More than just Bangalore

Second, India is producing far more world-class companies than China. The best known are the wizards of software and “business process outsourcing”—Indian firms have two-thirds of the global market in offshore IT services and nearly half that in BPO. But now they are being joined by manufacturers. Again, unlike China, this manufacturing boom cannot be explained by cheap labour, but by the efficient use of technology. India's merchandise exports grew by a quarter last year.

Lunch Meeting with Julie Kelly from Library University of Minnesota

JulieKelly (jkelly@umn.edu) is one of the project coordinators of agecon (http:agecon.leb.umn.edu). They are at the moment considering to use DSpace for their repository. I told them about our DSpace plans. They would be more than happy to try our adapted DSPACE version (with AGROVOC and AGRIS AP) incorporated.

Kenya 2006-05

In May 2006 I participated in the founding conference of the IAALD Africa chapter in Nairobi. Together with Hugo Besemer I organized during the conference a meeting of the Agris Content Management Taskforce. I also visited KARI (Kenyan Agricultural Research Institute)

CGIAR Knowledgesharing Workshop

The first day during my stay in Nairobi, I participated in the CGIAR Workshop on "Knowledge Sharing in Agricultural Research". Beside interesting techniques for better sharing of tacit knowledge (chat show, Speed dating, World Café) - I know them all from my time as teacher at the German School, I experienced a real Dilemma on this workshop. Speaking about knowledge sharing might significate two totally different situations. The first: Knowledge Sharing between Researchers, this is a straightforward discussion and many things are to be said and to be done.

johanneskeizer.com