I signed up for SHDC about a year ago because I thought I'd ask for help
to build and "Includer" http://www.includer.org  a device for reading
and writing text files (like emails) onto a USB flash drive.  I won a
Knight News Challenge award to blog about the idea.  My lab, Minciu
Sodas, http://www.ms.lt (for independent thinkers) has very strong
participation in Africa (most notably, during the Kenya post-election
turmoil http://www.pyramidofpeace.net )

Now we're interested (among many projects) in creating ebooks that can
be read on DVD players, mobile phones, etc.  Perhaps we might work
together?  We could really use some hardware hackers, especially to
think through our African participants what kinds of projects might be
possible.  I appreciate your thoughts!  Andrius, m...@ms.lt
-----------------------------------

I invite us all to our chat room http://www.worknets.org/chat/  on
Thursday, September 10, at 16:00 Kenya time, 14:00 London, 9:00 New
York. We'll chat about publishing ebooks in local and regional languages
(like Kiswahili, Hindi, Lithuanian, Luo) that can be read (as JPG
images) with DVD players, mobile phones, digital picture frames, ebook
readers, etc.

We'd love to work together with other communities.  Many of our
endeavors are converging:
* Ricardo (UK) has written many helpful pages about making the most of
marginal Internet access, as in Africa:
http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?Ricardo
* He suggested that we convert text to JPG images so they could be read
on DVD players, mobile phones, etc.
http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?OnlineTextConverter
* I implemented this: http://www.worknets.org/software/ebook/  You can
enter a text and it will output a zipped file with JPG images,
typically, one per paragraph.
* Josephat Ndibalema (Tanzania) is championing the creation of learning
materials in Kiswahili (see our wiki http://www.worknets.org/sw/ )
* Graham Knight (UK) promotes DIY Solar, small do-it-yourself solar
panels for recharging mobile phones, and we could create related ebooks.
http://biodesign.webeden.co.uk
* Franz Nahrada (Austria) wants us to engage the participants of
http://www.thingiverse.com (sharing "digital designs for physical
objects") to work together on real-life challenges and we agreed (with
Ralf Schlatterbeck (Austria)) that this will be the first "semantic"
project for our Worknets Interface Architecture Committee.
* Ananya Guha (India) has suggested children's books and that is also a
focus of Masimba Biriwasha (Zimbabwe). Indeed, it would be good for us
to collect, share and write children's stories and study them in terms
of the values that we and they are espousing. That's a great way to
research our own values, including our deepest values, and to create a
new culture, growing with children.
* Janet Feldman's (USA) Rising Voices guide for Blogging Positively and
other such materials are also great.
http://rising.globalvoicesonline.org/guides/

As you see, we need help:
* Learning what content might be relevant to publish.
* Strategizing the publishing path (which might include converting EPUB
and PDF files, using Public Domain resources like books
http://www.gutenberg.org , http://www.feedbooks.com , audio books
http://www.librivox.org ) and even interweaving (much like a slide show)
text, photos, audio, video.
* Creating software for conversion and for making publishing easy with
good results.
* Exploring hardware options and even hacking new ones.
* Translating materials.
* Organizing publishing and distribution networks.
* Building contacts and developing business opportunities.

We'd also like to learn about any endeavors you may have that we might
work together on
http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?Endeavors
as well as your "deepest value in life" and "questions that you don't
know the answer to, but wish to answer"
http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?Values
and "what would you like to do with your life"?
http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?Dreams
and "how can we help"?
http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?Tasks

Worknets is a culture for independent thinkers, that is, for focusing on
those who are able to work even by themselves, are willing to give and
share in the Public Domain, and so with our help might remake all of our
world, so that what we believe is what happens.

In 1998, I founded Minciu Sodas http://www.ms.lt as a business (and
haven) for serving and organizing independent thinkers.  I'm taking the
lead to organize Worknets as a broader culture and network based on
minimum requirements for maximum sharing
http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?Charter

Our endeavor above is a good occassion to seek liaisons with a wide
variety of groups such as Rising Voices, Yi-Tan, Learning Communities,
Ugabytes, Super Happy Dev Club and many others.
http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?Liaisons
I hope we might find people who could build bridges amongst groups,
summarize what people are working on in a group, and share endeavors
from other groups.  Such summaries and related exchanges would be
assumed to be in the Public Domain, for participating groups.  I am
actively looking for liaisons and also for modest stipends for their help.

I prefaced my letter with "Mornflake outreach" because this summer such
outreach was made possible by work we did for Leon Benjamin
http://www.winningbysharing.net on behalf of Mornflake cereal
http://www.mornflake.com and their online video contest
http://www.mornflakecompetition.com   Leon paid us to engage online
communities and agreed that we focus on reaching out to them and
supporting their endeavors, and credit Mornflake for their support,
rather than promote Mornflake cereal directly.  The groups that tolerate
us are those with whom we can effectively build such a network.  Leon
and I think that we can find more such clients to support our outreach,
and we can share this work as well.  I thus appreciate your
understanding and support (and Mornflake's, too).
http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?MornflakeOutreach

Please share your thoughts, how might we help each other, and what
groups would like us to reach out to them?

Thank you!

Andrius