SI MONTHLY NEWS JANUARY 2007 Exco Info
From SI Exco News
Meeting of SERVAS INTERNATIONAL ICT
The ICT team (Uwe, Omer, and Claudio) met on 7 December with Mario Burlando and his son, Marco. Gary Sealey came and edited these notes.
We noted 5 ways ICT can help improve quality communication in Servas:
1) Help Servas Have Fun
Traveler-Traveler
Traveler-Host
Host- Community
Community-Community
2) Serve Servas
6 big, incorporated groups;
15 smaller groups with constitutions;
30 informal associations; and
25 individual Servas country organizers.)
(numbers are approximate)
3) Contribute to Servas Outreach
WebPages
SI News
4) Serve GA Governance
Host List
Key People
Democracy
5) Assist Orientation/Education
Distant Interviews
Local Interviews
Our meeting set out:
An action plan linking the ICT programme with the budget;
a beta test to see what needs to be done to complete Dolphin;
summary of our work, so Key List and others could see what is being done by ICT and, possibly, where they could help
Space is too limited to provide full details, but anyone in Servas is welcome to a copy of notes of our discussions. Please let us know.
Summary of the work done by EXCO members in January.
President Gary has been working with Peace Secretary Nandee on appointment of a Servas Representative to UNO, Geneva. He is also working on a Peace Roadmap and in this connection, he is interacting with teachers and theologians (interfaith).
Vice President Mary Jane represented SI EXCO at the Area Meeting cum Youth Conference of Central America held in Costa Rica. There she also conducted a workshop on interviewing techniques.
General Secretary Pramod has been working on the first ever Distant Vote of Servas International to be held in 2007 and in this connection, he has been trying to contact all National Secretaries.
Overview of ICT Activity:
ICT should provide for collection and spread of information by providing • Architecture • Infrastructure and tools
Information comes through everything connected with Servas: • Travelers and hosts • Key People – exercising their specialist responsibilities • Other groups, government, and partners
But Servas has a problem knowing what Information to link and how to structure it. Servas needs editors to make information useful and user-friendly.
Other ICT challenges · Entering data · Need financial and operational help · Perceived and real Security issues and regulations
Some of the deficiencies in the existing approach: • Loss of information • Lack of appropriate archiving – e.g. back issues of SI News, legal documents, etc. (Grant is working on this.)
- Suggested Policy (for review): "All information is public unless regulated otherwise."
ICT Projects:
Public Website: clean up, simplify, make more useful to travelers, hosts, groups
Dolphin: continue to develop, assist groups to choose features.
WebSaturna: enable quick information finding
SharED: help information sharing about communities, like Intelligent Roadmap.
Uwe Federer, Italy
Claudio Pacchiega, Italy
Ömer Özkan, Turkey
Gary Sealey, Canada
Peace Secretary Nandee has been working on developing an international network of Peace Secretaries.
Treasurer Omer has been working on accounts for the years 2004 and 2005 and also on Dolphin Project. For those who may not know, Dolphin is a software which will make it easy to create and update host lists.
Host List Coordinator Anna has been working on collecting and compiling the host list requests from all National Groups and is also helping with the Dolphin Project.
Pramod
uploaded by Amelia
