Day 7 – Power in the Conversing Word

Spectacular! Tired! Spectacular! and tired.

As a different approach today, I headed to GeoMark, a private GIS company in Addis to access their high-speed Internet connection to lead our conferees to the possibilities around the concept of web mapping towards a geospatial data clearinghouse in a NSDI. 

 Ghion Hotel in the center of Addis Ababa

 Ghion Gate to the Gardens 

I taught my fellow GIS colleagues deeper knowledge of what is available and how to construct online GIS web maps and build applications that can be deployed through iPads and iPhones, etc.. In addition it was a wonderful time to show them the Ushahidi course that I developed on Udemy.com to teach them how to do crowdsource mapping from volunteered geographic information (VGI) for free. https://www.udemy.com/crowdsource-mapping/

However, I only taught 25 conference folks at a time. The other 25 were deeply engaged in a conversation and debate about the current status of geospatial data towards a NSDI. Part of our hope and plan of schedule was to encourage this kind of deep and honest assessment and conversation – Ethiopian expert to Ethiopian expert. Even on Monday I said, “You don’t really need me, you just need each other”, referring to the concept of working on the NSDI. It has been a joyful and full day. My voice is shot, my legs are cramping (Addis is at 7605 feet above sea level), I am pretty much getting no sleep at night, and I have a 101 other things to complain about. But really I am in such a joyful place because of this opportunity given by God to impact my colleagues this way.

I don’t know what the future holds for the NSDI in Ethiopia and I hope that these wonderful folks will continue to be enabled to move ahead. What role I get to play, I know not, but for now this role is joyful in abundance. Here are some snap-shots of our conference room celing. The name of the conference room was called 'Sheba'. The panels were the historical life of Queen Sheba.

We had a celebration meal banquet in the evening in a traditional Ethiopian style meal. It was spicy and delicious! Among the wonderful conversation and food and drink, my colleagues and I enjoy ourselves very much!

Missing my family on this very full day!  One more morning session on Friday to summarize and wrap-up and the off we go to Dubai and London.