No Illusions Podcast 03 – Rangan Srikhanta, OLPC Australia
Posted on 07. Dec, 2009 by Cameron Reilly in geeks who care, Podcast
Rangan Srikhanta is the Executive Director, One Laptop per Child Australia. On this show he chats with me about their efforts to get laptops into the hands of kids living in remote regions of Australia. The idea to speak with OLPC came out of a recent Geeks Who Care meeting we had in Brisbane. OLPC have a terrific program running called the “Window of Opportunity Initiative” which enables all of us to contribute to getting these wonderful devices out where they are needed.
The Golden Rule and Geeks Who Care
Posted on 19. Oct, 2009 by Cameron in geeks who care, religion
I just watched this recent TED video of religious historian and author Karen Armstrong talking about the importance of the Golden Rule and how we need to re-engineer a world based on compassion. It’s excellent and I highly recommend it.
Speaking of compassion, I’m re-launching my charity “Geeks Who Care” in Brisbane this month and I’m hoping some people will join us for the first Brisbane catch-up. The idea of GWC (which I tried to get off the ground just before I left Melbourne in 2008) is that geeks have a special skill-set that I think can be used to improve people’s lives in ways that mere mortals cannot. We know how to make the interwebs work, how to promote things via social networking, how to build websites, make podcasts, refurb PCs, build mesh networks, etc. I want to see geeks doing more when they get together than just nerding out about new tech. We need to be giving back to the society that let’s us be geeks in the first place. So, anyway, details of the Brisbane meeting are here (yes it’s a Facebook page) and if anyone wants to gets stuff started in other cities, go for your life. Let’s share idea and learnings as we go.
G’DAY WORLD #311 – Geeks Who Care, inaugural meeting
Posted on 28. Jan, 2008 by Cameron Reilly in geeks who care, Podcast
On January 27, 2008, a small group of people gathered in South Melbourne for the inaugural meeting of Geeks Who Care, a group of geek activists who want to be more involved in their local communities.
Attendees are (L to R):
Colin Wilson, Matt Trentini, David Jackson, Father Bob Maguire, Cameron Reilly, Nay Parkinson, Tony Goodson, Miriam Parkinson
The two outcomes we agree to were:
1. to set up some face to face meetings with teenagers living in public housing communities in South Melbourne to run some of our ideas past them, to sanity check our thinking
2. to explore the idea of providing mesh networks and refurbished PC’s to kids in public housing around Melbourne.
There was an interesting discussion about whether or not GWC should be focused on providing technology-related solutions for people, to leverage our geek-fu, or just doing basic “good works” that aren’t specifically technology related. The general feelings seemed to be to try to do something geek-specific.
If you have any ideas on how to build out mesh networks for public housing communities, please throw your ideas around over on our Geeks Who Care forum.
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Geeks Who Care
Posted on 30. Dec, 2007 by Cameron Reilly in geeks who care, social activism
Over the last few months I’ve been wrestling with the notion that there should be some kind of framework for geeks to do something positive in their local community. Something that isn’t tied to any particular religious, political or social agenda. Something that plays on the strengths of geeks and doesn’t require a full-time commitment but also involves more than just writing a cheque or a blog.
After a chat with Father Bob Maguire (from TPN’s Father Bob Show and the guy who has been the inspiration for much of my thinking in this area), his co-host Michaela and Michael Leone from Gnoos a month or so ago, I realized that perhaps we should pull together a group of people together and workshop ideas on what we could do, together, to make a difference in our local communities. I don’t have the answers. Hell, I don’t even know most of the right questions to ask. But I do feel that I could be, should be, doing more. I just need to work out what kinds of things I, we, can do. And I think it might be easier if we were to try to accomplish it in a group.
So, with that in mind, I’m kicking off “Geeks Who Care” with a meeting at Bob’s place (Cnr Dorcas and Montague Sts, South Melbourne) on January 27th. I’m hoping we’ll get a small group of like-minded individuals to come together to workshop ideas. From there we can put together a framework, steps forward (kind of like how we started MODM early last year). I’m sure most of you will have more of an idea about what we should be doing that I do. I’m an idiot. I’ve already had a few great ideas given to me and I’m sure between now and Jan 27 I’ll get a lot more. There is a Facebook event set up for the meetup. Get to it here (link) and the main domain, GeeksWhoCare.com, currently re-directs to a Facebook group for general discussion. For those of you itching to tell me how much you hate Facebook – save it, I’m not interested.
Perhaps, if this one works out, we can set up similar groups around the country, around the world even… hell, let’s put one on Mars. Those poor little green guys needs our help too. Martians are humans too you know.
