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  • Tiffany von Emmel 5:31 am on November 16, 2011 Permalink  

    Wanted: Front-end Developer 

    Friends, I urgently am looking for a front-end developer to rock the Dreamfish Community Tech Project. Please share the following “help wanted” with friends.

    Help Wanted: Volunteer Front-end Developer
 for Dreamfish
    Project timeline: December, 2011 – February, 2011
    Location: anywhere with good network connection

    The Dreamfish mission is to connect any person from a rural village to an urban street to develop a thriving livelihood through an empowering mobile/web work community. Show what you’re working on, ask for help, hire and be hired, and celebrate your growth. Work like a human!

    Project description:

    Looking for a front-end developer who loves to do WordPress theming and mentor virtually with youth in East Africa as you go. Learn more about the big picture here: http://vonemmel.com/2011/09/community-tech-project-update/

    Skills needed

    • CSS3, HTML5, Javascript, PHP
    • Git user
    • Show beautiful quality of work
    • Can jump in, learn and adapt quickly
    • Connect easily with people
    • WordPress theming experience
    • Both team player and self-directed
    • Experience with open source community or working in online collaborative environment
    • Experience with theming other social software is a plus

    Why do this?
    • Change lives. Make tools that empower disadvantaged entrepreneurs everywhere to grow and develop
    • Mentor youth developers in Nairobi
    • Belong to a team of like-minded people

    Get and go!
    We would want for you to jump in and start immediately on a project.
    We prefer that you live either in San Francisco Bay Area, Nairobi, or have strong distributed team experience

    About Dreamfish
    Dreamfish is the first peer-to-peer global work cooperative, co-owned by individuals with micro-enterprises from many walks of life in 24 countries. Dreamfish meets the basic human need for individuals to come together across boundaries of race, wealth and geography to create opportunities to develop as humans and entrepreneurs. While discourses about poverty are invested in institutional solutions rather than human solutions, micro-entrepreneur youth and women struggle to access a market, overcome cultural blocks, recover from mistakes due to working in isolation, and develop effective behaviors. These barriers to success are human and social.

    Dreamfish can make the difference between failure and resilience with support to help move from isolation to networked, from apathy to agency, from self-defeat to effective choices. As each person gains income from projects with other Dreamfish members, member-owners invest 10% back in the cooperative and then share the profits and growth. Dreamfish partners include Stanford University, Fielding Graduate University, Nairobits School of Design, Craigslist Foundation, Poptech!, Institute for Sustainable Development among others.

    How we work together
    We are a small team of volunteers, working distributed from East and West Africa, San Franciso Bay Area and Midwest U.S. We put people first and are professional. We bring our humanity to work and play.
    Connect
    Contact me (Tiff) and Grant, project co-leads, in freenode irc #dreamfish
    or vonemmel [at] dreamfish [dot] com and grantbow [at] dreamfish [dot] com
    Timezone: We are currently in Nairobi, 11 hours ahead of PST

     

  • Tiffany von Emmel 9:47 pm on October 7, 2011 Permalink  

    A journey of relationship 

    Ubuntu, the dog, and Ndoto, the cat, were enemies when they first met. After four months, they are now best friends. How did this relationship evolve?

     

  • Tiffany von Emmel 2:26 am on September 18, 2011 Permalink  

    Community Tech Project Update 

    ( Check out the new short cut of the Dreamfish Tech Dance video)

    Harison Wamani, 2011 Dreamfish Intern, learning to use the command line as he works on the Community Tech Project

    I want to share with you the kickoff of our online community technology project and the upcoming improvements you will experience. Before we discuss the tech project, it’s good to reconnect with who we are and what do we do so it informs how we do…..

    Dreamfish is a peer-to-peer micro-enterprise development network. Our mission is to enable people everywhere to work like humans to realize their dreams. For different people, this can mean realizing basic needs of food and shelter, achievement, learning, collaboration, and/ or care for our world. Our structure is also human – A global co-operative. Dreamfish members are both co-owners and customers of Dreamfish. Many of us contribute our energy, skills and funds to operate these four programs:

    • Dreamfish Community Tech – Our core program is our online work community. Below, we’ll get into what we’re working on.
    • Dreamfish Fellows program – A 12 month service learning experience for senior consultants to coach entrepreneurs in professional skills while gaining experience in global citizenship and intercultural collaboration
    • Dreamfish Internship program – An empowering 6 month program for youth from settlements in developing regions of the world, youth gain practical experience in global leadership and professional skills.
    • Dreamfish Residency in Kenya – 12 week residencies at Dreamfish Place Nairobi for professionals leading capacity-building projects while mentoring youth in our internship program.  Dreamfish Place Nairobi also serves a landing pad for Dreamfish contributors while generating income as a collaboration retreat venue.

    Why do this project now?

    Cynthia Kihu, Grant Bowman and Maryann Wangari working on front end development

    Now is the time because great people have stepped up and open source software is available to support the project. In addition, we create impact by using this project as a training ground for African young professionals. Here are the needs that we’re addressing:

    1. Do more of what we do well
    Our core competency is helping people to develop themselves and develop their enterprises through practice in relationship. A few examples of Dreamfish at work – facilitating a One Laptop Per Child Kenya Summit; a web developer in Ohio collaborating with a startup entrepreneur in Ghana; an LGBT activist working with an artist on digital storytelling, a leadership consultant in Taiwan facilitating strategic planning for a grassroots nonprofit benefiting homeless children in Kenya, a transgender youth creating their life with professional skills and income, an executive coach in US to support a young woman CEO to build a tool empowering rural farmers in Africa.  Given the small resources invested in Dreamfish, these are great results AND with better tools for connection, we can do much more. Imagine millions of people having the same opportunities.

    2. Mobilizing our diversity
    Diversity is both our strength and our challenge. How do we hold space for engaging the richness of our diversity for our members’ benefit? How do we enable individuals to customize their participation for their unique goals and interests?
    To give you an idea of our diversity in action, my estimate is that about 40% of our community are youth and live on less than $4 a day, 20% live on more than $100 a day, about 40% are over 40 yr. We are of many faiths, and cultural norms. Our new technology will allow people to follow the topics that are most of interest and filter out what they don’t need.

    3. Shifting from “give me work” to “we are doing it!”
    With the new technology design, our goal is to shift from passive transactions to pro-active relationship-building as the foundation for work in Dreamfish. Behind this is a larger agenda of societal change to help people shift from institutionally-learned apathy to empowerment. it is critical that we support individuals to pro-actively create support systems for their own development, rather than wait or resign. The way our tech is setup now, people in the Dreamfish network tend to wait for something to happen rather than initiate interaction. The tech is getting in the way – it is hard for anyone to know how to start, how to interact and how to achieve goals. This is changing. We are designing our new tech to facilitate people connecting around “What are you working on?” as the starting point for interaction.

    Currently, it is not easy to connect with Dreamfish members in a rural village or without a computer. In our new tech plan, you will be able to select whether you use your phone, sms, or sit at your computer to interact with Dreamfish people. You will also be able to more easily initiate local face-to-face events.

    4. Easier Knowledge sharing
    Finding information that you want and sharing has been hard in our current platform. We are making the act of sharing to be front and center. We also are making a friendly section to explain what Dreamfish is and how to get started.

    What are we working on?

    Grace Kwamboka, Harison, and Nelson Munyiri, learning to code on a One Laptop Per Child XO 1.5

    Our team includes Grant Bowman and me as project co-leads, 2011 Dreamfish Interns and Mentors. The project has three sub-teams – Community Leadership, Back-end Development, and Front-end Design.  We welcome volunteers to get involved. Here’s what we are working on…

    Community Leadership is working on the Community HelpDesk, community digital art and performance, social media communication, improving online documentation, online admin, and the campaign to fund the project. Team members work alongside me and include Grace Kwamboka, Nelson Munyiri and Simon Muya.

    Backend Development is working on developing software functionality, server administration, wifi network and maintaining hardware for the project. The team has now got a server up, prepared hardware for development, installed and configured software for prototyping. Team members work alongside Grant and include Harison Wamani and Peter Masuman.

    Front-end Design and Development is working on user experience/ interaction design, product management, graphic design, CSS and HTML. We have been interviewing Dreamfish members on how Dreamfish tech can help them, researching the problems with current tools, prototyping solutions and testing different open source social software. Team members work with me and include Maryann Wangari and Cynthia Kihu.

    Our mentors include Bernard Owuor, Jamila Abass for development, Bridget Mcgraw for design, Jonas Kolben for networking and Polly Bodegener for communication. Thanks to Nancy White and Peter Kaminski, Dreamfish Advisors, for helping on strategy.

    All of this will take time and is due to the committed efforts of contributors to the project. As we get farther along, we’ll ask you to try what we’re building and give feedback. I would like to invite you to get involved in any way that you like with your expertise, funds and cheers :-)

    What can you do?

    • Learn more about the open Tech Planning process here: http://pads.dreamfish.com/tech-plan-2011
    • Fund the project – Every bit counts. We have 12 days left in our campaign to raise $5,500, which pays for simple living and tools for the team in Nairobi during the project. In exchange, we can give you things like B&B accomodation or an iPad.  Learn more: http://www.indiegogo.com/dreamfish-community-tech
    • Volunteer – Senior professionals, developers, designers, testers, fundraisers and community managers – please, you are welcome to join in. Contact Grant, me or jump in…

    in Chat (Freenode IRC) - Enter your name and #dreamfish
    Open meeting at 10pm PST / 8am East Africa or any time you can jump in

    Thank you, Dreamfishers, for your pioneering spirit, your patience and all your efforts to build Dreamfish.

    Tiff

     

    • george pope 11:06 am on October 12, 2011 Permalink | Reply

      Till I’m a friend of Grants writing from Ghana. Your Community Tech sounds not only what the doctor ordered and a dream come true. How to make all this happen here? Lots of work and skill.Of the latter I’m a little shy but will do what I can.

  • Tiffany von Emmel 8:15 am on September 2, 2011 Permalink  

    Kicking off with a Dance 

    Join me in kicking off our new project, Dreamfish Community Tech. Not only is the project building technology for peer-to-peer development to empower the world’s underserved entrepreneurs, the project also empowers Kenyan youth to develop as successful web professionals.

    To tell you about the project, we made this fun video. You’ll see a campy skit about “what is Dreamfish?”, an experience of peer-to-peer development, in which two young professionals work together on a client project supported by their peer group. Then the group rocks out in a shimmy and shake!

    Dreamfish Tech Dance from Dreamfish on Vimeo.

    The project team includes youth web developers and designers, recently graduating from Nairobits, a training program for youth from Nairobi settlements, working alongside senior professionals that want to make a difference. To facilitate, Grant Bowman, open source community leader, will serve as Dreamfish’s first Technologist-in-Residence and travel from San Francisco Bay, California to Dreamfish Place Nairobi to manage the project team from September through November.

    While working on the project, the youth are also receiving training and mentorship from Dreamfishers in professional communication, consulting skills, software development, collaboration and eco-product design. Thank you to Bernard Owuor, software developer, Polly Bodegener, adult educator, Susaneve Oguya, CTO of MFarm, and Jenny, recycled art product designer, for volunteering as trainers.

    Your help matters!
    Our big challenge is that our youth are living in rough conditions in Nairobi settlements and need tools to work with. Your financial contributions will provide food, water, better housing, laptops and mentorship to support this empowering project. Any size gift makes a meaningful difference. Learn more.

    As a thank you, contributors receive cool perks, donated by Dreamfish members – a free iPad, a weekend in a California guesthouse near the beach, hand-made cups, and more. Check out the perks.

    Come to the party
    Tonight, September 2nd, 11am-5pm, Caffe La Scala, Walnut Creek, California, US

    September 11th,11am-5pm, Hackathon, barbeque and dance at Dreamfish Place Nairobi, Kenya – Contact Shiku to RSVP and MPesa 350Ksh to +254.705.185.020

    If you are a developer or designer and might want to help out, terrific! Please let Grant or me know.
    @grantbow
    @tiffanyvonemmel

     

  • Tiffany von Emmel 8:45 am on June 5, 2011 Permalink  

    Connected, we grow 

    To be human is to grow in connection. In connection with ourselves. With each other. With nature. This is the Dreamfish way. To work like humans. Yet perhaps you can relate to this experience – in work, I have often felt alone, forgetting the love and support around. We are networks, after all. If I only reached out to reconnect and ask for help. To be of mutual support to each other, please join in spreading the new Dreamfish message, “Connected, we grow”.


    I am connecting to you from Nairobi, Kenya, from Dreamfish Place, a new home for Dreamfishers, where folks are gathering now to connect to grow. And, we still have a lot more to do. Please join me in opening Dreamfish Place Nairobi, the first of many open collaboration retreat homes in the world. A place where we connect to our humanity, bridge between global and local, online and face-to-face, and liberate our growth as humans.

    At Dreamfish Place, folks gather for leadership retreats and workshops. Women and youth gather to ask “What am I doing with this precious life?”. Dreamfishers gather to work and learn together in a spirit of service. The place financially and spiritually supports all of us to connect, to grow.

    Our Connection Goal is to warm the place up with YOUR cozy awesomeness, wherever you are!! Our Growth Goal is to raise $15,000 by July 24th. You can contribute in many ways! Watch the videos. Read our story. Share the link. Write a comment. Book a retreat, sponsor your favorite group for a retreat, sponsor a women or youth social entrepreneur or contribute a few bucks to build Dreamfish.

    I dearly thank you for all that you do to connect. Connected, we grow.

    Tiff

     

  • Tiffany von Emmel 4:24 am on April 5, 2011 Permalink  

    The makings of an African kitchen 

    Friday, April 1st, we started our lease of the property for Dreamfish Place Nairobi. I’ll share our startup adventures with you….
    The kitchen is the heart of a home, gathering people to it, it is an environment for connection. (In a former life, I taught gourmet whole food cooking to adults and managed a large kitchen. Seriously, not April Fools). The source of heat, the oven, is especially important as the place where alchemy happens.  So, our first items to find for the place had to be a fridge and a gas cooker (oven). Environmentally-conscious and working on a lean budget, we looked to either purchase refurbished used items or find donated items. And, the less we spend on appliances, the more we can spend on changing lives. We figure that these appliances will serve hundreds of meals a month to dreamfishers, groups and teams visiting. (Lunch for local Dreamfishers will cost Ksh 120 (USD $1.50) and for visitors USD $7.)

    Sometimes though, buying new is the best way to go. We browsed online forums, checked the UN office, posted to Dreamfishers, made phone calls. Finally, Robert Murati, dreamfisher, says he has a friend that sells used appliances in Rongai, a local town outside Nairobi. So Robert, Irene and I borrowed a car from Sietske and Guy for the search. But, even with Irene’s skillful bargaining, the prices were only 10% less than new appliances. So, we headed back to the shopping mall and purchased them new at Nakumatt. There, we met Nakumatt worker, Joshua Mwa,who explained that electrical appliance prices are regulated to be high in Kenya. It easily costs a family two month of salary to buy a gas cooker!

    And as we got to talking, Joshua talked about his dream of being an entrepreneur and signed up to be a Dreamfish member :) . With Joshua’s help, we bought a small LG fridge for Ksh 18,000 ($220USD), because hearsay is that the brand is more reliable and a Universal 4 burner gas cooker for Ksh 21,000 ($260), 50-70% less costly than other models because it was not electric. Yet, actually, this means the cooker consumes less energy and is better for the environment and our monthly budget.
    Next day, Steve, Fred and I bought a 13KG gas canister to fuel our gas cooker. The canister plus gas cost us Ksh 8,000 ($100). When the canister runs out of gas, about once a month, we refill the canister at the petrol station for Ksh 2,000.

    Today, we are cookin’! We had tea with milk, fresh from the fridge, and then boiling potatoes, we stood around the cooker and marveled at the gas flowing from the burners. I sure am grateful for a hot meal.

     

  • Tiffany von Emmel 7:36 am on March 8, 2011 Permalink  

    Dreamfish Place Nairobi opening soon! 

    Dreamfish Place Nairobi is opening soon. Just signed the lease! April 1st, we will be moving in!

    What is the purpose of the Dreamfish Place Nairobi? The place gives us a way to support the Dreamfish network, financially, physically and spiritually. Here, you can read about the big vision.

    photo

    Starting up takes a village! Big thanks to all who have helped to realize the place and welcome Dreamfish to East Africa! Special thanks to Irene Senei, who is putting in a lot of sweat, Charlyn Green Fareed and Sietske van Poelgeest for finding the place, Pauline Kimeu and Robert for making the place guest-ready, Bernard Owuor for our internet, Nancy White and Sue Canney for networking, Jamila Abass and Susaneve Oguya for space visioning, Stephen Nduati and Kenya Super Cabs for transportation, Ahmed Maawy for hacking, and Mel Mbugua for consulting.

    Here are three ways you can participate….

    Visit! – We are now renting out guestrooms and a guesthouse. The place is one of the most beautiful places I have ever visited. It is located in Karen area of Nairobi with fantastic 5 acres of gardens for experiential workshops with 100 people, accommodations for 20 people and internet!
    Please tell friends and colleagues to consider our available rooms and guesthouses at great rates from $30-79 USD (from 2400 Ksh), including breakfast, internet and open Dreamfish workshops.  Guest rentals will financially support the Dreamfish cooperative and with each visit or venue rental, you can support the development of women and youth entrepreneurs.

    We are excited to rent the Samburu Guesthouse . 20% of proceeds will benefit the Samburu eco-entrepreneurship project in Dreamfish. This is a response to the current life-threatening drought.

    Sponsor a space! To support intercultural learning about global collaboration, each space will be designed in a cultural tradition with help from Dreamfishers from that culture. You can choose a culture and sponsor the design and furnishing of a room, a hut or outdoor area with a donation. Jamila Abass, who is Somali, is designing a small global village with huts built in different tribal traditions in Africa. Guests will be able to stay in the huts on the land. Susaneve Oguya is designing a reflection place in a shady grove with hammocks and benches.  All donations of any amount are welcome. Let Irene or me know your inerests.

    Pitch in! Big thanks to Sietske and Guy who just donated a washing machine! For real!   If you are passing through Nairobi and can bring a few things, we welcome all offers. Here is our wish list. You can also come plant vegetables and flowers on gardening day, tba soon at the local Dreamfish Nairobi meetup :-)

    Talk with Irene to get involved..


    Irene Senei at nairobiplace@dreamfish.com
    Tel: +254 702 890 195/ 0734 793 599

    Thank you, friends! Asante sana!

    Tiff

     

  • Tiffany von Emmel 10:04 pm on January 2, 2011 Permalink  

    Dreamfish Fellows program in 2010 

    In a series of posts, I’d like to share about Dreamfish in 2010, our activities and lessons learned, and what is unfolding in 2011. In 2010, with a lean team of volunteer contributors, we built key infrastructures with 250 members and over 60 projects. First, I’d like to tell you about the 2010 Dreamfish Fellows program and thank all the people who brought it to life. In 2010, the Dreamfish Fellows program was founded to support mid-career professionals to make an impact in Dreamfish. Our pilot group of Dreamfish Fellows has just completed a 6 month cycle of service, finishing their tenure on Friday, December 31.

    Why Dreamfish Fellows Program?

    Sietske, Helen and Nancy learning together. Maasai land, Kenya

    The efforts to support one entrepreneur at the margin can be quite extensive, although hard to see from the outside. In twenty years of  micro-entrepreneurship development, the biggest challenges the industry faces is that the human side of development is expensive and programs are hard to scale. In Dreamfish, we are changing the game with a peer-to-peer network organization.

    To illustrate, here is one example of success. Recently a homeless Dreamfish member gained a paid contract job.  This enabled the person to pay for rent and food and then get other contract work. Now, what most people saw was only the transaction of employment. They didn’t know the person was homeless or how tough this person’s life situation was, because those working with the person didn’t want to share a narrative that could potentially be self-defeating. But, here I want to make visible the work that Dreamfish Fellows do to help individual to create the support system they need to realize their dream. In this case, Dreamfish contributors gave:

    • 16 hours of project management training
    • 4 hours of financial coaching
    • 10 hours of coaching in self-confidence, agency and interpersonal skills
    • research and introductions to social services resources
    • lodging and access to internet at another Dreamfish member’s house during contract job

    One of our areas for improvement for 2011 will be to make visible and measure the impact of Dreamfish Fellows activities. Relational practices, “soft” technology of human and organization development, are often not perceived as creating value in small organizations, and especially “disappeared” in engineering organizations. But, research indicates that for both affluent and low-income entrepreneurs, supporting human development in individuals is correlated to economic success and venture resilience.  (Scott McNeally of Sun and Nick Nesbitt of Kencall will also tell you that the course from their Stanford MBA program that most impacted their career was Interpersonal Dynamics, aka Touchy Feely, a course that founding Dreamfishers facilitate).  Growth is built in connection.

    Whereas most Fellowships are designed for college kids, this program is for self-directed life-long learners of any age.

    Thanks to all our first Dreamfish Fellows     who courageously went where no Fellow had gone before! They applied their decades of experience in human and organization development in a new virtual territory of network organization.

    During their tenure, this first group carried out community development projects as they trained in online community management, network facilitation, social media, multicultural communication and distributed organization development.

    Thank you to 2010 Dreamfish Fellows

    Charlyn Fareed Green, entrepeneur coach
    Dan Bashaw, web gardener
    Kate McAlpine, coach and strategic planner
    Jamie Talbott, leadership educator
    Jim MacQueen, OD consultant
    Monica Evans, theology student

    As many of the 2010 Fellows are now seeking contract jobs, please reach out to them if you might want to work together.

    How did the program start up?
    There are many people who helped the program come to life, all social innovators! The seed of the idea started with Julie Anding, a Fielding alum, philanthropist and Director of  Organization Development at a major corporation. Julie creatively thought about how to make as a big an impact as possible.

    Marie-Anne Haour, now of Kiva en Francais, Elizabeth Montgomery, entrepreneur in Shenzhen, China and Lisa Abbott, marketer, then joined our effort to develop the first design of the program.

    Fielding Graduate University‘s Katrina Rogers and Charles McClintock then collaborated on creating a partnership that both serves the learning community of Fielding and our mutual goals to create social impact. Julie Anding, Fielding alum, and her partner, Lisa Kornetsky, founded the Fielding Dreamfish Fellows Fund with generous donation of $10,000. Charlyn Fareed Green additionally donated $1500.

    Dreamfish mentors, Nancy White, co-author of Digital Habitats, and Mary Ann Huckabay, Director of Women in Management program at Stanford, then contributed their teaching and coaching to Dreamfish Fellows.

    Nnenna Nwakanma, Chair of Free Open Source Software Foundation for Africa, then stepped up to lead the community team in 2010 and support the first Fellows.

    And, with the efforts of much love, the program was born!

    What did the Fellows accomplish?
    Each Fellow had a different focus, depending on their skills and learning interests. Micro-entrepreneurship development in Dreamfish involves development of three system levels -  individuals, their projects, and the network of Dreamfish itself.

    To give you insight into what this looks like, here are a few of their many contributions over the past months:

    • coaching Dreamfish members in leadership and entrepreneurship skills
    • facilitating in Dreamfish Pool
    • welcoming new members
    • making introductions between members
    • managing our mailing lists
    • facilitating strategic planning
    • writing news
    • building relationships across networks
    • hosting conference call meetings
    • hosting learning events
    • designing processes
    • contributing to strategic conversations

    Special thanks to Fellows who are continuing on. Charlyn Fareed Green in Atlanta is coaching a social entrepreneur who serves rural women in Kenya. Kate McAlpine is facilitating strategic planning and using Dreamfish to support Caucus for Children’s Rights projects in Tanzania.

    Program Evaluation

    In order to design, staff and fund 2011 program, we are now in the process of gathering Fellows feedback and reviewing accomplishments and challenges. We, Dreamfish contributors, will then collaborate with Fielding and funders to implement next year’s program. In the future, the program could be expanded to financially support developer projects and operations projects as there are more funding partners to fuel the program.

    Funding

    How did we use the first funds? Fielding gave two awards to the first two Fellows chosen. We then used the funds to support Fellows with training and community management. In 2011, we are expanding funding to create a stronger foundation and hire full-time core staff.  To kick off fundraising for 2011, Scott Turner is giving a matching pledge of $5,000 if we match the pledge by January 30th. Don Bushnell is hosting an event January 14th in which to rally support and has pledged $1,000.

    How to get involved in 2011
    If you are interested in helping to grow Dreamfish, I welcome you to get involved. Dreamfish operations are carried out by individuals in Dreamfish network.

    To offer ideas, here are a few possible projects you might want to do…

    • identify projects among membership in Dreamfish that would benefit from Fellows skills
    • build tools to help Fellows do their work
    • propose opportunities for Fellows program in 2011
    • make a pledge
    • help create an online fundraiser
    • give airline miles to Fellows
    • build the program for developers, creatives and business people
    • Apply to become a 2011 Fellow. Watch for the application

    Thanks again to all of you who helped to realize the 2010 Dreamfish Fellows program. I’ll keep you posted on new deveopments for the 2011 program. May we together further our dreams of work in 2011.

    -Tiff

     

  • Tiffany von Emmel 10:32 am on December 31, 2010 Permalink  

    The Future of Money video 

    The turn of the year is a great time to open the window to the future and take a deep breath of fresh air!

    The Future of Money from KS12 on Vimeo.

    What do youth envision as the way of value and the economy in the future? Digital Natives bring inter-netted minds to bear on transforming the economy. This video is a riff on what the world might look like when networks form the foundation of our economy.

    Jam on! at hashtag #futureofmoney

    Creds

    This video was part of Venessa Miemis’ presentation at the SIBOS Conference in Amsterdam, 25 October 2010. The interviews were conducted with participants in America, England, Sweden, Mexico, Germany and Thailand via video Skype calls from Berlin, Germany.

    Written by Gabriel Shalom, Venessa Miemis and Jay Cousins

    Directed and Edited by Gabriel Shalom

     

  • Tiffany von Emmel 11:57 pm on November 19, 2010 Permalink
    Tags: , , kenya, nairobi   

    Networks offer ways to move in new worlds 


    A Way In

    Deepening networks

    It was my first time going to Nairobi, Kenya.  Going to support the growth of local Dreamfish community, I wanted to stay with local residents instead of a hotel, so that I would connect more deeply with people and the city and keep on a frugal budget. So, I drafted a plan and asked my network of friends and colleagues with relationships in Nairobi.  In this way, I met wonderful people with interest in development and entrepreneurship.  Kate McAlpine, Dreamfish Fellow, who launched the 50% Campaign in Tanzania introduced me to Stefan and Esther van der Swaluw. Stefan is a director of the African Children’s Policy Forum. Esther teaches at a Dutch pre-school in Nairobi. I am now staying with them, their three children, and bevy of guinea pigs, monkeys, tortoises, dog and cat. (Tiwi, the cat, is on my lap at the moment.)

    Esther with students at Nairobi Dutch School

    A friend from the U.N. introduced me to Joseph Gichore Kamau who has a taxi business. Joseph got me home late last night from Nairobi city centre.  Nancy White introduced me to CGIAR Gender and Diversity, an excellent resource. Peter Kaminski connected me with Erik Hersman of Ushahidi who just started up Nairobi iHub, a super cool coworking center for technology entrepreneurs, where I am now coworking (While at iHub, I ran into Beth Kanter, a friend from California who heard from Nancy that I was here, but that is another day’s story!).  Lush green landscape, well-paved roads, with over a dozen shopping malls, home to an affluent international community of Kenyan, European, Asian NGO and embassy workers. This is the West side of Nairobi.

    Engaging a personal network, the network can share a bounty of learning, allowing a deepening of connections to domain areas more familiar.  Now, what can a new network offer? A network where you don’t know anyone? Another side of town! Things that you want to experience but your personal network may not have easy access to….

    To serve African Dreamfish members, I wanted to engage local youth entrepreneurs who were seeking collaborative ways to work.  So, I reached out to a new network. I surfed Couchsurfing. Why? Because the Couchsurfing community shares attributes with the vision of Dreamfish community- millions of people helping each other to realize adventurous dreams. People freely offer a place to stay overnight to each other.

    And that is how I met Pauline Kimeu, a community connector who has a knack for network weaving.  Pauline hosted me in her home for the first two nights in Nairobi.  Pauline introduced me to the East side of town.

    Navigating a new network
    From Pauline, I learned how to navigate Nairobi, geographically and culturally.

    Taking a Matatu to work

    Pauline lives in a bustling suburban area under heavy construction, where apartment buildings built of grey cement blocks house workers that commute into the city centre.  On my first morning,  we took a Matatu into town. A Matatu is a converted van that packs 14 people. Standing on the muddy side of the road, we examined the many Matatus that came by. Pauline showed me how to look for a “good one” – Get the price up front (it varies between 20-50 shillings depending on demand and supply),  and look for one that has seats nearer the front, because sitting near the front was a smoother safer ride. Because of this education, I am now learning more Swahili, saving a bundle on taxi fares,  and seeing much more of Nairobi life.

    Network growing
    The Matatu dropped us off in Nairobi City Centre. Weaving throughout the crowded street, we went into a building up to an internet cafe, Tropical Communication Center, owned by a woman entrepreneur and friend of Pauline’s. (This then became the location for the first Nairobi Dreamfish meeting a week later.)

    While in town, we visited Right Choice Safaris and Tours, to book a shuttle for me to Tanzania the next day. While there, we made new friends. Above is Pauline taught George Oketch how to Dreamfish.

    Pauline and I then took a bus East out of the city to the country to visit her family, which has a farm, near the town of Tala. Landing in Tala, we then took a motorcycle-taxi the rest of the way. Yes, a motorcycle. We huddled behind the driver, the three of us sharing a seat, riding along a dirt road. We weaved among the life of the village, women carrying water, men with carts, bicyclists, trucks, and children waving at us. With the smack of bugs against my face in the wind, my mind admittedly went to the lecture of the Health and Immunization nurse in San Francisco about malaria and yellow fever. But, my heart was full with the joy of connecting to life.

    Meeting Pauline’s family was food for the soul. Gracious, generous, warm, they welcomed me in and I felt at home immediately. I learned about the work of Chapati making and dress-making.

    Pauline’s sister-in-law and i had an entrepreneurial huddle. She would like to create a sewing business, making dresses. We explored how she could create a support system to grow her business while at the same time care for her two children. We explored the challenges of caring for a family, living 100 miles outside of Nairobi, and ways that Dreamfish can help. Here are pictures from our glorious day.

    To riff on Gregory Bateson, a “network” is not the map that represents it. A network is the generosity of heart and the graceful will of each person, emerging as a powerful dance of change.

     

    • Sandy Heierbacher 4:42 pm on November 21, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      What a wonderful illustration of the power and possibility inherent in the work you do at Dreamfish, Tiffany! I enjoyed reading this, and seeing the pictures from your trip, as Kenya is dear to my heart.

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