Azerbaijan and Open Source Localization

Baku, Azerbaijan.

I'm here in Baku, at the behest of George Soros, or at least his favourite organisation, the Open Society Institute, as a trainer for an e-riders project being started by the local Open Society Assistance Foundation.

My participation has a few purposes. First of all, it's a bit of a training experience for myself, ie. I'm being evaluated to see if, in the future I can be used to handle these e-rider startup training projects in other countries. Secondarily we have a few meetings to talk to the local organisation about possible wireless projects in the future, and finally i've been doing a small portion of the actual training of the e-riders.

The e-riders are basically roving technology consultants to the local NGO sector. They are locals with IT experience being trained to act as consultants. And apart from the fact that it has been really difficult to actually gather the 5 participants in one room, it has been a good 4 day training so far.

It's an interesting job, and with my private sector background, it is something I both enjoy, and do fairly well. I hope there'll be more projects like this in the near future.

I also think the e-riders project, at least in the incarnation I have seen it take here, is a interesting and relevant project, albeit with all the flaws and quirks of many development projects. I like the idea of training local trainers, rather than depending on foreigners to act as consultants. I like the focus on the needs of ngo's, especially the attempt to look at ICT in a non-technicl manner, emphasisng strategy and mission support over IT for the sake of IT.

But the training itself, has been a difficult 4 days with participants missing or simultaneously partaking in a variety of other activities, none of which were ultimately beneficient to the learning process.

Oh well, if it were easy it would be dull :-)