ict4dev

Over the years, videoconferencing has evolved from a bandwidth-consuming unreliable technology to one that consumes less bandwidth and is much more stable. Video has become more and more utilized as bandwidth has increased and prices have come down. As part of the Strategic Technologies for the CGIAR in 2010, Multi-point videoconferencing gateway ranked 4th place.
The simplest and easiest Video conference to use is point-to-point, but there is increasingly a need in the CGIAR to easily set up meetings with multiple locations (multi-point) for the purpose of communication and collaboration.

As new  Megaprograms were being finalized, research defined, new partnerships forged for a new more impactful agriculture research agenda… as the  texture, the vital structure of the new CGIAR  was being defined it became apparent that communication and knowledge sharing related issues were “missing in action”…. but not everywhere… signs that there was a growing awareness of the value of knowledge sharing in research became apparent… the heads of communication of the various CGIAR centers started to make noise around the fact communication and knowledge sharing were being neglected… so these topics made it back to the “must be there” list in a Megaprogram.

Truly innovative companies, according to Roger Martin, author of “The Design of Business”, are those that have managed to balance the “reliability” of analytical thinking with the “validity” of abductive thinking. Basically, these two concepts try to differentiate two ways to deal with innovation.
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On July 12th 2010, an innovative new project hosted at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) held a one day workshop on ‘developing index-based livestock insurance to reduce vulnerability due to drought-related livestock deaths’. The project -Index-Based Livestock Insurance-,  better known as IBLI, has been operating in Kenya already and is now looking to expand its activities into Ethiopia.
The objectives of the workshop were to: