Registration Open: Africa Roundtable Featuring Lumana on March 2, 2012

Submitted by Tobias Eigen on 8 February, 2012 - 06:39

Yippee! After months of planning and discussion, we finally have the Africa Roundtable on the calendar! Our inaugural catered luncheon will take place on Friday, March 2nd, and from then on the first friday of every month. Each Roundtable will feature a guest speaker and provide plenty of time for each participant to share their own news, goals, and opportunities with the group.

Invitation to join Kabissa Database Review Work Party: Saturday, 4 February 2012

Submitted by Tobias Eigen on 1 February, 2012 - 00:01

A comprehensive review of the Kabissa database of organizations is long overdue, especially with an upgrade in the works to make organization profiles even more useful for finding and connecting with African civil society. To this end we are organizing a "work party" this coming Saturday, 4 February and we'd love to have as many people pitching in as possible, both remotely via the Internet and face to face on Bainbridge Island at OfficeXpats, a coworking and meeting space.

Please join and share! Invitation to join the Africa Roundtable on Bainbridge Island

Submitted by Tobias Eigen on 25 January, 2012 - 22:01

I just sent the email below to Kabissa members and supporters in Washington State about the Africa Roundtable, an initiative I am starting up here on Bainbridge Island where I live. This is something I've been interested in doing for a long time, and if it works here on Bainbridge we should join forces with others to replicating it in other parts of the world. Please help spread the word and let me know if you have ideas or are interested in helping out. Thanks! 

 

Dear Kabissa friends in Washington,

I am writing to let you know about a new initiative I am starting here on Bainbridge Island where I live called the Africa Roundtable.

I would appreciate it if you could take a moment to learn about the initiative, join in if you are interested and help spread the word in your network by forwarding this email, sharing the Africa Roundtable facebook page, mentioning @africaroundtabl on twitter or just simply pointing people to http://www.africaroundtable.org.

Where does this idea come from? In the months since returning to Bainbridge from Berlin, and while networking and looking for organizations to work with, I have come across a number of people on the island who have an interesting Africa connection but who have never heard of each other. As the founder of Kabissa, an African civil society networking platform operated by volunteers, I am committed to grassroots empowerment through technology capacity building and networking. I'd love to do this on Bainbridge with people and organizations working in Africa, with regular face to face meetings to explore opportunities for cooperation, peer learning and mutual support.

The idea behind organizing both lunchtime and evening meetings is to accommodate schedules (not everyone is actually on Bainbridge during the day) and types of engagement (not everyone works on Africa on a day-to-day basis but many would like to learn what is being done for Africa from Bainbridge and support it). Another idea is to have these events be catered - Simply Bainbridge have made us a terrific offer which I think will contribute greatly to making our Roundtable gatherings enjoyable and successful for all involved.

Here’s the link again to join in: http://www.africaroundtable.org.

With thanks,

Tobias Eigen,
Kabissa Founder

P.S. Here’s a sample short text you can take verbatim (or tweak) to share the URL with your friends and followers on Facebook and Twitter:

Do you work on Africa from (or near) Bainbridge Island? Join the new Africa Roundtable! http://africaroundtable.org

The internet is going dark on January 18, 2012

Submitted by Tobias Eigen on 18 January, 2012 - 07:01

Kabissa is joining an initiative to protest the Protect IP Act / SOPA law on January 18th for which our website at kabissa.org will be taken offline completely for 24 hours. We encourage you to inform yourself about the issue and to participate in the protest  - we received many announcements about the day and opportunities to get involved in the United States and around the world but the most useful was that from Access, reprinted below. 

 

Take action today to learn about Facebook timeline and hide embarassing and potentially endangering old status updates

Submitted by Tobias Eigen on 17 December, 2011 - 23:32

Facebook is again evolving and growing its offerings, this time to bring a new feature that makes it easy and fun to explore and engage with someone's activities on facebook through time. As I've been saying over the last few years as Facebook gained in prominence (and I'm not alone in this) I am very concerned about Kabissa members working in potentially risky environments using Facebook in a non-tactical way and risking not just embarassment but arrest or worse. 

Please donate to Kabissa!

Submitted by Tobias Eigen on 22 November, 2011 - 03:01

Hello everyone! 

November and December are the months when we turn to fundraising at Kabissa - we may be a volunteer-led nonprofit with no staff and low operating costs, but we do still have costs. As for many nonprofits, this is the time for reaching out to our members and friends to ask for financial support.

If everyone who benefits from Kabissa gives what they can (even $10 helps!) and asks a few friends to do the same we will quickly reach our goal. Then we can get back to the more important work of supporting our members and building our networking platform!

Please click here for donation options: http://kabissa.org/donate

In solidarity and gratitude,

Tobias Eigen, Kabissa Founder and Executive Director

P.S. Kabissa is participating in two workplace giving campaigns again this year. 

  • Combined Federal Campaign for US Federal Employees: Please designate Kabissa CFC#11021 in your workplace giving.
  • World Bank Community Connections Campaign for World Bank Staff and Retirees: Please designate Kabissa in your pledge. 

P.P.S. Still have questions before you give? Take a look at the fine print at http://kabissa.org/donate - then please don't hesitate to call me at +1-206-965-9345 or email tobias@kabissa.org. I'd love to talk to you.

P.P.P.S. Want to support our campaign but can't contribute financially? It would be a huge help if you could ask your friends and colleagues to support us at http://kabissa.org/donate in emails, facebook and your other social networks. Together we can reach our goal. Thanks!

So what do you think of our new look?

Submitted by Tobias Eigen on 17 November, 2011 - 09:31

We have redesigned the site to reflect Kabissa’s role as a niche network connecting people and organizations working for positive change in Africa. We hope you like it!

We can’t wait for you to explore the site and give us your feedback. Here are some highlights:

  • The Kabissa Front Page draws in new members by highlighting our unique offerings for African civil society, showcasing members through a new “member stories” section and featuring news and blogs posted on Kabissa by members.
     
  • The Kabissa Community Blog is a space available for members to blog about their activities in Africa and to share opportunities, insights and tech tips relevant to the continent. Posts to the blog are featured on the Kabissa frontpage, monthly member newsletter and distributed via Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks.
     
  • Kabissa Groups are now reoriented around private, members-only discussion, information sharing and networking via email (like Yahoo! Groups or a listserv) to enable quicker interaction and mutual support between members - directly in our email. Each group has a private online space containing member list, full record of email discussions and wiki pages.
     
  • Log in to take a look at the new Member Dashboard pull-down menu which brings together in one place everything you might need to do to manage your group memberships, newsletter subscriptions, user profile page, organizations and more.

If you encounter a problem or bug with the new site, or have any feedback at all, please report it as soon as possible via our feedback form at http://kabissa.org/beta so we can fix it - thank you!

Silicon Valley Human Rights Standard (crossposted from rightscon.org)

Submitted by Tobias Eigen on 29 October, 2011 - 02:11

Silicon Valley Human Rights Conference

One of the objectives of the Silicon Valley Human Rights Conference is the creation of a Silicon Valley Standard (SVS). This is a principled statement incorporating the issues discussed at the 2011 Silicon Valley Human Rights Conference. The document includes 15 principles based on the 15 workshop topics covered at the conference.

The document is designed to complement other existing frameworks and uses the international human rights framework as its foundation. These principles served as a useful basis for discussion during the panels and represent a standard, which we hope the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector will use after the conference.

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