Dear Bodil Fox and Gary Kebbel,

Bodil, Thank you for reminding me to send in my third report for the
Knight Foundation, which I include below, and share with our working
group Learn How To Learn http://groups.yahoo.com/group/learnhowtolearn/

Gary, I'm not getting comments at my blog or links to my blog. What
should I do, if anything? Whereas, we have quite a lot of activity at
our email groups and wiki. Does that activity satisfy the requirements
of my contract?

Thank you for this award!

Andrius

Andrius Kulikauskas
Minciu Sodas
http://www.ms.lt
ms@...

Organization name: Andrius Kulikauskas of Minciu Sodas

Report due: March 1

Grant # Unknown

Grant amount: $ 14,100 (over one year)

Grant date: Unknown

Project description: Blogging about The Includer, a proposed offline
device by which Africans might read and write emails stored on a USB
flash drive so they might upload and download them later at an Internet
cafe.

Please report your project outcomes clearly, briefly and honestly.
Include setbacks as well as successes. Knowing why something didn't work
can be as helpful as knowing why something worked.

In describing your relationship with Knight Foundation, please be candid
and provide constructive criticism whenever appropriate. Honest feedback
can help both of us improve our organizations.

To get started, please read the following anticipated outcomes
paragraphs carefully. The anticipated outcomes sum up what we were
expecting from this grant.

Anticipated Outcomes

Progress will be measured by:

* the number of blog posts,
* the quality of my content and
* the number of reader comments

Tides' grant agreement with the Knight Foundation asks to measure

* the frequency of new blog posts,
* the number of responses by others,
* the length of various conversations,
* and the number of different people contributing to the conversation
will be used to measure the Blogger's efforts.
* They also will be measured by the number of other blogs linked to them.
* The quality of the blogs - do they link out to others, do they supply
their comments with hyperlink references.
* The number of unique visits to MediaShift blog will also be monitored.

Requested Information

1. Please list each required project activity and tell us if, and when,
you achieved it.

I am blogging at http://www.includer.org as agreed earlier.
I blogged 14 posts (Episode 28 through Episode 42) in March, April and
May of 2009.
They total about 8,500 words, which is about 19
printed pages. I have included about 24 pictures. I wrote about some 40
people and their work, some as memorable characters. I have given some
110 links. My posts looked at the Includer from a variety of angles:

* User dynamics (Episode 29)
* Strategy (Episode 33)
* Proposals (Episode 30, 34)
* Sample content (Episode 31, 40, 42)
* Knight News Challenge: (Episode 28)
* System infrastructure (Episode 39)
* Technology development (Episode 32, 35, 36, 41)
* Key contacts (Episode 38)
* Organizational dynamics (none)
* Usage survey (Episode 37)

I am grateful to Minciu Sodas members for letters which I used for
interesting posts. Some discussed examples of issues relevant for
potential Includer users with marginal Internet access, such organizing
a business for wedding pictures, becoming an ICT technologist and
building pit latrines. Some discussed relevant advances in technology
such as new Internet cables to East Africa, the use of MMC cards instead
of USB flash drives, and opening up PayPal accounts from Africa. Others
discussed obstacles such as "the viral divide". I wrote about two
proposals, including one that was accepted, which was to organize global
teams to promote Mornflake cereal. I also wrote up my overall strategy
for our lab.

Almost every post makes clear that we have a lively discussion at our
lab. However, this discussion is taking place within the posts. We're
also reaching out and being found. "Vagrant netizen" Lorraine Lee wrote
from Michigan that she, too, faces the digital divide and would like an
Includer. Hardware hacker Marko Makela responded to Ricardo's idea of
using MMC cards. Pamela McLean and I wrote a post for Christian
Crumlish's new book. We get about 20 posts a month at Kiyavilo Msekwa's
working group Learn How To Learn
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/learnhowtolearn/ which is the base for our
work. We also get more than 100 posts per month from our other working
groups with African leaders such as Samwel Kongere's Mendenyo. And we
get queries at our wiki http://www.worknets.org

I received maybe 1 comment. I think we're not getting comments at our
blog for the following reasons:
* The center of our activity is elsewhere: our email groups, our wiki
and our chat;
* Blogs work best as social media for bloggers and their regular
readers, but people with marginal Internet access tend to be neither;
* Blogs receive hundreds of false comments from spammers, and nowadays,
comments are often never posted, which means that overall many people
use them less and less as they are not worth the trouble.
* I can't and don't encourage our participants to "respond" except in
ways that are easiest for them, especially because many are poor or
overworked.
* The Knight Foundation, which asked me to blog, has never left any
comment at my blog or engaged me otherwise as a blogger. We have no
relationship. (Why?)

Please let me know if it's indeed important for you, as you state in
your anticipated outcomes, that people post comments at my blog. I am
reworking my Minciu Sodas laboratory's websites and very likely I will
redo my blog so that it works as a substream amongst a "stream" of
activity at our lab. It will become part of a light weight project
management system where comments and replies will be central and
encouraged.

2. Were there any major changes in the project activities and timetable?
What caused them?

None since my first report.

3. Describe any setbacks you encountered and how you addressed them.

None since my first report.

4. Were there any positive surprises? If so, please explain.

We had a wonderful meeting in London which included Samwel Kongere and
Rachel Wambui Kungu of Kenya. I was very encouraged by Samwel as a
person and by our strategy meeting with Pamela McLean and Franz Nahrada
and our vision of global villages where we live.

I am also very grateful for work from Leon Benjamin
http://www.winningbysharing.net for our global team to engage UK online
communities http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?UKOnlineCommunities and
promote Mornflake cereal http://www.mornflake.com and their online video
contest http://www.mornflakecompetition.com We've had trouble
including our African participants in this work because of bad Internet
connections. Yet this is an example of the economic potential of the
Includer. Our work on this promotion has pushed us to think fresh about
our values and so we're now working much more closely with Marcin
Jakubowski, Ben de Vries, Jeremy Mason and Marcin Jakubowski of Factor E
Farm http://factorefarm.org, Masimba Biriwasha of Zimbabwe
http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?GiveABook, and Thomas Chepaitis,
Foreign Minister of Uzhupis Republic
http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?UzhupisRepublic This has also allowed
us to invest ourselves in our global team, in a network of online
communities, and in websites that would support a responsive "help room".

Technologically, we're seeing the proliferation of netbooks, which are
now available for $300 or so, and also e-book readers such as Amazon's
Kindle. This means that Includer, in some sense, is coming to life.
Our contribution is to apply such tools to include those with marginal
Internet access. Ricardo and Kennedy Owino are making giant steps with
their Sneakernet project in Nairobi.

5. Please explain how you are meeting the overall goals stated in the
anticipated outcomes.

I am blogging at my own website http://www.includer.org We are having
organic activity, but it's not taking place at the blog. I suspect that
the Knight Foundation doesn't care about the bigger picture and may (or
may not) insist that I get the requisite (but unspecified number!) of
links, comments and conversations. It's not productive to do that at my
blog. Instead, I am redoing our websites so that through them we can as
a team respond effectively to incoming comments and also note actions to
take by which we might help each other. I also want to aggregate our
lab members' blogs. When I pull this all together I expect to have a
"blog" that will meet the Knight Foundation's formal requirements. Yet
please let me know if I shouldn't worry about them.

6. How are you measuring your progress? Please attach copies of any
evaluation reports, and list results of any measurements, such as Web
traffic, downloads, registered users, monthly trends, etc.

I am measuring progress by considering how easy it is to cull material
for my blog from our members' letters and other content. Almost all of
my posts are based on such material and that means that we have organic
activity and a real purpose.

7. If you were publicizing the single most important outcome of your
work, what headline would you write for your news release?

Mornflake engages the UK by way of Africa

8. What did you do to market the project? Was it successful? What would
you do differently next time?

I am focusing on how our African participants might directly benefit.
More and more, I'm trying to understand how we might all benefit from
their activity on-the-ground, given their difficulty in participating
through the Internet. This might include us blogging from our "global
villages" and supporting local projects to try out new technologies, as
Factor E Farm is doing in Missouri.

9. Please provide the demographic breakdown of your staff. What
percentage are women and people of color? How does this participation
measure up to your diversity goals and plans? Please describe your
efforts to achieve diversity.

Same as last report... I don't have any staff but we've had very strong
African participation and Black-American participation as well. I've
also highlighted our women leaders.

10. Please provide the audited financial statements from your
organization's last fiscal year.

Not applicable. I worked as an independent contractor. I received the
first payment of $7,050. Thank you.

11. Please attach the Knight Foundation budget report form showing the
proposed budget and the actual spending in each project category.
Explain any significant changes.

Not applicable.

12. Do you have a surplus from your Knight grant? If so, please tell us
how much it is and explain why you have it. Please explain what you
propose to do with the unspent funds, and indicate whether these are new
or previously proposed activities.

I never learned about the travel charges and reimbursements, who owes who?

13. Who else funded this effort, and at what level? Was it necessary for
you to make significant changes to the proposed project budget?

My laboratory and participants have invested large amounts of money and
time in this project.

14. Please describe your plans in detail to sustain the project long term.

Business opportunities include open source math learning materials,
worknets culture, a 24-hour help room, and Sneakernet services. I am
awaiting results for a Nordplus proposal:
http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?NordplusProposal and the Sneakernet I
have proposed for Ghor province, Afghanistan:
http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?Afghanistan

15. Did you collaborate with other organizations, particularly Knight
Foundation grantees, during the course of this project? How?

Janet Feldman leads our Holistic Helping working group. She's writing a
handbook on "blogging positively" for Rising Voices.

16. Please describe your interaction with Knight Foundation staff. What
was most useful and what changes would you suggest?

Nobody contacted me. I have not found anybody at the Knight Foundation
who wants to help me.

17. Did you ever need Knight Foundation to help you facilitate contacts
with experts in the field, professional peers and similar organizations?
If so, was Knight Staff helpful?

Nobody contacted me. Nobody responded to my previous reports. I have
not found anybody at the Knight Foundation who wants to help me. Please
do contact me so that we might work well together!