Solidays is the biggest music festival in France and take place at the Longchamp Racecourse, a 57 hectare horse-racing facility, located on the banks of the Seine River in Paris. The event brings together more than 150 artists and 170,000 festival-goers for three days. The proceeds from the festival are donated to organizations fighting against AIDS, especially for those focusing on the African continent. Continue reading
Motorbiking in Morocco
I love taking long journeys with a motorbike. I started driving a dirt bike when I was a teenager in the countryside around my parent’s town. I had at home an old 125cc Peugeot from 1954 and a scooter that I tinkered with every weekend.
Starting a National Research and Education Network in Benin
I have been involved for the last couple of months in designing an ICT program for Benin that is the fist step for a National Research and Education Network (NREN). The request came from the government of Benin who would like to get their universities connected to the rest of the world. Continue reading
Designing the digital Education Plan for Higher Education and Research in Haiti
I worked for three months on designing the digital Education Plan for Higher Education and Research in Haiti named PENDHA (Plan d’enseignement numérique à distance en Haïti). This program was intended to provide significant support in the reconstruction of Haitian higher education and research system. Indeed, Haitian universities welcomed 60,000 students and 2,000 teachers before the earthquake and these people need to keep going in their academic activities. Continue reading
Working on post-earthquake Haiti
I spent three months working for Internews in Haiti just after the January 12th, 2010 earthquake and it was a tough experience. Continue reading
Innovative solutions from Geekcorps in Mali
I spent two years in Mali from 2005 to 2007 such as the Country Director of Geekcorps which is a non-profit organization that sends people with technical skills to developing countries to assist in ICT infrastructure development. At Geekcorps, we built a couple of innovative technical solutions such as an open FM transmitter, a CanTV, an offline wikipedia, a bottleNet, DIY solar panels, a rural information center named Cybertigi or a digital kiosk named la Source. We had a nice office located in the Bamako hippodrome district with a lab and six rooms to welcome fellow geeks. I was lucky enough to run the office after Ian Howard and Matt Berg who had already built amazing adapted ICT solutions for Mali. Continue reading
Bridging the digital divide in Burkina-Faso
The French government has been working on a six millions € project named ADEN (Appui au Désenclavement Numérique) to provide about 60 Public Internet Access Points in 13 African countries. These Access Points work on Open Source Software. Continue reading
Connecting Burkinabé universities
I spent two years working on a French government project named RESEAU from 2005 to 2007. This project aimed over a period of 48 months to integrate universities in Burkina Faso into the world of knowledge sharing and an eLearning network.
Teaching at the University Polytechnic of Bobo-Dioulasso
I spent two years teaching multimedia production at the Masters level in the only public computer science faculty of Burkina-Faso located in Bobo-Dioulasso from 2005 to 2007. It was an amazing experience to be based in this university located 15 km away from the city. Continue reading
Overland Story: a long journey through Asia
I finished my studies at McGill University in Canada and I didn’t want to work right away. Unlike my American and Canadian fellows, I didn’t have to reimburse a loan for my university studies and I wanted to travel for a couple of months before looking for a job. I flew in January 2004 to Istanbul with my good friend Maxime, a camcorder and an online photo’s blog still available at: http://overlandstory.com/go/. Continue reading