Innovative solutions from Geekcorps in Mali

La Source at the Bamako main market

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 ADEN project

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

A computer room at the University Polytechnic of Bobo-Dioulasso

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.

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Teaching at the University Polytechnic of Bobo-Dioulasso

Computer class at the University

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

On the Bosphore river in Istanbul

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 →

Being a developer in India

Working at my desk in India

I did two internships in India during my study. Both took place in south India in the beautiful former French colony of Pondicherry. First time that I went there was in April 2000 for my computer science bachelor degree internship. I was working in an Indian firm, Nexus Computer Ltd, that I virtually meet through the magic of the Internet. Indeed, I was browsing the web in France with the expectation to find an internship in India and I entered in touch with computer fellows. The University of Paris was nice enough to give me a grant to support me in that experience and I flew to India for three months.

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