So, you just got back from an exciting week at Pop!Tech 2007, tell me a bit about your expectations going in? Honestly, I wasn’t sure what to think going in. I heard that Camden was pretty and that everyone was working on really interesting “over the horizon ideas.” I also heard in the words of the Bostonian, this group was “wicked smaht”. No question, Pop!Tech is an incredible scene. For most of us that can’t attend Pop!Tech, what’s the feel? The environment? The buzz like a

Africa is looking up. Believe it. After years of being fed a constant diet of bad news about the continent, most Americans are all too ready to assume nothing but the worst stories come out of Africa. Sometimes it seems that CNN has a special slot reserved just for a weekly feature on pestilence, war and famine. At least in the US media, you really have to look hard to find anything approaching good news about Africa, anything you might think of “looking up” to. So it’s not a

I’m rushing to try to put something down for a blog… Partly because we face big issues. Because we don’t have time to wait. But also because I’m only at Pop!Tech for a while. And because unlike many bloggers, it seems to take me a long time to crank out a piece. Time is short, and I’m on deadline, after all. So quickly to the work at hand… Again this morning we heard about the planet in crisis, that we need to take action, now, today, immediately, if we’re going to save the e

Thursday morning’s session had an audacious title: “The Human Impact”. And, of course this immediately appealed to me… A veteran of many soccer, rugby and an odd US football game, impact is no stranger. After all, we grow up – especially us boys – wanting to be “impact players”. As we get older, we try to keep in shape through our high impact workouts. And then, as we age, we look back at our legacies. Did we accomplish something meaningful? Did we have an impact? Well, it ap

It’s been a long time since Patrick Henry made his famous speech in Virginia calling for liberty or death, calling for democracy and independence for what is now the United States. And a lot has changed since then. A lot more countries are nominally considered democracies, and at least some of them claim to be interested in providing services and opportunities for their citizens. Around the world citizens are demanding a lot more from their interactions with Government and co

If you are a regular – or occasional – reader of Andy’s Global View (www.amglobal.blogspot.com), you’ll know that one of my goals is to try to think over the horizon a bit, looking at technology and development issues in new ways, focusing on Emerging Markets. Well I am happy to say that our world just got bigger. This week I will be attending the Pop!Tech (www.poptech.com) conference in Camden, Maine as a “guest blogger” –covering the conference as combination commentator an