Hello! I’m in a cool, chilled internet cafe in Accra (capital of Ghana) at the moment, catching up on the news from the BBC website. It’s the end of the trip, and I don’t feel too physically exhausted, mainly because we’ve managed to get plenty of sleep. I’m sipping Mirinda, a fizzy backcurrant drink. Even […]
Year: 2002
Well, I’ve spent all week in a mild state of packing stress, but I’m pretty sure I’ve got everything now, and it’s all packed. It’s noticeable that the only things I’ve got which I like were recommended to me by someone. So in return… Some items that I would recommend: Travel towel (they’re much smaller, […]
I’ve been away round the UK visiting friends and family last week and the start of this, and have just got back. This evening I met up with Stuart and Graham in London for a planning meeting on Ghana. We leave early Saturday morning. I’ve read all the instructions on my digital camera (thanks everyone […]
Last Wednesday I went to visit Microrobotics as part of my research into co-operative businesses. This one being particularly relevant to me as it is high tech. Their website describes it as “employee-owned”, which is accurate, although there is lots of interesting history to this. Karl kindly explained it to me, and there are some […]
Last night the Think Twice nameservers and DNS transferred from Easily (where it was inelegantly forwarding to part of some Demon webpages) to a new account at Pepperfish. This means we can have mailing lists and things, when Daniel sorts them out (thanks Daniel!). Pepperfish rules. Think Twice was a really good conference this year, […]
OK, I’ve decided not to write up my visit to Windhorse Trading as I don’t have enough of a journalistic angle on it, and the trail has gone cold. It’s a Buddhist warehouse business on the outskirts of Cambridge which I had a tour of a couple of weeks ago. I am interested in it […]
This week I did some more work at Ravenbrook, and I’m doing more next week. On the shelves there (or perhaps it was Zoonami‘s, who they share an office with) I found an excellent book called Creative Company by Andy Law, about an advertising agency in London which turned into a co-operative, equally owned by […]
Yesterday I impulsively decided to go to Ghana with my friend Stuart. He used to work there about six years ago, for Wycliffe the bible translating missionaries. He’s going back for a ceremony to dedicate the completion of the definition of written language for the village that he was in. I don’t approve of bible […]
Today I showed Sheila at the Harambee Centre how to turn a Word document into a sensible email questionnaire. We just went for copy and paste from Word into an HTML email, then asking people to reply and fill in their answers. Outlook 2000 has a nice feature that if you type within a reply […]
Went to the Cambridge Co-operative Development Agency (CCDA) today and had a good long chat with Adrian Ashton there. I am investigating the possibility of persuading someone to start their new software-related business as a co-operative, rather than a more normally structured sort of company limited by guarantee. But that’s just an excuse, as I […]