The 23rd March, 2007 Meeting took place at Busyinternet

Fred Sarpong, Public Relations Officer, GHAJICT


Mawutodzi Abissath, Executive Member GHAJICT


E.K.Bensah II, Ag President GHAJICT

All went well with the meeting, with some very concrete recommendations made, which will be circulated in minutes over the next couple of days!

FW: mtg-busyinternet-230307 (live on the GHAJICT blog)

GHAJICT Constitution Meeting

Date:23.03.2007

Venue: BusyInternet, Ring Road, ACCRA

 

Agenda

1. Adoption of Minutes / Agenda
2. Membership dues
3. Fundraising opportunities (UNDP, etc)
1. GHAJICT Treasurer should immediately liaise with Kwami Ahiabenu III on this
4. registration of association
1. who will take lead on registration? What signatures needed?
2. which bank?—(ECOBANK)

                                                              i.      individual account for now / savings acct

                                                             ii.      can treasurer take care of this?

3. Fees (GHC150,000/quarter)

                                                              i.      Members can pay in advance/yearly

4. Possible date of launch?

                                                              i.      April-end? Or on World Information Society Day (Thu 17 May^[1])?

                                                             ii.      Coordination / basic communication strategy for launch:

1.      a hotel? BusyInternet? Kofi Annan-IT CE?

2.      which media outlets? Radio? TV? Print media?

3.       aob

5. BLOG Activity
1. Executive members and executive must maintain their blogs
2. We need “blog whip” to remind those GHAJICT members (http://ghajict.blogspot.com/) to keep up
6. Membership cards
1. Talk to Busyinternet

                                                              i.      Find out fees

                                                             ii.      cost

                                                           iii.      Let’s get them done

7. Communication Tools
1. GHAJICT now on blogafrica.com—available to African blogosphere
2. Blog exists—what can be improved

                                                              i.      Executive members should ALL be contributors

3. Ideas for website
4. newspaper

 

8. AOB

 

 

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^[1] “Wednesday, 17 May 2006: First World Information Society Day

The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), held in November 2005, adopted the Tunis Agenda for the Information Society, which recognized that there is a need to build more awareness of the Internet. It specifically called upon the United Nations General Assembly to declare 17 May World Information Society Day. (http://www.itu.int/wisd/2006/index.html)

 

KNUST students to benefit from Broadband Wireless Internet

Picture shows Prof. K. K. Adarkwa (2nd left), Vice Chancellor of KNUST trying to access the internet on a laptop at the launch of the wireless service.
Story: Enoch Darfah Frimpong, Kumasi
A Broadband wireless Internet and voice telephony facility has been inaugurated on the campus of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST).
Known as the KNUST E-Campus Network, the facility has the potential of transforming the mode of teaching and learning on campus, as it would provide members of the university community with in-room and on-campus wireless Internet and voice telephony.
The provision of the service is a joint venture between Universal Telephone Exchange Limited and Engineering Systems and Services Limited, in collaboration with the KNUST.
The project is the first phase of a comprehensive Information Communication Technology (ICT), which is aimed at integrating all educational institutions into the global ICT network with KNUST as the hub.
According to the Vice-Chancellor of the KNUST, Professor Kwasi Kwafo Adarkwa, the services would be provided at an affordable rate to enable all subscribers benefit from the innovation.
He said with the innovation, students and lecturers could have access to the Internet service from any location on campus for research and recreational purposes at their convenience.
Aside that, he said students would be able to manage their time more efficiently with affordable telephone service.
The vice-chancellor said the cumulative effect of the benefits could result in improved academic performance of students enrolled at the university.
It was also expected that the current range of services provided under the KNUST E-Campus project would be complemented with distance learning, which would leap KNUST into the frontiers of educational excellence, the vice-chancellor said.
He said the network would eventually be interlinked with similar networks in Ghana and beyond to enable members of the university community share resources with other educational institutions to create a serene environment for education and research.
The Chief Executive of Engineering Systems and Services Limited, Mr Ben Adu, in an address, said university teaching and learning was becoming increasingly challenging in the face of limited resources and increasing demand for enrolment.
Mr Adu said physical facilities and lecturers were in short supply, and that access to quality learning and educational resources were limited.
He said the gap between quality of education in the developed economies and the one in the developing countries would further widen if steps were not taken to address the problem.
Mr Adu said distance education and e-learning could help to ameliorate the situation, but without equal access to quality communications infrastructure, distance education would not be able to deliver its promise.

Minutes of Mtg on 2/2/2007 @ I-Net, A&C Shopping Mall, East Legon

MINUTES OF GHAJICT MEETING on 2 February, 2007 at

I-NET Café, A&C Shopping Mall, East Legon

 

 

Present:

n               Ruby Amable, Ag. VICE-PRESIDENT

n               E.K.Bensah, Ag. PRESIDENT

 

NOTE: this meeting was held at A&C Shopping Mall, East Legon instead of BusyInternet

 

ISSUES

1. Adoption of Minutes / Agenda
2. Membership dues
3. Fundraising opportunities (UNDP, etc)
4. registration of association
1. which bank?
2. Fees?
3. Possible date of launch?
5. Liasing with blogs on http://www.gjaict.blogspot.com/

6.     GHAJICT intervention in Three ICT Bills Before A-G

7. AOB

 

1. Adoption of Minutes / Agenda

·         There was dissatisfaction expressed at the quality of the last minutes. It was agreed that whilst each person has his own style of producing minutes, some of the errors were more than typographical. The minutes looked more like a report than minutes.

 

·         The Vice-President is ready to offer capacity-building to any member of GHAJICT who is interested. The Ag President expressed an interest in this capacity-building offer.

 

·         Despite this initial comment, the minutes were adopted, and the current agenda for the meeting approved

 

2. Membership dues

·         There was a suggestion of GHC600,000/yr, translating to GHC50,000/month/member

·         It’s unclear as to whether we want to make it quarterly (GHC150,000/three months), or yearly

·         It was decided that to get the ball rolling, MARCH could be a good time to start getting payments made

 

3. Fundraising opportunities (UNDP, etc)

·         At the time of writing (2/3/07), Ag President, in a yahoo chat with Penplusbytes chief Kwame Ahiabenu III some weeks back, found out that getting UNDP money is very easy. Important to capitalize on that aspect—maybe GHAJICT treasurer (Veronica) could look into this?

·         Other opportunities for funds include JICA; UNESCO

·         It is important to identify a GHAJICT member who can facilitate this

 

4. registration of association

·         Yet again, the discussion between Ahiabenu III and Ag President on yahoo revealed that a priority to establish and register the association is better than tweaking out details in the constitution

·         It is yet undecided what to operate—only a SAVINGs? Or a CURRENT acct? Or BOTH?

o        Advantage of savings is that money deposited would stay there for longer, and accrue interest as opposed to current one

o        GHAJICT would need to consider whether CORPORATE or INDIVIDUAL account would be better?

• which bank?

                                                              i.      Ag President suggested ECOBANK

• Fees?

                                                              i.      Please see above

• Possible date of launch?

                                                              i.      End of March/early April

 

5. Liasing with blogs on http://www.gjaict.blogspot.com/
• The Vice and President checked almost all the sites on that blog, and realized—with much horror—that a lot NEEDS must be done for the collaboration to be effective
• Given the challenges facing that group, it would be better to focus on motivating members of GHAJICT to get others to blog!!

 

6.     GHAJICT intervention in Three ICT Bills Before A-G

• The Vice President’s experience with parliamentary press corps could be brought to bear on any eventual intervention by GHAJICT

 

7. AOB

• VENUE:
• The I-NET CAFÉ at the A&C Shopping Mall, East Legon is a very comfortable atmosphere, providing sufficient space for all of us to use the fast computers there. The Vice-Prez and Prez find it a VERY amenable place for working, and thinking as a team
• Proposal to hold it there for a while

 

• WORK ON CONSTITUTION:
• It was agreed that we could provide a deadline for comments. Initially, it was going to be end of February, but can be moved forward
• Those comments could be compiled and reflected through the constitution off-line

 

Proposed next meeting:22 March, 2007 @ A&C Shopping Mall

 

ENDs