Digital Green helps farmers in India to farm better
A long lost buddy during my Amazon days Rikin recently resurfaced (long live social networks!) and, what a surprise, he’s really in India helping villagers as he said he would 5 years ago! (after building spaceships that is) What’s even more amazing is that he’s still sort of working in Microsoft while getting this going – respect 😉
In short, Digital Green, which Rikin is the CEO (and I expect no less..), is disseminating agricultural information to small and marginal farmers in India through digital video. -__-||| Nope too long, let’s try: DG is teaching poor and lousy farmers to farm better! Let me quote the whole overview:
Digital Green (DG) is a research project that seeks to disseminate targeted agricultural information to small and marginal farmers in India through digital video. The Digital Green system sustains relevancy in a community by developing a framework for participatory learning. The system includes a digital video database, which is produced by farmers and experts. The content within this repository is of various types, and sequencing enables farmers to progressively become better farmers. Content is produced and distributed over a hub and spokes-based architecture in which farmers are motivated and trained by the recorded experiences of local peers and extension staff. In contrast to traditional extension systems, we follow two important principles: (1) cost realism, essential if we are to scale the system up to a significant number of villages and farmers; and (2) building systems that solve end-to-end agricultural issues with interactivity that develops relationships between people and content.
Ah, I can almost feel like I’m back in US again – it’s too LONG! haha
The interesting part of this whole project to me is the form of social networking that’s not really offline, and not online either, but lives somewhere between roaming volunteers with video cameras, as if the volunteers themselves are the Internet, and the videos are the websites. A very interesting in-between model that aspire to harness the same kind of network effects that social networks have online.
Here’s DG’s (super verbose) website: www.digitalgreen.org and blog: digitalgreen.spaces.live.com for those interested.
And here’s my favorite video (has very little to do with their main product .. i just like cows with balloons!)
