Links I Liked (LIL's) #1

Ideas/Model/Paper
- McKinsey Report – Africa’s path to growth: Sector by Sector; quick read – two page summaries on agriculture, banking, consumer goods, infrastructure, mining, oil & gas, and telecommunications; found agriculture, con goods, & infra most interesting; requires free registration, I can email you the pdf also. #BUSINESS https://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Economic_Studies/Productivity_Performance/Africas_path_to_growth_Sector_by_sector_2602
- Stanford business news – “D.Light’s Lofty Goals Meet Practical Challenges” Hands down favorite article; Student group builds highly useful light technology to serve poor; however, must address distribution, adoption,& financing challenges. #ENG #BUSINESS
http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/bmag/sbsm1005/feature-dlight.html

Person/Thinkers
- Stuart Hart – Cornell University; into sustainability/design /innovation; “disruptive technologies” & “building native capability” #BUSINESS
http://www.stuartlhart.com/philosophy.htm

Group/Organization
- 100cameras – photography in development #ART
http://www.100cameras.org/
- Trickle Up – alternate model to microfinance; uses grants to build small businesses #BUSINESS
http://www.trickleup.org/ourwork/whatvdo.html
- UNDP Initiative on Legal Empowerment of the Poor; shows how law can be used in development; four main areas: property rights & tenure security, labor rights, rights to livelihood & entrepreneurship, and rule of law & access to justice. #LAW
http://www.undp.org/legalempowerment/

News/Prayer
- Pray for Kyrgyzstan
http://www.economist.com/node/16377279?story_id=16377279

Opportunity/Grant/Contest
- Photography contest – related to MDG’s (Millen Dev Goals) #ART
http://picturethis.undp.org/about/more deadline 16 July 2010
- Essay contest – improving food security in rural areas
http://arc.peacecorpsconnect.org/essay-contest deadline 31 July 2010
- Essay contest – faith & development two $5,000 prizes
http://www.sevenfund.org/faith-and-development/ deadline 15 Oct 2010

Random/Fun
- Lastly, in spirit of Word Cup, hilarious world cup puppet comedy w/Mourinho, Rooney, Sven, Fabio, & Ronnie.
http://www.youtube.com/user/Doitchampions

some rough ideas for purpose of this blog

I never thought I would do a blog, but here it is.

The blog is called "economic development thoughts". I'd like to do two things with this blog:

1. Links I Like
Each week I'd like to post links about international economic development that have caught my interest. Links might include new ideas, new papers, neat examples/models, neat organizations, and new articles.

Most of the links come from a twitter list I created a few weeks ago. Here is the list if you want to follow it - http://twitter.com/michaelsyates/econdev.

2. An Occasional Column
From the links above, I'd like to put some ideas together into an occasional column. It's just a way of synthesizing something concrete from all information out there.


So why does this all matter? What's the point of all these links and columns?

I'd like this blog to be an online depository of nuggets and broad strokes of some new thoughts in international economic development. I'd like it to be a bit of a place/forum for people to create and hash out new ideas to serve. There are many collaborative tools on the web - Facebook groups, Gmail Buzz, and Google Wave, and this is partly a bit of test to see how well blogs work. Maybe down the road it could be a launchpad to get something started. Below is a figure with a bit of this vision:

Figure #1

Lots of information on the web -->
Twitter list plucking sorting & filtering & abstracting the interesting -->
"Links I Like" highlighting some of the best -->
An Occasional Column synthesizing new ideas, models, & examples -->
Possible discussion & creative forum -->
Launch pad? : )

However, if in the end it's just an online depository for quick reference, I'll be pretty happy : )