Janet Haven
I live in Budapest, Hungary, and work for the Open Society Institute's Information Program. OSI is a private, grant-making foundation that works both in the United States and internationally, although I only work on the international side. Which is one of the reasons for writing this blog: my work takes me to the Middle East, North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia, Eastern Europe, and South East Asia. Three years of amazing travel has gone by without any record, aside from a few pictures on my hard drive and many more in my head.
The job itself is the other reason for starting this blog up again. I'm lucky in my work: I travel quite a bit, regularly see fascinating projects and meet extraordinary individuals. It seems worthwhile to share that information with those who might also be interested.
Within the Information Program at OSI, I run the Civil Society Communications program, which includes a capacity-buliding piece and a toolsets piece. To translate: the Information Program works to enhance the ability to access, exchange and produce information by civil society constituencies (i.e., activists, advocates in a range of areas) . Some of this work is done via policy interventions, or investment in libraries, publishing, translations. What I do is work on the problem of how it's done at a hands-on level - what are the software tools, communications tactics, and capabilities that civil society groups need in order to communicate both with each other and with their target audiences, be that the general public, national governments, or international communities. We look at issues along the lines of "what can blogs do for a human rights community in the Middle East?", "how are networking software tools relevant to public health activists working for anti-tobacco legislation in Eastern Europe?" or "what technologies will help in categorizing hundreds of human rights abuse reports?"
And to wrap up the bio part of things: I grew up in Seal Beach, California, in the heart of Orange County. Unfortunately, I skipped town before Orange County became "the O.C."; when I lived there it was known only (if equally, probably) for its phenomenal number of strip malls, its conservative (and later bankrupt) powers-that-be, and its ska scene. I wasn't into any of the above - regrettably, ska-wise - and moved on majority to SoCal's antonyn, Amherst, Massachusetts. Western Mass was different and quickly beloved, but pork stew, Urgic languages, and nations in transition called, and I moved to Hungary in the mid-1990's.
I spent one year in Hungary, and then moved on to the UK, Prague, and back to Hungary. I fit in a masters' degree at the University of Virginia (in a fantastic American Studies/Computing in the Humanities program, one of the first of its kind in those days). Post-MA, I joined two start-up software companies in Central Europe. One, Netbeans in Prague, was bought up by Sun Microsystems (and survives to this day as their open source Java IDE); the second, Uproar in Budapest, was purchased by Vivendi during Jean-Marie Messier's crazed shopping spree in 2001.
Budapest has been my home for the past six years. I live here with Favorite Husband and the Stuffed Turtle.
Comments
I'm so glad you're blogging. :-)
Also, what a wonderful photograph of you!
Posted by: Rachel | January 12, 2006 06:45 PM
Thought of you today. Happy Birthday, glad to see you are doing so well. You have come a long way from the OC ;)
Posted by: Margo Moreno-Weber | May 12, 2006 01:08 AM
Your alive!!! and still saving the world. Long way from Eger.
Posted by: Chris Petty | May 31, 2006 05:46 AM
Hi Janet, I'm trying to find your e-mail so I can invite you to the recption for my wedding on July 13, but this proves difficult. Possible to send?
claudecahn@compuserve.com
Also, a very belated thanks for rescue efforts in Istanbul!
Posted by: Claude Cahn | July 2, 2006 09:00 PM
Hi,
Chanced by your page via Frederick Noronha on Social Source Commons.
I'm acting in an advisory capacity to an online group which is trying to promote community participation in development through information exchange. I've been working on a research based project to do this using fundamentals of swarm intelligence in a tiered approach. I'm looking for collaboration on this and your work appeared to be inline.
Pardon teh long post, but couldnt locate your e-maiol id.
Cheers
Arjun Venkatraman
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