Thoughts about Open Development

As of now Open Development Alliance is more of a dream than a ready-baked concept with a clearly formulated vision, mission or strategy. An vision of a truly open international development community that shares its accumulated knowledge and experiences; that strives for openness, collaboration and equal opportunities. 

For the dream to become a reality requires a serious joint effort of a wide range of players: individuals, organizations and governments. All those involved with international development from "high up" in their organizations to down in the grass roots level. 

Technologies have very recently empowered individuals and organizations in ways that most people don't yet realize. It's time to brake free from the behavioral models of the last millennium and build new ones.

This main page will be probably used merely as a "bulleting board" with pointers to other pages, sites, blogs, etc. with more information and thoughts.

Open Development Alliance is a journey in its very early stages. If you share the passion and dream feel free to join the Open Development social network (at Ning) or drop me a line.

The change starts at You!

-Jaakko

firstname@opendevelopmenalliance.net

Tools for More Open Development

Email: Your Identity - Are You Being Kept Hostage?

In short: If you want an email address that doesn't change when you change jobs or your ISP, and that doesn't merely promote an email service provider (Yahoo, Google, etc.) but carries a message that you want to identify yourself with (opendevelopmenalliance.net, etc) please check the domains page and let me know which user name & domain combination you'd like to register. Note that this service is free, that you will be able to keep the email address(es) forever, and that you can simply use the address(es) as an email forwarding service to which ever email you are using at a given time.

Background

Your digital identity is becoming more and more important. Your email address is often essentially your identity not just in the online environment but in the real world, too. You register to various services with your email address, your friends and colleagues find you from a growing number of online services with your email address and, if nothing else, people mostly connect with each other through email.

Email is often your most permanent contact information. While your physical addresses or phone numbers change every so often your email address is usually more stable. Or is it? If you change your company your work email changes. If you move and your internet service provider (ISP) changes you often have to change your email address. And even if not you may wish you could change your email service provider to a better one. But most email service providers don't let you do this.