This summer was a flurry of activity for all of us here at GIIP. We carried out a number of large events, submitted some very promising grants, continued building and enterprises group for more sustainable revenue, and worked to improve our own organization. Before I run through more details I need to offer many thanks to Christina Hamill, Julie Caso, Jon Madden, Katie Roper, and other star students that worked very hard this summer putting on events and moving GIIP forward.

I want to introduce to the world GIIP Enterprises (check out http://giip.org/ in the next few days). GIIP-E is a small group of GIIP students and myself that have worked on developing products and services for on- and off-campus groups. Our primary focus thus far is customizing the Joomla! (http://joomla.org/) content management system for campus units so they can take advantage of the easy-to-use software to maintain a consistent and up-to-date web presence. This system will help units deliver current and relevant information and improve service delivery. GIIP-E is also working with Ruby on Rails (http://rubyonrails.org/) to deliver custom web applications for International Health Programs and the Packard Foundation. In addition, this year we will release a service to let campus-based student organizations quickly set up and deploy custom Joomla-based sites in minutes at a very low cost. We hope this can bridge the “information gap” that prevents the public from learning about the amazing work that our student organizations do.

This summer we again worked with Progressive Technology Project to put on not one but TWO “TechCamps”. This summer we saw 80+ community organizers from all over the US. If that was not enough we also worked with the Center for Multicultural Cooperation (http://cmcweb.org/) to host the “Summer of Service Technology Institute”. This institute hosted near 20 students from the San Joaquin Valley to learn about getting in to the University of California. They are currently working to finish up short videos about their experiences which they will share with their peers in 3 languages. Thanks to Katie Roper, there is are videos highlighting this camp online (http://giip.ucsc.edu/content/view/118/40/ and http://giip.ucsc.edu/content/view/119/40/).

As always, we continue to grow and are excited about the upcoming year. We hope to involve more students and community groups in more projects using ICTs for inclusion, justice, and social entrepreneurship. We have a great team this year including the addition of Elijah Saxon (of riseup.net infamy) who joined the PhD program in Sociology. Please stay up-to-date with us by joining our email list (http://giip.ucsc.edu/) or dropping by our Tuesday evening class (6:00-7:45pm, Physical Sciences 130).

Best regards,

Adam Thompson
Associate Director for Programs and Instruction
Global Information Internship Program