Listers, I attended an Open Data conference in Abu Dhabi on 8th of this month. There are opportunities emerging out of that conference that I want to bring to your attention. I will give a brief of the conference but in the meantime we need our application developers to check this. Please read e-mail below and the attachments. Ndemo. Sent from my BlackBerry® -----Original Message----- From: Duncan Edwards <D.Edwards@ids.ac.uk> Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2012 13:12:29 To: bitange@jambo.co.ke<bitange@jambo.co.ke>; ps@information.go.ke<ps@information.go.ke> Subject: Grants for open applications development Dear Bitange, It was really good to meet you at the Linked Open Data workshop organized by REEEP in Abu Dhabi. I wanted to follow up with you in relation to the conversation we had regarding supporting better links between research and policy. At the Institute of Development Studies (UK) we have been involved in the provision of services, such as www.eldis.org<http://www.eldis.org> and www.bridge.ids.ac.uk<http://www.bridge.ids.ac.uk>, to support evidence based decision-making through making the findings of research more accessible to policymakers and practitioners. As I explained when we met in Abu Dhabi, we have developed an Open API to allow other organizations make use of the datasets of development research we host. We are running a call for proposals for the development of applications to make use of this content (see below), and I wondered whether you might be able to forward this to any contacts of yours who you might feel would be interested in the call? The deadline for this call for proposals is quite tight but we will be running more of these later in the year. In addition to this I wonder whether there might be other ways in which IDS Knowledge Services might be able to support your work in strengthening the links between research and policymaking? Would it be worth having a follow up phone call to discuss further? Best wishes, Duncan ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Duncan Edwards Information Systems Innovation Manager Institute of Development Studies, Brighton BN1 9RE, UK Charitable Company No. 877338 email: d.edwards@ids.ac.uk<mailto:d.edwards@ids.ac.uk> tel: +44 (0)1273 915797 fax: +44 (0)1273 621202 Skype: duncan_ed1 Twitter: duncan_ids<http://twitter.com/duncan_ids> Eldis Community: http://community.eldis.org/duncan Knowledge Services at IDS:http://www.ids.ac.uk/go/knowledge-services ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- IDS Knowledge Services have some technical grants available to create applications that make use of their datasets on academic research on development issues. These grants are available to application developers in developing countries wishing to use information and communication technologies to repurpose, and contextualise research on development issues and so inform evidence based policy making. Please see the call for proposals below and documents attached and contact api@ids.ac.uk<mailto:api@ids.ac.uk> if you are interested. And please do forward to technical staff within your organisations if relevant. Call for Proposals The IDS Knowledge Services Open Application Programming Interface (API) provides easy programmatic access to tens of thousands of thematically organised resources, primarily academic research, on development issues that are freely available online. IDS Knowledge Services invites your organisation to apply for a small technical grant. These grants are available to application developers in developing countries wishing to use information and communication technologies to repurpose, and contextualise research on development issues and so inform evidence based policy making. Individual grant maximum: GBP £3000 Implementation period: 5 weeks Application deadline: 13 February 2012 We are currently offering two types of grant: 1) Plug in grants These grants are allocated to design and build plug-ins/modules/add ons to existing content management systems and web platforms. The plug-ins will import or display a user defined selection of data from the KS data sets. There are two grants currently available, for developing a Wordpress plug-in and an HTML embeddable "widget". 2) Innovation grants These grants are allocated to design and build applications or services that use innovative ways of combining data and information from different sources, to create new tools, applications and systems which are useful, meaningful and relevant for informing development policy and practice. Preference will be given to proposals that focus on the programme's key thematic or technological areas, as follows: THEMES * Climate Change * Food and Agriculture * Health * Governance * Gender TECHNOLOGY * Mobile * Mapping * Applications supporting people in areas of limited connectivity Full details can be found in the attached documents, or online http://api.ids.ac.uk/about/grants.shtml Simon Colmer Information Projects Officer Knowledge Service Department Institute of Development Studies University of Sussex Brighton BN1 9RE, UK +44 (0) 1273 915771 http://api.ids.ac.uk<http://www.ids.ac.uk> api@ids.ac.uk<mailto:api@ids.ac.uk> | Twitter: ids_api This message is for the addressee only and may contain privileged or confidential information. If you have received it in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete the original. Any views or opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of IDS. 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