The Afghan American Chamber of Commerce conference started today in Washington DC. Roya Mahboob and I traveled from New York City to meet with Afghan and American entrepreneurs and government representatives. The conference will end of Tuesday December 4th.
We had the pleasure to spend some time with Kathleen McGowan, senior adviser on Persian affairs at USAid. In the past few months, she introduced us to the concept of Mobile Money and the value of eLearning platforms like the Khan Academy. Kathleen McGowan is also a major inspiration and mentor for me personally.
We also met Lauren Lovelace, executive director of US-Afghan Women's Council at Georgetown University. We are planning a breakfast meeting to define possible synergies with her organization and members.
We had an interesting conversation with Mr. Paul Stevers, President of Think Renewables (www.ThinkRenewables.com), a company dedicated to the distribution of solar panel computers and consolidation of educational software and tools for Afghanistan.
We met a very interesting person, Sophia Swire, Executive Chairman at Future Brilliance (www.FutureBrilliance.net), whose project is to support jewelry design projects and development.
My desire for new positive stories and content from Afghanistan was fulfilled by Kamran Lufti, VP at Trivision (www.Trivision.tv) and Mamo Rafiq, respectively manager and coach of the Afghan national Basketball team, of which we need valuable content to promote and finance with Film Annex's advertising revenues.
We shared information on Film Annex's technology and the Afghan Development Project with Mr Edward Corcoran, Project Manager of Web of Growth (www.WebOfGrowth.com), and talked about the development of a Web TV channel for information on development, in particular starting from Afghanistan.
The keyword “building schools in Afghanistan” dominated the conversation. The concept of professional social media and content creation defines the tools of this great project. We will plan separate interviews with each person listed in this article, first in blogs, later on video.
Tomorrow, Roya Mahboob will present the Afghan Development Project, the work to open 40 Internet classrooms and connect 160,000 children to the World Wide Web, the implementation of the Examer Educational Software and its interactive curriculum in social media and other contemporary subjects, and our Micro Scholarship on Mobile Money rewarding system for best performing students.
