RSSI've just returned from Front Royal where I spent two days at a workshop hosted by the Smithsonian Institution. Smithsonian has a Conservation and Research Centre there which started out as a site for excess animals from the National Zoo.
The workshop was about R, a programming language and environment for statistical analysis. It was taught by Glen Sergeant from the USGS (who was brilliant, just by the way).
R is freeware and is truly a global collaboration. My reason for writing a blog about it is to highlight what is possible when people are selfless and cooperative. R is an incredible collection of free packages designed by people in their own time and made freely available. It is a potential replacement for similar software that costs a substantial amount of money. Simply, it is very GOOD.
Learning about R gave me hope that we can move away from a consumer-society in which large multi-national corporations rule supreme (... Apple and Microsoft etc). R is a software analog for things like farmers' cooperatives, for community development projects, and for charities. Seeing how something of this nature can produce something that is good and of great use to people around the world is an indication that we can overcome other similar problems through global collaboration and selfless acts from individuals.
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rudi It's always great to see examples of people giving a little of themselves to make other peoples' lives a bit better. If it can tie into your work, then so much the better. Work volunteerism programs and that sort of thing can make a big difference and improve the quality of your own life too.
Pete Though it is great that Bill Gates donates lots of money to charity and cancer research etc, it is also easy to open a checkbook and do that. We tend to forget about the 'little folk' on the ground doing the hard and time-consuming work.
The trend that I've been noticing among my friends here in the States who want to travel to SA is that they don't just want to be a consumer-tourist anymore, but they want to contribute something through volunteerism, as you said. This is such an encouraging thing to see.
Overall, I think it comes back to having a servant's heart.
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