The Discovery Channel News website has just published a story on the Fair Tracing project entitled Food Tags Aid Ethical Eating. As stated in the story by Tracy Staedter, the “Fair Tracing project…aims to narrow the gap between growers in underdeveloped countries and their consumers”. The story also includes quotes from interviews with Dr Apurba Kundu, the project’s principal investigator, and Dr Matt Jones of the Future Interaction Technology Lab of the University of Swansea, and member of the project’s Advisory Board. See it in full here.
Archive for January, 2007
Fair Tracing in the news: Discovery (Channel) News
Sunday, January 28th, 2007Inaugural Advisory Board meeting
Sunday, January 28th, 2007Immediately prior to the BGDD Network conference, the Fair Tracing management team held the first meeting of our Advisory Board, hosted in the Department of Geography of the University of Cambridge.
In attendance were Elsbeth Fabels (Project Manager, Certificering Leveranciers, Dutch Association of Worldshops, Netherlands), Matt Jones (Future Interaction Technology Lab, Department of Computer Science, Swansea University, UK), Paul Palmer (PRIME Faraday Partnership, Senior Research Fellow, Loughborough University, UK), and Roger Tucker (The Local Language Speech Technology Initiative, Outside Echo, UK). Unfortunately, Carol Bergin (consultant based in Ireland), Rachael Wilshaw (Oxfam, UK) and Tim Unwin (Department of Geography Royal Holloway, University of London) were unable to attend.
The meeting began with a presentation from Dorothea Kleine on the Fair Tracing project, including its origins, methodology, and background on its prospective partners in the two case studies located in Chile and India. The presentation also included a section on tracing technology using google mapping by Christian Wallenta. The presentation sparked off a number of interesting and valuable comments from the Advisory Board on a number of issues, including the particpation of retailers in the project, the attitude of consumers to various means of accessing digital tracing information, and the suitability of peer-to-peer (P2P) technology for the project. Following the end of the formal part of the meeting, the discussion contunued over lunch at the University of Cambridge’s Riverside Restaurant.
Fair Tracing Team reports at BGDD Conference
Thursday, January 25th, 2007
The network of researchers involved in the four EPSRC-funded projects around the Theme “Bridging the Global Digital Divide” met again for a conference at Cambridge on January 8-9, 2007. We had all gone through an interactive peer review process together, and this was the first time we met since the four projects started towards the end of last year – it was great to see everyone again.
Cambridge was grey and a bit wet, but still very pretty – and the archways at Emmanuel College were not only decorative, they also kept you dry. Above is a photo showing the Fair Tracing team giving our presentation to the other researchers – in this darkish historic hall with the stern looking men on the walls.
The atmosphere amongst the four project teams was much less stern – constructive feedback all around, and we found out that two other projects also work with partners in India. We talked to Ram Bhatt from the NGO “Voices” in Bangalore who run community radio in rural Southern India (see for example http://ictpr.nic.in/nammadhwani/2jul.htm for a UNESCO article on one of their initiatives). They are interested in reporting on our project locally, which will be great. I also think the way that their Namma Dhwani project connects participatory methods (PAR) with media and development issues is a good example of how a good participatory and holistic approach can ensure relevance and sustainability.
Finally, here’s us having a square-table meeting, planning the project, particularly the upcoming trip to India (left-to-right: Dr Apurba Kundu, Ashima Chopra, Christian Wallenta, Dr Ian Brown, Dorothea Kleine and Ann Light). We also tried to take on board the ideas and comments we got from colleagues- ah yes, one thing they really liked was having this project blog. So we’ve decided to fill it with even more content in the weeks and months to come – now that we have emerged from that dark hall. So watch this space!
Advisory Board and BGDD Meeting at Cambridge
Thursday, January 25th, 2007
Emmanuel_070108Originally uploaded by Fairtracing.
On January 8th the Fair Tracing Team and members of the Advisory Board all met in Cambridge. We held the Advisory Board meeting in the morning, with members coming from the North (Bradford, Loughborough), the West (Swansea), the South (London) and the East, well, with a bit of water in between (Amsterdam). It was an informative and lively event, and we received lots of good and useful feedback. Over lunch, we tried some Chilean wine – of which the “Big Red” variety came out tops. Thanks to all our Advisory Board Members!
For the next two days (Jan 8/9, 2007) , the FT Team were part of the Network meeting of the researchers involved in the four projects funded under the “Bridging the Global Digital Divide” Call of the EPSRC.
