Advance Courses in Disaster Management

The experiences of recent major disasters, such as the results of the twin typhoons, Pepeing and Ondoy in the Philippines, the recent earthquakes in Indonesia, the Indian Ocean tsunami and the massive earthquake in Pakistan, and the discouraging trend of disasters around the world have made it clear that a holistic approach to Disaster Management is needed to substantially reduce disaster losses. It is not only the response to deal with the consequences of disasters that has to be more effective and professional, but even more so the efforts to assess and reduce risks beforehand and to recover after. Disaster situations call for facilitators,planner, trainers and managers. This prompted the University of Copenhagen and the University of Lund into a partnership to bring a truly unique response to this development concern.They began offering a flexible Masters and PhD programmes on Disaster Management.

The programme present the three main processes of Disaster Management: Disaster Risk Reduction, Response and Recovery – all have distinctive objectives and are equally important and overlap each other, and will have to be incorporated in all Disaster Management decisions. Further should Disaster Management decisions be based on a socially, politically, culturally, economically and environmentally sustainable foundation. The Master of Disaster Management programme is aimed at providing the appropriate skills for disaster management at a national and international level in areas of natural and man made disaster, climate change, and terrorism. You can download the application form is here.

Meanwhile, the three year PhD programme is offered via the Centre for Advanced Security Theory (CAST) in the Copenhagen School of Global Health and Oresund Center for Disaster Research at the Faculty of Health Sciences. CAST is a research centre under the University's excellence programme, placed at the Department of Political Science. It aims to bring together researchers from a wide range of disciplines to explore, compare and refine the methods, concepts and principles, each discipline uses in assessing its kind of threats, dangers and risks. The Oresund Center for Disaster research, a joint center between Lund University and University of Copenhagen, is to provide some of the theoretical background used in the teaching on the Master of Disaster Management www.mdma.ku.dk. This PhD student will act as a bridge builder between the two initiatives. Main supervisor will be from the Faculty of Health Sciences and co- supervisor will be from the Department of Geography and Geology.

The Copenhagen School of Global Health aim to coordinate and improve health research and training at the University of Copenhagen, in collaboration with local and global partners. The Expression of Interest form can be downloaded from here. For additional inquiry, contact: Ass.Prof. Peter Kjær Jensen of the University of Copenhagen, Denmark Tel: (+45) 35 32 76 88

WDR 09 is Out! See BBC Documentary

Please be informed that the World Development Report 2009 documentary--"Slums and Money" will be aired by BBC. The film is about 45 minutes long and will feature some of the world's foremost economic development thinkers. Featuring some of the world's foremost economic thinkers - from Nobel laureate Paul Krugman to anti-poverty campaigner Jeffrey Sachs - 'Slums and Money' explores the arguments for and against.

The possible broadcast times in Thailand and Laos would be on: (a) Saturday 10th January- 21:10, (b) Sunday 11th January- 15:10 (re-air), and (c) Monday 12th January- 01: 10 and 09: 10 (re-air). Please consult BBC for the actual timing (http://www.bbcworldnews.com/Pages/Programme.aspx?id=247).

The World Development Report provides in depth analysis of a specific aspect of development. It is published annually and is available for free at: http://www.worldbank.org/wdr or http://econ.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/EXTDEC/EXTRESEARCH/EXTWDRS/EXTWDR2009/0,,menuPK:4231145~pagePK:64167702~piPK:64167676~theSitePK:4231059,00.html

Philippine Holidays 2009

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo signed Proclamation 1699 last December 24, 2008 setting the dates of 2009 regular and special holidays.

This year, the following regular holidays shall fall on the following dates:

April 6 (Monday, in lieu of April 9) - Araw ng Kagitingan
April 9 - Maundy Thursday
April 10 - Good Friday
May 1 (Friday) - Labor Day
June 12 (Friday) - Independence Day
August 31 (Monday) - National Heroes Day
November 30 (Monday) - Bonifacio Day
December 25 (Friday) - Christmas Day
December 30 (Wednesday) - Rizal Day

Meanwhile, the Special (Non-Working) Holidays for 2009 shall fall on the following dates:

August 21 (Friday) - Ninoy Aquino Day
November 1 (Sunday) - All Saints Day
November 2 (Monday) - Additional (Non-Working) Day
December 24 (Thursday) - Additional (Non-Working) Day
December 31 (Thursday) - Last Day of the Year

A Laptop in Your Pocket

Wow... The minimalists are winning the war against laptop weights and sizes. As facilitators, we use to lug lots of weights and space for our laptop and its accouterments---only to discover that the training venues’ laptops are even better than what we have. But we tried several solutions before. We placed all our data in one flash drive and use the laptop available on-site. We also deposited our files in a remote internet site and downloaded them when we are on-site. But really, the feel and experience are not the same. We still longed for our original working environment.

Now, how about the idea of cloning and then placing your entire desktop computing environment on your portables like your iPods, USB flash drives, external hard drives, USB-enabled cell phones, and USB-enabled digital cameras. Wow, this is certainly a welcome change! What do you need to achieve to achieve this? RingCube Technologies introduce the MojoPac that supports popular applications such as Firefox, Microsoft Office, Photoshop, and other popular games.

MojoPac works even if any on-site laptop does not have the required software. This is the advantage of cloning your working environment in a USB so you can just plug it in. Moreover, it will use the resources of its host laptop but will save all the changes you made on your USB drive. No modifications are made on the host laptop either. You can view a demo on how to run MojoPac here.

To setup the MojoPac, you need to download and run the installer and select a USB device attached to your laptop, whose working environment you like to clone. Once installed, MojoPac creates an executable in the root of that device along with an autorun file that gives the user the option of starting the MojoPac environment automatically when the device is plugged in. Once this application is started, a new Windows Desktop (with its own wallpaper, icons, shell, etc.) is started up in the virtualized MojoPac environment. Any application that runs inside this environment runs off the USB device without affecting the file system of the host laptop. You can watch this video to learn more.

You can install most applications on the portable storage device by simply running the installer inside this environment. You can switch between the host environment and the MojoPac environment via the MojoBar at the top of the screen. When you are done with the applications, you can just exit out of MojoPac and eject the USB device. To run the applications on a different laptop, you do not need to reinstall the application. All your settings, applications, and documents function the same irrespective of which laptop the portable storage device is connected to.

You and Your Tyres

A friendly reminder to the very mobile facilitators before they move-on to another far flung training venue by car. Check your tyres!

The best is to change all four tyres together but if two only, then put them at the back (contrary to what our local tyre shop guys are telling us!).

Wow! This is against everything my tyre shop has been telling me all this while. Have to remember this useful safety tip now.

According to Michelin, on wet roads, the new tyres at the rear of the car will prevent its tail from spinning because of better grip in the rear n hence ensure higher driving safety. Heed this advice seriously! Where to put the new tires?

Watch this video from Michelin.

Michelin advises to put the new tires always in the rear!

Nervousness and Turbo-Charging Powerpoint

One oft asked questions for would-be facilitators or presenters of technical topics like procurement or consulting is: How do I get rid of my nervousness? For the more experienced ones, the answer is simply: You don’t! With nervousness, you can enhance your performance by preparing more, rehearsing more, and making your nervousness work to your advantage. But what if you are really just a would-be presenter who still need to master your topic fully? What if you are still unsure if you can confidently deliver the topic? How would handle situation? Bring in technology....off course!

I would like to introduce a new Powerpoint plug-in called Adobe Presenter 7. Given your completed Powerpoint slides (as we all usually does), this plug-in will allow you to add narration (videos or other objects too) for each slide, prepare a nice theme, and publish the completed shows. A topic can have as many as three or four 3-minute shows (placed in one folder) that you can ask the participants to play in the respective computers, one show at a time. You can have one set in English and another in Chinese (or other language, too). You can assign the participants to view, listen, learn and digest each slide sets. They can also have the option to repeat the show if they did not get it during the first run. After each set, you can intervene by giving more information, clarifying confusions, asking more questions or answering questions raised.

Sounds like a dream come true! Is this doable with Powerpoint? Right now, Yes! We can use, Adobe Presenter 7 to turbo-charge the usually dull Powerpoint slides. The plug-in rapidly creates high-impact Adobe Flash presentations and eLearning courses. With just a few clicks in PowerPoint, you can transform drab presentations into engaging Adobe® Flash® multimedia experiences. You can easily add narration, animations, interactivity, quizzes, and software simulations to your presentations...all within Powerpoint.

You can create professional and highly interactive Flash presentations and self-paced courses. You can also import and edit video in any format and export them as SWF in addition to recording and editing high-quality audio. For more details visit: the overview, a quick-start document, and an actual tutorial as an example.

The potentials are enormous. This will free you from reading each slide for the participants. This consumes much of your patience and energy. And like it or not, bores them all the more. The pre-prepared shows will insure that the instructions are “perfectly” and uniformly transmitted. You will still be present and visible to deliver your most valuable contribution…practical experiences and actual lessons derived from true stories. And do not forget, you can still revert back to use actual deliveries if you no longer feel nervous and tired. Once the sets have been assembled, a combined internet and face-to-face learning becomes a real possibility.

Laptops with SIMs: Make Sense

At the dawn of the 21st century, many predicted the convergence of the phones and the computers. But which way...from computers to phone or the other way around?

I predicted (among a few others) in a 2006 high level conference in Honolulu that as far as Asia is concerned, it'll be from computers to phone. This means that more and more computer features will be lumped inside the cellphones. The advent of smart (and even yet smarter) phones made this a reality. I also mentioned that American computer makers will move the other way. More cellphone features for the computers.

Recent events have likewise made this a reality. In 2009, many will start selling and using laptops bundled with SIM cards. This will make the laptops connected anywhere GSM operates.

Last August, Vodafone launched the Lenovo notebook and the Dell Inspiron Mini and reported that in November, they were selling 2,000 embedded SIM netbooks a week. Not to be left behind, Orange responded by dramatically increasing its portfolio of laptops with an embedded SIM. Predicting that almost a third of all the laptops that will sell in 2009 will have a SIM embedded, Orange wanted to be a one-stop-shop for getting connected.

Orange and Fujitsu have signed a deal to include an Orange SIM in Fujitsu computers featuring an embedded GSM and 3G module. The Fujitsu LifeBook E laptops won't be locked to Orange, so no network subsidy, but they will be tested to work with the Orange 3G and HSDPA networks. Given the stability of the GSM standards, any incompatibility is pretty unlikely.

In addition to its being light weight (1.2 Kg), a sleek height of 30 mm, robust battery and DVD drive, and carbon fibre clad-shell, Sony Vaio VGN TZ21WN/B's will feature a special slot for mobile SIM card for easy internet access. This is a cool feature if you don’t want to look suspicious pulling your USB dongle in public. The subcompact also features fingerprint reader, an integrated notebook 0.3 MP camera, an on board L2 cache memory of 2MBs, Wireless LAN, Bluetooth, Card Readers, a generous 100 GB hard drive, 11.1 TFT display, Lithium Ion battery and usually comes with Microsoft Vista Business Operating System.

Who knows what 2009 will bring. A laptop with TV, perhaps?

Ed Canela