Dear Friends,

I hope this finds you and your families well.  I wanted to let you know what we at Jhai are doing before I go to the Navajo reservation this Monday.   We also could use some help on a couple of things, so I list those opportunities below as well.

 Jhai PC and Communication System – ready to go

1. We have completed the Jhai PCs v1.4 build (six for the Proof of Concept, one additional will stay behind for a rebuild to v.1.8 and I will test that here), tested everything on the system completely, and have created user, assembly, and preliminary maintenance documents (v.1).  The v.1.4 Jhai PC itself draws six watts without its current communication hardware.  In the next version it will draw about eight to ten watts, I imagine, including a Pentium 4 equivalent card, flash memory and storage, and communication hardware.  This time we designed for a specific situation and we used Vonage hardware on voice communication.   If you wish to see our v.1 user doc, please click http://www.circlesoft.com/Jhai/userdoc.pdf .  There are plenty of pictures there.  If you want to see a picture of the whole new box running, I’ve attached a .jpeg file.
2. Fred Mednick from Teachers without Borders www.teacherswithoutborders.org and I will be visiting the potential end-users, the Superintendent, board members, and the team managed by Technology Coordinator Chris Larsen of  the Window Rock School District on the Navajo reservation, starting Monday.  I expect to give you further news the following week or so.
3. Many, many people have worked on this effort over more than two and a half years.  I list some of them in the “ps” below.  I will try to list everyone who put their hands on the machines in my next email as well as all those who helped us financially.   This last push was headed by Jim Stockford who deserves much praise and thanks.

 Jhai Lao Coffee Farmers Association – moving on up

Will Tomlinson will be back in Laos soon and the crew there this year has done a masterful job creating a cooperative that works for the coffee farmers.  We will be announcing a major marketing push in the next few weeks with the help of Thanksgiving Coffee.  Buy some coffee on our website and stay tuned!

 What we need

1. Funding and marketing help.  We need immediate help (read: funding, now) as well as long-term partners who are interested in low-cost, low-power computing with proved tools for sustainable business.
2.  A partner for a Jhai PC ‘beta’ test in South America.  Brazil would be nice.  
3. Software development volunteers with experience in relationship websites and wikis who would like to help me and others in our group to conceive, create and manage websites that will 1/help technologists doing work in alternative power and low power computing communicate and co-create; and 2/help local non-governmental groups across the world talk with each other about their successes and ask each other for help, whether or not they have facility in English.

I, for one, know too well we are doing this work in the midst of American wars and water and health crises worldwide.  I often feel ashamed for the leadership of my country and their constant war-making.  And I feel powerless in the face of the enormity of the problems we as people in this world face and especially of the problems that poor people face.

 I also know we are going against the grain at Jhai in many, many ways, and with way too little money.  And God knows I know we make mistakes.

But we are not alone.   Many other people find themselves in this same boat.  We keep on doing what is in front of us because somewhere inside we know we are in this together.  Don’t we?  It is in the conversation, isn’t it?  That’s how we know. 

Let’s help people poorer than us drive this conversation more often.  We can help them with tools.  They can help us enjoy our lives. 

Yours, in Peace,

 Lee

 Lee Thorn
Chair, Jhai Foundation
350 Townsend Ave., Ste. 309
San Francisco, CA 94107 USA
www.jhai.org   lee@jhai.org
1 415 344 0360

Ps  Hundreds of people from the Linux community and within the IT and development community have helped us.  We have been lucky to receive funding from some of the most forward thinking people and organizations in development.  We are very grateful.  For now I want specifically to thank the people of Phon Kham, Laos (whom we are still working with and with whom I just visited), Lee Felsenstein, Vorasone Dengkayaphichith, and Janine Firpo, who were on this project from day one, Bob Marsh, Mark Summers, Anousak Souphavanh, and Steve Okay who put in hundreds of volunteer hours, new colleagues Chris Larsen and Rex Vance from the Window Rock School District on the Navajo reservation, Chetan Sharma from Datamation in India, Zhang Liwei, He Wen, Wui Xhong Hui, all from Amity Foundation in China, Jim Forster and Peter Tavernise from Cisco, John Sherry from Intel, Howard Neff, formerly of Applied Materials, Ken Haughton formerly of the board of Solectronics, head of engineering for Santa Clara University, and an inventor of the Winchester Drive, and last but definitely not least, our current consultants, Jim Stockford, Gerard Cerchio, Jon Toler, Eduardo Cervantes, Christina Ye, Alex Rudis, and Pam Holmon.  Thanks to all, but especially to these people for bringing this project ‘in’.  I also want to mention volunteers Josh Hawn, Stan Osborne, Will Tomlinson, Mel Ochoa and Debra Darlington who tried to get me to ‘manage’ and even succeeded on the rare occasion and to Noam Chomsky, Philip Wickeri, my wife, Bernadette McAnulty, Paul Dravis and many others who actually tried to help me think and reflect, a daunting, probably impossible task.  I believe hundreds of people deserve credit for what we have achieved so far.  Beyond that the process deserves credit:  working in a reconciling, open source, open design way has helped all of us grow and share and produce.  We are grateful.  And we look forward to next steps. 

 I take responsibility for all mistakes we may have made in relationships or process.  I do this not only because I ‘led’ this effort through the thickets and Murphy’s Law squared over this period, but also because I probably personally made the bulk of the mistakes.  I apologize and in all cases possible are making amends. 

 We are doing a good thing … and your help has been critical.  L.