Gypsy Jan - 3-19-2013 at 02:53 PM
From San Diego Red
by Brenda Colón
"It was about a week ago when the team behind the "KA Lite" project visited Cetys University, UABC and the MindHub and Bit Center in Tijuana, in order
to get a picture of the current digital landscape in this city. By the end of the day, they were very surprised.
KA Lite is a digital platform that promotes education, in which the need for internet service is not necessary. And in addition to meeting educational
needs, it also involves small investments that low income regions in the world can benefit from.
Videos and exercises is what KA Lite will display for users, which the idea with this is to reach 65% of the world's population that does not have
access to the Internet. One other benefit is that the program will be available in different languages.
The project is also making an invitation to programmers, translators and other specialists who may be interested in joining the team. The content in
this project is free and open to anyone. It is expected that this project will be similar to Projects like Gutenberg or Wikipedia.
Because KA Lite is programmed in Python language, it will work with any operating system and can be adapted to be used with any device, including a
small Raspberry Pi server. It can also be stored in a small USB "memory stick."
The visit from these UCSD students to the city counted with the support of the U.S. Consulate in Tijuana, who was responsible for leading them through
each site.
So far, more than 200 organizations have joined the project and already have development partners in countries such as Portugal, Spain, Slovakia and
the U.S. (San Francisco and San Diego).
On this visit to Tijuana, the KA Lite team was surprise of what was going on here in the technology community. Richard Tibbles and Dylan Barth noted
that there are several ways to support the project, and that what was going on in Tijuana within this sphere was very admirable.
During their visit they learned about the different projects that were being developed in various venues, including events such as Startup Weekend who
is about to launch its third edition.
Afraid of Tijuana? On the contrary, the KA Lite team commented that there are great opportunities in the region and that these types of visits are
going to be more constant. For those afraid to visit the city, they just recommended for everyone to use common sense when going to certain places.
For more information, please visit KA Lite's official website: http://kalite.adhocsync.com/
Brenda.Colon@sandiegored.com
Omar.Martinez@sandiegored.com