Here’s little story about how the smallest action can really develop into something amazing: Last spring I was sitting in the doctor’s office waiting to get a couple shots before the CFU 2006 visit when I spotted an article about a new highly energy efficient solar PC that this company Inveneo was developing. I remembered the CFU team’s constant lack of electrical power the year before. This was the solution! Excited, I got home, looked them up online, sent an email, then told Fredrik and John about my discovery.
The Inveneo PC. 20 Watts, with an external battery that charges from a solar panel. The Inveneo website has a little more information.
Mark Summer, the man from Inveneo who responded to my email, has been in contact with John and Fredrik over the past year, and is now best friends with Johnorable (earlier I had a post of John showing off his new Inveneo PC). And next week Inveneo is holding their official launch in Kampala. Also, InterConnection Uganda and a few other local companies (one of them is Denis’s CLS) are partnering with Inveneo, and InterConnection will probably end up providing most of the storage for these PCs.
Soon, after Inveneo can generate some income, they can start to mass produce these PCs and lower the prices. Who knows, maybe in a decade everyone in Uganda will have an Inveneo PC. It’s going to be amazing progress, and it’s something that Uganda (and all of Africa) really needs…I can’t wait to see where this goes next.
Anyway…today, after over a year and a half I finally got to meet Mark!
We exchanged some data, I gave him a tour of InterConnection, we talked about MIT a little, and he gave me some tips about a potential project idea I have and suggested a few programs that I could use for the center. (Thanks, Mark!)
And of course we both talked about the different operating systems and how Windows is…
I’ll just leave it at that, because we like Microsoft too, right? 
I really like the Inveneo idea. It’s an awesome concept, and one that would work well for the Ugandans.