This week the annual Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) meeting is taking place in New York. The CGI website describes this event as a meeting that “brings together a diverse group of the world’s most distinguished leaders from government, business, and civil society to examine today's most pressing global...

At the Centre Africain d'Etudes Supérieures en Gestion (CESAG), a prestigious regional school of management for West and Central Africa, Microsoft introduced an ICT training program for government leaders and decision makers. CESAG is located in Senegal, a country making headway in the ICT...

Last week in Paris close to 100 ministers of education, senior education officials and policy advisors attended the UNESCO World Conference on Higher Education (WCHE) followed by the Microsoft Education Leaders Forum . The WCHE is focusing on critical issues around reduced funding for education globally...

For many years before I joined Microsoft I taught in secondary schools in the UK. One of the most important initiatives I became involved in was to increase the relevance of education to capture the interest of our students and ultimately motivate them to succeed. I am happy to say that this challenge...

The People's Choice Award website for this year's Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals in Cairo is up and running! To make it easy for you to vote, we have published videos from all of our software design finalists online. Every single student who entered the competition focused on how they could use technology...

This article from IDG’s PC World site about some of the challenges to teaching in Thailand, and technologies to help overcome them, was interesting and had a humorous ending. A reporter came to visit one of the schools where we are trialling Microsoft Multipoint, and the children and teachers really...

Given that most of us have encountered PCs from the time we were in school or college, it may be difficult to think of what it was like to discover the PC for the first time! But most adults in countries like India are new to PCs, and usually view it as a rather intimidating device. Inspired by...

The Unlimited Potential Group in the Middle East & Africa has been hard at work for more than 6 months to introduce ICT for the first time to a rural school in the village of Ha-Tumo, 30 kilometers outside Lesotho’s capital city, Maseru. Working with the Lesotho Ministry of Education &...

A year ago, the Microsoft Unlimited Potential Group in the Middle East & Africa started a series of pilots in Francophone West Africa, to introduce small-notebook PCs into schools in Burkina Faso, Senegal and Mali. Each pilot used Microsoft software running on 50 low-cost, low energy-consumption...

Indian concept, global appeal Recently Microsoft India has experienced two very welcome “returns”. The first returnee was Amit Mital, an Indian working at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond as global head of Microsoft’s Unlimited Potential Group. The second was MultiPoint, a technology which, while...

Next week some of the brightest – and youngest – minds in America will compete in the US Finals of the Imagine Cup , Microsoft’s worldwide student technology competition. Fifteen student teams were chosen out of thousands to showcase the technology applications they designed to help “solve the world...

At first glance a line penned in 1785 by Scotland’s famous poet Robbie Burns and the modern Thai education system have very little in common, but it was this line that kept popping into my head as I watched a Windows MultiPoint demonstration in Bangkok recently. School desks, each containing a pupil...

I spent last week in Vienna at Microsoft’s European Innovative Teachers Forum with representatives of the Nizhny Novgorod Institute of Educational Development (NIRO). NIRO just completed a study examining 252 students out of over 42,000 students who have been given laptops for use in the classroom in...

It’s incredibly exciting for us to see increased momentum with MultiPoint in schools! MultiPoint was conceived during the summer of 2005 at Microsoft Research India , when we visited rural schools in India to understand how they use PCs. We discovered that unlike in wealthy schools where PC classrooms...

After an exciting trip on an overnight night train we’ve landed in Nizhniy Novgorod, Russia. We spent most of today in the community around the Gorky Automobile Plant (GAZ) where Microsoft is working with NGO Free Deed to provide students with PCs loaded with affordable Windows, Office and educational...

The highlight of our first day on tour in Central and Eastern Europe was a visit to Cafemax iCafes in Moscow. I’ve seen many iCafes but this one struck me as leading edge. Why? Variety. The Cafemax chain understands what their customers want and they know how to maximize their opportunities. They...

I’m in New York today, and it’s been a really busy week here on the global development front --- with Bill Gates and other leaders addressing a UN special session on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) convening leaders across government, industry, and civil...

Recently, I spent a little under a week traveling throughout India, visiting some of Unlimited Potential’s programs and partners that are working to bring increased social and economic opportunity to the region through the benefits of technology. It’s an exciting time to be in India. The economic success...

Those of you that follow Microsoft might be familiar with Imagine Cup – an annual student technology competition that Microsoft sponsors. This year Unlimited Potential has worked with Imagine Cup to add a new category -- the Rural Innovation Award . At its core, Imagine Cup is about capturing...

When someone mentions Internet cafés to me, I immediately think of backpackers sitting at banks of tables hammering out emails to their friends and families about their latest trip, catching up with the world and sports news, or more often than not destroying The Covenant in Halo 3, or building vast...

Last Thursday and Friday in Jakarta, Indonesia, I had the privilege to attend this year’s Government Leaders Forum—Asia. It was my first time attending one of these events in my new capacity leading the Unlimited Potential Group, and offered a thrilling chance to dive in headfirst into our work there...

Last week, I had the opportunity to travel throughout West Africa to represent Microsoft Unlimited Potential, meeting with our partners across the public and private sectors to further discuss how Microsoft can best contribute to help create new economic opportunities in Africa. I began my journeys in...

I’m just now wrapping up the second day of this year’s Government Leaders Forum—Americas (GLF), and I wanted to share some more stories around today’s events. I’ve been busy meeting with a variety of local and regional government and business leaders as well as our partners from a broad range of groups...

Greetings from Miami, Florida, where I’m participating in the next installment of our ongoing Microsoft Government Leaders Forums (GLF) – GLF Americas. As I’ve mentioned before, GLFs are semi-annual events sponsored by Microsoft that gather top government and business leaders, focused on provoking dialogue...

After a few days in London meeting with officials from industry and NGO organizations, I’ve arrived in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates for the next Government Leaders Forum – this time focused on Arabia. Similar to Berlin, I’ll be meeting with partners from both the public and private sectors and talking...