An Auspicious Beginning in Cambodia

Our first year in Southeast Asia is coming to a close. It seems apropos that this final trip of the year for me coincides with the Cambodian Water Festival, Bon Om Tuk. The Water Festival, centered around 300 pairs of Bayon-inspired boats competing in front of the Royal Palace, is an homage to Angkor's ancient navy. The Water Festival also marks a profound ecological transition: the end of the rainy season during which the waters of the Tonle Sap River reverse and flow back into the Mekong. During this change, the waters become still.

(PHOTO: Team training for Water Festival.)

At InSTEDD, we have been racing to the finish line, and I am grateful for the still waters to reflect upon our first year and prepare for the years to come. It has been amazing to see an idea -- that free, open source software that helps people work better together can make a real difference to the domains of public health and humanitarian response -- come to fruition.

We started the year with a set of possibilities, and found ourselves at the end of the year with eighty Cambodians doing a pandemic flu simulation using geochat near the Cambodian-Laos border. We started the year meeting in cafes, figuring out who is who, and ended the year with an Innovation Laboratory where the software is being co-developed and spearheaded by people who live here in partnership with two local technology NGOs, Yejj and Digital Divide Data. There were many challenges we faced along the way, but it has all been worth it to see what is happening now.

Now that we have laid a foundation, we are ready, in these still waters, to dive deeply over the next year. We look forward to working with all of you to ensure that we are making a difference.