-----original message-----
From: Allen Gunn < gunner%40aspirationtech.org">gunner
aspirationtech.org>
Date: Oct 23, 2006 7:33 PM
Subject: [NOSI discussion] Announcing the 2006 Dirk Award Winner:
Vladimir "Kaladan" Petkov!
To: nosi-discussion%40nosi.net">nosi-discussionnosi.net
Howdy NOSI friends,
Given that he is a passionate champion of free and open source
software for NGOs, it gives me great pleasure to tell you...
The Dirk Award Committee is honored to announce Vladimir Petkov as the
2006 winner of The Dirk Award!
The Dirk Award is given annually to Circuit Riders or eRiders who have
shown extraordinary contributions to the nonprofit and international
NGO technology communities while paying tribute to the principles of
social justice and the role technology can play in empowering other
communities and individuals. eRiders are one of the largest global
resources of ICT capacity building for development organizations and
work in a world-wide movement with growing representation in more than
20 countries. More information about eRiders is available at
www.eriders.net.
Since 2003, Vladimir Petkov (aka Kaladan) has worked as an eRider,
serving as Content and Project Manager at Interspace, a New Media Art
Centre in Sofia, Bulgaria. He is part of a great team which supports
his efforts in spreading eRiding; the team is creative, dedicated and
ever-willing to welcome new visitors to Interspace. Several years
back, the term "supeRider" was coined to describe an individual who
showed strong mentorship and leadership skills both on their own
eRider team as well as in the larger eRider community; Kaladan has
been an embodiment of that term ever since he started eRiding.
Along with his team of talented eRiders at Interspace, Kaladan has
hosted visits from two other eRider teams, Open Consultants from
Georgia and the eRider team from Tajikistan. Kaladan set a week-long
agenda for each visiting team that offered learnings on how the
Interspace eRiding team has been successful, but also provided
opportunities to address the visiting teams' current challenges.
Kaladan has also traveled to Tajikistan and most recently Thailand to
provide training to eRider groups there; in Thailand he trained with
eRiders working in the "Free Burma"; movement, and he has agreed to
travel to Sierra Leone to work with teams of eRiders working in West
Africa. He is also responsible for the running of the eRiders.net
website.
Kaladan and Interspace have long been at the forefront of providing
Open Source Solutions to NGO's. His strategy of deploying open source
solutions came as a response to a Bulgarian Government crackdown on
illegal software piracy which threatened to close several Bulgarian
NGO's. With Kaladan's help, many Bulgarian NGO's remained open and his
model for migrating NGO's to Open Source has been used by many other
eRider organizations.
In person, Kaladan is warm, friendly and always has a smile. He is
also entirely humble and always ready to help where he can. It is
because of these traits that we are honored to acknowledge Kaladan and
all that he has done for the eRider community and for the NGO sector
as a whole.
The Committee of previous Dirk Award recipients and the global eRider
and nonprofit technology support community congratulate Kaladan for
passionate, inspiring, far-reaching work!
More information about the Dirk Award for eRiders is at www.dirkaward.org.
With eRider regards on behalf of The Dirk Award Committee,
gunner
Allen Gunn
Executive Director, Aspiration
+1.415.216.7252
www.aspirationtech.org
Aspiration: "Better Tools for a Better World";
.