INSECT@THON IS ON!!!

[Joris Komen]

Dear TAXACOM-Listers!!!

Insect at thon is on!   On 14 and 15 August, 15 school teams from 11 regions
in Namibia will participate in a globally unprecendented event at the NIIT
Training Centre in WIndhoek.

Briefly:

Although the increased awareness of biodiversity preservation has
highlighted the crucial role of biological collections in museums,
little attention has been given to the *urgency* of inventory
work.  Essentials are simply not being computerized fast enough.

*Insect at thon* is a new annual school contest created by the National Museum
of Namibia. The purpose of the *Insect at thon* is to computerize national
biodiversity information (this year, the insects of Namibia), and promote
the Internet at schools in Namibia (less than 30% of the 1600 schools in
Namibia
presently have telephones, and only a handful provide internet access to
their students!) -   an interactive, participatory event that is intended to
encourage students to take advantage of the Internet as a vast, and
constantly growing, source of information, with the clear understanding
that the Internet, like telephones, electricity and other services, *does
not come for free*.

The target of the Insect at thon is to computerize *70,000* hand-written insect
catalogue records (comprising 11 data-fields) in *two* days (14-15 August),
employing 15 school teams of 6 students each, 28 PCs, two Macs, and some
innovative database capture screens developed by us using FileMaker Pro.
Please note that *ten*  of these school teams have not had *ANY* previous
computer experience!

The Insect at thon event is almost entirely sponsored by the local corporate
community (40 local corporate sponsors to date), with exception of firstworld
school software subsidy and airtickets for the winning Insect at thon team to
visit Sweden in April next year to computerize hand-written Namibian insect
records at some key museums in Stockholm and Lund:-).

Subsequent school involvement by way of the internet, e.g., adding more
biodiversity records to our webtop databases,  or creating
biodiversity/environment-oriented web pages will be rewarded with credit
points - points which will allow the schools to obtain additional
equipment, software, internet subscriptions, payment of telephone bills,
etc.  We expect that this incentive should provide continuity to the
project.

Local sponsorship has thus far resulted in some 180 PCs and modems being
pledged to the project - of which 15  will be immediately awarded to this
year's Insect at thon participants.  While the three top winning schools will
receive contemporary equipment (Sun server, Imac, and Pentium III), a lot
of the
computers are older generation 486dxs and Pentium Is.  As more and more
local corporations join the party, we'll have plenty of machines (and modems),
and internet subscriptions, to distribute to schools over the months to
come, and do a repeat show in July/August next year.

We have sourced  *appropriate software* -  NewDeal software - which will
work very elegantly on older, non-Y2K compliant computers.  Corporate
capital equipment write-off schemes will effectively provide a continuous
stream of computers and peripheral equipment in the years to come,
including Y2K compliant gear within the next 6 - 12 months:-).

If you would like more background on the Insect at thon and our museum's
searchable webtop databases, please take a look at

http://www.natmus.cul.na/insectathon.html

The event can be seen live from Saturday morning (08h00 local time GMT +
1hr) onwards by way of a web camera courtesy of the PC Centre at

http://webcam.mac.com.na

Please join us at the eye of the storm!:-)

Best regards

Joris @ Insect at thon

http://www.natmus.cul.na/newindex.html