UN-GAID and Silicon Valley Taking Steps Forward Together

These are the action items, again organized by panels, from the UN Meets Silicon Valley event. Although they are still quite general and moreover do not have any timelines and concrete responsibilities attached to them, they are hopefully the beginning of a fruitful collaboration between the UN and Silicon Valley.

Innovation Panel
• UN GAID to form working group to promote open ICT ecosystems
• Create “Environment Guidelines” to promote ICT and innovative entrepreneurs

VC Panel
• Support quality, financially sustainable mentoring of entrepreneurs to make them “Investor Ready”
• UN GAID to promote and publish best practices for ecosystem to support and scale innovation

Content Panel
• Make ALL UN and development agency publications available online and free of charge
• Open access to communication - Bring into Telecenter initiative
• Bring together KEY content providers – Form a network of Silicon Valley organizations to generate a common platform (UN GAID to catalyze)

There are programs already under way in Silicon Valley that do some of these things, such as the Reuters Digital Visions Program at Stanford University and the Global Social Benefit Incubator that are bringing social entrepreneurs from developing countries to the Valley to help them with developing and scaling their projects, respectively. Rather than reinventing the wheel, it might be helpful to go to them for some lessons learned.
RiOS Institute is looking forward to work with all interested organizations to bring these action items to life.