CTO, Open Mind
Jon Gosier joined Open Mind’s Question Box project in June 2008. Since then, he has become the anchor of Open Mind’s activities in Uganda and the Great Lakes region. Jon has overseen the build of specialized backend software. The software, now launched as Open Question and made available Open Source, allows even a small organization to run its own Question Box service, even if the Internet is down much of the time. Jon has also managed day-to-day operations of Open Mind’s pilot with Grameen Foundation, maintained the website, and built What the World Wants to Know, a spooling list of questions from Uganda displayed in real time.
Jonathan Gosier is also founder of Appfrica.org and a TEDGlobal 2009 Fellow. Appfrica invests in east African software start-ups to create jobs and prevent brain-drain. He currently lives in Kampala, Uganda where he is working on two fronts: to encourage western businesses and investors to engage African entrepreneurs and in developing parts of Africa to encourage the adoption of computers, programming and use of the Internet. His novel Muxtionary explores a potential future where the world has become a technological utopia but Africa is still like it is today.
