My Job in Afghanistan

Primarily based in Mazar-i-Sharif and working with Balkh University (thanks to the German Academic Exchange Service), there are a number of jobs I will have to start across Afghanistan's higher education institutions. In general - and given the somewhat difficult situation at present in Afghan higher education - the management of different Afghan universities and my Afghan colleagues will have to take the lead and support me in getting the priorities right.

The outline below will provide a rough idea of my activities in Afghanistan:

teaching at Balkh University
support other Afghan universities (partners of RUB Ruhr-University Bochum/Germany) by teaching additional courses in business information systems
helping the management of Balkh University and different other Afghan universities to fully utilize "good governance" practices
support the introduction of new curricula in economics and business administration at different Afghan universities (esp. in cooperation with alumni of RUB Ruhr-University Bochum/Germany and with IEE Institute of Development Research and Development Policy)
strengthening the utilization of Afghan talent from the university environment by initiating joint projects between universities and Afghan businesses and public administration organizations.

Because I will have to work across different locations in Asia and Europe with a large number of colleagues, university administrators, international donor organizations, and higher education government officials on a day-to-day basis, e-collaboration and information sharing seems to be in demand. Having extensively worked in the e-collaboration field in research environments and in industry, I hope to make a lasting contribution in this area. Because the required information systems are complex, I will have to rely heavily on the work and the products from colleagues, industry partners, and friends for the support of my personal work infrastructure.

Prof. Dr. Ludwig Nastansky will contribute his K-POOL information system, which was developed at the University of Paderborn - GCC Groupware Competence Center.
Felix Binsack of TIMETOACT Group allowed me to use his TIMETOWEB CMS product to support my work in Afghanistan.
Jürgen Zirke of PAVONE AG allowed me to use the PAVONE Enterprise Office systems and the organization and processes modeling tools developed by PAVONE AG.
Michael Gollmick, an acclaimed Notes/Domino systems specialist and application developer makes a significant! contribution to make things work - if they don't.
IBM/Lotus supports my work via the IBM Academic Initiative program. In fact, quite a number of my lectures (notably about electronic collaboration and database systems) would not be possible without the generous supply of cost-free licences for teaching and research by IBM.

Last-but-not-least I have to mention IBM. As a member of their Academic Initiative my students - and myself - benefit from their generous provision of their software for teaching and research use: For my teaching and research activities I rely heavily on IBM DB2 database and on the Lotus Notes/Domino e-collaboration environments.

Definitely, I rely on the support from additional people and institutions. The people and organizations named above are just the tip of the iceberg.