RPCV / Armenia
2004 - 2006
My wiki page Will Dickinson
Thanks to all that have been helping move the navigation and templates ahead on the wiki. Thanks, Chris Collman, Kenji Yamada, and Mike Sheppard --Will 18:41, 26 March 2008 (PDT)
| Error: It's not possible to get http://www.peacecorpswiki.org/blog/?feed=rss2... |
Job on the wiki
I've been doing most of the web administration since December 2007 on Peacecorpswiki which includes, improving the navigation, hierarchy, building templates, extensions, and includes. If you would like to HELP ADMINISTER part of the site please drop me message in my DISCUSSION.
For questions regarding FOIA and the documents and welcome books please drop Mike Sheppard a line
Websites
About Me
Will Dickinson was born and raised in Alexandria, Virginia only a few miles south of Washington, DC. Attending high school in the District heavily influenced him with its expansive cultural and international resources. After high school commencement, Will enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania hoping to cultivate his interests in geology, geography, and anthropology. After graduating from UPenn with a bachelor's degree in Fine Arts, he traveled to the Black Sea region where he worked closely with Frederick Hiebert on an archaeological expedition on the Black Sea coast of Turkey.[i] After graduation Will was employed as an architectural consultant then decided to embark on a world tour with the intent of experiencing the major geological and architectural features of various cultures. Although the traveling experience was both fascinating and enlightening, Will felt limited by time and language constraints. His decision to join the Peace Corps was heavily influenced by this trip.
Will served in Armenia from 2004 to 2006 as an environmental education volunteer in the towns of Jermuk and Ijevan. His first year, which proved to be a difficult cultural adjustment, was a mix of intensive language training and working with the Red Cross and schools in Jermuk. During this time, the lack of institutional memory within the Peace Corps became increasingly apparent to Will. There was no way to access records of the work of his half dozen predecessors, nor did it appear that there even were records of their specific projects. After a year in Jermuk, Will found that there was not sufficient work to keep him occupied. He documented and presented this information to the country administration and was allowed to change sites. At the new site in Ijevan, Will engaged in a productive educational leadership program that focused on community planning and training. This program was designed to train local community stakeholders in the use of new technologies such as GPS and GIS and was funded by World Vision and the EU. The remainder of Will's Peace Corps service was spent working on this project. [ii]
After returning to the States and working for a year, Will realized that his frustrating Peace Corps experience resulting from the lack of records of previous volunteer projects was not unique to him. He decided that with his knowledge of web tools and the profusion of new open source software, he could constructively address this issue by building a resource collector for the institutional memory of the Peace Corps. After establishing his first wiki site map designed to capture community maps and information[iii], Will combined his efforts to expand the Peace Corps Wiki with Mike Sheppard, a former volunteer who had served in the Gambia.[iv] The two began to explore the history, issues, and potential of the Peace Corps as well its connection to its returned volunteer community. Since January 2008, Will has been administering the Peace Corps Wiki as well as the Peace Corps Journals website[v] that strives to keep current, former, and prospective Peace Corps Volunteers in touch with one another. Both websites are managed by Developmentary Inc.,[vi] the nonprofit cofounded by Dickinson and Sheppard. Together, these two former volunteers have logged thousands of hours of research, tech design, and administration.
Recently, the National Peace Corps Association recognized their work by including both Dickinson and Sheppard on a committee, along with representatives of Yahoo, IBM, and Idealist.org, that has been tasked with the technological design and implementation of a new Peace Corps volunteer social networking site entitled Peace Corps Connect.[vii]
In addition to Will's work with Developmentary Inc., his most recent employment was with the United States National Park Service, Cultural Resources division, American Historical Engineering Record.[viii]In this position, Will was charged with completing a cultural landscape evaluation study and historical drawing set on the Brunt Mills historic site near Bethesda, Maryland for submission to the Library of Congress. During his time in the San Francisco Bay area, Will conducted several architectural, landscape, and preservation projects for UC Berkeley as a Landscape Survey Leader and as a researcher for the Heart Greek Theater Historical Survey Report, 2007. Additionally, he served as a survey leader for UC Berkeley's Durant Hall as well as a leader of recordation, mitigation studies, and drawings for the UC Berkeley Faculty Club. He also served as a consultant on historical landscapes for the Salz Tannery in Santa Cruz.
Will's current interests are in geography, architecture, urban design, and art. At the moment, he is focusing on the researching and planning activities of past and present civilizations in order to investigate the history of sustainable design and resource management. Will would like to design a method to express these processes visually and spatially with the goal of developing new strategies for sustainable development and design solutions with economic incentives. The desired result would be more effectively managed resources in micro-watersheds as well as around the world.
Will Dickinson currently resides in Philadelphia, PA where he continues to study constructive and analytic drawing and architecture at the Studio Incamminati.[ix]
[i] http://www.willdickinson.com/blacksea_expedition_1999/
[ii]http://www.willdickinson.com/2008/06/27/mapping-peace-corps/
[iii] http://www.mappc.org
[iv]http://www.msu.edu/~sheppa28/
[v] http://www.peacecorpsjournals.com
[vi] http://www.developmentary.org
[vii] http://www.peacecorpsconnect.org
