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Last week, I sat in a conference room full of DC development-types over lunch, listening to a presentation sponsored by the Society for International Development.  It was standard stuff - the woman next to me was reading the New York Times as folks shuffled in, and I spotted a few people I know who work for DAI, Chemonics, and other development contractors.

As the event was gearing up, however, it became clear that it was no regular brownbag lunch.  First, the room was totally full - no offense, but these sort of events aren't usually so compelling as to attract 50 people on a Wednesday.  Secondly, I started to see people I know from outside the "development" world.  Fred Tipson, Microsoft's Senior Policy Counsel here in DC, slipped quietly into a chair towards the back of the room.  Then Eric Gundersen and Alex Barth of Development Seed, a local website development firm, sat in my row.  Not the usual lunchtime crowd for a SID event.

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Andrew Mack is a former World Bank official and Principal of AMGlobal Consulting. He previously blogged for NextBillion .net about Rwanda's IT development and leapfrog technologies, in January 2007.

By Andrew Mack

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Microcapital reports (via Auctionbytes) that eBay has moved into the peer-to-peer lending space with the purchase of MicroPlace.  This is significant because eBay is far from the first to enter this space - which is currently dominated by Kiva, Zopa, and Prosper.

How will a big company like eBay succeed in the nascent world of P2P lending?  Will this affect the way Kiva or Propser works?  More on the acquisition, from Microcapital:

MicroPlace will soon launch an eBay style online marketplace where individuals will be able to make microfinance investments, most likely in the form of notes offered by microbanks.  The transaction will be hosted by eBay working through an intermediary like the US Calvert Foundation in order for such investments to clear regulatory hurdles. It will be in the same vein as current sites such as prosper.com (for-profit), where individuals list and bid on loans within the US market, and Kiva.org (non-profit) where individuals can lend to specific micro-businesses in the developing world through links with microfinance institution (MFI) partners.

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Sorry for the late notice, but if you don't have lunch plans today and are in or around Washington, try to swing over to DuPont Circle for what promises to be a fascinating talk. Jeffery Galinovsky (of Intel's Emerging Markets Platform Group) will present World Ahead, an Intel program that will invest more than $1 billion over the next five years to speed access to uncompromised technology and education for people in developing communities.

I know Jeff, and I have seen the Classmate PC in action (there will be a demo today as well). If you're at all interested in the One Laptop Per Child idea, stop by today to see how others are approaching this issue. The presentation will span a variety of interests, from education policy to technical design. Jeff is not only a successful platform manager at Intel, but he's an electrical engineer by training, so he promises to make a great presentation.

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