Help!

Dear friends,

As part of Science for Sustainability we've been working on a model loosely based upon Lake Naivasha, as shown in the videos below. The model is simply an Excel spreadsheet, a trick I picked up at NECSI. Its to be used as the basis for a game design and shows chiefs and their villagers plus various aspects of the 'environment' such as fish in a lake and neighbouring eagles. The idea then is that all these parameters are interlinked thus demonstrating the complexity of 'ecosystems' (in the broadest sense).

So I have a version for MS Excel which I'm fairly happy with - at least it demonstrates the approach (it will be down to local groups to develop their own model and subsequent game) - and I have a version which works in Documents to Go on Palm OS.

We are hoping that the learning materials we develop will now feed into TESSA, at least we are talking about this. However, we cannot assume that everyone in Sub-Saharan Africa has access to MS Excel as its cost may be prohibitive.

Hence, we'd like to convert Big Chief to Open Office format. Which is where we would like you to help please?

I tried last night but couldn't get the charts making sense. I also removed circular references where the first year's "plants" for instance take their value from the last years - this was throwing up an error (523 I think).

Charts which would be useful include:

• chiefs populations - of the 3 villages
• environmental populations - eagles, fish, fertiliser and bank
• crops - for the 3 villages
• 'external' variables - sun, rain, war and disease

If anyone is a whiz at Open Office or just has some spare time to take a look we'd appreciate it. If you do get something reasonable then please just post a comment here and we'll sort out how to add it to the project.

Cheers,

Tim