Ready for April events? This month has plenty of conferences and panels to keep anyone with an interest in mobiles entertained. Check out the upcoming events to see what's happening this month. 2-3 April, Africa Mobile Money Research (Nairobi, Kenya) The goals of this two-day event are to examine opportunities, trends, and growth strategies in mobile money initiatives, and to highlight African mobile money innovation.
Mobile Mondays: Each month independent branches of Mobile Monday gather together to discuss different aspects of mobile technology. Some of this month's events are:
2 April, Mobile Monday (Montreal, Canada) The organization will be discussing mobile advertising.
4 April, Mobile Monday (Bangalore, India) This meet-up is centered around the Ubuntu Cloud Day presentations.
5 April, Mobile Monday (Tokyo, Japan) This is an open event focused on socializing with other fans of mobile technology.
17-18 April, The Mobile Show (Dubai, United Arab Emirates) The Mobile Show is a multi-track event focusing on a variety of mobile themes: App Development, Mobile Advertising, M-Entertainment, M-Commerce, and M-Health. The conference has panels and exhibits focusing on different aspects of mobile phone use.
The MobileActive News Round Up is a collection of news stories and trends that are shaking up the mobile industry. If you'd like to get this content earlier and delivered right to your inbox, sign up for the MobileActive Newsletter.
Click through to read about reaching multi-lingual audiences with an SMS campaign, new research on the efficacy of mobile tools for health work, SIM card registration requirements in Ghana, and much, much more.
Mobile Trends
Does branchless banking reach the poor and the unbanked? CGAP investigates new evidence on how mobile banking is being used by poor individuals.
A study from Kenya looks at how citizens currently interact with the government, and how mobile tools could affect service delivery and government participation.
If you're sending an SMS campaign to a multi-lingual audience, you need to know about accents and accented characters. Sending a text with accents or different characters means you may have to adjust the length of your message, so choose carefully.
If you read a right-to-left language, Twitter is now much more accessible. Thanks to help from 13,000 volunteers, Twitter is now available in Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew, and Urdu.
What's going on with the African tech scene? Check out this collection of the top ten African tech tweeters.
A new infographic breaks down the ways people are using mobile devices for health, government participation, and financial services.
Mobile phones allow farmers to check market prices and get the latest information to sell their goods at a fair price. This photo story looks at how cashew farmers in Cote d'Ivoire are using mobile technology to stay connected.
If you think mobile Internet is growing, you're right – global Internet usage on mobile devices has almost doubled from 2011 to 2012.
Gallup has released a report on mobile and social media trends and telecommunication techniques drawn from surveys in 44 countries.
Which country has the most mobile phone users? Saudi Arabia has 180 phones for every 100 residents, making it the per-capita winner for mobile connectivity.
SaferMobile: Better Mobile Security and Privacy
SaferMobile, a project of MobileActive, helps activists, human rights defenders, and journalists understand the security risks of mobile technology and use mobile tech more securely in their work. Below are security and privacy-related news stories that highlight some of the threats in the current mobile environment.
After the deaths of journalists in Syria in late February, reports surfaced that the Syrian government was tracking journalists through satellite phone activity. SaferMobile has a breakdown on why satellite phones aren’t secure.
In other government surveillance news, Mexico’s legislative branch has adopted new legislation that will grant the police warrantless access to mobile phone users’ location data in real time.
Want to have a phone in Ghana? You’d better register your SIM Card soon – the government deadline for mandatory SIM Card registration was just pushed back by a month. If you don’t register, your phone will be cut off. We write about the global trend.
A US Senator is pushing for the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the latest smartphone application privacy breaches after news broke that some Apple and Android applications are allowed to copy private photos and address books.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation calls for a privacy bill of rights for wireless users in the hopes of raising public awareness about mobile application privacy issues.
Ready for some mobile tech and social change events? This month has a little something for everyone – whether you're looking for a developing-focused convention, a discussion about open source solutions, or a women-oriented mobile tech night, March events have what you want. Read on for upcoming events:
Mobile Monday is an loosely organized, international community based around interest in mobile technology. Chapters hold get-togethers to discuss a variety of topics; here is a sampling of some of this month's events:
5 March (Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania)This is a women-only event based around the theme “Social Media and What it Can Do for You.” There will be female bloggers, entrepreneurs, and students discussing how social media technology can be used for professional and personal uses.
19 March (Sydney, Australia) If you're interested in monetizing your mobile work, check out this presentation from the Google Australia group.
19 March (Washington, D.C., USA) This Mobile Monday event will focus on mobile opportunities in education.
If you are looking for a job in the field of mobile tech for social change and development, the MobileActive Discuss list and the MobileActive newsletter are great resources not only for talking about the latest issues and topics in the ICT4D world, but also for jobs. Here's a sampling of some of the recent openings posted:
A new effort focused on mobile security is looking for a number of ethical hackers. The organization is currently hiring for a Tech Researcher for a mobile security lab, and a Mobile Application Developer for open source/security applications. Based in either New York City or Washington, D.C., no deadline listed.
The New America Foundation is hiring! From policy research to mobile development, there are many Washington, D.C. opportunities available.
Want to help develop a new mobile tool to promote democratic organizing, civil society, and free speech? For this Mobile Developer opening, applicant must have least 3 years of professional programming experience, preferably in mobile applications. (This deadline is fast approaching – a resume, cover letter, and three references are due by Feb. 29th)
February may be the shortest month, but there's no shortage of upcoming mobile events. Read on to find out what's happening this month in the mobile world, and please add in your own events in the comments!
7-9 February, BlackBerry DevCon Europe (Amsterdam, Netherlands) If you're curious about what's involved in developing for the BlackBerry market, check out the BlackBerry DevCon. The event features demonstrations, hands-on labs, and discussion panels to show attendees how to build for the BlackBerry platform.
9 February, Mobile Disconnect (Washington, D.C., USA) Mobile Disconnect examines the hype around mobile technology and its role in combatting global poverty and social issues. The panel will discuss the potential and limitations of mobile technology for social change and development.
10 February, mEducation Alliance Seminar (Washington, D.C., USA) USAID and the mEducation Alliance are hosting another event in their seminar series. This month's seminar features a discussion with One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) on the new XO 3 tablet and learning. You can register to attend virtually by RSVPing to mobilesforeducation@gmail.com
(Editor's Notes: The following is a guest post by Keshet Bachan, a gender equality activist and manager of the Because I Am A Girl report. The article originally appeared on Linda Raftree's ICT4D blog. It is reposted here with permission.)
Can mobile ‘apps’ really prevent or discourage instances of violence against women? This question has been on my mind since a colleague shared this video from Voice of America about a mobile app called ‘Fight Back’, marketed as ‘India’s first mobile app for women’s safety’.
The video sparked an email discussion that raised some interesting questions that deserve a closer examination.
The VOA story provides a holistic view of violence against women and the developers of the mobile phone application admit that they are but one element in a broader system that needs to respond to instances of violence. They discuss the involvement of police and other duty bearers, such as municipal bodies, which need to address reports women make and do more to reduce their risks. I applaud this approach and the way in which the developers acknowledge the limitations of their application, which I find refreshing.
At the same time I feel this application distracts attention away from more prevalent (and deadly) issues. According to the World Health Organization 10-69% of women stated that they had been physically assaulted by an intimate partner at some point in their lives. The WHO also reports that 40-70% of female murder victims were killed by an intimate partner. A recent survey in the UK showed that one in three girls aged 13 – 17 reported sexual abuse from a partner and one in four had experienced some form of physical partner violence. The UK police receive a call for help regarding relationship abuse every minute.
The degree to which this mobile phone application promotes the notion of ‘stranger danger’ distracts attention from the urgent and more prevalent issue of family and intimate partner violence. Moreover, the fact that the application has a GPS tracker to trace a woman’s route home could inadvertently contribute to both increasing women’s fear of violence in public spaces as well as playing into the hands of those who seek to control women’s mobility by pleading the need to ‘protect’ them by knowing their whereabouts at all times.
In this context a colleague commented that a GPS enabled function could allow ‘even a moderately tech-savvy user to trace the woman in question’ – which could serve to increase traditional control over women who dare to step outside the confines of convention (and the home) even further.
Many mobile and tech for development projects elicit enthusiastic responses by the target constituency when they are asked, but then go on to not be used."Yours is Better!" Participant Bias in HCI investigates the influence of researchers and developers on how beneficiaries react to new services and products, specifically the social and behavioral reasons why users may claim to like a project or find it useful. In an effort to understand the relationship between interviewers and interviewees, two researchers ran an experiment to test the effects of participant bias. Covering interviewers with 450 residents of Bangalore, India, the experiment tested three hypotheses:
Legislation such as SOPA and PIPA directly affect sites like ours that curate, aggregate, and report on innovation initiatives worldwide. SOPA and PIPA would censor the web, do nothing against illegal piracy, and are job and innovation killers.
FailFaire – where it's okay to admit the mistakes. MobileActive hosted another round of FailFaire, bringing together practitioners, developers, donors, and students involved in the use of technology for social change development to discuss what's usually swept under the rug – project failure. The event is an open space to discuss those projects that went wrong in our field fostering a sense of learning from mistakes and knowledge sharing. The latest FailFaire in New York brought together eight practitioners to present their failed projects and what they learned along the way. Take a look at this FastCompany article about the NYC FailFaire for some background.
It may be the end of the year, but that doesn't mean mobile events are slowing down! With conferences, calls for research, developer meet-ups, and networking opportunities, you won't get bored this December. Check out what's happening with mobiles this month:
5 December, Mobile Monday Las Vegas(Las Vegas, USA) The inaugural Las Vegas Mobile Monday meeting will feature presentations of mobile applications, product demonstrations, and discussions about social media outreach and investing.
5-7 December, mHealth Summit (Washington, D.C., USA) The third year of the mHealth Summit looks at how multiple sectors (including governments, NGOs, the telecommunications industry, and academia) can work together to create mobile health projects that improve health systems around the world. We'll be reporting from there.
5-7 December, Advances in Mobile Computing & Multimedia (MoMM-2011) (Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam) This research-based conference, now in its ninth year, brings together researchers and industry practitioners to discuss the mobile computing and multimedia industry.
6 December, The Guardian Mobile Business Summit 2011 (London, UK) This event focuses on the business side of mobile use – branding, user engagement, content creation and delivery, and mobile advertising. The event also has a large focus on networking for attendees.
6-9 December, MobiQuitous 2011 (Copenhagen, Denmark) For researchers and practitioners in the mobile and computing worlds, MobiQuitous offers a chance to share research and learn from workshops and discussions.
