On day three of MobileActive ’08, I attended a session led by engineer Blaine Cook, formerly Twitter’s Chief Architect.
Cook summarized what the group was looking for:
“We would like an ongoing, up-to-date tool. A migration tool that keeps us moving from one social network to the next so NGO’s can move and migrate from platform to platform. We need the ability for any one organization to connect with any other organization.”
Mixit was mentioned as a useful tool, but Cook noted cross-border interoperability issues: Mixit requires GPRS which isn’t that credible across borders. Using a SIM card costs a lot to text across borders. Cook suggested that there could be a network where you send to SIM chip in Uganda from Uganda, but set up a network with nodes to dramatically cut costs of cross-border activism.
Cook said that it costs around $20,000-30,000 for a short code in the US and you can send as many SMS’s as you like. He mentioned that Twitter got a bill for $37,000 in Egypt for only 6000 Twitter users.
On day two of the MobileActive ’08 conference in Johannesburg, I attended a session entitled "In the Elevator With Operators: How to Pitch New Service Ideas to Mobile Companies” that focused on how to pitch mobile development projects that present both a social and a business opportunity. It was moderated by Jesse Moore of the GSMA Development Fund, and panelists were Pieter Verkade, the CMO of MTN South Africa, and Vuyani Jurana, executive director at Vodacom SA.
At some point, people with new mobile ideas in the development field need to get mobile operators involved so services can scale from small pilot projects to sustainable efforts that service many more people. As Moore said: “If you’re losing money, scale is your enemy. If you’re making money, scale is your friend.”
The goal of the meeting is to assess the landscape of tools, and begin to develop a technical roadmap.
The Open Mobile Consortium believes that it is critical to overcome frthe current agmentation in this field, and to align existing projects that are developing and implementing mobile tools. A longer-term vision is to work as an open source consortium, with funding for coordination and project management, as well as code integration, refactoring and producing documentation for training and support.
MobileActive.org will participate in tomorrow's portion of the event, and report back on key discussions.
On day three of MobileActive ’08, I attended a session led by Pragnya Alekal of the XPrize Foundation. Pragnya is a water sanitation and energy engineer who has spent a lot of time in the field. She stressed that technology has its limitations – it’s not the whole solution. Her entire goal has been to make up for the fact that technology is important while encompassing other factors.
Alekal told us that XPrize’s goal is to revolutionize sectors – they have a commons-based philosophy. Pragnya was at MobileActive ‘08 to get ideas. How do you solve poverty? How do you get more people to think of solutions?
Alekal told us the history of XPrize, which started with a big dream and got scaled out. It was founded by Peter Diamandes – from the age of nine on, he wanted to go to space. He became a rocket scientist and got six degrees. He felt that the astronaut program was too restrictive. If you are non-American like he is, your chances of becoming an astronaut are low. The number of people who make it into space is very small.
On day two of the MobileActive ’08 conference, I attended The Humanitarian Technology Challenge: In Search of Innovative Solutions presented by Claire Thwaites, who heads the technology partnership between Vodaphone and the UN Foundation.
Thwaites said that their goal is to find technology solutions to humanitarian challenges. The IEEE lists five key challenges which Thwaites presented: Reliable Electricity
Needs: Power availability for electronic devices, including low power stationary facilities, rugged mobile power supplies for emergency settings, mechanical transducers, passive generation devices that charge as you walk. Renewable energy hubs are preferred, as well as the use of intermediate field offices as data relay points. Data Connectivity of Rural Health District Offices
Needs: Exchange data between central health facilities and remote field offices. Two-way transmission – upload/download, data could be batched for daily transfer, also useful for emergency alerts and outbreak alerts, less expensive service and higher bandwidth needed, maps of existing connectivity
On day two of MobileActive ’08 in Johannesburg, I attended Mobile Use By Micro and Small Enterprises (MSEs) by Jonathan Donner of the Technology for Emerging Markets Group, Microsoft Research India.
Donner explained that Microsoft Research conducts long-term research and development – it’s not tied directly to products. Its goals are to understand potential technology users in developing countries, and to adapt and design technology that contributes to social and economic development of poor communities.
Donners’ research focus was on tiny informal businesses with fewer than five employees. These businesses are post-agriculture and post-family farm. Example types of businesses that Donner examined include basket weaving, fruit stands, food sellers, and informal pipe fittings manufacturing.
Donner studied how mobiles have had a positive impact both in Kigali, Rwanda in 2002-2004, and Bangalore and Hyderabad, India from 2005-2007.
He found “information needs very different than those of my colleagues in Redmond.”
On the first day of MobileActive ’08 in Johannesburg, I attended "M-Banking and M-Payments for Social Impact", with Jonathan Donner, Tonny Omwansa, Jesse Moore, Brian Richardson, and Alex Comninos presenting to a packed room. The session gave an overview of m-banking (mobile banking) and m-payments (mobile payments), including specific mobile banking solutions such as M-PESA and Wizzit.
Brian Richardson, the CEO of Wizzit, began by stressing that mobile banking is becoming more and more common in African countries. In South Africa, more than 11 million people live with cash only. 600 million in Africa don’t have access to basic financial services because of affordability, accessibility, and availability. Without access to basic financial services, it’s hard to be an economic citizen.
Three hundred and eighty people gathered from all over the world in Johannesburg last week to discuss how mobile phones might be used for social and political purposes in developing countries. The event crackled with the kind of energy that happens when people gather on a topic for the first time. Russell Southwood, a prominent researcher and analyst in South Africa, looks at the issues raised by the event. Excerpts follow.
At the core of all this energy was a very simple notion. The technology device of choice for the majority of people in developing continents like Africa is the mobile phone. If you want to deliver messages to people or get them to respond then SMS or voice is an obvious route to go down.
Two great blog-posts wrap up MobileActive08. Ismail Dhorat from ignite^2 gives an overview of one of the best sessions on ReadWriteWeb:
I found this presentation by Tino Kruetzer, a researcher at the University of Cape Town, extremely interesting. It was based on the interim results of a pilot study on mobile internet usage by low income youth in Cape Town. Some of the key findings were:
What an amazing three days MobileActive08 it was! We gathered an extraordinary group of people in one place who usually never get to see each other and the energy and work and collaboration that happened here in Johannesburg was truly amazing. The session and ideas are too numerous to describe here (and not that I would know about all the crazy work that went on, anyway!) but here are a few observations about who was here!
Participants: Thanks to the fantastic team at Mobile Researcher, we conducted a number of surveys of the more than 370 attendees and here are a few data points:
According to Microsoft’s Unlimited Potential division, there are several barriers standing in the way of effectively reaching the large masses of underserved communities. Among these are infrastructural obstacles, localization issues, the need for personalized solutions, and the prohibitive cost of technology.
As a solution to these problems they are looking at ways of tapping into the most basic a ubiquitous form of technology on the continent: mobile phones. This would enable users of mobile phones to access services from Microsoft’s services in the ether to mobile phones through pcs. To this end, there has been a lot of research into bringing the Microsoft platform to basic mobile phones by providing the technology to do this as well as by partnering with service providers as well as governmental and non-governmental actors.
One of the big initiatives that was just formed/announced at MobileActive '08 was what we're calling the "Open Mobile Consortium" (working name). This is a body much like the W3C, focused on bringing together groups working on initiatives in this space, formulating best practices and standards and generally working to bring this fragmented industry a little closer together.
We'll see where this goes, but there seems to be a lot of enthusiasm and willingness to make something happen. On top of that, the organizations taking part carry a lot of weight. There were representatives from UNICEF, Shuttleworth Foundation, Tactical Tech, InSTEDD, Cell-Life, Ushahidi, UN Foundation, Open Rosa, Columbia University, and many more that I can't remember.
Yesterday I attended the session "OpenRosa mHealth in Tanzania" presented by Gayo Mhila and Neal Lesh. Gayo told us about CommCare, an OpenRosa mobile data collection application which enables community health workers (CHWs) to easily collect patient data through their mobiles. OpenRosa is a consortium for mobile data collection and decision support.
Community health workers serve poor, rural populations, promote preventative care, convey health information, and collect data. Their challenge in being able to use applications such as CommCare include limited network coverage, the fact that it's hard to charge phones in rural areas (solar charger, anyone?), airtime management of personal calls in the case of granted airtime, and understanding of technology.
I asked Gayo about how the CHW's found patients to survey, especially since privacy is such an issue for the population with HIV and TB. He said that health workers direct patients to go to the NGO to get help, so it is their initiative to work with them.
Another audience member mentioned how complicated navigation on donated cellphones was an issue in her project.
It's amazing working with a team of African student citizen journalists to document MobileActive '08. Students are from CSDF and Rhodes University and are from countries including South Africa, Mozambique, and Zambia. Blogging of sessions was divided up according to a students' particular interest in gender or democracy or citizen journalism. They're certainly getting a lot of on-the-job training, and MobileActive is lucky to have their perception and insight.
This afternoon I attended 'The Mobile Web': The potential and reality for developing countries, facilitated by Toni Eliasz.
There was extended discussion of the value of the mobile web to developing countries. Views hinge a lot on how one defines 'mobile web'. Some people had strong reservations about the potential of the mobile web, related to affordability, the need for high-end phones in order to browse the internet, the high cost of data access via cellphone networks, and ongoing problems with connectivity.
But many of these reservations can be removed if one defines the mobile web more broadly than accessing the Internet. One person proposed defining it as access to data and databases in whatever form. So if people are able to access data on the Internet, through tailored SMS services, for example, that qualifies as the mobile web.
MobileActive08 delved right into the key issues that we have been talking about for some time now. During the Mobile Cafe in the opening session, key themese emerged that need to be addressed to fully "unlock the potential of mobile tech for social change."
It was rightly noted that we need to make "common ground" - there are lots of small projects that should start sharing notes, tech, and experiences. This is one of the key reasons, of course, why we co-convened MobileActive08 - to bring the best and the birghtest people in this field together to start comparing notes. Several participants talked about the importance of voice. Much attention is focused on SMS and higher-end applications but voice is often neglected.
The cost of mobile communication is a hug barrier for many projects that needs to be addressed in order to go beyond a small proof-of-concept phase to anything resembling sustainable use of mobiles.
Greenpeace Argentina, Al Jazeera, Unicef, Burmese monks, healthcare workers in ten African countries, geeks and IT entrepreneurs, 380 people from 45 countries: what's the common link? Mobile technology with a social mission. Whether it's sharing medical information in rural Mozambique, or helping getting the word out about post-election violence in Kenya or getting accurate demographic data in regions with no IT structure, or using phone minutes for micro-banking or social marketing, someone here (and there are close 400 participants) is talking about it, and others are sharing their experiences, with each other of course, and with any social network you've heard of from Twitter to Flickr to Youtube to Facebook.
In general the flash of the IT world is mixed with a fair amount of humility; most people are here as much to listen, and get the lay of the land as they are to present the killer app or networking tool.
For me, coming from New York, the notion that Katrin Verclas suggested, that the event is packed with people and information precisely because it's in Africa, rings true.
As more than 300 mobile social innovators set out to Johannesburg to convene at MobileActive08, we wanted to let you know how you can follow the proceedings and participate remotely. We will be blogging many of the amazing sessions here on this blog, on MobileActive08's blog; and you can follow and discuss proceedings through these channels:
Mobile phones are providing organisations and advocates with new ways to reach their communities. Now the Gender Based Violence Prevention Network in collaboration with Women of Uganda Network (WOUGNET) will use text messaging to create awareness about violence against women in Africa.
We are pleased and proud to welcome and thank the sponsors and supporters of MobileActive08. We are very grateful for the generous and amazing funding from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) in Canada which is a major supporter of the event. IDRC has also been instrumental in the mobile-for-social-impact field with extraordinary research and support, so we are very pleased that IDRC staff and grantees will be contributing their expertise and innovations to MobileActive08.
Yael Schwartzmann is a social entrepreneur, a programmer, and a mobile innovator. She developed a mobile data collection application-- DigitalICS -- to monitor smallholder coffee farmers' compliance with organic, fair trade certifications and quality requirements at a rural coffee cooperative in Oaxaca, Mexico. Yael will feature DigitalICS (pronounced Digitalix) at MobileActive08's SIMPlace. In my interview with her, we discuss why mobile phones are so useful for agricultural data collection on compliance and certification, how the application works, where else it could be used, and why she is passionate about her work.
Here is the audio of my interview with Yael; an edited transcript follows.
We are the organizers of MobileActive08 and M4D, and are jointly hoping that our events will advance the exploration of the emerging field of mobile technology for social impact. Both of our events are interdisciplinary and include NGO practitioners, technologists and researchers. Together we will explore how mobile technology can advance work in a wide variety of issue areas such as health, advocacy, livelihoods, environmental protection and citizen media.
In our exploration this week of the social impact of mobiles phones on livelihoods, the GSMA Development Fund has aggregated key research studies from the last few years on the social and economic impact of mobile telephony in developing countries.
There is a growing body of impact studies that indicate the substantial effect that mobile telephony has on the lives and livelihoods of poor people. The GSMA Development Fund compendium (attached for easy download) lists 20 studies conducted between 2005 and early 2008, and cites other, related reseaech in a well-done overview.
