MobileActive's Blog

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.

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As Katrin Verclas posted last week, the 2008 USAID Development 2.0 has launched.  The challenge is seeking innovative mobile technology projects.

Hosted on the NetSquared community site, you are invited to submitt your project idea to a community process:

1. You will have an opportunity to submit your idea and receive feedback from NetSquared's 13,000 members.
2. When the submission period ends, registered NetSquared users can partiicpate in an on-line vote to select 15 featured projects.
3. Senior USAID staff will select  a first place and two runners up.  The first place winner will receive a grant of $10,000, with runners up receiving grants of $5,000 each.  All three will have an opportunity to present their ideas to senior officials and the public.

To find out more about the challenge and, we hope, enter your idea, please visit: 2008 USAID Development 2.0 has launched. We look forward to seeing what you are working on.

I spoke with Ian Puttergill of Microsoft Digital Divide Solutions. They are working on taking the power of web and data capabilities and extending that to mobiles. He demonstrated an SMS hookup to Excel based on SMS Toolkit that can be used for data collection and analysis in rural areas. In Kampala, Uganda they consulted with midwives to design a system that would find out what equipment, training, and medication local populations needed. They are currently still working on that system and its feasability - it's not yet in the field.

Mobile researcher Andi Friedman just presented the results of his survey of the MobileActive '08 attendees. He showed us a Google map mashup using the dialing code of attendees to show where they come from, and there are people here from every continent but Antarctica. South Africa heads the list and Zimbabwe is in second place.

Other facts: 65% of attendees are NGO's, if attendees had $1 million to spend on a mobile application for social change the top sectors they'd choose to bulid it for are education and health, with government in last place.

Unsurprisingly, 0% of attendees don't own a mobile. 

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.

Reposted from MobileActive08.org, by Brett Davidson

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.

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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.  

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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.

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