MobileActive08 and M4D 2008: Events for Mobile Social Innovation

By Katrin Verclas and John Soeren Petterson

There are two notable events this fall focusing on mobile telephony for social impact and for development. The first event is MobileActive08, October 13-15 in South Africa. The second is M4D 2008: Mobile Communication Technology For Development, December 11 and 12 in Sweden.

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.

As our goals and passions overlap, we have been discussing how to take the discussions begun at MobileActive08 in October and bring them to Sweden to take them to the next level.  We will be bringing key learnings and documentation from Johannesburg to Stockholm, and from there to as many other places as we can.  
 
We believe that the time is ripe for a collaborative and focused field of mobile innovators who share best practices, knowledge, and ideas to maximize impact, not re-invent wheels, and strategically pursue key opportunities to improve people's lives.   We feel that there needs to be a continuing debate and discussion so ideas can mature and find implementors and evaluators. We encourage our networks to share learnings in order to foster this focused field, and we hope that other organizers of similar events will do the same.   
 
We are determined to bring mobile technology -- which holds so much potential to make people's lives truly better -- to the next level in service for social goals and social good.  We are greatly looking forward to seeing you -- this amazing community -- in South Africa in October and in Sweden in December!