Sweden has better internet connectivity than East Africa.
I can’t talk much on my blog about what I’ve been doing in Uganda, besides the usual elevator pitch about my research (mobile-phone and web-based claims administration for treatment of STDs in Western Uganda). Mostly, I’ve been taking care of errands like paying my Uganda National Council of Science and Technology fees, and working with Marie Stopes to identify a new partner to help them barcode the vouchers and process claims.
In addition, I had the opportunity to attend the Makarere University Faculty of Computing EpiHandy workshop, where I was asked to talk about TIER’s research and how we might be able to collaborate with universities in Uganda.
My slides are a little photo-heavy, and Office 2008 seems to have taken out the “compress all pictures in the document” feature, so I’ve only put the pdf online:
http://melissaho.com/talks/epihandy-11-28-08.pdf (2.6MB)
Here in Sweden at m4d I’ve just given a very different presentation, talking about our long distance wireless (WiLD) deployments in Guinea Bissau and Ghana, and how the parameters for these cases differ from TIER’s deployment in India.
http://melissaho.com/papers/m4d08-mho-reassessing.pdf (workshop paper, 1.7MB)
http://melissaho.com/talks/m4d-mho-reassessing-121208.pdf (1MB)
http://melissaho.com/talks/m4d-mho-reassessing-121208.ppt (10.1MB)
I’ll eventually put these up also on some sort of index on my main web page. Eventually.
By the way the m4d conference has been really good so far. I’m totally torn between all of the different tracks, and it is a great blend of technical, development, and social-speak. Despite the initial lack of information preceding the conference, it’s been really well organized thus far, and the talks have been interesting – I’m seeing a lot of projects here that I haven’t heard of before, and meeting people that I’ve heard of but not had a chance to meet in person. The keynotes have been excellent and insightful – Adam Denton from GSMA, Victor Bahl from Microsoft Research (on white spaces), and Richard Heeks from University of Manchester. Karlstad is a nice location, and last night’s dinner included very interesting lessons on the bios of Alfred Nobel (timely!) and Lars Magnus Ericsson by Peter Sundh and Dag Nielsen.
