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.

I’ve just been going over the sessions, and it’s totally action packed. Here’s the schedule of the ICTD-themed sessions I’m hoping to attend:

• Thursday, October 2
  • 11.20-12.20: Enabling Nonprofits to Accomplish Their Missions through Technology (Torreys Peak III)
  • 2.45-3.45: Social Impact of Advanced Technologies and Telemedicine in the Developing World (Crestone Peak II – IV)
• Friday, October 3
  • 10.00-11.00 Building a Better World: Using Anthropology to Ensure Success in Your Project (Crestone Peak I) (actually this one is interesting but I’ll probably be at the next one…)
  • 10.00-11.00 Experiences with OLPC Technology in Ghana, West Africa and Build a Better Future with Creating an ACM-W Chapter in the United Arab Emirates to Help the Peace in the Persian Gulf (Torreys Peak IV)
  • 11.20-12.20 Engaging Students in the Free Open Source Movement Through Civic Engagement (Quandary Peak III)
  • 1.30-2.30 Having Global Impact as a Technical Woman: Information Technology Applied to the Developing World (Torreys Peak I-II) (I’m speaking at this one)
  • 2.50-3.50 Women Working in International Development to Build a Better World (Creston Peak II-IV)
  • 4.00-5.00 Change Agent Awards Panel (Quandary Peak III)

Come find me (I have no idea who will actually read this). And maybe we can go explore the rockies a bit on Thursday afternoon!

Come join the conversation!

Panel Info:
http://gracehopper.org/2008/conference/program-schedule/friday-october-3-session-7

Our Portal:
http://gracehoppper.ictdchick.com

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I’m honestly really divided between the two. My vote? That we pick both, choosing one to be ICTD 2010 or 2011, two conferences from now.

One of my main concerns about the content in this year’s conference, is that it seems even more biased towards Indian projects than last year’s, when we had at least one paper from China, as well as keynote speaker Prof Zhiwei Xu from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Out of the 18 papers and 20 posters:

• 22 presented results from work in India alone,
• 4 from India and other countries (“S. Asia”, India and S. Africa, India and Central America, Kenya/India/Bolivia),
• 2 from Pakistan,
• 1 from Nepal,
• 1 from Honduras,
• 5 from Africa (7, if you count the combos: Zambia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Botswana, and 3 South Africa) , and
• 3 non-specific (the meta-ICTD panel)
• 0 from China

I think several regions are under-represented. This is not to say that there is a flaw in the review process – I’m sure part of it is just that Microsoft Research India is just producing a lot of high-quality research, and another part is just that there are a lot of ICTD projects in India, so a good bulk of the submissions are about reasearch in India. Indeed it’s a lot easier to set up WiLDNet links in Tamil Nadu than in, let’s say, Ghana. I might suggest, however, that maybe some communities just didn’t get the invitation? Or that they saw that the conference was in Bangalore and thought the invitation wasn’t for them. Or they saw the program committee and At the same time I’m not sure that there’s much more we as a community can do to draw in more perspectives from projects in other countries; there’s some diversity on the program committee, they provide scholarships for participants from developing countries, and we’ve always been (as far as I can tell) an open and inviting group of people. Okay, well, I guess I for one could start writing more papers on my work in Uganda and Ghana. (Which might mean that this is a generational issue, since many of us wet our toes in India.) But I think a healthy next step could be to hold the conference in one of these under-represented areas. And, unfortunately for my decision-making process, both of these fit the bill. At the same time – given that Rahul Tongia is already firmly on the program committee, along with M Bernardine Dias (who I don’t think I’ve met yet), perhaps it makes sense to use this opportunity to engage with the universities in Argentina. But then again, this conference is still in its fledgling years, so I can also see how one would want to go with a well-known quantity and give the less-well-known quantity a year or so to become a well-known quantity. I know a certain School that does the same thing with PhD applicants…

If I were forced to choose, I would vote for Qatar (I don’t think I actually have a vote). It’s closer to Africa, where I’m likely to be at the time of the next conference. And the Argentine bid’s (I’m really sorry I forgot your name) tourist video was a little over-the-top for me; I think it was so long and so flashy that by the time it ended I forgot whatever academic reasons there were for locating the next ICTD in Buenos Aires. Besides, I’m really not all that into salsa.

ICTD 2007 Opening Keynote Notes – Anirudh Krishna
ICTD 2007 Session 1: Design Notes
ICTD 2007 Session 2: Extending the Boundaries of ICTD
ICTD 2007 Session 3: Telecenters
ICTD 2007 Panel Discussion Notes: Meaningful Research for ICTD
ICTD 2007 Session 4: Alternatives to Real-time Internet
(Oops, no notes for Sessions 5 and 6)
ICTD2007 Session 7: Children and PCs
ICTD 2007 Closing Keynote Notes – Paul Polak

The (unedited) notes available in the links above are not verbatim (I can’t type quite that fast), and don’t include everything said. Please don’t attribute content in these (especially the Q&A) to the labeled speakers without consulting with the speakers first – I may have misheard what they said, or paraphrased it in a way that misrepresented their meaning. For the talks themselves, you should refer to the corresponding papers for details and missing graphics, although of course the Q&A won’t necessarily be represented. In any case I hope these notes help you find ICTD work that is of interest to you!

The keynote speakers were both incredibly engaging. Anirudh Krishna spoke on his research on how people move in and out of poverty. For me – two main points were:

1. Poverty is escapable: many people escape poverty every year, just as many fall into it. At a high level, this indicates that while working on ways to help people escape poverty is good, our efforts may be moot if we fail to also prevent others from becoming impoverished
2. The capacity to aspire: Krishna notes a glass ceiling for those in villages; although they may try to aspire higher, their condition (the socio-economic-political context) prevents them from aspiring beyond the level of schoolteacher. Perhaps we can work on ways to provide protection against descents into poverty by connecting talent with opportunity.

Interestingly, two papers spoke directly to the topic of aspiration. Renee and Kathi’s paper on gender and shared computing in Chile and India (Akshaya) looked at women’s aspirations; Joyojeet’s paper on his work with parents of schoolchildren in India talked about how computers factored into children’s aspirations as well as parent’s aspirations for their children.

Paul Polak started off the closing keynote with some of Krishna’s slides on the consistent divisions (asset/status-wise) between extreme poverty and poverty, and between those in poverty and those who are not. And then went on to talk about his last 25 years of work talking with and listening to $1/day farmers, trying to understand how they want to move out of poverty. His takeaway: we need to collaborate and co-design with them to find ways to help them make more money, noting that by starting with the problems they give priority to, one opens up the door to addressing their next priorities… Anyways – his talk was packed with interesting stats, observations, an three-step how-to’s, courtesy of the editor of his forthcoming (Feb 2008) book Out of Poverty.

Tap also did an awesome job with the poster session – probably the most interesting and engaging poster session I’ve attended; since each one was also accompanied by a peer-reviewed conference-length paper, all of the posters exhibited real work, real ideas and were well thought-out. The posters in the same room as the sessions, exactly where everyone was during the break, so they had great exposure to a great audience.. And the fast forward session, in which each author gave a 90 second intro to their work, was a brilliant way for all of us to get an overview so we could quickly target the posters we were interested in during the poster session.

Before I close, there’s a couple of presentations I want to highlight as ones that I thought were especially interesting and well-crafted. (Apologies to those who presented in the sessions I missed – I’m sure J Sherwani and Indrani’s presentations were excellent, and I’ve also heard good feedback about Aishwarya Ratan’s paper on Welfare, agency, and ICT4D.)

ICTD 2007 Session 1: Design Notes

Digital Green provides a sort of “Indian Farmer Idol”/YouTube to farmers employing new agricultural technology advocated by the Green Foundation (see paper for details) . I think it’s really interesting to note their results on how various deployment/video strategies affected the farmers’ adoption of practices, with low receptiveness to expert-facilitated video and hole-in-the-wall/tv-broadcast strategies, and 6-7x more adoption with videos including low/medium-skilled mediators working with local farmers. These results underline ideas and observations from Janaki’s paper on the role of trustworthiness in the Parry information kiosk: information access is not sufficent – “whether a community uses the information services offered by information kiosks depends, among other factors, on the perceived quality of the information offered by such services.”

ICTD 2007 Session 2: Extending the Boundaries of ICTD

This was a one-paper session. Janini’s presentation did a great job of explaining the transnational flows of e-waste, and the associated issues. It would definitely be remiss for us not to consider these issues as we pursue our ends of employing ICTs for development, and as markets (some consequent of ICTD movements) draw more and more toxic materials into developing countries.

ICTD 2007 Session 4: Alternatives to Real-time Internet

I’m really impressed by Revi Sterling. Out of all the papers presented, hers truly integrates theory and practice, enabling theory-backed (driven?) engagement in development using novel technologies.

ICTD2007 Session 7: Children and PCs

Of course in this session (as with Session 3 on Telecenters), I’m a little biased. I think I must have listened to Joyojeet’s research talks at least two or three times each now, but I’m still riveted every time. With all of the (often hype-driven) push towards information-kiosk-as-community-centers and computers-in-schools (with Internet or without), I think Joyojeet’s findings on the engagement of the local communities with these projects are critically important, but often not done because they are, well, hard to do.

Rabin’s paper on usage models of classroom computing gets started on some important critical thinking about how one can plan for computers in schools. Although they did pull out some numbers on public spending in other countries, I wonder how these models translate outside of India. I just visited some secondary school computer labs in Jinja, Uganda (urban, private schools, no internet access), and indeed, the multiple students per shared computer model is the norm, with one school putting 10 students at each of their computers. At the same time – multimouse/multipoint is certainly not mainstream – so their representation, while nice, isn’t representative. In Uganda’s secondary schools, computer education is largely about basic “theoretical” (what is RAM, CPU, etc) and practical (create a word/excel/access/powerpoint document, print, move files) computer skills. While they are taught with 10 students to a computer, they are tested with one person per computer (they have to test the students in shifts, since there aren’t enough computers). I think it’s possible that a multimouse approach might be useful for teaching/learning certain aspects, there are limits to where that approach can be employed in teaching computer skills. I think their main arguments still hold up – even the single-user-per-community-computer model is significantly more financially feasible than the single ownership model.

That’s all she wrote.

But hopefully she’ll also write a couple of submissions for the next ICTD conference!

(Early reg deadline is on Nov 15th.)

——————————-

ICTD2007 Call for Participation
——————————-

2nd IEEE/ACM International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD2007)

http://research.microsoft.com/workshops/ictd2007

December 15-16, 2007
Bangalore, India

Following on a successful conference at Berkeley in May of 2006 (http://sims.berkeley.edu/ictd2006), we are pleased to announce the second ICTD conference to take place in Bangalore, India!

India is home to a robust IT and telecommunications industry as well as a huge agrarian economy which supports many of the world’s poor. As such, it is an ideal setting for a conference focusing on information and communication technologies (ICT) and socio-economic development. Every sector is involved – governments, academia, small start-ups, large corporations, inter-governmental organizations, and non-profits and non-governmental organizations. In spite of the tremendous energy and resources behind these projects, scientifically sound research in this space is still just beginning to emerge: What is the actual impact of ICT projects? What novel technology is required to meet development needs? What methodologies lead to success or failure of a project?

The goal of the ICTD conference is to provide a forum for academic researchers working with ICT applied to development. The conference will be scientifically rigorous and multi-disciplinary – papers reporting high-quality original research were subject to double-blind peer review by a program committee of leading scholars in the field. The conference will bring together researchers in both the social and technical sciences, with anticipated representation from anthropology, sociology, economics, political science, computer science, electrical engineering, industrial design, and so on.

Conference details are available at the ICTD2007 website: http://research.microsoft.com/workshops/ictd2007.

PLEASE NOTE THAT REGISTRATION FEES WILL INCREASE ON NOVEMBER 15 AND AGAIN ON NOVEMBER 30. EARLY REGISRTATION IS RECOMMENDED.

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -

Chair: Kentaro Toyama (Microsoft Research India)

Program Committee Chairs: Balaji Parthasarathy (IIIT Bangalore), Krithi Ramamritham (IIT Bombay)

Advisory Committee: VS Arunachalam (CSTEP), Michael Best (Georgia Tech), Ken Keniston (MIT), Raj Reddy (CMU), S. Sadagopan (IIIT Bangalore), AnnaLee Saxenian (UC Berkeley), Ernest Wilson (U Maryland)

Local Arrangements Chair: Balaji Parthasarathy (IIIT Bangalore)

Publications Chair: Rahul Tongia (CMU)

Sponsors:

International Development Research Centre (Canada)
Microsoft Research India
Alliance for Technology, Learning, and Society (Univ. of Colorado)

Conference held in association with…

Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore

Program Committee

Richard Anderson University of Washington
Akhtar Badshah Microsoft
V Balaji ICRISAT
Anupam Basu Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur
John K. Bennett University of Colorado, Boulder
Michael Best Georgia Tech
Subhash Bhatnagar Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad
John Canny University of California, Berkeley
John Chuang University of California, Berkeley
Royal Colle Cornell University
Chris Coward University of Washington
Rahul De Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore
M. Bernardine Dias Carnegie Mellon University,Qatar
Jonathan Donner Microsoft Research India
Kevin Fall Intel Research Berkeley
Pat Hall Open University
Claire Heffernan University of Reading
Bill Hefley Carnegie Mellon University
Arding Hsu Siemens Research China
Heather Hudson University of San Francisco
Mahad Ibrahim University of California, Berkeley
Ashok Jhunjhunwala Indian Institute of Technology, Madras
Atreyi Kankanhalli National University of Singapore
G.R. Kiran London School of Economics
Jim Koch Santa Clara University
Beth Kolko University of Washington
Richa Kumar Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Suresh Lodha University of California, Santa Cruz
Colin Maclay Harvard University
Shirin Madon London School of Economics
Margaret Martonosi Princeton University
Shrikant Naidu Motorola Labs
Brian O’Connell University of Connecticut
Joyojeet Pal University of California, Berkeley
Govindan Parayil University of Oslo
Tapan Parikh University of Washington
Nimmi Rangaswamy Microsoft Research India
Tony Salvador Intel Research
Nirvikar Singh University of California, Santa Cruz
K R Srivatsan International Institute of Information Technology and Management, Kerala
Christoph Stork University of the Witwatersland
Eswaran Subrahmanian Carnegie Mellon University
Rahul Tongia Carnegie Mellon University
Tim Unwin University of London
Zubin Verghese Siemens

Workshop on IUI4DR – Intelligent User Interfaces for Developing Regions
(in conjunction with IUI ’08)
Canary Islands, Spain
January 13, 2008

http://research.ihost.com/iui4dr

Organisers:

* Sheetal K. Agarwal, IBM Research, India
* John Canny, UC Berkeley, USA
* Apala Lahiri Chavan, Human Factors International, India
* Nitendra Rajput, IBM Research, India

Advisory Committee:

* Michelle X Zhou, IBM T J Watson Research Center, USA

Program Committee:

* Ravin Balakrishnan, University of Toronto, Canada
* Michael Best, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
* Mary Czerwinski, Microsoft Research, USA
* Gary Geunbae Lee, Pohang University of Science and Technology, Korea
* Sougata Mukherjea, IBM Research, India
* Oscar Murillo, Microsoft, Colombia
* Shimei Pan, IBM T J Watson Research Center, USA
* Pearl Pu, EPFL, Switzerland
* Anxo Cereijo Roibas, Vodafone, UK
   * Andy Smith, Thames Valley University, UK
* Andrew Thatcher, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa

Theme:

Information Technology has had significant impact on the society and has
touched all aspects of our lives. So far, computers and expensive devices
have fueled this growth. It has resulted in several benefits to the
society.
The challenge now is to take this success of IT to its next level where IT
services can be accessed by masses. “Masses” here mean the people who
(a) are not yet IT literate and/or
(b) do not have the purchase power to use the current IT delivery mechanisms (PC centric model) and/or
(c) do not find current IT solutions and services relevant to their life or business.

Interestingly, a huge portion of the world’s population falls in this category. To enable the IT access to such masses, this workshop aims to focus on easy-to-use and affordable, yet powerful, user interfaces that can be used by this population.

The workshop aims to bring together researchers in the industry and the academia to focus on user interface issues related to designing interfaces for this population.

Topics of Interest:

Considering the social, cultural, educational and economic diversity of
developing regions, the challenge is to develop appropriate and effective
interfaces/interaction techniques that will enable these users to access
services that currently remain elusive to them. The focus areas of the
workshop include, but are not limited to:

* Novel and effective interfaces that reduces the cognitive load on the
users who usually operate in chaotic environments:
People in developing regions often would access these interfaces
in noisy and crowded surroundings. Providing privacy through the
          intelligent UI and handling the noise would be a challenge for such
interfaces.
* Interfaces for semi-literate and illiterate users:
Iconic interfaces, speech-based interfaces and multimodal
interfaces offer promising solutions to overcome literacy issues.
Any other interface that does not need language skills will be of
interest to this workshop.
* Designs tailored to factor social and cultural issues:
If an interface technology is culturally not acceptable to a
society, it may not have  acceptability. So interfaces that reflect the
culture of the society are bound to be promising.
* Shared user interfaces and devices:
People developing regions seldom own a computing device on an
individual basis. Access to applications or services is mainly through
kiosks or phones. Most families now own a cell phone that is shared
among family members.
* Cost-effective interfaces:
Since the purchase power of this society is not high, expensive
and sophisticated interfaces may not be the right choice. Intelligent
use of cost-effective devices will therefore be more  acceptable
for this population.

We seek original, unpublished papers in the following three categories:
(a) Position papers that describe novel ideas that can lead to interesting
research directions, (b) Early results or work-in-progress that has significant promise, or, (c) Full papers. Papers should be of 4-6 pages in length in the IUI publication format. The LaTeX (http://www.iuiconf.org/LaTeXclassfile.zip) and Microsoft Word (http://www.iuiconf.org/chi2008pubsformat.doc) templates are available through these links. All submissions should be in the PDF format and should be submitted electronically through the IUI4DR Easychair Conference site (http://www.easychair.org/iui4dr08). Since the submission deadlines are dependent on the IUI conference, we will not be able to grant any extensions in any circumstances.

Since the workshop also aims to be a meeting point for researchers working in this area, atleast one author of accepted papers should attend the workshop to present their work.

Demos:

In addition to the papers, participants are also invited to submit interesting demonstrations of working systems. These demos should reflect the usability of the systems for developing regions. A one page description of the system should be submitted through the workshop submission site by November 11, 2007. The description should also provide any equipment that is required for the demo. Needless to say, if accepted, the demonstrators should be able to travel to the workshop for presenting their work.

Key Dates

* Paper/Demo Submission Deadline: Nov 11, 2007 (11:59 pm Spain Time)
* Notification:                                   Dec 01, 2007
* Early Registration Deadline:            Dec 03, 2007
* Workshop:                                    Jan 13, 2008.

Websites

* IUI4DR Workshop: http://research.ihost.com/iui4dr
* IUI ’08 Conference : http://www.iuiconf.org/

From the call for proposals:

AITEC Africa, Africa’s leading ICT event organiser, is inviting presentation proposals for the first ever ICT for Healthcare in Africa Conference, to be held in Nairobi over 11-13 September 2007.

Delivery of healthcare services remains rudimentary in most of Africa. To achieve any of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) related to healthcare there is an urgent need to multiply care delivery through effective IT and communication systems. The conference will provide a platform for health practitioners, managers and ICT professionals to share knowledge and experience and identify best practices in Africa and internationally for the deployment of effective ICT systems for healthcare.

The conference will target participants from the healthcare sector across Africa:

• Ministries of Health
• Government Agencies
• Health Management Organisations
• Public and Private Hospitals
• NGOs and other development agencies active in the Healthcare Sector

The conference will cover key topics for this audience, with top African and international experts contributing strategy briefings within the conference.
Issues to be covered will include:

• Current use of ICT in healthcare provision in different countries
• The role of ICT in National Health Insurance schemes
• Telemedicine for delivery in rural areas
• Smart card technology in healthcare
• Financing and sustaining ICT in healthcare (including Asset Management)
• ICT training requirements for health professionals
• National healthcare portals
• Information security and data protection
• National communication policies & infrastructure development
• Outsourcing healthcare information management systems

To propose a presentation in the conference, e-mail the title, together with a brief outline and information on the speaker to Sean Moroney seanm@aitecafrica.com

www.aitecafrica.com

Unite for Sight is a health conference held every April.  It’s an interesting gathering of people from a large number of backgrounds doing international health and development, and although it has a focus on eyecare, it incorporates numerous tracks and presentations on other aspects of International Health as well. Last year, Sonesh did a presentation on Aravind’s WiLD network.

The next conference is April 12-13, 2007, to be held at Yale University.  If you are interested in submitting an abstract, you need to sign up and send in your abstract by July 15th at the url above.

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My slides are downloadable here (ppt, 10.5 MB).  I gave an introduction to TIER, talking about our work using long distance WiFi (WiLDnet) for the Aravind Eye Hospitals in India, then gave an overview of our project in Ghana. Just for a bit of context, I also presented a brief introduction to network infrastructure options in Ghana.

It was a great opportunity to meet many wonderful people, including my host Grace and the many doctors actively returning to Ghana on a regular basis to provide training and do rural outreaches. I’m really looking forward to working with all of them!