» Archive for the 'Talks' Category

Event: Investing in Entrepreneurs in Developing Countries 11/14 6pm

Monday, November 5th, 2007 by melissa

Investing in Entrepreneurs in Developing Countries — A Talk Sponsored by The Blum Center
Wednesday, November 14th
6:00pm
Hearst Memorial Mining Building, Room 290, UC Berkeley Campus
Please join The Blum Center for Developing Economies for a talk on:
“Creating an online investment platform for entrepreneurs in developing countries”
Thierry Sanders and Koen Wasmus, Directors of the Business in Development BiD Network Foundation.
A reception and graduate student mixer will follow.
Please RSVP: http://blumcenter.berkeley.edu/events/BID

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Craig Newmark Speaks: we listen

Wednesday, October 31st, 2007 by melissa

Craig Newmark of Craiglist recently gave a talk as part of my Social Entrepreneurship class. I’ve attached my notes from the talk here (Notes: Craig Newmark on Craigslist), and you can listen to the audio on the ischool podcast.

Craig, as a self-proclaimed-and-proud-of-it geek is a fun speaker with lots of interesting perspectives. As someone who has lucked out by having some really good insights into what people want (simple, functional, straightforward ways of linking people with things to people that want them), he looks at his brainchild from a very technologically deterministic perspective. Give them what you have, listen to what they want. And if they don’t like the principles you stick to, its okay - there’s always another community that will.

And so it turns out that the stuff that I think is really interesting about craigslist (besides the fact that it is so useful) isn’t really all that interesting to Craig. I asked if he could highlight any differences in how different communities have picked up craigslist - if perhaps there were certain characteristics that lend towards the craiglist-principles being more appropriate or not. At the very least, there’s a tipping point - if there aren’t a lot of postings then it’s less useful as a resource for people that are looking for things. Craigslist apartment listings, for example are probably more useful in the bay area, than some random small town. There was a time where it was only useful in the bay area. Although it’s in a lot of cities now so maybe we aren’t so different after all. But try to transfer the idea to another country (madrid?) and see what happens. Do the categories and everything reflect some structural element of American culture, or is their model flexible enough to reflect any culture?

What I’d really like to see is a sort of Craiglist-free tag for connecting specific NGO-needs with micro-donors. A micro-donation marketplace, where approved social entrepreneurs can list their needs and be matched with people willing to donate time or money, either on a one-time or an ongoing basis. We’d have to be careful not to inculcate dependence, but to make sure the projects listed are well thought out. I guess instead of craigslist you could think of it as a kiva.org, extended to allow micro-donations and not just micro-loans, crossed with an idealist.org that recruits people to come and do particular tasks. For example, HEAL Africa, a hospital I do some volunteer/missions work for in the Dem Rep of Congo, could list their needs: salaries for their employees, school fees for the families that take in orphans, oxygenators, etc, and individuals could adopt particular needs, rather than donating to an unlabeled bin called “HEAL Africa”. People like being connected to specific achievements; it just feels more engaging to pay a particular doctor’s salary, than to be writing a yearly check to a faceless NGO.

Getting back to the topic at hand, I’m really glad Craig never sold out - especially to the banner ad people. I stopped using Yahoo! Mail because the banner ads kept getting more and more…umm…skanky. I didn’t really appreciate always having some half-naked model on a banner ad occupying my screen while I was reading email. (Besides, threaded conversations are just so much easier to track/manage.) It’s amazing to realize that a site with 9 billion page views per month is managed by only 24 paid employees. An ongoing problem is that of scammers, something that is as much as possible policed by users, but still a serious concern. And a recurring theme is the one of listening to the users. He who has ears to hear, let him hear. It’s not just about listening, but about hearing what they are saying and knowing what to do about it. And I think that’s what a lot of development-speak boils down to: take the time to listen to your users and you might actually be able to work with them to develop something they will actually use!

Talk: The New Wave of Social ICT Impact

Wednesday, October 10th, 2007 by melissa

Eventually I’ll post these talk announcements before the fact! The announcement for the panel discussion is below. Click on the “more” link for my notes on the discussion and speaker bios…

HARNESSING COMMUNITIES & MARKETS - NEW WAVE SOCIAL ICT IMPACT.

Please join us for a panel discussion on
‘Harnessing Communities & Markets- The New Wave of Social ICT.’

Jessica Flannery, co-founder of Kiva.org, Darian Rodriguez Heyman,
Executive Director of the Craisglist Foundation and Gerard Speksnijder
from McKinsey’s Technology office in Silicon Valley will discuss the
possibilities and limits of market-based models to alleviate poverty and
create social equity.

Date: Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Time: 12:30 to 2 pm
Place: School of Information, 101 South Hall

This talk is part of the iSchool seminar on ‘Social Entrepreneurship in
ICTD’ taught by Paul Braund and Anke Schwittay from the RiOS Institute.

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Event: Blum Student Symposium - Smartphones and Healthcare Information Management in Uganda

Monday, October 8th, 2007 by melissa

Hi all,

I gave a presentation at the Blum Student Symposium last Thursday.

For anyone that’s interested, the slides (65MB) are downloadable here:

http://tier.cs.berkeley.edu/~melissa/blum-symposium-oct-04-07.ppt

The talk was about current health information practices in rural health clinics in Uganda, how PDAs have been integrated into a particular district, and our projections for what we’re working on now.

The future symposiums look really interesting (See Blum Event Calendar for times and locations):

Legal Aid Organizations and the Rule of Law in Sudan
Presentation by Mark Massoud, Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program Graduate Student
Thursday, November 1st

Media and Development in Zambia
Presentation by Laura Hubbard, Visiting Faculty, Anthropology
Thursday, November 15

Reducing Rape and Mutilation in Darfur with Fuel Efficient Stoves
Presentation by Susan Amrose, Graduate Student, Energy & Resources Group
Thursday, November 29th

Event: A Philanthropist Speaks: “Lessons from Life”

Monday, October 1st, 2007 by melissa

A Philanthropist Speaks: “Lessons from Life”
Sudha Murthy, Chairperson: Infosys Foundation

4:00 - 5:30 p.m.
Monday, October 15
http://www.citris-uc.org/sudha-murthy-2007

Live online broadcast at mms://media.citris.berkeley.edu/webcast

Part of the Center for South Asia Studies Public Lecture Series, Fall 2007, co-sponsored by CITRIS

Sudha Murty is an Indian social worker and an accomplished author. She is the chairperson of the Infosys Foundation and is known for her philanthropic work through the Infosys Foundation. Among other things, she has initiated a move to provide all government schools in Karnataka with computer and library facilities. An MTech in computer science, she teaches computer science to postgraduate students. A prolific writer in English and Kannada, she has written nine novels, four technical books, three travelogues, one collection of short stories and three collections of non-fiction pieces. Her books have been translated into all the major Indian languages and have sold over 150,000 copies. She was awarded the Padmashree in 2006.

African Healthcare Summit - GPS Foundation, DC

Monday, May 21st, 2007 by melissa

I recently (April 29, 2007) gave a talk to the Ghana Physicians and Surgeons Foundation (a group of Ghanaian doctors practicing in the US) at their annual African Healthcare Summit.

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!