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.

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The mission of the BiD Network Foundation is to contribute to sustainable economic development by stimulating entrepreneurship in developing countries. They achieve this by:
Stimulating small and medium sized entrepreneurship to create jobs and raise income in developing countries.
Engaging professionals, investors and organizations offering them the opportunity to directly contribute to poverty reduction through SME development in developing countries.
Inspiring people that business and poverty reduction can go hand-in hand.
Come hear Thierry Sanders and Koen Wasmus discuss how they have created an online investment platform and community called the BiD Network to tackle the key problems facing investors wanting to help stimulate economic development in emerging markets.
The BiD Network now operates the world’s largest business plan competition for entrepreneurs in developing countries.  This year the BiD Network received 3,400 business proposals from over 100 countries.  It operates competitions in Kenya, Tanzania, Philippines, India, Argentina, Columbia and Peru.  All of this happens online though www.bidnetwork.org  In addition to the business plan, over 3,700 active members contribute to the online community to help entrepreneurs in developing countries.  In the first year alone the BiD Network assisted the start-up of almost 20 companies in developing countries that help reduce poverty and employ over 500 people.
Speakers Bio:
Thierry Sanders is the Founder of the BiD Challenge, an international business plan competition for developing countries. He has a blended career background in development and business, with a dash of IT, carbon markets and finance.

http://www.bidnetwork.org/person-43-en.html

Koen Wasmus focuses on the internal organization and the roll-out of the local BiD challenges in developing countries. He is a development economist with experience in micro and small finance.

http://www.bidnetwork.org/person-40994-en.htm

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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!

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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.

Kiva.org

How it works:

Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) identify entrepreneurs and publicize them through Kiva’s website. Anyone can then loan a small (or large) amount to a particular entrepreneur, and groups can collectively fund these individuals.

Why this works:

What makes people come? It’s sustainable – the money come back. There are a lot of lenders – young tech-savvy individuals that want to participate, but might not be able to actually go. There’s an easy MFI user interface, and it actually costs less to raise money through Kiva.

One personal note I’ll make is that I started investing in Kiva projects in April 2006, making two loans of $25 each. It took about a year for them to be paid back and umm.. I just reloaned that money out during the talk, one to a retail shop owner in Kabul, and another that was just sufficient to finish covering the loan. They’ve changed a lot since my first loan – they have more information now on their MFI partners, and the entrepreneurs are easier to search through. I didn’t get a lot of feedback from my entrepreneurs – mostly notices that payments were being made on time, but it’s still nice to have a face and a story to loan to, instead of just an organization.

McKinsey

41% of transationcs are on interactiosns. Looking at the impact of ICT – in manufacturing it is limited, but in transactions there’s a larger role. If you are able leverage IT in interaction, you can increase productivity by 6x. Distributed co-creation is beneficial – for those that can harness it (e.g. Wikipedia, Lego).

How are these trends affecting how companies do business, and where is the greatest impact of these trend. Looking at the overall impact across industries, you can examine the size of particular sectors (with respect to GDP) and determine how much value will be at stake if these trends aren’t addressed.

Craigslist Foundation (+Bootcamp)

Happy Craigslist Day! Craigslist is still running out of a house, with 26 employees. What is a social entrepreneur? A for-profit or non-profit organization with an objective beyond making money and instead centered on providing a social good. The triple bottom line of the company of the future looks at money, social and environmental bottom lines, not just the financial bottom line.

Apparently 38% of Haas students chose Berkeley because of our focus on corporate social responsibility.

About Craigslist Foundation: Hosting events, and providing web-based resources. So CF is currently working on a craigslist for foundations. They don’t give away money. They are a publicly funded 501c, and deliberately chose to not give away money but to maintain an idea of not “playing favorites” and instead focusing on projects that are of general benefit to organizations rather than on particular organizations.

Plug for Echoing Green, who just published a (free?) book on what makes a successful social entrepreneur: Be bold and mighty forces will come to your aid.

Peter Drucker on non-profits: Non-profits have a bottom line as well. The difference between a for-profit and non-profit is that for a non-profit the bottom line changes a lot. At the end of a day the for-profit is judged based on whether they made a profit, whereas a non-profit is judged on whether they changed lives.

Hybrid foundations: new foundations (e.g. Omidyar Network, Google Fdn) that may choose to invest in either for-profits or non-profits, and look for a social return, but they have a particular goal/objective. As an interesting new model, ON was given money for which the community collectively decides where it goes…

Engaged philanthropy: e.g. Full Circle Fund, which gives money (grants) and also service grants, like building websites, consulting services, etc.

Facilitate a sense of movement with capital. Rise of the concept of the encore career, where people are championing this idea of continuing to be engaged in retirement, as a volunteer or as a career. It’s importan that these people are thery because they have experience, not just to “lick envelopes”.

More websites: kiva.org, prosper.com, changing the present, poverty’s demise (connecting individuals), change.org, paul hawkin – wiserearth.org, idealist.org, craigslist foundation – a website that serves as a conduit and not a destination, in jan 2008.

Questions

Q: How does the change in the bottom line change things?

Darian: Eventurally the bottom will be integrated into the company identity and will not be in conflict with the financial bottom line

Jessica: It’s a false dichotomy…

Gerard:… i couldn’t hear him over the lawnmower…

Q: On Microfinance: kiva is paving the way for corporations. Will it eventually be cheaper and easier for MFIs to take low-cost loans from Morgan Stanley, etc.

Jessica: A lot of the cost is startup – learning the system, etc. And it is currently about 2%. So it is extremely cheap. And if things changed such that we were not needed, that would be great. We know what our work is about – we know what is happening out there and just trying to do the best we can do with what we know in our niche.

Darian: This is not a saturated market. Competition only serves to legitimize the market. And the height of a success of a non-profit is the elimination of the need for the work they do.

Jessica: Profit vs. Non-profit is basically a tax structure – it doesn’t define who we are or what we do.

Q: Peer-to-peer lending (e.g. prosper.com, and zopa).  How is kiva different?

Jessica: Prosper and Zopa are a platform for borrowers and lenders to talk to each other. And ideally kiva would being the borrower and lender as close as possible to each other.  Incidentally – these platforms are problematic and targeted by people with bad finance practices (paraphrase, not quoted).  With kiva the MFI absorb some of the problems with risk, etc.
About Jessica Flannery
Jessica Jackley Flannery is a co-founder of Kiva.org with her husband
Matt, and the spirit behind the organization. Jessica first saw the
power and beauty of micro finance while working in rural Kenya,
Tanzania, and Uganda with Village Enterprise Fund and Project Baobab on
impact evaluation and program development. Jessica has worked in a
variety of organizations in the public, nonprofit, and private sector,
and serves on numerous boards in the Bay Area. Jessica has spoken widely
on microfinance and social entrepreneurship, and has shared the vision
for Kiva.org in more than 30 countries worldwide. Jessica holds an MBA
from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a BA in Philosophy and
Political Science from Bucknell University.

About Darian Rodriguez Heyman
Darian Rodriguez Heyman’s mission in life is maximizing his sphere of
positive influence. To this end, he strives to contribute towards
significant and sustainable social progress on many fronts. In his role
as Executive Director of Craigslist Foundation, he supports not only one
nonprofit sector or interest area, but rather he leverages the power of
the craigslist brand to create a high tide that is raising all boats and
creating a true movement.

About Gerard Speksnijder
Gerard Speksnijder is an Associate Principal in McKinsey & Company’s
Business Technology Office in Palo Alto, California. He has 10+ years
of consulting and management experience. During his career he developed
expertise in the areas of IT transformation (combining business
strategy, IT competence with change management skills), offshoring &
outsourcing, IT architecture and post merger management within a wide
variety of sectors: high tech, financial services, consumer packaged
goods, transport and logistics, energy and government sectors.

Gerard holds an M.S. in Applied Physics from the Delft University of
Technology, the Netherlands, with majors in transport phenomena,
software engineering, data communications structures and algorithms and
computer architecture.

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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

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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.

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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!

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