At the moment, I’ve totally given up on using my 64/64 WiMax+VSAT link via Infocom (which costs $300/month) and I’m using my Warid Telecom GPRS/EDGE modem (cost $60 + $40/month), which incidentally also claims speeds up to 128kbps (16KB/s), but in reality usually sits at about 2-5 KB/s on a good day (I am getting about 1.0KB/s now).  The MTN EDGE/HSDPA service ($150 + $45 modem) is a bit of a joke and I have never seen it go above 1-2 KB/s (It’s supposed to be 384kbps, or 48KB/s).  My suspicion is that MTN, as the pre-dominant service provider in Uganda is over-subscribed, and they use older equipment here in Mbarara. Rumor has it that they get better performance in Kampala.  But it is totally beyond me why they claim 3G services and sell HSPDA modems but offer a service quality that is really completely unusable. In practice – I was able to get data services (with the same sim card) using my android g1 phone, but not with the modem they provided. Okay, I’m straying from my original topic – I’ll do another series later reviewing available mobile data services in Uganda, since that’s part of what I have to research here for Claim Mobile. (My findings are mysterious and intriguing, let me tell you… or just plain frustrating, take your pick.)

So why is a mobile phone researcher sitting here worrying about ISPs and various telecommunications providers, other than the fact that I can’t send emails and every time I manage to load my credit card website it times out and kicks me back to the log on page? Well, it’s actually part of my participant observation activities.  Yes… I get to be my NGO’s consultant on all things IT.  But it is also useful to know and understand these things – not just in theory but on the ground – what are NGOs actually facing in day-to-day experience trying to deal with ISPs, from selection of an internet service provider, to daily maintenance of an Internet connection, to their own understandings of why things are and are not working..

The technical people to whom we outsource things are in general okay.  There is a dependence on Windows products.  And I could wish that they would install proxy caches, especially since we are using VSAT services.  I like that Infocom uses WiMax.  But their connection to the Internet seems less than reliable, which is unreasonable given that they are multiplexing WiMax users. And really, when the Warid mobile internet for $40/month performs better than the $300/month Infocom link, you know that something is seriously wrong.

As I mentioned at the beginning – this isn’t an all-across Uganda problem.  I can go to my Mbarara University office, and my internet connection is fine – we use Uganda Telecom as an ISP there, and the connection is a lot faster.  Unfortunately for me, the sysadmin is a bit paranoid since he doesn’t quite know what he’s doing, and the firewall doesn’t let me POP3 my mail.

And I will also note that the story differs a lot when you change regions – East Africa Internet prices are very different from West Africa – in Ghana you can get fairly decent DSL broadband for $90/month, with out paying an arm and a leg for VSAT equipment, purely because West Africa has the SAT3 submarine fiber with a landing point in Ghana and a few other countries.

We’re waiting for that submarine fiber to Nairobi to be finished this summer?  Hopefully with a non-monopoly business plan? But even once East Africa has submarine fiber, that doesn’t solve pricing problems for the land-locked countries in central Africa.  While, there are many capital projects working on getting broadband Internet around the coast of Africa, no capital projects that I am aware of to date are investigating lowering the cost of Internet beyond the coast. More than a few invest in broadband via VSAT (e.g. o3b), but while VSAT may be expedient, it will remain expensive to maintain, and is not a new solution.

How many development projects have died after their three year term when the supporting NGO was no longer able to pay the $2000/month subscription fee for the VSAT service?  Even when coupled with on-the-ground last mile solutions like WiMax or WiFi for sharing the VSAT link amongst a number of users, we find that the per-user cost of VSAT is too high.  $2000/month here pays for maybe a 263/790kbps connection, which will support about 20-30 users.  That’s almost $100/user/month!  Let’s say we restricted applications to low-bandwidth apps and could support more users. With an optimistic 200 users, assuming no costs for maintaining a network that supports 200 users, $10/month is a lot of money to ask from a rural villager, discounting the cost of whatever device you are giving them. There’s still no real scenario in which this pricing model becomes affordable and sustainable. Shared VSAT plans are less expensive – but as I allude to in the beginning of my email – shared plans support fewer users.  This 64/64 Infocom plan is virtually non-functional at the moment.

There’s something on the horizon… Warid has started offering WiMax service in Kampala, for which they are charging about $150 for equipment and $100/month for “broadband” service.  In theory they will offer the same in Mbarara at the end of the month. (End of the month in Uganda usually means sometime in the next 3-6 months, as I’ve learned..)  I assume that this is similar to Infocom and MTN’s service – WiMax to VSAT, unless Warid has some sort of wireless relay going up through Kenya and Ethiopia to the Middle East that we don’t know about.

Also on the horizon is Eric Brewer’s plan to build long-distance wireless broadband (not necessarily WiFi or WiMax) links down the Rift Valley, effectively bringing broadband inland from a number of possible submarine fiber drop points to a selection of possible inland locations using existing(?) wireless towers.  Issues to surmount?  Spectrum licensing in each country, trans-boundary traffic issues, negotiating agreements between the various ISP associations in each country, pricing models, who will administer the network, etc.  Oh, and of course, setting up the network…. But TIER has experience with that…

In the meantime.  I’ll post this and be thankful that at least two of my three available Internet connectivity options are functional.

From:  Laura Stachel

Cross-posted from wecaresolar.com
Hello friends and family,
I’ve been in Nigeria for 5 days and it’s been a whirlwind of activity and accomplishments. Please take a look at the WE CARE website: www.wecaresolar.com if you want some detailed updates. The solar project is phenomenal – the solar panels are being installed, wiring is being done, and lights will be up in the maternity ward, operating room, and labor and delivery by the end of Monday. We’ve also installed outlets to enable suctioning in the operating room, and ongoing battery charging for the walkie-talkies and LED headlamps. Nurses in ALL of the wards are using the LED headlamps, and I’m learning that they are no longer having to postpone critical nursing care due to lighting problems. So intravenous lines are being placed on time, babies are getting the antibiotics they need, and stress levels are going down. The new antenna for the walkie talkies has been installed, and the repeater will be put in place on Monday. Then I will test the system to
verify that the walkie talkies will extend for 12 miles. That means that all the hospital employees on call will be able to use them, not just the ones who live on the hospital grounds. I also met with a group of visiting American doctors and convinced them to donate surgical supplies to the labor and delivery ward.  Finally, I have been observing and working with hospital staff, who have asked me to initiate a meeting next week to review difficult cases with poor outcomes, and to promote improved standards of care. They see me as  an allie and have responded to my gentle criticisms of their care in the most productive way possible.

And for the most special surprise – I procured a solar powered blood bank refrigerator and solar panels for the laboratory today

I’m going to be visiting the ministry of health on Monday, because the hospital wants to have a celebration in honor of WE CARE on Wednesday.

I haven’t been sending out my field notes about hospital care as I have in the past. I have been witness to many sensitive things, and worry about publicizing this for the world to see. If you would like any of my notes for your personal perusal, just let me know. They are at least as detailed and moving as the ones I blogged a year ago.

Finally, some of you have asked me how to make donations.  If you have not had a chance to make a donation to the WE CARE project and would like to, the website will accommodate donations through PAYPAL for a tiny fee, or you can send a check to: WE CARE, 3009 Hillegass Ave, Berkeley, CA. 94705.

Kindle 2 ($360)	Kindle (discont’d)	Sony Reader PRS-505  ($299)

My major complaints about the original Kindle were that it was flimsy, thick, clunky, and the buttons were not well designed. The plastic it was designed from made its weight distribution funny – so it actually even aggravated my tendonitis. I liked the WhisperNet feature, and the keyboard – but the slowness of the screen made annotating books a pain at best, and referencing the annotations wasn’t really useful enough to merit the design flaws. Amazon’s closed ebook format isn’t great either – most of stuff I want to read just happens not to be available in Kindle format (i.e. academic papers, textbooks, papers that I’m reviewing/editing), so I ended up with the Sony Reader which supports viewing of native PDFs as images, with additional support for portrait or landscape viewing (I wish there was a button), and a zoom button for magnifying the text if you have OCR’d text accompanying the image. Since I didn’t want to take a suitcase full of books with me to Uganda, I sliced the bindings off of them, scanned them to pdf and OCR’d them, and I’m reading them on my reader instead. Much better carrying a slim e-book reader on the plane than the 2-inch thick copy of James Scott’s Seeing Like a State.

The Kindle 2 is even slimmer than the Sony Reader, also comes with a leather case, and has the advantage of incorporating wireless and a keyboards for just $60 more. Kindle has access to a larger selection of copyrighted e-books, “Kindle Editions” at much better prices, with a much cleaner interface. Sony’s software, frankly, is flaky, slow, and crashes a lot. But at least I can put my PDFs on it directly. I think for the Kindle I still would have to email my PDFs to amazon and pay them 10-15 cents to upload them to the Kindle in some weird, potentially mangled, format. I might be able to put up with that from Berkeley, but depending on email access for giant PDFs out here is totally impossible. And I like my WYSIWYG PDFs. In that sort of vein – Sony’s ebook philosophies are actually more “free thinking” than Amazon’s (for all those copyleft people out there) and the Sony Reader supports the open eBook format (ePub), and as Wired notes, actually provides access to more public domain books than Amazon offers on the Kindle through a recent deal with Google Books.

What I really want is for Amazon to build a Kindle that supports GSM, so I can stick a Ugandan SIM card in it and download Kindle books over the local network? Please? Or I guess I can wait until i get back next year…

I have this vague theory that the Kindle devices might make decent computing platforms for rural areas.  Imagine – data connectivity, low-powered devices that don’t need to be charged more than once every two weeks or so, built-in keyboards, screens that are visible in sunlight, a large screen, and a price point comparable to smartphones, or less?  What the heck am I doing working with smartphones with tiny screens, batteries that die in a day, and keyboards that are too small for healthworkers to read?  Oh yeah… waiting for the ebooks to take off, the platform to stabilize and open up, and um.. trying to finish up my dissertation before starting another project. But if amazon is willing to throw some summer interns at me this year, and a few Kindles, I think I could manage to host them here in Uganda.  Umm.  We just need to find an EVDO network or get Sprint to subsidize the roaming charges? =)  Anyone know someone at Amazon?

There’s also a Sony Reader PRS-700, which I haven’t seen, retailing for $399. It includes an LED light (which I think is great, since I can’t get my booklights to attach, and I think it is lame to have to wear my headlamp to bed, or to have to lift the mosquito net to turn off the lamp on my nightstand), and a touchscreen. I can’t imagine how the touchscreen actually works – I think it’s something I’ll have to see to really understand/evaluate.  But ultimately I think Sony will have to move towards integrating wireless into their readers…

By far and away, MTN is the dominant operator. Zain/Celtel was the first to market, but as my Ugandan friends say “then they started cheating us, overcharging – we will not forget.” So when MTN arrived with giant masts, reliable infrastructure, and fair rates, the Ugandans switched en masse.

UTL is the government owned operator (they may be partially privatized, I would have to check), so they also carry the stigma of distrust of high prices, as well as perception of inadequate infrastructure. In my experience – their GPRS is great, EDGE is not so good, but their overall coverage is not as widespread as MTN or Zain.

Warid is a new arrival – as of about 2 years ago, and already they have a reputation for being an all-over network – that is what their billboards say (if you have time, browse my flickr photos from fall 2008). They don’t have huge market share yet but people say they will make gains. In the meantime, they are also entering the broadband market, offering low cost Internet services via a city-wide WiMax network at less than $100/month with minimal installation costs. Revolutionary in an area where VSAT is the norm.

Orange. Another provide means more competition. Will it force an existing provider out of business by driving prices lower? Will more money go into infrastructure rollout in rural areas?

Another extremely important aspect of telecommunications rollout in Uganda is the Uganda Communication Commission’s rural communications development fund, the RCDF. Using part of the income from the taxes on the voice communications, take bids from the mobile phone operators to fund projects to develop unreached rural areas that don’t have mobile coverage yet – and might not be a viable market normally. I think it is structured well here, with a good balance of investment in innovation and practical deployment. Orange has the potential to be another player here, if they are willing to participate in Uganda’s development, and not just trying to tap the mobile phone market. The two can be mutually beneficial. We shall see.

The mother receives the baby from the nurses at the clinic.

Like the HealthyLife program, the mother purchases a voucher for 3000 USh (approximately 1.50 USD, the HealthyLife program charges 3000USh for a pair of vouchers treating both sexual partners). The voucher then can be broken into several sticker stubs, one of which is submitted with a claim form on each visit.

The first mother puts her thumb print on the HealthyBaby claim form

The hospital then submits the claim form with the voucher to the funding agency (my collaborating organization), who then pays the hospital for the cost of the visit – labs, any prescriptions given, the consultation fee, etc. You can see in the picture to the right the nurse filling out the paper form and the mother putting her thumbprint on it. Filling out the forms can be tedious and error prone – this particular clinic had almost 18% of their STI claims rejected for errors last October. In the same month another clinics had 38.6% of their claims rejected. I am trying to work on digital systems that can help improve communications between the clinics and the funding agency, and also decrease the cost and burden of claims administration.

The Claim Mobile project actually focuses on the HealthyLife program – the STI treatment program, rather than the HealthyBaby program, but I hope to demonstrate the sustainability and replicability of the system that I’m developing by training the engineers here to retool my system for HealthyBaby – so by the time I leave, I am hoping it will be in place for both programs.

By coincidence, this first birth occurred in one of the two clinics where I’m running the pre-pilot of the Claim Mobile system.

The fact was that I spent a lot of time on airplanes and figured it might be worth the investment to spend some money on a headset such that I might be able to hear music and my recorded interview data over the sound of the airplane engines! And sometimes it is nice to be able to sit in a shared office and have some privacy.

The long and short of my research: Noise Canceling technology requires batteries and external power, and is ultimately bulkier and heavier. Noise isolation is great because you can actually turn down the volume being sent towards your ears, they work like earplugs, and it doesn’t require additional power. And they are cheaper. But it can be a little weird because – you are totally deaf to the outside world (i.e. you can’t tell if a flight attendant is trying to get your attention), and if you eat something you can hear yourself chewing, and sometimes they don’t work so well if you are running. Mine are fine as long as the cords are hanging relatively free, since V-Moda redesigned the cables with a cloth cover.

You can plan ahead, but sometimes you have to improvise a bit to make high-tech things work once you leave home...

The V-Moda ones are especially great (not that I’ve actually compared them) because they come with a carrying case. The ones I got came with a little compact leather case that open when you pinch it, and a v-shaped cord wrapper, which was initially a little mysterious to me but now I think is the best thing ever. I want one for all of my corded accessories! Unfortunately the new ones don’t come with the v-shaped thing – they come instead with a rectangular carrying case sized for the iPhone and the iPod Touch. I don’t blame them, but as an iPod Nano owner I’m glad I got my headset earlier.

Okay so that was a long intro. Onto my sob story. I was walking home the other day from work, and I decided to listen to one of my interviews on the way, so I pulled out my Nano, and my headset. As I connect the headset to my nano, I notice that one of the silicon ear fittings is missing. I should note that this happens to me almost every plane flight – these things fall off all the time and it drives me nuts. Why I don’t have spares is beyond me, but they give you three pairs in different sizes (small, medium, large), so I just picked my size and left the other two pairs at home when I came. On a plane, this is mostly fine – I mean, where can a little black rubber thing go on a plane anyways? I’ve always found it eventually. But this time, when i pulled the headset out, I managed to drop the earfitting onto an area of the ground littered with black pebbles, bits of trash, and random grass growth… and a ditch. Yikes. Ever hopeful, I searched anyways, to no avail.

So I walked home, listening to the interview, with one ear happily isolated from noise, and the other ear listening to the interview and the caws of the maribou vulture-storks, with a piece of metal uncomfortably perched in the canal. I had thought through this situation before, and I plotted, considering my options, and wondering if I could wait for someone to bring a batch of spare fittings to me in April…

My solution: well, since noise-isolating headsets are essentially earplugs with sound coming through them, why not use earplugs? So I got out an earplug, my handy-dandy leatherman, and hollowed out the center. The leatherman, as it turns out isn’t all that useful for hollowing out the centers of things, so once I made divots on either end of the earplug, and cut it to the appropriate length, I used the pen from my Palm Centro to poke a hole through the center, such that the middle could grip well onto the headset. I think it actually works better than the silicon fitting – at least it is less likely to fall off, even though it doesn’t look nearly as slick. And now it is much easier to tell the left from the right.

It goes to say that 1) I’m pretty privileged to have the gadgets that I do have, 2) to have the options that I have with which to fix them and 3) I should have brought extra silicon fittings with me (I’m not a boy, but the boy scout motto is Be Prepared after all). But I think this also says a lot about ICTD and technology transfer in general. What happens when we take information technologies and deposit them in developing regions without a thought towards their repair and maintenance?

Eventually things break, parts get lost, and things must be repaired. And spare parts don’t exist, or even if they do exist, or can be acquired, they are difficult or too expensive to acquire. So some people improvise. Others just allow the donated equipment to lie fallow until a new donation arrives, or another benefactor comes to repair the equipment. I have seen rooms full of dead computer equipment, “computer graveyards,” in Mexico, India, Ghana, and Uganda. I like mobile phone projects because there is a rapidly growing infrastructure and ecosystem outside of our own projects to support the repair and replacement of the mobile phones we are deploying – yet the truth is that often we are using very specialized phones. So even as mobile phone project developers we must be aware of the maintainability and serviceability of our devices. At least these objects are generally familiar to mobile phone service reps! (Maybe less so the android phone and the Palm phone. The blackberry seems to have gained popularity though. Obama has given it a popularity boost out here too!) Laptops are serviceable because they can be carried to a service center. But desktops are the hardest to carry because people are afraid to move them – afraid to break them, especially with the associated heavy CRT monitors.

And so while I was able to repair my headset, I have to admit that my solution isn’t perfect – they certainly aren’t the same as they were before. Getting the technology out here is one thing – making it work over a long period of time is yet another.

My Stopgap Ergonomics Setup

Well, you can’t really call it Ugandan style if it involves a stack of 4 eeePC boxes, admittedly, and I’m not actually going to use this as my permanent setup. But I thought it would be entertaining to share this with you.  Most days I’m too lazy to set up the entire stack – I only do it when I’m doing a LOT of typing, and/or my tendonitis has already flared up.

It’s basically my stack of eeePC boxes, with an open binderbox being used as a keyboard tray, and the laptop on top. The top three eeePC boxes are raising the laptop to eye level and counterbalancing the keyboard so that it is stable while I am typing.  There’s a fourth underneath (not visible) that lifts the keyboard a little off the chair so that the keyboard is a little below elbow level and such that I can sort of fit my knees under it. I’m using my goldtouch keyboard and a small portable usb mouse, connected to a 4 port usb 2.0 hub.

I’ve wandered all around looking for actual keyboard trays, and everyone looks at me a little blankly. Hah. But I finally found a store that actually sells computer desks for $70-$100 with built-in keyboard slider trays and adjustable “secretary chairs” for about $100. Expensive, especially by Ugandan standards, so I’ll have to think about it pretty seriously, but ergonomics and RSI is serious, yeah?

My other theory is to hire a carpenter to build a wooden keyboard tray into the desk pictured on the right of the picture.  Or to see if I can find a small waist-high table to fit under the desk.  I think I’ve been too spoiled by keyboard trays that can be tilted in every-which direction and fully adjustable.  Strange to have to find a way to cope out here…

I was sort of hoping when I looked that they were a site that donated textbooks – so that I could get some textbooks for the Object-Oriented Programming class I’m teaching at Mbarara University of Science and Technology this year. I wanted to use Head First Java (which you can get from BWB for $32), or maybe Deitel and Deitel’s Java How to Program (available in various editions from BWB) at least as a reference, but unfortunately they don’t have either in their libraries (the library actually has a lot of copies of C++ How to Program and C How to Program), and I’m sure the students can’t afford to buy the books.  Alas even if they could I didn’t even know what class I was teaching until a few weeks ago, so it’s not like the books would be shipped on time. There are a bunch of other textbooks in the library – but unfortunately there’s about 20 books for my class of 208 students to share. I’m hoping they’ll cope with the online resources (e.g. the Java Tutorial) and my lecture notes, but that puts a lot of pressure on my lecture notes and very unreliable Internet connection.  I just gave my first lecture today, which was followed by lots of frantic copying of my slides to some very highly infected usb-keys.  Thank goodness I have an apple laptop. Whew. Sigh.

Anyone want to donate an electronic copy of a decent OOP-Java textbook?

Actually, lots of people here are asking me for advice on web development and some systems administration too.  I think we’d be happy to take donations of any textbooks, electronic or otherwise.

You can ship books to me here at the Institute of Computer Science:

Institute of Computer Science c/o Melissa Ho
Mbarara University of Science and Technology (MUST),
P.O. Box 1410
Tel: +25648520394 / +25648521373
Mbarara, Uganda

If you decide to ship anything else to me, umm, like computers (!!) let me know and I can give you an address in Kampala, which might be more secure/faster. =)

p.s. For my personal use, I’m perfectly happy to just buy and download pdfs of books from O’reilly or elsewhere and read them on my Sony Reader.  It’s a little slow sometimes, but I get instant gratification (relatively, compared to the post) and remarkably readable. And I can carry them home with me. But if you send me a physical book I’ll leave them here for the library.

Powered by Qumana

So I mentioned before that I purchased a bunch of eeePCs to test out in the health clinics and to use in the management agencies as asyncronous web servers and health information management devices.

I suppose to some extent that in retrospect these clinics will have wanted Windows on these laptops so I’ll eventually have to port all of the software to windows, but for now my systems are running on Ubuntu.  It’s just easier that way. 

Installing Ubuntu was remarkably easy. There’s instructions online here, as well as lots of hints and fixes.  This is sort of my simplified version for the particular eeePCs I was working with.

Ingredients:
    1 latest distribution of Ubuntu (currently 8.10)
    1 external usb cd or dvd-rom drive (e.g. the LG-GSA-E50L 8x USB DVD-RW)
    1 eeePC (i.e. the eeePC 1000HA, 10in, 160GB, 1GB RAM, 6-cell Battery)
    1 wired Internet connection (and presumably an ethernet cable)
    Note: In theory you can also install from a USB Stick

Instructions:
    1. When turning on the eeePC, press f2
    2. Verify that a) wifi is turned on (this is for later) and b) the usb device is listed first in the boot order
    3. If the dvd device is not connected, with cd burned with the latest copy of ubuntu on it inside already, do that now, and then continue booting
    4. Install and continue, following normal instructions
    5. After install completes, update all packages via a wired Internet connection
    6. From fixes page, you will note that wireless does not yet work. You’ll want to follow the instructions there, but do not do the modprobe ath5k. However, you do need to install the backport modules:

  sudo apt-get update
  sudo apt-get install linux-backports-modules-intrepid-generic

Wireless should work after this. I used Ubuntu Ibex 8.10

I neglected to put in all my arguments for netbooks vs the mac minis we used in the Ghana consultation network, vs locally purchased desktops, vs actual servers. Basically it boils down to the fact that the netbooks have built in batteries, so we don’t have to purchase UPSes to use as backup power for then the power goes out. And we don’t have to track down a separate monitor, keyboard, and mouse every time we want to do something, which was frankly a pain, when we were working with the minis in Ghana, and couldn’t access them via the network. Laptops are designed to be disconnected from power on a regular basis, and have built in peripherals. Convenient. And actually cheaper than the minis, if a little underpowered, comparatively.

Powered by Qumana

Even without the new configuration, people are raving about these netbooks. They won’t let me take them back to the states, and people keep buying them off me – so I have to replace them when I get back home, using the cash people give me. More stuff to carry when I come back – it’s a wonder I always make it through customs with my 6-8 laptops..

The reaction to my laptops this time is that everyone wants to buy these off of me “when your project ends” – to which I always say that when my project ends, the laptops will still be in use because the project will continue without me – unless they are already certain of my failure (I hope not!).

The proposal for now is twofold: two of the laptops will be used as asynchronous web servers, akin to the design used in the Ghana Consultation Network, allowing the Program Management Office in Mbarara and the Management Agency Head Office in Kampala to access claims information even when their Internet connection is down – basically, since the processor will certainly be slow, it will be a caching agent. (I might try Google Gears as well and see if that works better, but this is something that I can intelligently back up and that they can own locally.) The rest of the laptops will be allocated to two of the private health clinics for use in administering their claims forms. However – a primary distinction from the mobile phone solution is that they don’t include communications technology. I will explore a couple of options – including both a sneakernet style solution of sending the forms by SD card, or the more expensive solution of attaching a falcom modem to the laptop, which essentially doubles the cost of the laptop. A few other clinics will be assigned mobile phones, and the remaining clinics will be controls – I will visit them, continue to run surveys, and observe claims administration, and monitor their transcations, but I won’t deploy services there for at least the first 9 months, although I may encourage my partners to independent conduct their own deployment (i.e. with my supervision but not done by me) towards the end of my study.

This study involves simultaneously understanding both the technical feasibility of these solutions and the financial feasibility of these solutions – it will take time to make the service providers understand the ramifications of the various solutions – and the resultant costs and benefits to them. What are the tradeoffs they will make in the end? I think different providers will choose different means in the end.. and it is entirely possible that they might choose to purchase a laptop but not use it for online claims submission, purely for its other utilities. Or because the service provider is of higher means and higher claim volume, they might choose to do online claims submission and pay the service fees because timely payment is so extremely critical for them. I’m curious to see what happens, and I can’t wait to see how it all unfolds.

I, however, was nowhere near South Hall – and instead enjoying pork and chips in at the Grand Holiday Inn in Mbarara, Uganda, the trading town in Western Uganda where I am based for the next year for my dissertation fieldwork. It’s an urban center – not quite the locus for most of the private health clinics where I’ll be working, but the location of Mbarara University of Science and Technology, where I’ll be teaching, and sort of the center of gravity for the private clinics – they all come here to restock their medical supplies.

On the inauguration – expecations here run from high to indifferent. The newspapers all feature Obama’s picture on the front page, both yesterday and today. The radio programs have “Obama” speaking as a guest, while people call in to discuss Bush’s legacy as the president who gave the most aid to Africa. People have high hopes – but simultaneously know not to have high expectations of the president of a country with an economy currently in shambles. Yet just Monday night I was just approached by a hotel manager wanting me to help him get to the USA so he could “raise so much capital for his business.” His plan? To work hard in the hotel industry and save money.

Most people I spoke to didn’t seem to be planning to watch the inauguration – yet when one of my coworkers was checking in to her hotel at about 3pm (4am Pacific, T-4 hours), the reception was playing CNN, which had already started the countdown to the inauguration. (It transpired later that whatever the reception played – the entire hotel had to watch, since they controlled the cable access for the entire building!!)

Later, I discovered that my place didn’t have a tv, so when the time came, I went back to my coworker’s hotel room and joined her to watch the festivities. The power was out, so there was a super-loud generator running just outside her room competing with the volume of the (heh) 13 in tv. The walls of the room were an odd shade of lime green. She called many of her friends and family to see if they were watching too – “how can you be watching cartoons when history is happening?” I found it strange that we could be off work and watching – while many of my friends had to be at work or class and couldn’t get away to see it. Yet at the same time, part of the (ahem) cnn experience was also seeing people all around the US watching the inauguration on giant screens everywhere else. It’s crazy to be a part of such a shared experience.

So. Where were you when Obama became president?

Tensions between the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Rwanda are beginning to thaw as on-going peace talks, aimed at ending fighting in the east of the DRC between the Government and the main rebel militia in the region, are making slow progress, the United Nations envoy facilitating negotiations told the Security Council today. 

from Lyn Lusi
date Sun, Jan 18, 2009 at 7:12 PM
subject: This is letter TWO, all about Congolese POLITICS in North Kivu

Yesterday, as I was driving into the hospital, we were stuck on a street for almost 5 minutes by an endless cortege of hundreds of motorbike taxis, – lights glaring, horns blaring, people screaming, to celebrate the peace agreement signed on 16th January between Rwanda and Congo. Even the Mai Mai have decided to sign on for peace once again.

We sincerely hope that it is true. There have been no serious incidents of fighting since Christmas. When the Congolese government and CNDP met Nigerian ex-President Obasanjo in Nairobi before Christmas, it became obvious that they had nothing to fight about with the Congolese government, so they went home and started fighting amongst themselves. Nkunda heads one faction, and his second in command, Bosco, heads the other. Both are indicted war criminals. Strangely, it is the Bosco faction that has signed the peace agreement in the latest round of peace talks; but Nkunda has said Bosco does not speak for the CNDP.

All of this manoeuvering is the subject of endless speculation: maybe the split is engineered so that Rwanda can have two options: peace or war. According to the peace deal, the Rwanda army will come into Congo officially, and hunt down the FDLR alongside the Congolese army, and all the CNDP will join the Congolese army (Back to square one! Do not pass Go! Do not collect 200!) On the other hand, the Rwandans keep their options open to continue fighting as before alongside the other half of the CNDP.

Some rather sinister indications about what is really going on have come from Kigali. At the US embassy party, the new ambassador appointed in August apparently said that one of the objectives of his government in the region would be to redraw unjust boundaries that were fixed in colonial times. Either he is a total idiot speaking only for himself, or else he has revealed the secret agenda of the US in the region: that would also indicate he is still a total idiot. We can only hope that the Obama administration will take a more impartial and intelligent approach to resolving conflict in this region.

The FDLR militia of course are not happy about this agreement. The only FDLR that can be easily found are the ones who have settled into villages in North and South Kivu. To hunt them down means more suffering and violence for people in the rural areas. The ones who are really dangerous are in the forest, constantly on the move and impossible to find. The women of the region, (Hotense Maliro, media officer from HEAL Africa is one of their leaders) have organised together as Sauti ya Wamama WaKongomani (Voice of the Women of Congo). They held a demonstration on Friday in Goma, and are planning to lobby the Ministers here in Goma for the talks, for a peaceful approach to the FDLR. There is no space and no future for them in Rwanda; the only lasting solution is to give them space to settle in Congo, and approach them with messages of inclusion and peace building. This is the challenge of the church, and our partners the Nehemiah committees are prepared to take up this challenge.

So the message of this letter is mainly hopeful, but with reservations because politicians have their own agendas and never tell us the whole truth. Continued prayer is needed! Thank you for being alongside us with your prayers.

LL

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.

There is a crisis in Eastern Congo around Goma.  The rebel army, CNDP, lead by Nkunda advanced from the north all the way to the outskirts of Goma, the provencial capital.  More than 50,000 people fled to Goma.  Behind the CNDP lines, credible reports document that the rebels have broken up IDP (internally displaced peoples camps) and burned them to the ground, further displacing 50,000 + more people.  Aid agencies haven’t been able to reach many of the displaced, until now, and hunger and starvation are very real, as there is no food. It is wet, muddy, and raining.  Many are sick. Below are a few articles that do a good job analyzing the conflict.

How we fuel Africa’s Bloodiest War
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-how-we-fuel-africas-bloodiest-war-978461.html

The Rape of a Nation (~10 min documentary that explains some history)
http://mediastorm.org/0022.htm

Update on UN’s role
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/31/congo-unitednations-miliband

This conflict is more than what is frequently cited as “tribal” or “ethnic,” rather it is economic.  Eastern Congo is rich in natural resources: copper, diamonds, gold, and coltan.  Coltan is used in laptop computers and cell phones — multinational companies benefit. Attached is a form letter to send to your senators calling for conflict-free coltan regulations.  Send a letter to our senators and representatives.  The form letter is “Coltan Letter.pdf”

Here are the links to the CA Senators
Senator Boxer: 
https://boxer.senate.gov/contact/email/policy.cfm
Senator Feinstein:
http://feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=ContactUs.EmailMe

Secondly, it is women and children who suffer the most during this conflict.  Troops from both sides are raping and pillaging.  The people of Congo need security and to be able to return to their homes, their villages, their fields in order to produce food!  One million people are displaced in North Kivu, and they cannot be taken care of.  They’re dispersed, and putting huge strain on the existing towns and cities as they try to feed them.  WFP’s rations are one quarter of what is needed to survive.  MONUC (UN peacekeeping mission) doesn’t’ have the resources to provide protection.  Support is needed from the international community in order to help these organizations do what their mandate is: feed and protect. Attached is a petition drafted by HEAL Africa you can sign.  To sign, email your Name, Affiliation, Country to [editor's note: instructions for participating in the petition are available on the HEALAfrica "Four Ways to Help" website]

Finally, to encourage the international community to do something about this humanitarian disaster, attached is a form letter (thanks to Andrew Hoeksema) to send to your senators calling for them to do something and influence the UN Security Council, rather than sit back and ignore.

“As the UN Security Council will be briefed on the situation in eastern D.R. Congo.  Please work with fellow Senators to encourage the U.S. delegation to the UN to push for further intervention on behalf of the innocents who are affected by this fighting.  Great humanitarian aid is needed for the 100s of 1000s who have been displaced in recent months.  Tell the UN Security Council to increase humanitarian aid in this emergency situation to the displaced peoples in the major city of Goma.  Also, have the UN Security Council increase the mandate of the peacekeeping troops to further intervention to stop and push back the advances of Nkunda’s rebel forces.  The UN Security Council also must work to push negotiations between presidents of D.R. Congo and Rwanda who are both involved in this crisis.”

Thank you for taking time to learn more about this catastrophe.
Thank you for praying fervently for peace and for taking  a step to end the atrocities and injustice.

Marian

I’ve been meaning to cross-post all of HEAL Africa’s updates here, but just have been swamped with travel, etc.  I suppose it’s not too late to start.  Here’s the latest update from Judy Anderson’s conversation with Joseph Ciza:

November 14, 2008. 

I just spent time with Joseph Ciza on the phone.  (He’s in Goma, I’m in Seattle).  You haven’t heard from HEAL Africa for a few days.  It doesn’t mean that things have “settled down” in Goma.  The military action continues all around, people are increasingly unsettled, and troops from Angola and Zimbabwe are reportedly in Congo.  This doesn’t bode well at all.   Joseph said he’d heard from someone that military troops were heard in the dark, so they wait to hear what will happen in the morning.

I don’t want to inundate you with email.  We are working to consolidate our databases so you won’t get four messages from us, but thank you for your patience with us!  Thank you for your support; we need it!!!

Joseph has spent the past week and a half visiting with nurses, clinics, Nehemiah Committee members, IDPs, military and militia and rebel leaders, and with humanitarian organizations assessing the needs for their own organization to begin work in Goma, North Kivu, DR Congo.

It is deeply personal work for him.  For the past many years he has been involved in providing training and equipment to rural health clinics in North Kivu.  He has been a tireless advocate and encourager; he has visited every military group that operates in North Kivu.  In the past week he has visited looted clinics, visited community leaders in hiding, in IDP camps.  They cannot go home.  The future is very uncertain, especially with foreign troops coming in from various countries.

He has picked up wounded and brought them to the hospital for treatment.  Today he was southwest of Goma, visiting the hospital at Kirotshe, and stopped at Bweremana.    He was taken to see two women, and said “They  were shot in the legs by FARDC soldiers as they were retreating from Goma toward Bukavu.  The women were in a car coming from the market; the soldiers stopped them to commandeer the car.  The women suffered severe injuries when they were shot in the legs by the soldiers.”  The women are now at HEAL Africa’s hospital.

The number of wounded related to the present crisis today at the hospital is 127.   This is in addition to the normal number of around 180 patients.  He continued,   ” 82% of the new cases are raped women.  45 women are victims of rape from Kibati refugee camp.  45 were raped in town.  There are about 30,000 extra people in Goma town right now.”  This is in addition to the IDP camp on the northern edge of town, Kibati.  And does not include the camps to the west and southwest of town…Mugunga, Bulengo and others.

I asked him how he sees the future, “The best hope I see is that we get good leadership.  I don’t see who can lead correctly.  Both leaders (Kabila and Nkunda) were in the same military movement in 96-98″ (that displaced the Mobutu regime and installed Laurent Kabila as President, father of the present elected Joseph Kabila).   “This is a very complicated, complex situation.  We are condemned to live together. The challenge is how to live in peace and be reconciled, especially with all the violence that is happening on all sides now.  That is the real work of HEAL Africa”.

When I asked him how we can support him, he mentioned: 

• Financial support for HEAL Africa.  “The people who are coming to the hospital are very vulnerable people.  They cannot pay for the care they get; we cannot refuse to treat them.”    www.healafrica.org .
• Pray for the people working in such conditions.  Pray for Joseph and the various HEAL Africa teams.
• Pray for the ONE MILLION people in North Kivu who are displaced or lost, children and parents as well as the inhabitants of Goma.  Many parents are affected.  Joseph said, “FARDC soldiers came to rob my neighbor.  They also took the daughter from the hands of the parents.  They were unable to protect their daughter…you can understand how they feel.  What if it happened to me?”

 .

Thank you for standing with our Congolese sisters and brothers.

Peace for Congo, peace to you.

Judy

Just as diamonds are mined to finance these conflicts – coltan (used in the Sony PS2 and mobile phone chips) is another scarce resource that can be traded for weapons or other supplies.

Senate Bill 3058 endeavors to do what we’ve already done with diamonds – to enforce restrictions to make sure that we don’t end up with conflict coltan in our mobile phones. Kerry Gough from my church has drafted a letter that you can use to urge your senator to sponsor this bill.  You can download word documents for Senator Feinstein or Senator Boxer (California) here, or you can just copy the text from below and use it for your own senator.
Letter to Senator Boxer
Letter to Senator Feinstein

Honorable Diane Feinstein
331 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510

Re: Rape & Exploitation in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Dear Senator Feinstein:

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is one of the worst places in the world to be a girl or woman. Everyday women as old as 87 and babies as young as 10 months are raped by militiamen, soldiers, policemen and civilians. There are hundreds of thousands of victims—2000 RAPES were reported in June, 2008, in just one Province (North Kivu) of the DRC. There is a pervasive atmosphere of impunity that encourages rape at will.

Although the recently passed House Resolution 1227 condemns the ongoing epidemic of sexual violence in the Congo, such resolutions carry no sanctions and are ignored by the governmental powers in the DRC. Legislation with some teeth in it is necessary, such as the Conflict Coltan and Cassiterite Act of 2008 (SB 3058). Similar to the legislation banning importation of blood diamonds, SB 3058 will require that coltan be certified as conflict free before being imported. Coltan is a necessary ingredient for the manufacture of cell phones, computer games, monitors and numerous other high tech instruments. Restrictions on its import would compel not only Congolese government to take action to eliminate coltan related conflict, but also would put pressure upon the U.S. manufacturers of technological instruments to ensure that their products are conflict-free.

The Congolese live in dire life threatening and life ending conditions because DRC is entangled in 10 years of war which has contributed to the death of over 5.4 million people to date. This conflict is not just an internal African implosion but rather it is a battle for coltan, diamonds, cassiterite and gold, destined for sale in London, New York and Paris – the metals that make our technological society vibrate and ring and bling. In addition to high death rates, the war has lead to the use of child soldiers, child slavery in mines, the mass displacement of peoples, and the widespread use of rape as a weapon of war and the transmission of HIV infection by rape. Shockingly, notwithstanding the epidemic of HIV in the DRC, of the $45 billion dollars authorized by Congress to fight HIV (PEPFAR) only $15 million is allocated for the DRC.

I urge you to join as a co-sponsor of SB 3058, legislation that is essential to put meaningful sanctions behind well-meaning resolutions.

Let me know if you have any questions and I’d be happy to point you to some people that can tell you more about the bill!

Melissa

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!

I do information technology for healthcare in Africa. Actually, I’ve also recently dabbled in solar powered lighting for a hospital in rural Nigeria, done some IT for education in Mexico, and helped out with wireless deployments in India, so I’ve been known to think about other problems as well, but my primary focus (i.e. my dissertation) is on information technology for healthcare in Africa. My motivation runs something like this: (A) I’m pretty good (compared to some, not so much compared to a lot of my colleagues in TIER) at computers and actually get pretty obsessed with them at times. (B) God has placed a special and specific compassion in my heart for the needs of Africa. Since I’m absolutely sure that (A) is not a coincidence, and because God has managed to do a lot of things in my life to make this possible, I’m using (A) to address (B).

On an academic end, my dissertation committee is Dean AnnaLee Saxenian (co-chair), Prof. John Chuang (co-chair), Prof. Eric Brewer and Prof. Jenna Burrell. My coursework and reading delves primarily into research methods, development theory, and healthcare and telecommunications policy. My work experience is in user interface and web application design, so my research also involves human-computer interaction, participatory design, and action research. By combining a theoretical approach with an experiential interaction, my work most closely approaches applied anthropology. My dissertation will be primarily ethnographic – although I am allocating six months (jan-jun 2009) to do a deployment, the remaining six months have been set aside in such a way that I will deliberately step back from my role as a technologist, both to ensure sustainability of the deployment in my absence, but also so I will have the time to observe social dynamics as they emerge around the deployment over time.

Basically some guy decided that instead of getting birthday presents one year, he was going to ask people to donate $31/person so he could invest in wells in a bunch of villages in Africa.

The OBA project coordinator in the Mbarara office showed me this link (ostensibly to illustrate to me the power of multimedia video presentations so I could make one about the HealthyBaby project) and suddenly I felt like a card for not being more generous with my birthday.

Anyways, even though I’m not a September baby, feel free to divert any birthday attention for me towards this project instead.

Alternatively, I’ll accept future donation pledges for my up-and-coming newly founded nonprofit organization: http://tiergroup.org

Basically, we’re taking our research group, and starting an independent organization – to support the university research, and to spin out new products and services based on our various projects. =)

Powered by Qumana

I’ve been using tri-band antennas from Wilson Antennas, but unfortunately they don’t actually work in the places where you need the antennas because, well they’re made for the US-based frequencies (e.g. 1900, rather than 1800)

Jeff Wishnie from Inveneo points out this antenna for boosting signal strength:

This high gain, wide band, directional antenna covers the GSM900 and GSM1800 / UMTS bands. The kit contains the antenna with 7 m cable and the Universal Cellphone Adapter packaged into a sturdy box with detail instructions on installation and use. This antenna covers the 900 and 1800 MHz band which is used in built up areas.

Features:

* Broadband
* Covers various international cellular bands.
* Robust and weatherproof.

This antenna can be bought with the applicable cables for the different cards. Versions are available for:

* Vodacom OPTION Card
* Vodacom NOVATEL Card
* Vodacom HUAWEI Card
* MTN Sierra Wireless Card
* MTN HUAWEI Card
* Cell C NOVATEL Card

Powered by Qumana

1 solar flexible-panel charger (retail $99-ish) for 4 AA batteries
2 solio solar chargers, for mobile phones and usb devices
(can be charged via solar or grid power. I only have one adapter
for grid power) (retail about $80 each)
1 inverter (retail about $40)
1 potenco pull cord charger for charging car batteries (on loan)

plus lots of portable cell phone chargers (that can double as flashlights, $25ish) using AA batteries, and a few $5 LED book lights with hard-to-replace batteries. I also have two sidewinders (retail $25) which are wind-up flashlights+cellphone chargers. They aren’t
particularly useful for charging cell phones, but they are better than nothing in a pinch.

the potenco pull cord charger is also a lot of work to charge a car battery – you wouldn’t want to use it unless you could hire some kids to pull at it on a regular basis for cheaper than you could pay for the equivalent work’s worth of fuel. It’s a great device tho, and
could easily be hooked up to a bike or a windmill (not too fast of a windmill tho). To charge a car battery, basically you bolt the charger to a wall, grab the two ends of a rope, and then you swing your arms like you are on a nordic track. Some lights come on and the
battery starts charging.

I haven’t tried it yet because I don’t have a car battery yet. I’ll try it next week when I go to Rubindi and I’m staying in the rural health clinic overnight. By some miracle I haven’t experienced a single power cut yet.

It’s also been raining, so the solio chargers and the AA batterycharger don’t seem to have charged fully yet, although maybe they would if I put them outside directly instead of just in my window..  I suspect the AA battery charger’s 4 hour claim for 2 batteries only works for the standard AA rechargeables and not my super-high capacity 2700 mAH batteries, because they only every charged up halfway.   In the end they really just work well as capacitors for grid power. =P

Powered by Qumana

Of course this means that when you pop in a cd/dvd, it will no longer automatically launch some nice little installer application for you – you’ll have to go to "My Computer" and explicitly do that yourself.  But you’re better off doing things that way anyways. Trust me!

Last time I was in Uganda (November 2007) I managed to infect my usb drive, and then subsequently infect several laptops and PCs with my drive, when I tried to copy some files from a school computer. Basically some virus copied itself onto my drive, and then when I inserted it into a new computer, the computer automatically ran a special file called "autorun.inf", which launched the virus.  There were a couple of variants, including a funny one that made all of my folders hidden, and created a bunch of executable files with the same names as my folders, that had icons that looked like folders.  I mistakenly double-clicked on the "folders", and voila – another infection.  Insidious little trojan horses…  To make a long story short, I ended up spending a lot of time downloading AVG Free Anti-virus and installing it everywhere, since that was the only freely available anti-virus software that was up-to-date enough to remove these worms and viruses.. =)

Now we could have avoided all of these problems, if only execution of autorun.inf were disabled!

There’s a few sets of instructions on the web for how to do that.  Most of them just tell you how to do it for cd roms, a few give instructions that will disable it for both cdroms and usb drives:

http://www.tildemark.com/tips/disable-autorun-on-cdrom-or-usb-drives.html
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows/disable-autoplay-of-audio-cds-and-usb-drives/

The general gist of both sets of instructions is as follows:

1. Run the Group Policy Editor by typing "gpedit.msc" in the run box ("Start->Run")
2. Navigate to Local Computer Policy -> Computer Configuration -> Administrative Template-> System
3. Double-clinic "Turn Off Autoplay"
4. Select Enabled, and specify that you want to turn off autoplan for "All drives"
5. Click OK, Close the Group Policy Editor.

Do it!  Do it now!

The other thing you should do, is that anytime you are not actually copying files to your usb drive, and you are just giving files to someone else, make sure to make your usb drive read only (if possible), so if their computer is infected, they can’t infect your usb drive.

I’ve also thought about carrying around a copy of anti-virus software, but I’m feeling dis-enchanted with AVG-Free (it’s bloated, they have started running nagware for their paid services, and it’s not that straightforward to update if you don’t have a direct internet connection).  I’ve also OSX-ified myself, so have since stopped paying as much attention to Windows…. But if anyone has recommendations for good, solid, affordable anti-virus software I can give out to people in Africa, I’d be happy to check them out!

Powered by Qumana

Come join the conversation!

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

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

Powered by Qumana

But mostly, I’m making plans for my main dissertation research: one year of fieldwork starting in January of next year, in which the first 6 months will be allocated towards design, deployment, and training around the claims management system. For the last six months, I’m hoping to have handed off all training and implementation to the project partners – I’ll be geographically available, but mostly I’m sticking around to observe what happens when I let the ICTD project sit around and mature – how will my project partners appropriate the technologies?  How will their work practices and social dynamics reformulate themselves around a new system?  What will change, and what will stay the same?  What aspects of the project will fall into disuse, and what things might happen that I never could have anticipated?  I think by being intricately involved in a deployment, dedicated to making something that works for my collaborators, and willing to stick around to see what happens after the culmination of the project, I’ll have the opportunity to learn some really interesting things about what it might mean to have ICTs deliberately introduced into the practice of small health clinics.

So for now… I need to plan out that trip, set up housing, a schedule, line up my ducks, etc. I’ll test out some of my survey instruments: periodic surveys that I’ll repeat monthly throughout my stay as "checkpoints", and test out some of the equipment.  For this trip, I also have an undergraduate research assisstant, Emmanuel Owusu, with me.  We’ve been working on a first cut of "ClaimMobile", the application, so we’ll demo that for the partners, and get some initial feedback from the users on how it looks, how the form should be formatted, and everything, so we can start finalizing a digital equivalent of the paper form.  The hard part on this is actually formalizing in code what is currently a very implicit set of rules on what makes a valid claim and what doesn’t.

I think… none of this blog post makes any sense if you haven’t seen me present about my project. =) Oh well.

The long and short of it is that I’m in Uganda for a month, and I’ll be going out again for a year in January…

Powered by Qumana

Rabin was nice enough to do an audio recording of parts of the ceremony.

• Intro of the awards:
• Divya’s (on behalf of Rowena) intro
• My acceptance speech

If you are bandwidth limited, there are lower bitrate versions also here:
http://tier.cs.berkeley.edu/resources/media/yamashita/

It’s part of an interesting new direction for technology research – instead of just building faster, more high-resolution (and more expensive) devices, people are working on ways to build low cost devices that are more robust, can be mass produced, and can provide good enough information for primary triage.

On another note, these devices (as the economist article posits) could be well deployed with a good mobile-phone-based data collection system – collecting not just text and numbers, but images as well.

As part of the evaluation for the Uganda OBA project, Ben Bellows and his collaborators at Makarere University are conducting a household survey in the coverage area of the project and in a similar control area. As part of this survey they have to also do sexually transmitted infection (STI) testing, trying to determine the actual prevalence of STIs and not just an estimate based on who comes in for diagnosis and treatment. Can you imagine how much easier and verifiable these surveys would be if 1) the data collection could be done electronically, and 2) digital media for the testing could be integrated into the data collection records? Not that all diagnoses could be done with cell-phone microscopy, and you still need careful sample and slide preparation. But it’s still something to think about…

TPRC is an annual conference on communication, information, and internet policy that convenes international and interdisciplinary practitioners and researchers from academia, industry, government, and nonprofit organizations together with policy makers. The 2008 conference will be held September 26 – September 28, 2008 at The National Center for Technology & Law, George Mason University School of Law, Arlington, VA.

TPRC is now soliciting abstracts of papers, student papers, panel proposals, and student posters for presentation at the 2008 conference. Proposals should be based on current theoretical or empirical research relevant to communication and information policy, and may be from any disciplinary perspective. TPRC seeks submissions of disciplinary, comparative, multi-disciplinary or interdisciplinary excellence.

Subject areas of particular interest include, but are not limited to the following (for more detailed descriptions see http://tprcweb.com):

• Network Competition, Policy and Management
• Next Generation and all-IP Networks: Policy, Regulatory, Architectural and Societal Issues
• Spectrum Management and Wireless Futures: Anywhere, Anytime Communications and its Implications
• Societal Issues: Universality and Affordable Access; ICTs for Development and Growth
• The Transformation and Future of Media in an Age of User- and Community-Produced Creativity
• The Transformation and Future of Intellectual Property and Digital Rights
• Privacy, Security, Identity and Trust
• Internet Governance and Institutional Strategies for Information Policy
• Other Emerging Topics

Submissions are due by May 2, 2008. Please see the guidelines for authors for additional information.

With best regards,

Johannes M. Bauer

Johannes M. Bauer
Professor, Telecommunication, Information Studies, and Media
Co-Director, Quello Center for Telecommunication Management & Law
Michigan State University
409 Communication Arts and Sciences
East Lansing, Michigan 48824-1212
Fixed +1.517.432.8003, mobile +1.517.944.4154, Fax +1.517.432.8065
Web http://www.msu.edu/~bauerj and http://quello.msu.edu

In Kenya the results were delayed for several days as the voting was completed. In the meantime Kenyans rioted. Then the results were announced – the incumbent President Kibaki had won. And then the EU Electoral commission declared dissatisfaction with the vote tallying process: ““We believe that… the ECK… has not succeeded in establishing the credibility of the tallying process to the satisfaction of all parties and candidates,” chief EU observer Alexander Lambsdorff said in a statement.“. More Kenyans rioted – and now the latest news report says 30 have burned to death in a church set on flame by a mob.

[an aside: i imagine americans in a similar situation might object, but would be too apathetic to do anything as energetic as rioting. perhaps it has to do with our low voter turnout... and i guess al gore did the nice thing and conceded rather than waving a banner and accusing the bush family of voter fraud]

So problem #1: it takes a long time to manually count votes. And problem #2: auditing capabilities are limited – although some auditing can be done (apparently one district reported 110% turnout), only the incumbent party gets a useful “assurance” of the tally’s credibility. Both of these problems seem easily solvable by information technologies. For example one could use DTN+Tierstore to collect the votes and publicly publish them, decentralizing the counting and publication of the votes such that an attacker (in the Bruce Schneier technical sense) would have to compromise many units. But to prevent ballot stuffing, each vote would need to be accompanied by an individual identifier like a thumbprint (is it possible to distinguish a thumbprint from other fingerprints?) or signature, which could also be published on a per-district level, disassociated from the voter tally of the district. Use of computing equipment also assures the speed of tallying so the result could take hours instead of days.

But however, feasible/interesting this may seem as a research project, I anticipate a few possible glitches. Firstly, one would have to collaborate with the government, which may not actually want fair elections. Then (as a PhD student) one would have to be quite lucky to have the election during the course of the PhD, and really, aside from testing, they would have only one try per country every 4 (5? 10?) years. And there’s no guarantee that even with a verifiable and transparent election people won’t riot anyways. Although it seems that election fraud is the cause of this spate of violence, I would surmise to guess that a key underlying cause would the ethnic division, and the corrupt elections were just an excuse for such outward displays of frustration, angst, and wanton destruction. Um. And I wouldn’t want to be in Kenya during that disputed election period… But I think it’s still perfectly feasible to 1) do research on election systems in developing countries and 2) design a novel software+hardware solution motivated by an understanding of election systems in these countries, along with a model for how this solution could be adopted by various countrie, all without doing a full-scale deployment.
So if anyone is looking for a research topic… take this one and run with it.

• Displaced Fleeing War in Somalia Face Humanitarian Crisis
• Political and Economic Turmoil Sparks Health-Care Crisis in Zimbabwe
• Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis Spreads As New Drugs Go Untested
• Expanded Use of Nutrient Dense Ready-to-Use Foods Crucial for Reducing Childhood Malnutrition
• Civilians Increasingly Under Fire in Sri Lankan Conflict
• Conditions Worsen in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo
• Living Precariously in Colombia’s Conflict Zones
• Humanitarian Aid Restricted in Myanmar
• Civilians Caught Between Armed Groups in Central African Republic
• As Chechen Conflict Ebbs, Critical Humanitarian Needs Still Remain

Several of these are familiar to me through a combination of limited media coverage and personal contact. Malnutrition is a big one – while much effort has gone into funding for AIDS anti-retrovirals and other drugs, it’s been shown that availability of medicine often does not help without simultaneously pursuing proper nutrition. Likewise for a number of other indicators – malnutrition in children affects their lifespan, their learning ability, and their health. Schools that provide hot lunch for children – in both developing countries and developed countries – see increased attendance.

MD-resistant TB caught my attention because I’m in the middle of reading Tracy Kidder’s Mountain Beyond Mountains, a biography of Paul Farmer and Jim Kim (of Partners in Health). In Peru, where the DOTS program was implemented rigorously, they saw an outbreak of MDR-TB resulting from mismanagement of TB cases whose treatment fell outside of the “cost-effective” limitations of the DOTS program. They’ve made inroads in reducing the cost of second-line treatments, but as TB strains resistant to existing drugs appear, the costs of treating TB goes up. The question of financial sustainability in health is always tricky, making it difficult for health policies to advocate treatment of “rare” cases. Investment in research takes a long view – expensive efforts now to successfully treat MDR-TB cases today will result in lowered costs later on. Failing to treat today’s cases only pushes the need until tomorrow, when a few cases could multiply into an epidemic.

Having recently visited the HEAL Africa hospital in D.R. Congo, I’m still getting updates on the graveness of the situation there, in which several armies (Nkunda’s rebel troops, UN/MONUC peacekeeping forces, Congolese Army, Interahamwe, and more) are engaged in ethnic-and-poverty driven fighting. There’s been increased coverage recently, especially on BBC News, due to recent (i.e. starting in the weeks just after I left) increased instability. Refugees are fleeing to Goma and across the border to Uganda. Despite the danger, a team of medical practitioners from HEAL Africa continues their outreaches to rural areas, treating soldiers and villagers alike. Yet these new developments are only part of the story – even when things are relatively peaceful, the Congolese people of North Kivu (including Goma) experience atrocities daily, often perpetrated by the very people that are supposed to protect them – the Congolese army. Yet – precisely because this has been an everyday situation for a number of years/decades, these stories are not told, nor do we care to do anything about it. To hear the stories is to take on a responsibility, an obligation to care, but instead we prefer not to know about things we think we cannot control, we prefer not to know that human beings are capable of doing such horrible things to each other. I prefer to know – because I think we -do- have the power to change things, to consider our place in this world, and to want this world to be a better place. I think the world would be a better place if more people actively and genuinely want peace on earth, don’t you?

Inaugural Research Institute for the Science of Socio-Technical Systems

Ann Arbor, MI – July 20 to 25, 2008

Application deadline: February 28, 2008

Background

—————

A science of socio-technical systems is emerging from research in the
fields of HCI, social computing, social informatics, CSCW, sociology of
computing, and other domains.  The Consortium for the Science of
Socio-Technical Systems (CSST) is a new organization devoted to
advancing research on socio-technical systems. As its inaugural
activity, the CSST will be hosting a summer research institute for
advanced doctoral students and pre-tenure faculty on the campus of the
University of Michigan from July 20 to 25, 2008.  A primary goal of the
institute is to build a new cohort of faculty and graduate students who
are interested in research on the design and interplay of technology and
humans at the level of individuals, groups, organizations, and larger
communities.  Examples of this kind of work include research on:

*       social computing (e.g., online communities, social network
sites);
*       distributed work (e.g., collaboratories, virtual teams and
organizations);
*       new technologies (e.g., recommender systems, prediction markets,
ubiquitous computing);
*       novel forms of production (e.g., open source software,
Wikipedia);
*       new forms of expression and entertainment (e.g., blogs, wikis,
massive multiplayer online role-playing games); and
*       information and communication technologies for developing
regions (e.g., cell phone-based applications to assist economic
development).

Institute faculty

——————-

With funding from the NSF, the institute will bring together a faculty
of distinguished scholars in the domain of socio-technical systems with
up to 30 students, drawn from among advanced doctoral students and
pre-tenure faculty conducting research on socio-technical systems. The
distinguished faculty invited to participate include:

Tom Finholt, University of Michigan (director)

Steve Sawyer, Penn State University (associate director)

Mark Ackerman, University of Michigan

Steve Barley, Stanford University

Kevin Crowston, Syracuse University

Paul Dourish, University of California, Irvine

Jonathan Grudin, Microsoft Research

Pam Hinds, Stanford University

Wendy Kellogg, IBM Research

Sara Kiesler, Carnegie Mellon University

Gloria Mark, University of California, Irvine

Beth Mynatt, Georgia Tech

Bonnie Nardi, University of California, Irvine

Leigh Star, Santa Clara University

Institute goals

—————–

The goals of the institute are to:

*       Build a cohort group of new researchers who will then have a
network of colleagues spread out across the world.
*       Guide the work of the new researchers by having experts in
socio-technical systems research give advice.
*       Provide encouragement and support for the selection of
socio-technical systems research topics.
*       Illustrate the interrelationship and diversity of the field of
socio-technical systems research.

How the institute will be conducted

——————————————-

The institute will be conducted as a residential program with morning
small group sessions devoted to feedback on students’ research, and
afternoon full group sessions consisting of presentations by the
institute faculty (e.g., work in progress, instruction in new methods,
instruction in new analytic techniques) and moderated discussions (e.g.,
on career development, how to obtain funding, publication strategies).
Evenings will be reserved for informal activities, such as group outings
and picnics. All costs of participation, including travel, food and
accommodations, will be covered by the institute.

How to apply

—————-

Participants in this institute will be restricted to advanced doctoral
candidates through pre-tenure faculty at US institutions. Interested
applicants should submit the following to csst.institute2008@umich.edu
by February 28, 2008:

1) 150 word abstract summarizing your research;

2) two-page research statement;

3) current vita; and

4) letter of recommendation from your thesis advisor (doctoral student
applicants only).

Selection and notification

——————————-

Participants will be chosen by a committee of the institute director,
associate director, and selected institute faculty.  Selection will
reflect these criteria:

*       Research focused on the design, effects and interplay of
technology and humans at the level of individuals, groups,
organizations, and larger communities.
*       Research ideas and approaches that are novel and innovative.
*       Research that has broad social impact.

Accepted students will be notified by April 30, 2008.

Additional information

—————————

For further information please consult si.umich.edu/csstinstitute or
send email to csst.institute2008@umich.edu

Workshop at Designing Interactive Systems (DIS) conference 2008:
Building an International Community: Designing Interactive Systems for/ with
Communities in the Developing World

SUBMISSIONS
To participate in this workshop at DIS 2008, please submit a 1- or 2-page
position paper describing your experience, findings or interests relevant to
the themes of the workshop.

Deadline for submissions is January 14, 2008.
Notification of acceptance by January 21, 2008.

A large body of work in the field of International Development emphasizes
the need for host communities in development projects to be empowered in
designing and controlling these projects. Many projects are designing and
applying information and communication technologies (ICTs) as part of their
plan.  However, there have been few explicit efforts to bring together
practitioners and researchers from the Global South and those in the Global
North engaged in international development work to share their mutual
experiences.

The aim of this workshop is to facilitate a networking opportunity between
Global South and Global North researchers and practitioners engaged in
technology design in international development work for mutual learning and
sharing. We aim to discuss projects, methods, challenges and issues when
working in development and research in both hemispheres, and to collectively
work towards improving our relations, and uncovering techniques and issues
in community centered design and development work.

This workshop will offer a space to exchange experiences, to explore
differences between developed and developing world contexts, to develop new
partnerships, and to learn from each other about problems we have
encountered and the techniques that work that we have discovered. It will be
open to anyone with experience or interest in user-centered and
participatory design, and/or international development.

The workshop will be held over two days (February 23-24, 2008).
*       On Day 1, participants will briefly present their position papers
and identify relevant common themes. Participants will select a small number
of design challenges for practical brainstorming and collaborative
exploratory design activities. In the evening, an informal dinner will be
organized to facilitate relationship-building between participants.
*       On Day 2, participants will share their experiences, insights and
analysis of relevant projects that relate to the identified themes.
Opportunities for collaboration will also be identified. The possibility of
developing joint projects as an output of the workshop will also be
discussed, such as a book, film, publications, human network, specific
project and policy development.

In addition, we will hold an optional immersion day on February 22, 2008
prior to the workshop. This will be particularly for researchers who are not
familiar with the specific context of South Africa to experience local
sights and ICT-assisted development projects in and around Cape Town.
Participants will be divided into groups and attend 1-2 events and
activities around the city of Cape Town to see the local culture and to find
out more about local projects. The cost of the immersion visits will be
approximately 400 Rand (dependent on numbers). Our hope is to film these
experiences and edit this into a short documentary film as an output for the
workshop on local culture and projects.
SUBMISSIONS
To participate in this workshop at DIS 2008, please submit a 1- or 2-page
position paper describing your experience, findings or interests relevant to
the themes of the workshop.

Deadline for submissions is January 14, 2008.
Notification of acceptance by January 21, 2008.

Papers can be submitted by email to Andy Dearden at a.m.dearden@shu.ac.uk.
Organizers:

Nuray Aykin, The New School (USA)
Michael Best, Georgia Institute of Technology (USA)
Marshini Chetty, Georgia Institute of Technology (USA)
Andy Dearden, Sheffield Hallam University (UK)
Susan Dray, Dray and Associates, Inc. (USA)
Matthew Kam, University of California, Berkeley (USA)
Andrew Maunder, University of Cape Town (South Africa)
John Thomas, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center (USA)
Heike Winscheirs, Polytechnic of Namibia (Namibia)

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!

The problem: GPRS/Internet access on my various phones on all three of the GSM carriers in Uganda, MTN, Celtel, and Uganda Telecom (UTL).  (For acronym explanations see footnoote*.) 

Before I digress, here are the configuration options:

Celtel
Access Point Name (APN): internet.ug.celtel.com (alternate: wap.ug.celtel.com)
Username/Password: none
Authentication: none
Proxy Server: 192.168.100.10, port 9401 (wap clients use port 9201)
IP Address: dynamic (server-assigned)
DNS Address: dynamic (server-assigned)
Celtel will automatically configure some phones if you send an SMS to 175 with the message “internet” (Case-sensitive)

Uganda Telecom
Access Point Name (APN): utweb 
Username/Password: none
Authentication: none
Proxy Server: none
IP Address: dynamic (server-assigned)
DNS Address: dynamic (server-assigned)

MTN^
Access Point Name (APN): yellopix.mtn.co.ug
Username/Password: none
Authentication: none
Proxy Server: none
IP Address: 10.120.0.138 
DNS Address: dynamic (server-assigned)
^to use MTN, you also need to contact them to enable Internet on your account

I managed to get the Celtel configuration from a local office here in Mbarara, mostly by poking around on my phones and switching SIM cards until they pulled out the configuration manual and handed it to me. For MTN and UTL I went to the respective offices in Kampala to get the configuration instructions.  This is the type of info I think would make sense to provide on their web sites – but generally the most information I can find is that they offer the service, with no information on pricing or how to connect them.

This trip I have three mobiles with me, the HP iPAQ hw6945 (Windows Mobile 5), my Treo 650 (Palm/GarnetOS), and the HTC s710 (Windows Mobile 6). MTN I still have only working on the HTC phone – I can get it to connect on the Treo, but can’t actually access the Internet. UTL is by far the easiest to configure – just enter utweb as the APN, and you are ready to go. Unfortunately, UTL’s coverage isn’t as consistent – while I have so far always been able to get MTN and Celtel in the rural clinics I’ve visited, UTL wasn’t reachable in the two clinics in Rubindi. Since I’m planning to use Treos for the SmartForms project I’m pretty relieved I managed to get Celtel GPRS working on mine.

The trick was (since the automatic configuration didn’t work – my phones seem to always be too new for them to have customized instructions available) was that the IP address they gave me was for a proxy server, not the phone.  And proxy server configuration is moderately painful. On the Treo you can set up the GPRS connection through the “Prefs” app; click on “Network” for the GPRS settings.  The nice thing about this one is that you can connect there and test the connection.  Also in the “Prefs” app, click on “IBM Java VM” to  set the HTTP Proxy to “192.168.100.10:9401″ (server:port). Then you also need to configure the proxy for Blazer, the web browser.  Launch “Web” and cancel the download. From the Options menu select Preferences. You’ll see three tabs – click the Advanced tab, then click the “Set Proxy” button on the bottom right of the screen. Check “Use custom proxy” and enter 192.168.100.10 for the Proxy Server, and 9401 for the Port. From there you can go back to the browser and try to load a web page. (I generally use http://m.google.com.)

On the HTC, you configure one proxy for all of the applications. Go into connections (Settings->Connections->GPRS), configure Celtel as a “WAP Area Network”, and then set up a separate http proxy (Settings->Connections->Proxy) that connects the “WAP Area Network” to “Internet”.   There are a lot of backwards things about configuring GPRS on the HTC.  At first it seems straightforward – just add a new GPRS connection.  But when you are like me, and you use the phone on lots of networks in lots of countries, then you also have to go in and set all the connections you aren’t using to connect to a non-Internet network (I use “Secure WAP Area Server”, since I don’t normally need that connection), and set the one you actually are using to “Internet”, or in the case of  Celtel, to “WAP Area Network”.

What boggles my mind is the fact that people still need a book with individual instructions on how to set up GPRS for the phones.  Even for the windows mobile phones, every phone has a different configuration – I still don’t know why MTN works on the HTC s710 wm6 phone, but not on any of the wm5 phones.  The only possible reason I can think of is that its possible to specify “None” for authentication on the s710, while wm6 requires you to specify CHAP or PAP.  I think, though, that the non-smartphones, especially the basic Nokias, work just fine.

So!  Now you know how to get Internet service on your phone in Uganda. Happy surfing!

* General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) is the protocol that allows you to access the Internet through a GSM mobile phone network.  For those of you in the Bay Area, AT&T/Cingular and T-mobile are GSM networks – you can recognize a GSM network because they issue you a smartchip to put in your phone, also known as a Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) card. Your phone number is tied to the SIM card than your phone, so to switch to a new phone, you just need to remove the chip from your old phone and put it in the new one. As long as the new phone is not “locked” all your calls will be routed through the new phone.

Powered by ScribeFire.

(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

Of course – before everyone goes off running to deliver this very fine product to the masses of doctors in developing countries, there are a couple of catches. The data is very much geared towards doctors in the US, which has a number of implications. 1) Only the drugs that are available in the US are listed, and then with the US names. So, for example, many of the newer malaria medications which haven’t been approved in the US (like Coartem) won’t be there. And other drugs like paracetamol (as it is known in the UK and former British colonies like Ghana and Uganda) will be listed as acetaminophen. 2) There’s a yearly recurring cost of $100. Of course, this might not be out of reach for these doctors, and certainly is about equivalent in price to the paper versions of these reference guides, and about 1000 times more portable.. 3) The pathology is different – a doctor in the US wouldn’t expect TB, where a doctor in Uganda or Ghana would know to look for TB symptoms.

I bring all this up because I spent part of this past summer in Uganda with the 2007 East Africa Blum Fellows visiting some of the Uganda Health Information Network (UHIN) deployment sites in Lyantonde and Rakai. What struck me most was not the specific programs offered by the project (digital submission of health outpatient statistics, and dissemination of malaria and pediatric health information), but rather how they appropriated the devices, installing and sharing their own applications, and using the Excel application to track inventory and patient logs. They just drink up this data, reading whatever they can get to learn more about how they can care for the wide variety of conditions they see every day. So.. in addition to whatever information management functions I can put into place, I hope I can also help put more information in the hands of the doctors and clinicians and nurses I’m working with.

There’s of course still a lot of other issues to deal with – everything from power for recharging to the cost of the devices themselves (~$70 for a Palm, and $300 for a Palm+Mobile Treo) to maintenance and sustainability. I still want to try putting this type of information in their hands, with all of the appropriate warnings, as well as more locally specific information, like local health bulletins or Hesperian’s translated Where There is No Doctor series. Let me know if you have any suggestions for mobile health applications!

Fulfillment Elusive for Young Altruists In the Crowded Field of Public Interest

By Ian Shapira
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 2, 2007; Page A01

A friend pointed out this article for me. I have to wonder that if in our efforts to look at ICTD academically if we’re going to create another glut of idealists with nowhere to go. But there’s so much to do! I have been watching interest in this area grow over the past three years, and have high hopes that the entrepreneurial spirit of this generation of b-school and international relations graduates will be able to look beyond the traditional NGO positions and forge ahead with their own grassroots efforts. And of course, that this crop of people will be well trained to listen and live with the communities they want to help, and genuinely provide services that the communities need in a way that they can sustain them.

I’m not sure what all the schools are that have a good focus on information technology and international development. It seems that most Poli Sci, Public Health, and Public Policy programs are fairly cognizant of the theoretical issues around development, but are not always as well versed in technology. Haas Business school at Berkeley is fairly experiential in this area and actually sends students (where possible) to developing countries like Ghana. They are also part of the Global Social Venture Competition, along with London Business School and Columbia Business school, which have given rise to entrepreneurial efforts like World of Good and many other socially-minded organizations. Cornell’s Johnson School of Business also has a Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise which sends people to developing countries, knowing that while not everyone will continue to work on sustainable development post-graduation, the experiences they have as part of the program will be useful no matter where they end up. And of course I have to mention the Blum Center for Developing Economies, which sponsors a lot of my research and has recently started a new minor for undergraduates.

From a computer science perspective – developing new technologies explicitly designed for the infrastructural, economic, political, and social realities in developing regions, there is (of course) the multi-disciplinary TIER group at UC Berkeley, some work being done at University of Washington, and Keshav’s Tetherless Computing group at University of Waterloo, in addition to the very capable individuals scattered throughout other universities.

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

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!

And this is why I work in Africa…

Normally I’m pretty skeptical about missions. I mean really – what depth is there to going out to beaches over spring break and walking up to random strangers to tell them about God? It’s pure proselytization. But over the past few years I’ve been taking development classes and talking to people in Ghana, and I’ve realized that missions are not purely evangelical; many of the schools and hospitals in Africa are missions in which people have devoted their time and skills towards God’s mission of feeding the hungry, clothing the poor, and curing the sick. But still.. what can one do with two weeks? Short missions trips are always ultimately for the benefit of the person going and not to the community supposedly being served.

This trip was different. We gathered together as a multi-disciplinary group of people who wanted to go to Goma to listen to the people there, to hear what needs were there, and to serve in whatever way we could. We preached, installed wireless routers, and taught workshops on how to play with children. We even painted a mural! I really think we made a difference… and I can’t wait to go back.

For those of you that are interested, here’s the text of the talk I gave at the trip report:

First, I want to introduce you to Bizi, the medical engineer at HEAL Africa. Bizi was incredibly helpful, always smiling and always ready to help. His official job is to maintain and repair all of the medical equipment: incubators, oxygenators, etc. In one of my first interactions with him, he took me to visit a little premie in an incubator he was monitoring. He always referred to little Rebecca as “his” baby, checking on her often to make sure the incubator was still working, especially when the power went out. While he was there, he was also able to repair a second incubator, one that had been donated in 1976 to another hospital and re-donated to HEAL Africa recently. I could tell that his heart was very much broken with care for the shortage of functioning equipment – and the people unable to get adequate care as a result. Not only that, Bizi also strove to help people wherever and whenever he could.

I interacted with him mostly on the IT project. Together, we worked with the two IT administrators, Pytchen and Jacques, to set up a wireless link from the Jubilee conference center, to the main hospital grounds about 300 meters away. The hospital already has a wireless link to the local internet service provider, providing Internet to the 7 computers available in the “Internet Room”, as well as any laptops that want to connect using WiFi, but it’s not accessible in the main hospital It’s not in Bizi’s job description to help with the IT stuff, but he told me that he likes information technology, and he saw that I might have trouble communicating with Pytchen and Jacques with my limited French, and decided to step in. It’s this type of thing that made my time in Goma really stand out.

By this time I had already been in Africa for 3 months, trying to deploy IT solutions in Ghana and Uganda as part of my dissertation research. I’m a PhD student in the School of Information at UC Berkeley, investigating the best uses of communications infrastructure for healthcare in Africa. So I’m familiar with some of the resource shortages in rural Africa. Although my time in Uganda was incredibly productive, my time in Ghana was riddled with bureaucratic, technical, and logisitical struggles. By the time I arrived in Goma, I was frustrated and had almost become cynical about working in Africa, sure that any efforts that I put in would ultimately be weighed down by people trying to get their own piece of development money coming from the West.

Meeting Bizi after this was so encouraging to me – to see someone not focused on his own gain, but instead focused on helping HEAL Africa be everything HEAL Africa could be for Goma, and on being a blessing to his community. Together, we set up a wireless router in the Jubilee Center, and another just above his office. The second one had to be placed about 6 feet above the roof. Lacking telekinetic powers to make it float up there, Bizi came up with a great solution: he pulled a broken IV stand out of the scrap pile and constructed a pole on which we could set up the antenna. A trip to the nuts and bolts market later, we had a link set up. I couldn’t have done it without his willingness to help.

And that is what struck me about HEAL Africa as a whole. Not only was everyone so willing to help, but HEAL Africa is an environment where people feel encouraged to start projects helping others, and to pitch in and help other people realize their own visions. It is a place of hope and restoration, where people that have hope can see real ways in which they can make a concrete contribution. I was so encouraged to see how HEAL Africa mobilized in a way such that even for such a short trip, our team was able to really serve with our gifts, teaching, preaching, painting, and using technology. I was so encouraged to see all the programs HEAL Africa has running, and to meet the many Congolese people that were so engaged in running the programs. I was so encouraged by the hope and the joy in the hearts of the patients of HEAL Africa, some of whom had been there for years, and all of whom were suffering greatly. Their hope was rooted in faith and a hope for restoration.

Given the weight of what we saw, and some not-so-great experiences in Ghana prior to my arrival, a couple of my thoughtful friends have asked if I was discouraged about trying to get work done in Africa. My response is always that my time in Congo was very restorative and grounding – and reminded me who I’m doing my PhD for, and why my heart is so broken for the people of sub-saharan Africa. I learned the value and the hope entailed in an environment supportive of innovation and progress. And I was restored because I felt genuinely loved by my teammates and the people at HEAL Africa.

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.

Logging with care in Congo
By John James
BBC News, Congo-Brazzaville

The Mbendjele people of Congo-Brazzaville are using the latest satellite mapping technology to stake claim to a rainforest, two-thirds of which may be gone in 50 years.

…

For example, there is one for hunting, another for a cemetery, and another for a sacred tree. When these icons are pressed, the handheld device makes a note of the satellite co-ordinates.

The women of the village take obvious pride in pointing out these features on their newly printed maps.

They don’t need the maps themselves of course, but for the first time they have a record of how they use the land that can help them discuss their land rights with companies and the government.

…

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

Even discounting their disabilities, the performances were phenomenal – their timing was perfect, elegant, and graceful.  The first piece is a bodhisattva piece, with the 20+ hearing-impaired dancers moving their arms as if attached to one body. In another piece Huang Yangguang, a man without arms, uses dance to show how he waters and grows his fields.  Following intermission, we were treated to a chinese orchestra, performed entirely by blind instrumentalists.  For me, that was the most remarkable – in order for them to play music, they have to hear it and replay it, without the benefit of sheet music to learn from, and despite the fact that they had no conductor (they wouldn’t be able to see a conductor) they were perfectly synchronized. Having spent some part of my youth in various orchestras and bands, it’s hard to stay synchronized even when you do have a conductor!

Anyways, they are in California (mostly LA) doing live performances and publicizing a recent documentary, “My Dream,” about their group. If they come your way, check it out!

Unplanned Obsolescence

Grameen’s famous Village Phone Program lifted thousands out of poverty– and helped Muhammad Yunus win the Nobel Peace Prize. The problem: It’s not working anymore.

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/118/unplanned-obsolescence.html

There is a counterpoint to this article on the website for one of the about-Yunus books:

http://www.youcanhearmenow.com/?p=97

Primarily, the FC article notes that the “phone lady” model is no longer working in Bangladesh; mobile phones have become too ubiquitous. The counterpoint says FC is missing the forest for the trees; the fact that mobile phones are more ubiquitous speaks to the  growth in the overall income of the area (or to the drop in price of mobile phones).

In most of the villages I went to in Uganda, the VillagePhones (a collaboration between Grameen and MTN) operated alongside mobile phone vendors from a variety of service providers (Celtel, UTL/Mango), and there was mostly ubiquitous coverage.  However, that wasn’t always the case – generally the Village phones start out in areas where a mobile phone would need a rather unwieldy booster antenna in order to have reception.  Eventually the mobile service providers are able to extend their coverage and build a nearby cell tower, allowing more traditional mobile phones to work, and lowering the barrier to entry; the capital required to be a “village phone”. I don’t think it’s clear that it is the village phone that causes the mobile service providers to expand their networks, although certainly MTN’s presence in a particular area causes some “first-to-market” fears in Celtel and UTL.  At the same time, I suspect the development of rural telecommunications infrastructure is much more driven by goverment policy (and certainly rural subsidy taxes), and the Ugandan Communications Commision’s (UCC - the FCC of Uganda) forward-looking efforts to find ways to help rural areas benefit from communications infrastructure.

Replication of the Village Phone in other countries (e.g. Uganda) aside it goes to say that the ultimate goal of most development projects should be obscelescence.  Wouldn’t it be great if extreme poverty were eradicated and everyone would have the power to (as Jeffrey Sachs might say) raise themselves on the ladder of development?

p.s. Another interesting article – on how housing/property demands are changing the lives of farmers in India.  I think this guy is faring better than the lottery winners in the US.

SPOTLIGHT ON INDIA: The Price of Modernization
Millionaire still keeps cattle in his garage
Only 2 years ago, he was living on $5,000 a year on the farm

Heidi J. Shrager, Chronicle Foreign Service

Sunday, November 4, 2007

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/