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THURSDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2006

Reflections on kiwanja: Four years on

Assignments in Nigeria and Zimbabwe, talks at W3C in India, the development of several new projects, work with UNEP, a Fellowship at Stanford, an increasingly popular website, new volunteers... all in a years' work. And at the root of it all - kiwanja.net

Despite all of this, I'm still unsure how to describe kiwanja. Ten years in the making and now almost four years old, to me it remains indefinable. I guess you could argue that it's a company - although it won't be for much longer - run by me, but that definition implies some degree of separation or competitiveness. There isn't in either case. I'm not sure if there is a word to describe a person as an organisation, or a movement, or a belief come to that, but if there was then that's probably what I'd use. Marvin, a Jamaican guy at the Digital Vision Program here at Stanford, has got as close as anyone to understanding, although he probably doesn't realise it.

kiwanja is very public but, at the same time, very private. What it does is provide me with the vehicle to do what I've chosen to do with my life. Is it an alter-ego? Perhaps, but I'm a little uncomfortable with the use of that word. I'm a firm believer that the ego is more of a barrier to progress than an enabler. After all, so much more gets done if you don't worry about who gets the credit. People who know me know that I'm slightly uncomfortable describing kiwanja's achievements as my own, which might sound slightly odd. You see, it's no accident that, with the exception of the Blog, you won't find a single reference to 'I' throughout the whole site. I've always believed that it doesn't matter what you've achieved in the past - that time is over - and that you're only as good as the last thing you've done. This is the best way of suppressing that ego, and keeping me on my toes. We should all learn to be a little more humble, I believe.

One of the beauties of kiwanja - and there are many - is that it can never be taken away. For as long as I live, work and play, it will always be with me. There's a tendency in life to surround ourselves with physical 'things', all built on the back of a life of labour. Often used as a measure of how successful we've been, these are the very things that we shouldn't be building our lives on. We shouldn't forget how fickle life is, how a single twist of fate can send us spiralling downwards, how quickly we could lose what we've worked so hard for. Instead of building our lives around material things, we should put more effort into working hard on the things that can't be taken away - drawing, painting, music, passion, belief, mission and religion, to mention just a few. All the money in the world can't buy these things. My effort has gone into kiwanja, my thing that can't be taken away. Don't be a slave to the system, and don't live unsustainably or beyond your means, however tempting that system may make it.

People should also not wait until they are effected - or touched - by something before making it their 'mission'. So often we hear of those who, touched by a disease, loss, particular event or near-death experience suddenly dedicate their life to an associated cause, usually via a Foundation created in their own name. Of course many, many others don't experience anything and end up doing nothing, or they only take up charitable or philanthropic activities in their later years when they realise - sometimes too late - that there's more to life than a home full of possessions and a healthy bank balance. Maybe I was fortunate when I found my purpose relatively early on (if you call 27 'early on'), but whether or not that's the case, the vital thing is to stick with it - good times or bad, famine or feast - whenever it comes and whatever it is. We all feel emotive when confronted with images of famine, war, despair, poverty, disease or environmental destruction, and in that brief moment we all feel that we ought to do something about it. If you do, don't let that moment pass, and don't ever forget how it felt. Remember, a few dollars donated yesterday to an African famine won't alleviate African famine. Either you're in it for the long run, or you're not really in it at all.

Also, remember that philanthropy is not just about money and not just the stuff of pop stars, and that we all have something to offer planet earth. A million acts of random kindness has far more potential as a force for good than any large-scale multi-million dollar project with all its associated overhead and waste. How are people around the world creating positive change? Often at the grassroots level. This is where so much of the real work gets done, yet ironically we hear least about it. So this is where kiwanja deliberately focuses, supporting those who dedicate their time, and sometimes their lives, to their own particular cause and own particular calling. I've always maintained that I myself am not going to save lives, or a rainforest, or a particular species from extinction. But I can support someone who might. Remember how much more gets done if you don't care who gets the credit? Drop that ego and get working...

As 2006 comes to a close and kiwanja enters its fifth year, I'm still no closer to working out where I'm headed than I was back in 2003 when it all began. Maybe it's because of my belief in remaining flexible, maintaining an ability to respond to, and make the most of, opportunities whenever and wherever they arise. I would never have dreamt last Christmas, for example, that a year later I'd be a Fellow at Stanford. So who knows what's next? All I can do is make sure I'm ready to take the challenge whenever it comes, and not become complacent in the meantime. kiwanja - whatever you define it as - has taught me a lot, not least that.

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SUNDAY, DECEMBER 17, 2006

2006: The people's year?

If it wasn't enough that Muhammad Yunus recently won the
Nobel Peace Prize for his work with the poor, Time magazine
now makes 'us' (that means you, according to the front cover)
all 'People of the Year'. According to Time:

"The 'Great Man' theory of history is usually attributed to the
Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle, who wrote that "the
history of the world is but the biography of great men." He
believed that it is the few, the powerful and the famous who
shape our collective destiny as a species..."

Is it just me, or is there change in the air?
 

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FRIDAY, DECEMBER 15, 2006

Craigslist: The capitalist conundrum

As a Visiting Fellow in the Reuters Digital Vision Program at Stanford University, I often find myself sitting in on some pretty amazing talks and lectures from some of the most amazing people. Love 'em or hate 'em, I even had the chance to hear from the likes of Bill Gates and Arnold Schwartzeneger recently. (Bill described the iPod as nothing more than "a hard drive with music on", and Arnie wanted to see more cranes (that's the building-type, not the bird) in California. Eye- and ear-opening stuff, but one for another blog entry, I feel).

Last month, Jim Buckmaster, CEO of Craigslist, came in to talk with us. It was a small, intimate affair. More like a Q&A around the camp fire than a Stanford seminar. But this is how Jim seems to work, and it suited us all down to the ground. Not even a plush Powerpoint presentation to talk of. Just Jim.

For about an hour-and-a-half, Jim described the Craigslist phenomenon and answered a whole bunch of questions. The seventh most visited site on the web, volumes of traffic that I could only dream of (for now!) and a web 'presence' in most major cities around the world. Yet all managed with a staff of less than forty. Just compare that to the hundreds, if not thousands, who work with other dotcom 'giants'. What struck everyone was the work ethic - a desire to keep things simple, give the users what they want and turn a blind eye to "maximising revenue". Craigslist, you see, doesn't have any ads, other than the ones posted up by users, and certainly no big money-making schemes.

"There are forums on Craigslist, and users have the chance to tell us what they want from the site, like if they want ads. And, so far, they haven't asked for them. So we don't"

It was very much an "anything for a simple, quiet life" ethic, even if this meant turning down tens of millions in potential revenue. So, when Jim met with a bunch of New York bankers several weeks later, imagine the mayhem and confusion. Described in a New York Times article as a "culture clash of near-epic proportions", some in the audience really struggled with the concept of "non-revenue maximisation" and "serving customers first and worrying about revenues later". In a world where money talks - as it certainly does in Silicon Valley - it is so refreshing to meet someone bucking the trend. And many people seem to agree, judging by the comments left on the New York Times website.

"Craigslist is the best example of businesses that are refusing to make money the only goal, or even the main goal. This type of customer-driven business, running as a partner to society instead of an aggressor, is the form of the future - truly green companies. They are hybrids of sorts, combining the best of for-profit and non-profit characteristics"

The fact that a bunch of bankers struggled so deeply with the concept makes it even more entertaining, for me at least.

Until you wake up, keep scratching, guys...

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FRIDAY, DECEMBER 01, 2006

On the eve of India, fame at last?  ;o)

I'm not sure if anything I've done before has ever made homepage news. Maybe FrontlineSMS when it hit the streets late last year? Or maybe wildlive!, backed by the 'Vodafone factor'? Homepages have moved on, so I'll never know...

So maybe the news of my impending trip to India, on the Reuters Digital Vision Program website, is my homepage debut. It's only taken 13 years.

In just two days time I fly to Bangalore, my first ever visit to the Asian continent, to talk and Chair and scribe at the W3C Workshop on the Mobile Web in Developing Countries (they're making the most of me over the two days, for sure). I was invited to apply, which is a new experience for me. Usually I have to beg, steal and borrow to get to these kinds of things, so some kind of recognition of my work is certainly a welcome change to my own personal little status quo. Being offered funding to fly there was also a new experience. And, of course, I'll be planting a tree to offset my carbon emissions. Although it's a long flight, so maybe that'll need to be two?

I usually get extremely frustrated at these kinds of gatherings - lots of talk and hot air and often no tangible results to show for all the cost and effort. I'm hoping that this one will be different, and with such an active involvement in proceedings I have the best opportunity yet to have a positive impact. My presentation, not surprisingly, is about keeping the mobile web relevant. Because let's not forget that this is not just about technology - at the end of that mouse, or mobile phone, is a real person. Someone with their own problems, issues, concerns and needs. By being there I hope to represent these people, and give them a voice in something which is more than likely, at some stage in their future, to have an impact of some kind on their lives.

You can find out a little more about the workshop on the W3C site, including a sneak preview of the presentation I will be giving. Lucky you.
 

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FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2006

Playing and learning in the global village

I admit that I'm not too much of a gaming freak these days, although I did go through a spell a 'few' years back when I was the proud owner of a 16-bit Sega Megadrive. There are enough challenges and puzzles in real life to be getting on with - I don't need a bunch of virtual ones to add to the list.

So when a game manages to grab my attention for more than just a few brief moments, it's worth taking a look. The game is called Village, and it's a multiplayer online strategy game (in the style of Warcraft, Second Life and so on) which immerses the player into the role of an entrepreneur. The overall objective is to build companies to bring prosperity to the villages of the third world.

"Fly over a remote village watching people walking about, farmers tending to their crops, people buying and selling goods in the town markets. Browse anybody in the village and see what income, jobs, education they have. View the stores in the town centre to find out what is selling well, and what's missing entirely. Set up your own store fronts to offer microcredit, kickstart pumps, solar cell rentals, all the self-sustaining businesses that will have the greatest impact on the villagers. Watch as farms flourish, villagers build new homes, and schools grow larger with more healthy children"

The Village is certainly a grand vision, and an incredibly innovative one at that. There's even hope that some day the virtual villages - or components of them - may become a reality. Imagine... Some organisations have also been quick off the mark and picked up on the fundraising and awareness raising potential of the game. According to Darian Hickman, the Village 'leader', "Organisations such as Ashoka, Technoserve, Acumen Fund and Habitat for Humanity have a vested interest in seeing this game reach a wide audience as it will bring awareness and donations to their causes".

People are already beginning to make quite tidy sums buying and selling in the virtual world. Adding philanthropy to the mix is a very neat, and a very nice, idea.

Keep an eye out for the Alpha version of the game, due in the new year, on the Village website.

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TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2006

Perspective

I bought a couple of homeless people drinks tonight, as I passed them there on the street. University Avenue. A vanilla bean frappuccino and a coffee, milk and sugar.

It seems so very wrong that people should have to live like this in a place like Silicon Valley...
 

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SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2006

Could this really be "the coolest thing in conservation"?

A new partnership has recently been announced, designed to tackle the age-old problem of how to attach 'value' to the environment, or to 'ecosystem services', however posh you want to make it sound. Stanford University, The Nature Conservancy and the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) are collaborators in what's become known as the Natural Capital Project.

Described by Carter Roberts - President and CEO of WWF - as quite possibly the coolest thing in conservation today, the Natural Capital Project, in its own words, aims to "make nature a regular column in our spreadsheets and cost-benefit analyses". It may not sound that cool, but attaching value to a forest, river, mountain range, savannah, swamp, insect or whatever will take some doing.

Take the humble honey bee, for example. Their value to a bee keeper in Tanzania is undisputed - without the bee there's no honey. But for a coffee farmer who relies on the same bees for pollination, a shift in population might instead 'just' effect his crop. It might not destroy it, but 25% less yield could be the difference between feeding or not feeding his family. So, using bees as our example, a healthy bee population, supported by a healthy forest home, is a key issue. For the bee keeper or the coffee grower, it's in their interests for the forests to remain intact. What the Natural Capital Project hopes to do is attach some financial 'value' to this forest. As they readily admit, however, "putting a price tag on ecosystem services won't be easy". Clearly, if it was then someone would have probably managed to do it already.

It's worth remembering at this point that we already have monetary values for the very services that this project seeks to value. A mahogany tree, for example, is worth several tens of thousands of dollars; a chimpanzee as a pet perhaps a couple of hundred dollars. But these are prices with the 'ecosystem service' removed from the ecosystem - not the price to keep it there. This is the key difference.

The problem will be, of course, in convincing as many parties as possible that it's in their interests to keep forests, rivers, swamps or whatever intact, however many dollars or pounds appear in the financial columns. If the coffee grower owns the forest, then that should be relatively straightforward if you can present the sums, aided, of course, by that spreadsheet. But when external, third parties have vested or varied interests then the value could vary dramatically, down to quite literally zero. Attaching ecosystem value could well help at policy level - which is where the Natural Capital Project is pitching - but it won't stop illegal logging from outsiders, or 'travelling bush meat traders', or unscrupulous companies or corrupt government officials. It's in some of these areas where the most pressing barriers to conservation perhaps lie.

This is a brave project which will be quite literally judged on its results. Success - however that is measured - needs to be turned into something tangible, with real results on the ground.

After all, this is where the actual conservation takes place.

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TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 07, 2006

Mobile2.0 or just another Gathering2.0?

This Monday, me and Erik Sundelof - a former Digital Vision Fellow - headed up to San Francisco for the day to attend the Mobile2.0 Conference, a mobile showcase which preceded the grander, more popular and longer-by-one-day Web2.0 event.

This was a first attempt to bring together individuals, companies, operators and mobile manufacturers to specifically discuss the emerging Mobile2.0 phenomenon. Sadly, it was largely an opportunity missed, although it was useful as a reinforcing exercise. Everyone left the room knowing that it wasn't just them suffering from the lack of handset standards. Once again, trying to work out a solution seemed way off the agenda, as I guess it would be for a short one day event.

Instead, practical debate was replaced by excitable handset manufacturers and service providers plying their own particular solutions. This in itself was interesting, but at the end of the day the problem will continue to exist until the big players sit around a table and agree to something. But at least we now know that there's a much wider range of sticky plasters which can be applied in the meantime.

What was interesting, though, was how delegates saw the transition of Web2.0 functionality onto the handset. What wasn't quite so clear was whether or not the user wanted it or not. Remember, mobiles have tiny screens and fiddly keyboards, and as such aren't necessarily the ideal device for editing or creating user generated content. The size factor does, of course, work both ways. If they weren't small then they wouldn't be mobile. Also, for many the mobile camera will be the only one they have with with them if something interesting or funny should happen in their vicinity, or if they feel compelled to capture a moment digitally. Combine this with location-based services and there is clearly a huge opportunity if it can be grabbed.

For me, one of the key issues here is in definition. We need to decide what we mean by Mobile2.0 - it's clearer with Web2.0 but the current craze to add '2.0' to everything doesn't always add value (anyone fancy a Coffee2.0?). The user doesn't care whether he's using a 3.0 or an 8.0, as long as he or she can seamlessly and simply carry out whatever task he or she wants on his or her device of choice. If the mobile is simply going to be the originator of content - a photo, video, sound clip or plain old text - which is then uploaded to a web service for 'mashup' or whatever, then that's cool. However, if we're looking to allow the creation, editing and posting of content directly from the phone itself then that's a totally different ball game.

If we mean the former then Mobile2.0 is a lot closer than you may think. If we mean the latter, put on the Kettle2.0 - you might be in for a long wait...

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SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 05, 2006

Thank goodness for the non-American system

It's always a very eye-opening experience when you first arrive in a new country. From driving on the opposite side of the road to experiencing different mannerisms and 'language variation', not to mention coping with the excessive patriotism (proudly displayed in the form of countless American flags and enthusiastic tributes to "The American Worker"), there are more practical actions that need to be taken, such as getting attached to a mobile phone network (sorry, cellphone network).

This has been a particularly eye opening experience. And all I can say is this. In Europe, mobile networks are being squeezed by the consumer and various EU bodies, but here in the States they're having a field day. If the rest of the world, and developing countries in particular, adopted their practices then there would almost zero growth in mobile use among the poor, and quite probably also zero initiatives using mobile technology for social good. I'll explain why. There are two reasons...

Firstly, for some crazy reason users here have to pay to receive a text message. The sender pays, and the recipient pays. If poor, rural phone owners in developing countries were forced to maintain credit on their handsets to receive texts, then many wouldn't be able to do it. They might also object, or opt out, of receiving valuable health or other information messages. The use of handsets to help bridge the digital - or information - divide would be nothing more than a dream.

Secondly, pre-pay (or pay-as-you-go) customers on some networks are charged a daily 'connection' or 'service' fee of 99 cents just to keep their number connected. They pay 99 cents each day whether they use their phone or not. It's ironic that this almost equates to the $1 dollar per day used to measure the number of people living in extreme poverty.

In reality it was the adoption of the pre-pay system which truly liberated disconnected rural communities in developing countries. The ability to connect to the network without needing a bank account, credit history or an address was the key which finally unlocked the digital door. A daily service charge of any kind, for many, would have slammed that door right back in their face.

Combine either - or at worst, both - of these in a developing country context and the effect would be disastrous. Thank goodness we have an alternative to the American system.

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WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2006

A little post-primate talk interview

On 26th October I was invited to the Africa Table - a lunchtime series of informal talks - at the Center for African Studies here at Stanford University. The focus of my presentation was my year in Nigeria working with primates.

After the presentation - which thankfully went so well I've been invited back to do another - John Kuner, another Digital Vision Fellow, took a short video interview for his own project.

Check out the informal (please note - informal!) interview on his ProjectVIEW website by clicking here.

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FRIDAY, OCTOBER 06, 2006

Blogging: Normal service will be resumed...

Since arriving at Stanford in the middle of September (click here to see what I'm up to), things have been a little hectic and I've not found time to work too much on my blog. You can probably tell.

Instead I've been posting up a kind-of 'Photo Blog' of my time here on Flickr. Feel free to browse over a coffee, tea or beer at www.flickr.com/photos/kiwanja

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TUESDAY, AUGUST 02, 2006

What not to do on safari: Take a rubbish camera

When you visit one of the only national parks in Africa where you can freely walk - quite literally - among the animals, make sure you have a decent camera with you. After all, it's not every day that a pack of African wild dogs pass through. Here's one looking for breakfast.

As for the lions...

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