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 A personal collection of thoughts, ideas, opinions and feelings on a range of
topics and issues - when time permits... A public version of this Blog - where
you can link to specific entries and post comments - can be found at
http://blogspot.kiwanja.netFor more general kiwanja.net news, check out the News page. An RSS feed of this Blog is available along with a recently compiled collection of favourite entries (pictured - PDF, 1.5Mb)
Blog timeout: Abort, retry, fail?
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 08, 2007 The value of content in a content-driven world Text messaging was, and remains, the surprise package for the mobile industry. Now a major income generator, SMS was never intended for mass public consumption - the channel was used mostly by engineers to test connectivity or to report the arrival of voicemail messages to users. Ironically, multimedia messaging - MMS - was planned and was supposed to signal the beginning of the end for SMS. But despite the massive effort - and marketing bucks - put in by the mobile operators, uptake was slow and remains slow to this day. People rarely want to send photos or short video to each other, and certainly don't want to play around with their MMS compiler to put a simple message together. Why bother with all that when SMS is much cheaper, is usually enough for the job, and much easier to work? Multimedia messaging was a classic case of a technology looking for a market. Maybe we're seeing it all over again with mobile TV.
What mobile TV is lacking is killer content. Mobile operators - as they did with 3G (another relative failure) - were convinced that people would jump at the chance to watch TV on-the-go and didn't seem to spend too much time working out why they would want to do it and what exactly it was that they would want to watch. What they didn't seem to figure out was that it is killer content that drives mobile data usage - the websites, services, blogs, social networks, whatever - not the technology which allows it to happen. And to prove the point, T-Mobile recently announced that sites like Bebo, MySpace and Facebook were driving mobile media usage in the UK. If the content or service is there, then people will happily use the technology at their disposal to access it. As if things weren't bad enough, another survey taken last month concluded that, despite the continuing emergence of new mobile applications, the address book remains the primary killer app on a mobile phone. Who would have believed it? MONDAY, AUGUST 06, 2007 Did someone really get sacked for this? Funny photo from "The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs" website. Taken in an AT&T store. Just goes to show what you get when you scratch the surface!
WEDNESDAY, JULY 25, 2007 A second coming of age
It was nice to be back at Sussex. And the whole event felt that little bit sweeter when I found out that the Graduation Packs, handed out to the hundreds of guests, included a copy of the latest Falmer Alumni magazine. But this wasn't just any old copy of Falmer. This one contained my recent interview with the university. It almost felt like a second graduation, a kind-of 'coming of academic age'. There's something nice about maintaining this kind of relationship with your university. Sussex's continued interest in my work feels like an endorsement of my chosen post-degree career path, and comes after earlier comments from one of my former anthropology professors who described me as a "credit to anthropology and a credit to Sussex". Right now it all makes sense, and everything seems to be falling into place. It didn't feel like it back in 1996. All I missed out on on the day was a photo opportunity with Mr. Attenborough. I have one with his famous brother - David (see my Photos page) - and a full set would have been nice. Maybe next time. I'm sure Sussex hasn't seen the last of me yet. MONDAY, JULY 23, 2007 A little reminder...
Technology, amazing as it is, clearly has an uncomfortable THURSDAY, JULY 12, 2007 The hidden library As interest in the phenomenal impact of mobile technology grows, so does the volume of literature on the subject. Reports are now published on an almost weekly basis, although many are commercially-produced and come at (quite) a price. Other more freely available studies are generated through high-level research by Phd candidates or Professors at western universities. Sadly, less seems to come from the developing countries themselves - those who find themselves most directly affected by the mobile revolution. But this may be beginning to change.
Take, for example, a survey on the obstacles to use of mobiles in rural areas among market traders. Some of the replies are particularly enlightening:
87% had issues with erratic power supply Gaining a better understanding of these kinds of issues is critical when planning and designing mobile-related projects in developing countries, but sadly it is also often lacking. For those who have overcome these barriers, however, the book is also full of quotes and nice anecdotes on the huge benefits that mobile telephony is bringing to Nigerian citizens. "It has helped me to communicate easily with people. Many people would readily confess that they do not have to travel as before to get in touch with others who live far away" "Given the number of people, especially the youth currently involved in the commercial phone business, there is no denying the fact that GSM is a tool for job creation in the country today. It has reduced the rate of unemployment" Mobile phones may have made it easier for us to organise our social lives or keep in better touch with our friends, but for people in the developing world the technology is proving to be a real lifeline. Although we hear much about the positive impact it has made on the everyday lives of Africans, it's not until we get to hear the story directly from the horses mouth that we begin to realise how positive this change really is. TUESDAY, JULY 10, 2007 Dispelling the myth? I spent the best part of spring and summer '99 working on my anthropology dissertation, passionately arguing that anthropologists had been wrongly excluded from much of the earlier global conservation process. The rationale behind my several-thousand word essay was that the view of indigenous peoples as 'outside of nature', or 'a blot on the landscape', with no place in the growing world view of pristine, natural environments was wrong. There seemed to be, after all, plenty of examples of indigenous peoples living in harmony with their environments, and that humans weren't always a destructive force. But maybe they were. My three years at Sussex University studying a blend of development issues and social anthropology allowed me to carefully develop my thinking and combine two of my three passions in life (the third being technology). So, it is with great irony that almost a decade later I find myself reading a book which squarely blames indigenous peoples for many of the the mega-fauna extinctions in their environments. And the catalyst for this destruction? None other than technology itself.
William McDonald Wallace also argues that we could be seeing a new environmental awakening underway today. With last weekends global Live Earth event, we could very well see this spearheaded by increased climate change awareness. Once again, the catalyst for our troubles has been a boom in technological innovation. It is quite astonishing how far we have come in just over a hundred years. But are we now not in a truly ironic situation where new technologies are being rapidly developed to counteract the negative impacts of others? It just goes to show that, whether you are a small community in the 21st century about to lose your island home to rising sea levels, or a buffalo in the 19th century roaming the plains of North America, technology can't always be seen a good thing. TUESDAY, JULY 10, 2007 Pet Shop [Birthday] Boy
Today marks the birthday of
Neil Tennant,
lead singer of
Pet Shop
Boys. I've been a fan since the mid-1980's, and it's no understatement that
the last two decades of their music plays like a soundtrack to my life. Just ask
the Digital Vision Fellows
from last year! It
seemed wrong not to acknowledge or celebrate this great event, so here's a cute
YouTube video of a song
called Cassanova in Hell, sung live by
Rufus
Wainwright during the recording of their "Concrete" album last year. The
video is unofficial, thrown together by a fan somewhere, but it seems to fit
well, nevertheless. Just click the image to begin playing.
FRIDAY, JULY 06, 2007 Pledge...
... because sometimes it's good to remind ourselves The Social Mobile Group
Mobile phones are revolutionising communications across the globe, more so in
developing countries where landline infrastructure is lacking in many rural (and
some urban) areas. Mobile phones represent the only means of communication for
hundreds of millions of people. SATURDAY, JUNE 30, 2007 FrontlineSMS on a Mac? Bobby, a friend of mine from the Philippines (who I met at a recent Fahamu workshop in Nairobi), has been doing some great work with FrontlineSMS lately and has become a real supporter of the software. Over the next few weeks development of the next version will begin - thanks to funding from the MacArthur Foundation - and hopefully Bobby will be a central player in that. In the meantime, he holds the honour of being the first person - that I'm aware of, anyway - to get FrontlineSMS running 'on' a Mac (within an XP 'virtual machine', anyway). And here's his photo to prove it.
The new version will be platform independent, so hopefully we'll see a lot more Macs running FrontlineSMS in the coming months and years... THURSDAY, JUNE 21, 2007 Where motives dare I once caused a stir during a regular Friday night pub outing in Cambridge when I dared suggest that some people only worked in international conservation because it meant they got to visit cool places and work with exotic animals. Although some were a little shocked at my suggestion and strongly disagreed (I was, after all, out with a dozen or so conservationists) the very fact that they responded in such a manner proves that I may have just hit a nerve.
There is much talk of local empowerment, local context and local ownership, but such an approach rarely suits a machine which needs considerable amounts of funding just to keep itself alive. Gerald Durrell (pictured), the late pioneering conservationist based in my home island of Jersey, always maintained that his ultimate aim was to secure the future of endangered species and their habits, and then close down his zoo. Job done. The global conservation and development movement could have learnt a thing or two from this guy. FRIDAY, JUNE 15, 2007 And the winner is... Few would dispute that we're living in an age of tremendous innovation. It's hard to believe that the PC has only been around for 20-odd years, and the mobile phone half-of-that. The personal computer may have blazed the original consumer IT trail, but what is happening today with the mobile phone is potentially hugely more significant. Let me explain.
For me, most significant is the interest that mobile manufacturers (and operators, come to that) are taking in development issues - poverty, gender, health, literacy, infrastructure, economic empowerment and so on. Just take the MOTOPOWER charging kiosk (pictured, courtesy of the Mobile Gallery), rolled out in Uganda earlier this year. Not only does it solve a major charging problem for mobile users (it runs on solar power, by the way), but it creates opportunity for micro-enterprise. Many women now run these kiosks. This is just one example of how manufacturers and operators have quickly understood that poverty - in all its forms - are barriers to ownership, and as a result they're making significant efforts to understand it. This, I believe, is a potential revolution in how big technology business views the developing world. Think, only recently have there been wide scale (global) attempts to build affordable laptops for the worlds poor - OLPC, for example - but it's taken decades to get there. Mobile manufacturers are already on the ball, in less than ten. It will be interesting to see how this plays out, but there may well end up being more than one winner. And the world's poor may just be among them. MONDAY, JUNE 11, 2007 Walking the walk
"It'll never work..."
So, as I enter my ninth month in the van (and my final week at Stanford), now seems a good-a-time as any to explain myself. And for someone who's generally not short of words this has been a surprisingly difficult blog entry to write. The initial catalyst for the move was purely financial, something few of us can ever escape. Each of the Fellows on my Program were required to fund their own living expenses, estimated at somewhere around $20,000 over the nine months. I was never going to let a lack of money stop me from taking up this huge opportunity, but when it became clear in early October that funds might become tight, using my hard-earned cash to acquire an asset (rather than paying off someone else's mortgage) made sense. I could then sell it at the end and live almost rent-free. A search through Craigslist followed by a highly eventful bank holiday weekend drive down to Long Beach, California - the subject of another Blog entry sometime - turned my vision into reality. I handed in notice to my landlord the Sunday morning I left to collect the van, and lead a double-life for three weeks before finally moving out later that month.
At the same time - and this is part of the third and final reason - I also wanted to show that anything is possible if you remain true to your vision, focus, passion and goals. That you don't necessarily need tens of thousands of dollars to make a place like this work for you, or a privileged upbringing, or friends in high places. Why, you can even choose not to conform and still make it. Doors which seem shut are usually just ajar. A little confident nudge is often all it takes. But first you have to find the door. I've always maintained that true change in the world will come through the collective action of the masses, driven not by high profile international charities, or film stars, or musicians or politicians but by everyday people themselves. I've blogged about this in the past. People just need to know that things are possible. Interviews with the BBC, industry award nominations, invitations to speak at conferences, specialist panel invitations and a major MacArthur grant. Yes, anything is possible. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 06, 2007 Analogy of a Fellowship I've never done a real marathon - I find jogging mind-numbingly boring - but metaphorically speaking I've been running one for the past fourteen years. A journey which started accidentally back in 1993 reaches a major milestone tomorrow as this year's Reuters Digital Vision Program winds down. The pace will then slow a little for the next few weeks, but picks up again after a short summer break back home in the UK. Thanks to a generous MacArthur Foundation grant work begins on the next stage of FrontlineSMS in the autumn, returning me to Stanford.
It's been an incredible nine months, and it's exceeded all expectations. My top five moments? Well, let me see. In no particular order... 1. Before leaving Cambridge last September I took out a 'single-trip' health insurance policy, not expecting to be going anywhere else for the foreseeable future. How wrong I was. A conference invitation in Bangalore came up just three months into my Fellowship, to be closely followed by a workshop in New Delhi, another conference in Canada and then a final workshop in Kenya last month. In the middle of all of that was a visit to the University of Arizona but, being in the States, that doesn't count. Positive change number one: An increase in invitations to 'industry' events. Lesson number one: Take out multiple trip insurance policies in future. 2. Having the opportunity to learn from some of the most talented people around has to be Positive change number two. The great thing about this Program is that it brings in some of the brightest stars from developing countries and gives them full access to the 'Stanford machine'. The opportunity is huge and those who get invited along are the very people best suited to take advantage of it. Me, for my part, crashed the party under the guise of a support person (or Collaboration Fellow, in Program-speak) but have been helpful enough for no-one to really notice or mind! 3. Without doubt the increase in visibility of my work has been enormous, and 'Positive change number one' is testament to that. My website has been around for over four years, and in true organic fashion has been gradually stumbled upon by numerous ICT practitioners, the mobile industry, NGOs, academics and the general public. Positive change number three is therefore my website, which has shot from an average of under 1,000 hits per day to 4,000 now. Not quite a YouTube, I know, but it's a start... 4. Positive change number four was having my 'Erik moment' back in April. An 'Erik moment', in the context of the Digital Vision Program, is "a sudden and unexpected event which elevates exposure, and interest, in your project to international level". (By the way, the phenomenon is named after Erik Sundelof, a 2006 Fellow and now good friend who was working on his citizen blog/journalism site when Israel invaded Lebanon after the seizure of a couple of their soldiers. Erik's site became an avenue for Lebanese civilians to report what was happening, via their mobile phones, and let the world know how the war was affecting them personally). My 'Erik moment' came on Friday 20th April when the BBC announced to the world that my FrontlineSMS system was to be used that weekend to help monitor the Nigerian Presidential elections. Very few people, however hard they work at something, are lucky enough to get 15 minutes of fame, never mind courtesy of the BBC. I was, and will be eternally grateful for it (and the work of the Nigerian NGO, NMEM, who carried out the project on the ground). FrontlineSMS has since been used to help monitor the Philippine elections, and discussions are underway for it to be used in Kenya later this year. 5. Last, but not least, funding becomes Positive change number five. Through the increased exposure in my work, the chance to mix with some great people on this Program and, of course my 'Erik moment', the MacArthur Foundation now take my work to a whole new level by announcing a $200,000 grant for FrontlineSMS. Coming as it did, during the last week of the Program, it's been the icing on the cake of an amazing nine months here. The challenge now is to match this when I return in September. Sadly, it won't be with Marvin, Cathy, Shashank, Isha, John, Edgardo, Nam, Netika, Steve, Adam, Hernan, Fabiana, Neil, Neerja and Atif.
But a Fellowship is forever, right? And we always have
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Over
the next few weeks this Blog will take a short summer break while I
work with the
A recent report in
Exactly eight years ago it was me walking across that stage to shake the hand of
the great
I'm
sitting here, my radio broadcasting news on the continued flooding around
Britain, waiting for my broadband to come back to
Recently I was fortunate to meet Christiana Charles-Iyoha,
editor of a fascinating book published in Nigeria late last year. "Mobile Telephony: Leveraging Strengths and Opportunities for Socio-Economic
Transformation in Nigeria" describes the impact of mobile telephony from an
African perspective. Dominated by the voices of women's groups, market traders,
businessmen and women, students and members of the public, the book gives a
unique insight into the impact of mobiles at the grassroots level of
Nigerian society. It's also full of little gems.
In
"
At
the same time, mobiles have opened up huge economic opportunities for their
owners. They can now be more easily contacted when work is available, they can
use them to advertise their services, receive market prices, job information,
and so on. Others now make a living 'sharing' their phones and charging
non-owners to make calls. Some make a living charging phone batteries, selling
top-up vouchers, or covers and chargers (see the
There can be little dispute that entire industries are built around
the act of 'international conservation and development'. And few are
headquartered in developing countries, an irony in itself. I'm not sure if there are any
official figures - please get in touch if you know of any - but the
international conservation and development communities must be a considerable source of employment in the 'developed'
world. Large percentages of allotted funding seem to have the habit of
staying in-country and covering items such as head office salaries, rents,
vehicles, meetings and other overheads. Why, entire conferences are built
around, and funded, on single conservation or development themes. I've even been
to a few.
Successful
companies understand their customers better than unsuccessful ones, at least
that's what we're led to believe. Back in the early days of the personal
computer, customers were medium- to higher-wage earners, or at the top end the
early adopters. It was the same with the mobile phone, considered toys for
executives in the early days and only more recently essential devices for the
masses. What's different today is, unlike the PC which stalled price-wise at the
lower-end of the developed western markets, mobile manufacturers have very
quickly begun looking at the very bottom of the pyramid, the emerging markets,
the billions living in poverty in the developing world. The rationale behind
this is two-fold, at the very least. Firstly, the developed world (if we can
call it that) has reached saturation point in terms of mobile ownership, so it
is natural to look towards new markets. Secondly, mobile phones are incredibly,
and perhaps uniquely, empowering socially and economically, so people don't tend
to see the move into emerging markets as an exploitative one.
So it was, back in late October 2006, that I moved out of my $750-a-month rented
room in Los Altos into a 1983 VW
The second reason - and
part of the third, come to that - are a little less clear-cut, and maybe
trickier to explain or understand because of it. For those of you who haven't had
the opportunity to visit
