Call to arms: Meeting our Clinton Commitment

It's not every day you get to glance around the room and see the likes of Bono, Al Gore, Mohammed Ali, Tony and Cherie Blair, Olusegun Obasanjo, John McCain, Bill Gates, the Queen of Jordan and Bill Clinton. I'm just back from an incredible week where I did just that, thanks to a complimentary invitation to this year's Clinton Global Initiative (CGi) annual meeting in New York.

Despite the line-up there wasn't too much time to get star-struck. Condition of membership - worth a whopping $20,000 - is that new CGi members make a 'commitment', outlining an idea which, when implemented, is expected to "impact on the lives of hundreds of millions of people around the world over the next ten years". kiwanja's commitment might not reach such dizzy heights, but it was deemed significant enough to be announced live on-stage during the 'Poverty and Information' workshop on Friday.

kiwanja's commitment - the FrontlineSMS Ambassadors Programme - seeks to increase the scale of FrontlineSMS use among the global grassroots NGO community. By the end of 2010 our commitment is to reach an additional 5,000 users through a combination of:

• Identifying leading international organisations working in key areas of education, energy and climate change, global health and healthcare delivery, and poverty alleviation

• Training Ambassadors within each organisation how to use FrontlineSMS and how to leverage the software's rapid prototyping capabilities in order to meet needs and outcomes

• Charging individual Ambassadors within each organisation with the promotion and implementation of FrontlineSMS use within their organisations and organisational area of influence

• Recruiting teams of volunteer Ambassadors from civil society

• Enabling individual Ambassadors to report use, constituency impacts and measurable outcomes derived through FrontlineSMS implementation

• The development of a FrontlineSMS Ambassadors website and resource centre

The commitment is due to start in January 2009. Between now and then we're going to need help in two critical areas. If you're a web developer interested in volunteering a little time to help us get a site together, please get in touch. Or, if you have project management skills and are interested in helping plan and co-ordinate this exciting new Programme, drop me a line. Alternatively, if you know anyone else who might be interested in helping out in either of these areas, please let them know. If you're new to FrontlineSMS and want to find out a little more, check out this recent Blog post, or check out the project website.

Help empower the grassroots NGO community, and help take FrontlineSMS to new heights.

Make your own commitment to help us reach ours.

Future FrontlineSMS

Today has turned out to be rather significant for FrontlineSMS. Two months and two days since we released the new version we've hit our 500th download request. Although I didn't set any targets back on launch day, by all accounts we've done incredibly well and FrontlineSMS is now likely the most widely adopted non-profit text messaging platform around.

Of course, many of those 500 users will probably never do anything significant with it, but at least they're thinking about how they can apply mobiles in their work, and at least there's a tool they can turn to as they begin to explore their mobile world. And for those who are beginning to use it, we're slowly building a powerful picture of how it's being adopted in the field. Here's some feedback from just a few of our new users.

Mercy Corps, Indonesia - agriculture: We have been using FrontlineSMS for about a month sending weekly information on commodities such as plant, fish, fertiliser and pesticide prices, and weather forecasts (pictured). In the longer term we plan to send SMS-advertisements as well. Right now we have around 350 subscribers consisting of internal staff, farmers, buyers, government staff and other organisations

FrontlineSMS is also central to a UNDP pilot project where it is being used to provide coffee prices and other related agricultural information to 150 smallholder farmers. This project was previously covered here.

Open University project, UK - election monitoring: We are working in Mozambique where we are setting up coverage for local elections in 43 municipalities on 19th November. We publish the Mozambique Political Process Bulletin and during election periods we do a daily newsletter. We will be running FrontlineSMS with four lines - two for each of the two mobile phone companies. One line will be our fifty correspondents in the field - largely local radio and local newspaper journalists who will also string for us. We did this in the 2003 and 2004 elections and the only change is to use text messages that can go directly into the computer for basic information. The other line will be open and we are experimenting, for the first time in Mozambique, with an open request for citizen correspondents to send us text messages on the conduct of the election

FrontlineSMS first hit the headlines last April when it was used to monitor the Nigerian Presidential elections. This story was picked up by the BBC, among many others. The software has also been used to co-ordinate election monitoring in The Philippines, and is being lined up to help monitor the forthcoming elections in Ghana, Guinea and Cote D'Ivoire.

mPedigree, Ghana - health: We intend to use FrontlineSMS for the "rapid prototyping" of creative mobile health services related to drug authentication, and to help us with our surveying and administration on the prevalence of fake drugs. Based on the work we've been doing here in Ghana since 2007, we're convinced there is room for FrontlineSMS in various e-government initiatives, health included

One of the early higher-profile projects making use of the latest version of FrontlineSMS is "Mobiles in Malawi", where it has been implemented as the central communications hub for 600 community health workers in a rural hospital. Plans are already underway to replicate this work in places such as Kenya and India. The work in Malawi was covered here back in June.

National Democratic Institute, USA - election monitoring: Thanks for all your (collective) work in bringing such a quality product to market. As you may know, NDI has done a lot of work using SMS to collect and broadcast data via SMS in a number of elections around the world over the past two years. The latest version of FrontlineSMS is quite impressive, and much more accessible for non-technical users starting off in the SMS world. Although it can’t replace the custom coding we do through other methods, it’s a GREAT tool for international development partners who don’t have a lot of technical expertise but who want to stick their toe into the world of SMS. FrontlineSMS is now on our radar and something that we will always keep in mind when giving recommendations to partners

Anonymous media organisation, Iraq - news dissemination: We had been in contact with a number of local mobile operators hoping to negotiate the launching of a news alert service. While progress with local operators was relatively slow we started to look for a technical alternative and that was when we found out about FrontlineSMS. The team came to realise, during FrontlineSMS testing and evaluation, that the program was a fantastic way to deliver our content. A user-friendly program, three of our staff were trained to use it within the context of few hours. The effectiveness of FrontlineSMS is evident as we can create, manage and update the profiles of the clients' groups we created. We now send messages to at least eight countries using different operators in Europe and the Middle East, with the messages delivered to all the numbers at the same time. We are keen to continue using FrontlineSMS as we predict that the demand for our services, via the software, will grow in the future

A significant number of rural radio stations have requested the latest version of FrontlineSMS as a method of sourcing audience-feedback, and we'll bring further information as we get it. Use of the software continues in Zimbabwe, however, where it is being used to keep members of the public updated on news and current affairs, and to provide them with a channel to air their views.

Watch this space for further stories and case studies, particularly as our outreach efforts expand and we prepare for nine conferences in three months, not to mention an exciting engagement with the Clinton Global Initiative in late September.

A Malawian perspective on FrontlineSMS

Josh Nesbit - a Senior in the Human Biology Program at Stanford University - spent the best part of this summer working in a rural hospital in Malawi, where he also implemented FrontlineSMS. Here, Alexander Ngalande, the Home-Based Care nurse at St. Gabriel's Hospital in Namitete, talks about his experiences of the software, and how it has impacted healthcare delivery for 250,000 people (video courtesy of Josh Nesbit)

FrontlineSMS on the frontline

The October 7th, 2001 invasion of Afghanistan didn't only mark the beginning of the "War on Terror". It also paved way for the introduction of the first mobile phone networks into the country, networks which today find themselves pawns in a game of cat-and-mouse between the Taleban, the government, security forces, mobile operators and aid agencies working to improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.

Afghanistan is rarely out of the headlines. Just this morning news broke of three women aid workers and their driver being killed near Kabul, demonstrating in the most graphic terms imaginable the huge dangers faced by so many NGOs working there. Decades of invasion, war and fighting has run the country ragged. There can be fewer more dangerous places on earth to work. As recently as July 2008, the Crime and Safety Report described the security situation as remaining "volatile and unpredictable":

"No part of Afghanistan should be considered immune from violence, and the potential exists throughout the country for hostile acts, either targeted or random, against American and other western nationals at any time. There is an on-going threat to kidnap and assassinate U.S. citizens and non-governmental organization (NGO) workers throughout the country. Afghan authorities have a limited ability to maintain order and ensure the security of the citizens and visitors"

In such a challenging and hostile environment, non-profit organisations rightly spend considerable amounts of time and effort doing everything they can to limit their exposure to risk. With improved communication often at the heart of security strategy, many have turned to the growing influence and availability of mobile phone networks in the areas where they operate, and to tools which give them the potential to communicate quickly, widely, efficiently and effectively.

Within months of the US-led invasion in late 2001, the first Afghan mobile networks began to appear. Today, Afghanistan has four privately-owned networks and, according to a recent report by the BBC, mobile phones are the "only way most Afghans are able to communicate, especially in remote areas where they are used to summon medical help or contact relatives". The importance of mobile technology hasn't gone un-noticed by the Taleban either, who have recently been destroying towers in an attempt to stop security forces using the technology to co-ordinate night-time attacks against them. That particular game of cat-and-mouse continues.

Mobile masts aren't the only target either, for the Taleban or invading 'liberating' forces. As is often the case in conflict situations, infrastructure - and innocent civilians - are among the early casualties. Power lines are also a target, presenting further challenges not only for the wider civilian population but also for operators and mobile users alike (photo above of a destroyed power pylon courtesy of Jan Chipchase, "Future Perfect").

Facing a continued and growing security threat, in January 2007 a major international humanitarian organisation approached kiwanja.net and within days started using FrontlineSMS as a field communication solution in their Afghan operations. Today they continue to use the Windows version in their main operations room (see image below), and the newer Mac version is used as a backup by a senior Security Officer. The software is primarily used to quickly pass time-sensitive security information to staff in the field via SMS.

According to the NGO:

Drivers receive updates on traffic congestion, road blocks, police operations, VIP movements, local minor security incidents and anything else that might be useful as they travel. Senior staff receive SMS messages regarding larger security incidents that may require them to modify program activities for the short term. Incidents that influence activities in other areas are sent to the sub-office group. Finally we have an 'All Staff' category for those situations where we need to notify or account for everyone as quickly as possible

As this use of FrontlineSMS demonstrates, the software continues to prove remarkably versatile, and its increasing use in a growing number of non-profit activities is testament to kiwanja's approach to building tools for NGOs, and not to try and build solutions to specific problems. As a forthcoming "Publius Project" guest article argues, communication is a fundamental yet often overlooked NGO need, whether they be working in Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, Pakistan, Nigeria, Aceh or the United States, or working in human rights, activism, environmental protection, health, economic empowerment or education.

Promoting the use of FrontlineSMS among the wider NGO community - particularly those working in conflict zones - whilst at the same time trying to protect identities is a fine balancing act. After the reported killings this morning, I decided to remove the name of the organisation using FrontlineSMS in Afghanistan from this post, even though I was given permission to use it.

However keen I might be to help other NGOs in similar situations get their hands on FrontlineSMS, some things simply aren't worth the risk...

An update following today's attacks outside Kabul:

"... FrontlineSMS was essential for us getting the word out quickly. E-mail was down, voice was spotty but SMS still worked. We had two female staff at a school near the incident and were able to tell them to stay put till things quietened down. All my staff made it home safe today"

Messaging by numbers

With well over four hundred download requests for the new (well, latest) version of FrontlineSMS, it seemed like a good time to dig a little deeper and see if any patterns were emerging. It'll be interesting to do this again in the coming months, and see how or if these numbers have changed over time.

Platform

The first version of FrontlineSMS ran exclusively on Windows machines, and we were keen to expand this to cover other operating systems in the latest release. That said, it comes as no surprise that the majority of new users have requested the Windows version (79%). The majority of Apple Mac requests (13%) came from either techies or users in developed/Western markets, and almost without exception all Linux requests - trailing in third place at 8% - came from the developer or techie community. This reflects what we originally expected, and justifies our original focus on a fully-automated Windows installer, as opposed to the Mac and Linux versions which require a little manual configuration. (This is set to change, however, as we work with Ushahidi on a standard platform-independent installer in the coming weeks).

Location

Geographically we have an interesting spread, with three regions cancelling each other out. Bearing in mind these are the areas of 'residence' - so-to-speak - of the users (and not necessarily their region of focus or operation), North America is slightly ahead at

26%, followed very closely by Africa and Asia (both on 25%). Europe sits back in fourth place (14%), with South America becoming a new 'growth' area for FrontlineSMS, hitting 8% from a standing start back in June. The Middle East makes up for quantity (only 2%) with quality - there are some very interesting FrontlineSMS-activities taking place there at the moment, and I'll hopefully be able to write about them at some stage. As always seems to be the case, the more interesting FrontlineSMS use-studies seem to be in war-torn areas, or areas of political instability.

Purpose

What's particularly interesting about the proposed uses of FrontlineSMS is that there's no clear 'winner' (see below).

Education and economic empowerment programs account for an equal share of 28% of downloads, followed by health projects at 10%, human rights and advocacy work at 9% and - surprisingly - media and arts at 8%. Two surprise packages are the number of youth-focused projects - 6% - and religious - 5%. Further analysis, and a more detailed breakdown of the categories, will be useful as the user-base grows.

So, what does this tell us? Well, it's a bit of a mixed message, but the numbers do give us an early "average FrontlineSMS2.0 user" profile - that of an organisation based in North America (by a whisker), running the Windows version and working in economic empowerment or education. Interesting...

Zimbabweans speak out through SMS

International press interest may be on the wane following the heady heights of recent months, but the daily struggle continues for millions of people living in Zimbabwe. An inflation rate of over two million percent - usually a leading headline in itself - merely serves as a backdrop to the political manoeuvring taking place following the recent flawed presidential 'elections'.

It would be all too easy for people to lose hope, particularly in such a disempowering and disenfranchising environment dominated by fear, government harassment and a largely state controlled media which pushes out its own unique version of the truth. Freedom of speech is only freedom of speech when it comes with freedom from fear, something that many people don't yet have.

But hope, it turns out, is one of the few things many people still do have, and freedom of speech has found an ally in the humble mobile phone. I recently blogged about the use of mobile phones during the ongoing troubles, and highlighted the work of Kubatana.net, a grassroots organisation who have been pioneering the use of mobile technology in civil society work. Since 2005, Kubatana have been using a combination of kiwanja's FrontlineSMS platform, and a couple of other custom applications developed around the technology. Kubatana continue to use it, and continue to reach out to everyday Zimbabweans through the mobile channel - one of only a few available to them.

Back in April, at the height of the troubles, Kubatana asked everyday Zimbabweans: "What would you like a free Zimbabwe to look like?". Zimbabweans answered the call through their mobile phones, texting in their hopes for the future. Many people said that the question gave them hope in uncertain times.

Last week, while doubts lingered over the newly signed MDC/Zanu-PF deal, Kubatana reached out again to their SMS subscribers, asking them: "Kubatana! ZPF and both MDCs agree to talk to resolve crisis. Send yr thoughts on this & give us yr postal or email addr if u want a copy of their agreement". Zimbabweans responded with a range of comments and opinions, including:

The talks is good but MDC must be very clever - Zanu PF wants to swallow the MDC

Yes it’s a brilliant idea which shall help end crisis, poverty and all tribulations in Zimbabwe united we stand divided we fall Tsvangirai showed qualities of being a leader by agreeing to talk

Free and fair elections tomorrow with international observers!

It is long over due but we want justice

May be worth the effort but MDC must keep their eyes open. You can’t trust these guys. I agree with Tsvangirai that people have suffered enough

I believe it’s a good idea if they can reason together in order to solve this crisis. But they must recognise the results of the election done on 29 March

We don’t need masters, colonial or nationalist. We want public servants. So respect our votes of March 29. You asked for them

That’s better because we are suffering. We are stuck and something must be done to save the lives of Zimbabweans

The talks are okay but Mugabe must not lead the government & must step down

For as long as it is something that will result in the fulfilment of our wishes and solve our problems no hard feelings

I think it is a very bad idea for ZPF and MDCs to talk coz they are like water and oil as far as policies are concerned. What happened to ZAPU when it merged with ZPF? I dnt approve of the talks unless they start on the March 29 election which means MDC T would be the winner

No problem as long as the talks result in the formation of transitional authority & fresh, free & fair run-off being conducted thereafter

The talks are very important but MDC must not at all accept a gvt of national unity. They must go 4 a transitional gvt and pave way 4 fresh elections. Zanu PF plans 2 destroy MDC just as they did to ZAPU

In addition to direct comments and opinions, over 300 requests came in for the document to be posted to people, and over 200 for it to be emailed. This, according to Kubatana, is a small indication of just how starved most Zimbabweans are for news about their own country.

The numbers may not yet be huge, but mobiles are certainly beginning to make their mark.

Three is not the magic number...

It's 1.4.7...

One month ago the new version of FrontlineSMS was released. Well over three hundred NGOs responded and downloaded the software, and over a hundred of them have joined the new online community. Apart from the excitement surrounding the software itself, the new community is already proving its worth. I'd easily have settled for a hundred members after one month - hopefully the other two hundred will also see the value and sign up and engage soon.

I'd also have settled for the level of enthusiasm among the practitioner community. As you'd expect, many of the smaller NGOs won't have had a chance to do much with FrontlineSMS in such a short space of time, other than get familiar with the software and maybe run a few internal tests and trials. Some of the larger or better resourced projects have made some headway, however.

One of the most active users is Josh Nesbit in Malawi, who's using FrontlineSMS to drive field communications between a local hospital and its six hundred roaming community health workers (CHWs). He's also managed to set up a number of innovative services, such as automatic cellphone top-ups and a facility which allows CHWs to text in drug names and automatically receive responses on recommended uses and doses. A lot of people seem to be watching what Josh is doing very closely. What makes it so exciting is the fact that it's so highly replicable, not to mention the immediate impact it's having on the hospital and the community it is seeking to serve.

In one of the first microfinance-related applications of the new version, FrontlineSMS is being used by Grameen in Uganda to open up text-based communications with their Village Phone Operator (VPO) network. According to the project:

... We have been using FrontlineSMS to survey VPOs on their experiences at our training sessions and events, distributing information to them ranging from airtime to announcements to outages, and inviting feedback on other selected items through SMS. It really makes our lives easier by giving us a clear record of what’s been sent and responded to that can be reproduced and re-used elsewhere. It also helps us promote a culture of SMS use for communications

FrontlineSMS is also being lined up by the Cambodia Crop Production and Marketing Project (CCPMP). Funded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research, their aim is to improve agricultural value chains as a key to sustainable growth and poverty reduction in Western Cambodia. CCPMP plan to begin workshops and trials of FrontlineSMS in August and September. Further details are available on their project wiki. (FrontlineSMS is already being used to provide coffee prices to smallholder farmers in Aceh, something I blogged about a while ago).

Another project considering FrontlineSMS implementation is a text-based SOS/distress facility for Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs). The programme attempts to maximize the widespread ownership and use of mobile phones by Filipinos at home and abroad, and provide a 24/7 service in case of emergency. Incoming SOS text messages will be forwarded to numerous organisations and agencies capable of responding to various emergency situations. The project has just completed a round of comprehensive testing on the latest version - 1.4.7 - and posted the results on the FrontlineSMS community web pages.

Finally, Ushahidi have just completed their own period of FrontlineSMS evaluation, and are now putting together plans to integrate the platform into their web-based "crisis alert system". Ushahidi was recently listed as one of "Ten Web Startups to Watch" by MIT's Technology Review.

Behind the scenes there's also considerable activity, and we're working with a number of large donor organisations and academic researchers to help them understand the FrontlineSMS user base. Expect some interesting field-based research in the coming months. And in a couple of weeks or so we're releasing the software source code, with a number of developers looking to build on the work we've already started.

I've always believed in the immense value of building an NGO community around a single powerful, shared, open, flexible mobile-messaging solution. After a couple of years it finally looks like it might actually be happening.

Three years on, but still some way to go...

I'm writing this from seat 7D at exactly 38,000 feet somewhere between Forssa and Cambridge. Normally seat 7D would be in first- or business-class, but unfortunately for me I'm on a Ryanair (low cost airline) flight. Nothing fancy here. I'm returning from a short combined work and pleasure trip to Finland, where exactly three years ago I was knee-deep writing the first version of FrontlineSMS.

It was 'seat of the pants' stuff back then. I remember giving a very early interview about the software to Charity Times, even though it was only a third complete and it wasn't totally clear what it was or wasn't going to do. If that wasn't enough, I was also asked for a URL so people could go online for more information. "Of course", I said. With no website yet in place, programming was quickly put on hold for an afternoon while one was hastily deployed. In the absence of an obvious graphic to use for the main banner, and no logo to speak of, I took the liberty of taking a photo of the forest outside (the same forest I used to stare into while trying to decipher numerous unfriendly VB.NET error messages). My forest banner - which did resemble something of a 'frontline', I guess - held firm for two-and-a-half years until it was finally replaced when the new website - properly planned and commissioned, I hasten to add - went live in May.

A lot has changed in three years, and we're not just talking website banners. The initial launch, back in late 2005, went largely unnoticed. I remember spending my evenings trying to identify people who might be interested in writing about it, but it was new, was written by somebody nobody had heard of, had no users, nobody knew if it worked (not even me, to be honest) and nobody knew if anyone would want it. Talk about an uphill struggle. Mike Grenville at 160Characters was the first to see some potential in it, and his post got the ball rolling. A few other sites followed suit, most liking the thinking behind the program more than the program itself. Things slowly began to move, and a few enquiries came in from here and there. One was from Kubatana, who have the great honour of being the first organisation to take a punt on FrontlineSMS (they still use it to this day). Significantly, another email was from the MacArthur Foundation. The huge significance of that mid-November telephone conversation with Jerry wasn't to become apparent for another year-and-a-half or so.

Today, news of the latest version is effortlessly working its way around the web and my Inbox is regularly hit with NGO and press enquiries, people wanting to know if they can help in any way, and a stream of messages of support (there are one or two negative individuals, but luckily they remain well in the minority). There are some great, hugely supportive Blog posts out there, including those by Erik Hersman, Mike Grenville, Sanjana Hattotuwa and Clark Boyd, but also some insightful, short and unusual ones. FrontlineSMS is work in progress, and people seem interested enough to want to come along for the ride.

Cellphone 9 described FrontlineSMS as "The NGO Twitter", while Unthinkingly thought it was "a thoroughly wonderful idea in many ways … If you’re into international rural research with mobile phones. A tool worth watching very closely, it’s what I think is the leading platform of the mobile research 'industry' if there is such a thing". Chromosome LK won the Dramatic Headline competition with their "FrontlineSMS and Sri Lankan Gays" (referring to its use in Sri Lanka by a gay rights group), while Aydin Design decided that one of the really exciting things about FrontlineSMS was "the speed of development - with low resources, putting it in the hands of people now - so they can do things to improve their lives - now", which is exactly what it is trying to do. Isis-Inc - who's strap line is "Technically, it's about sex" (?) - concluded their coverage with "Yay FrontlineSMS!! Access meets elegance!!".

It was Clark Boyd, however, who hit the nail right on the head when he wrote:

Today, FrontlineSMS announced version 2.0. To get a handle on what goes into this, think about it. This platform has to work on hundreds of different handsets and modems, and in languages ranging from Swahili to Cantonese. And it needs to work with Windows, Mac and Linux. Not child's play, and not something that's been done with millions of dollars of backing from major funders

Not one to sit on my laurels, I'm already working on ideas for the next version of FrontlineSMS, and a number of exciting related initiatives, with the support of another major US foundation. FrontlineSMS is a major step forward in kiwanja's efforts to build affordable, appropriate technology solutions for the grassroots NGO community.

But we're by no means there yet...

FrontlineSMS gets active

FrontlineSMS has so far managed to achieve quite a lot with really very little, but that's about to change. After two-and-a-half years of promise, it's finally beginning to look like the software I dreamt of that wet Saturday evening in Cambridge back in early 2005. I've spent the past week putting six months of development through its paces, whilst writing the new User Guide, and am as excited as ever about what this thing can do. One of the most exciting new features are things we've called "FrontlineSMS actions". Here's what they do.

"FrontlineSMS actions" are triggered by keywords which arrive via incoming text messages from patients, farmers, staff, fieldworkers, members of the public or whoever. Once a keyword or phrase is detected, FrontlineSMS can be told to do one of a number of things. These are our "actions":

Auto Reply
FrontlineSMS will automatically send a pre-determined SMS back to the sender of the message (maybe a "Thank you for your message", for example, or clinic opening times, or the current price of matoke)

Auto Forward
FrontlineSMS will automatically forward the incoming message to all members of a pre-determined Group. This can be useful for users who want Group members to be able to contact each other via SMS with latest news, or with urgent announcements (Auto Forward does a similar thing to Twitter)

Join Group
FrontlineSMS will automatically add the sender of the SMS to a pre-determined Group. Again, this is useful for users running a series of user Groups or clubs, and who want people to be able to join automatically by publicising the keyword without them having to make direct contact. A campaign, for example, could say "To join our Control Arms Campaign, text in the word JOIN to 123456789"

Leave Group
Members of Groups can leave any time they like by sending an SMS with a pre-determined keyword or phrase (for example, LEAVE GROUP)

Survey
Allows the running of competitions, Surveys or the soliciting of opinions from people. Any time a message comes in which starts with the pre-determined Survey keyword, FrontlineSMS will keep track of it and allow all responses to be analysed in the SurveyAnalyst module. Surveys or competitions could ask people, for example, to text in the word OPINION followed by their opinion on a certain topic or subject

Email
Keywords can be used to instruct FrontlineSMS to automatically forward an incoming text message to a pre-determined recipient, by email. This might be useful if a Project Manager, or someone in a different country or office, needs to receive emailed details of incoming Survey or campaign text messages, or if users want their messages to be backed up in an email system such as Outlook or Google Mail, or held somewhere for wider forwarding

External Command
To provide maximum functionality, keywords can be set up to trigger the running of external commands or programs on the computer (for example, a batch file or a script). Advanced users could write a batch file which finds out how much free disk space is left on the computer, for example. An incoming SMS with, say, the keywords FREE SPACE could then be set to trigger the running of this batch file, with FrontlineSMS texting the result (i.e. the amount of free disk space) back to the message sender. The External Command function can also be used to instruct FrontlineSMS to send incoming messages to remote servers over the internet, which may be useful as a method of backing up data, or for a website with a news ticker which needs to display all incoming messages for a campaign or event

As I speak - or should that be write? - FrontlineSMS is being tested by around twenty-five NGOs. Over seventy requests to use the new version have been submitted via the website in the past three weeks. Right now we're just ironing out the last few kinks before we make it more widely available to the NGO community. These are exciting times, and going by the feedback we're receiving, we're not the only ones getting excited...

An SMS is an SMS in any language

With users in over forty countries around the world - and growing - keeping FrontlineSMS an English language application was never going to be the way forward. Thanks to some great work from the developers, and with the new FrontlineSMS a matter of days from launch, we're turning our attention to widening language support. Volunteers and supporters from around the world - some of which are members of the FrontlineSMS Supporters Group on Facebook - have been helping us translate the software into other core languages: Portuguese, Spanish, French and Swahili. FrontlineSMS will support these at launch, with additional support in the pipeline for Filipino and Cambodian.

Of course, if we're talking about NGOs, activism and human rights, no SMS platform would be complete without Chinese language support. So here we have it - another one we're including at launch. It's going to be interesting to see how this impacts adoption in China, a country which, so far, has no FrontlineSMS users.

FrontlineSMS and the culture of the goodie-bag

This week sees the launch of the new and improved FrontlineSMS (or, at the risk of jumping on the bandwagon, FrontlineSMS2.0 as I prefer not to call it). As well as support for Windows, Mac and Linux, we're also launching a new website and, through a growing band of global volunteers, gearing up our awareness-raising campaigns. Although this feels like something of a fresh start, FrontlineSMS already has users in over forty countries around the world and continues to generate a buzz of excitement among NGOs who come into contact with it. Next week will also see the new FrontlineSMS debut at Global Messaging Congress 2008 in Cannes, where I'm doing a keynote address on the use of mobiles - text messaging, more specifically - among the global NGO community. This follows on from my February talk at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Although most mobile industry events continue to be dominated by money-makers, aspiring money-makers and deal-breakers, it's refreshing to see NGO work finally gaining traction. Clearly, as more and more companies turn their attention towards emerging markets we'll see an increasing emphasis on the 'bottom of the pyramid' at these kinds of events.

With the exception of my twenty-five minute talk, the remainder of the two-day conference turns its attention back to mobile advertising, the mobile web, user experience, messaging business models, the role of IM and the future of mobile messaging. There will also be the chance to unwind with colleagues at the Global Messaging Awards bash, which I helped judge last month. It's going to be a very interesting couple of days, and I'm looking forward to hearing from some of the leaders in their field and exploring ways of leveraging some of this innovation for the benefit of the non-profit community.

And, just to be sure that on their way home no-one forgets the considerable impact of mobile technology to promote positive social and environmental change around the world, delegates will get a FrontlineSMS goodie-bag. I won't spoil the surprise, but let's just say that the contents will help remind them of the considerable challenges many mobile users face in the developing world.

Thanks to Wieden+Kennedy for the cute photo.

Text messaging. Democracy. Coffee

What a week for FrontlineSMS. Activity was already on the rise - we're preparing for the launch of a new version of the software at Global Messaging 2008 in Cannes next month - but with news breaking this week on its use in Zimbabwe by Kubatana.net has come an additional flurry of press and user activity.

A number of Africa, technology and mobile blogs picked up on the latest report after I wrote about here earlier in the week. The sites quickest to the news included SmartMobs, Global Voices, DigiActive, Black Looks and Kabissa, with numerous other personal blogging sites continuing to link through.

Yesterday, a news item on "The World" also went out across public radio in the United States, where their Technology Correspondent interviewed kiwanja and Kubatana about how the software has been used in Zimbabwe. A three minute audio is available here (MP3, 2Mb).

Interestingly, this increase of interest has lead a number of sites to re-visit the use of FrontlineSMS in providing coffee prices to farmers, a subject I covered a couple of weeks earlier, here. The more notable sites to pick up on this has again been Global Voices, Ode Magazine and none-other than The Independent, who list kiwanja's blog entry on the subject among its "Pick of the Blogs" for 9th April ("From conception to replication").

All of this has lead to a flurry of activity from the non-profit community, with enquiries coming from far and wide - the United States, Cameroon, Trinidad and Tobago, Fiji, France and Uganda among many others. FrontlineSMS users around the world are slowly beginning to connect.

With so much already achieved with what is still technically the Beta release of the software, next month is very significant not only for FrontlineSMS, but also for the global NGO community who desperately need these kinds of tools in their work.

FrontlineSMS comes of age

Two-and-a-half years in the making, FrontlineSMS is finally shedding its Beta status and will soon, finally, be launched to the NGO community as a fully-blown product. Although it's taken much longer than I'd have hoped, at least we've had ample time to listen to the users and got the clearest possible indication of what we needed to add, remove, tweak and improve to make it more useful and relevant. The Beta - proof-of-concept as it was - naturally had its problems, but thanks to a great team of developers the new version is on target to exceed even my own expectations.

We're still in Beta in the new release (but at least it will get out of it this time!) and things are still a little rough in places. Many of the finishing touches are scheduled for later in the development cycle, but the software is already beginning to take shape and neatly builds on the current FrontlineSMS look and feel which we know works well.

Here's a sneak preview of just a few of the things we've been working on.

We've built two user interfaces in the new version - a Classic and Advanced view - allowing the user to determine how much functionality they want to be exposed to. Beginners will be happy with the Classic, which looks and feels pretty-much like the current release. We've also added right-click menu functionality, making things quicker, easier and more accessible throughout, and 'handles' which allow different elements of the screen to be expanded or reduced in size depending on how much the user needs or wants them.

A choice of database options are now available, allowing incoming and outgoing message data to be read and shared by other applications. Incoming messages can also be 'posted' automatically to web servers, or passed to other running programs which can then deal with them independently. There are also improved data import options allowing, for example, groups of contacts to be easily brought into the database, with generated message data more easily exportable from a number of modules in a number of popular export formats. One of the problems with the current version was that the data, useful as it was, wasn't easily accessible by anything other than FrontlineSMS. Not quite so useful.

Device installation and configuration is now largely automated in the brand new PhoneManager module, with auto-detect and auto-configure functionality. FrontlineSMS scans the host computer, looks for modems and phones (which can be internal devices, or connected via USB or bluetooth), determines whether they're any use, and then sets them up if they are. Multiple devices can be used at the same time, and each can be configured exclusively to send messages, or purely to receive, depending on what the user requires. A wide variety of GSM modems and phones will be supported at launch, with simple driver creation possible for new devices as they hit the market. Long gone are the handset headache issues of version 1.0

Additional functionality includes support for SMPP, which will allow messages to be blasted through SMS aggregators such as Clickatell. This will make it possible to send large numbers of messages far more quickly and cheaply than via any attached device, if and when an internet connection is available. The new FrontlineSMS will also be platform independent, so Mac and Linux users no longer need feel left out.

Of course, this is only half of the project. A team at Wieden+Kennedy are working hard to re-brand the software and build a simple, functional, accessible website, work which is also going fantastically well. But that's the subject of an entirely different blog post altogether...

All of this work - the application itself and the website - will be publicly launched on 8th May at Global Messaging 2008 in Cannes, where I've been invited to give a keynote speech - "Mobile messaging as a means of empowerment: How has SMS been harnessed by NGOs around the globe?".

Two weeks later, 22nd May, sees FrontlineSMS feature as a finalist in the Stockholm Challenge where it's been selected for its use in monitoring the 2007 Nigerian elections. The project then enters a new phase on 1st June as the MacArthur Foundation funding ends and a new grant from the Open Society Institute (OSI) begins.

I've always felt that FrontlineSMS had a huge amount of potential. Thanks to a dedicated team - supporters, users, developers, bloggers and donors among them - we may soon start to see it.

From conception to replication

Tonight, a hundred and fifty farmers and their families who I have never met will be going to bed better off. Not only is this significant for the farmers, it's also significant for me. Because without FrontlineSMS, which is being used to provide coffee prices to these smallholder farmers, this would not be happening.

There's a tendency to think that, as a free entry-level texting solution, FrontlineSMS is only relevant for smaller, grassroots non-profits who are most likely to lack the funds or in-house expertise to develop their own solutions. Over the past couple of years I've begun to see otherwise. As a case in point, this coffee project is being run by the UN. Not the suited, New York-based UN you see on TV, but a field-based team of UN staff and volunteers who simply wanted to try something. All they needed was a simple, low-cost tool which allowed them to rapidly prototype their idea.

Today, using FrontlineSMS, their pilot project is distributing prices from five large buyers to about 150 farmers, village leaders and farmers groups by SMS in a classic "market transparency" intervention. And it's working. Prices are going up for farmers, and the buyers are getting access to more quantity and better quality. Prices are collected via phone once a week and within ten minutes are entered into FrontlineSMS and sent out. The project has been successfully running for several months.

What's notable is the benefit this project brings to the coffee dealers, the middlemen. Usually tarnished as unscrupulous and exploitative, they also have families and also need to make a living. Rather than cutting them out altogether they have been brought on board, and their reward is better quality coffee and access to larger quantities of beans.

Of course, there are countless "market price" examples out there, but what makes this significant, for me at least, is that they used a tool that any organisation working on economic empowerment or market issues could use. Unlike the Kerala fishing example, where mobile phones helped fishermen in southern India increase their profits in a similar way, this latest UN project is using freely available, NGO-specific, easy to implement named software. Interested NGOs simply have to Google "FrontlineSMS" and - if they choose - learn about it, download it and use it themselves. Barriers need to come down, and they are.

But issues of cost, replicability and knowing what's possible remain three of the biggest hurdles to mobile adoption among the grassroots conservation and development communities, something I regularly blog about. As yet, this UN project is undocumented (which is why I can't be more specific), so the knowledge is largely confined locally to where they work. Hopefully this will change. For the hundred and fifty coffee farmers involved in this project the concept has been well and truly proven, but for countless thousands of others, it hasn't. Our challenge is to make it so.

When actions DO speak louder than words

Winston Churchill once famously remarked that it was "better to be making the news than taking it. To be an actor rather than a critic". But there are times when this simplifies, and trivialises, the complementary roles that 'actors' and 'critics' can play. Half-a-century on, modern technology has empowered 'critics' in ways Churchill could never have imagined.

In 1984 a BBC news crew, accompanied by reporter Michael Bourke, travelled to Ethiopia and brought news of a growing humanitarian crisis to the worlds' attention. "A biblical famine in the 20th Century" and "The closest thing to hell on Earth" was how he described it. The international community were shocked into action, and the following summer saw Live Aid - Bob Geldof's massive mobilisation of the music industry which helped raise hundreds of millions for the famine victims. Michael Bourke - 'critic' turned 'actor'.

Today, modern-day blogging is creating mini-Michael Bourke's the world over. Human rights violations, environmental vandalism, political killings, oppression against citizens, animal cruelty and unlawful detentions make the news from all corners of the globe, made possible by brave souls empowered by mobile and internet technologies. The line between 'actor' and 'critic' is becoming increasingly blurred, if it exists at all anymore. Recent events in Kenya - which have spurned the creation of Ushahidi.com - is a perfect case in point.

A few short days ago, good friend Erik Hersman (who Blogs as the widely read and highly respected White African) aired his frustration at the lack of news coming out of the country from the man and woman on the street. In "It's Not About Us, It's About Them", Erik noted:

"While blogging, emails, Twitter and the internet are doing a great deal of good getting the news out of what’s going on in Kenya to the rest of the world, I find myself troubled. You see, the communication that needs to be happening is at the grassroots level. Everyday Kenyans do not have access to any of these services. Let’s put our minds and capabilities towards solving real problems for people beyond the technologically elite"

True to his word, just five days later saw the launch of Ushahidi.com, a site which allows Kenyans to report acts of violence via the web and SMS, incidents which are then aggregated with other reports and displayed on a map. Ushahidi - which means "witness" in Kiswahili - provides an avenue for everyday Kenyans to get their news out, and news of its launch has been widely hailed in the mainstream press (and the Blogosphere, funnily enough). Putting Ushahidi together is a textbook study in rapid prototyping and collaboration, and Erik takes a huge amount of credit for blurring the 'actor' and 'critic' distinction yet further by pulling his finger out and actually doing something. As he says, when all the dust settles in Kenya, he doesn’t want to be one of the ones saying “I should have done something”.

From a personal perspective, Bloggers such as Erik have been hugely supportive of kiwanja's work, without which there would have been little chance of initiatives such as FrontlineSMS and nGOmobile ever getting off the ground. nGOmobile alone has generated interest from over seventy grassroots NGOs, all of whom are now in with a chance of winning equipment to run their own text messaging services. FrontlineSMS has empowered NGOs in over forty countries from all corners of the globe. Essential to this has been a dedicated band of supporters, including White African, ZapBoom, Tactical Tech, ShareIdeas, Textually.org, Ore's Notes, Total Tactics, Black Looks, Saidia.org and 160Characters, among many others.

Whether or not we're 'actors' or 'critics' - and whether or not it really matters - we all have a valuable role to play. Ushahidi shows us just how valuable that role can be.