Out of nothing comes something

I don't usually work on planes, even eleven hour transatlantic flights. But this time I thought I'd give it a go - maybe do something a little bit more interesting than reading reports or doing email. So I plumped for this. I've wondered for a while what the FrontlineSMS footprint is, you know, where it's been used since the launch just over two years ago. So I did the grunt work on the plane and have just thrown it onto a map. And here it is.

The totals are quite impressive. It turns out that FrontlineSMS is being used in 41 different countries, and in some cases by more than one NGO in that country. I counted over 60 uses of the software, too. From helping blood donor clinics and human rights workers to promoting government accountability, keeping medical students informed about education options, providing security alerts to field workers, the capture and exchange of vegetable (and coffee) price information, the distribution of weather forecasts, the co-ordination of healthcare workers, the organising of political demonstrations, the carrying out of surveys and the reporting and monitoring of disease outbreaks. Oh, and election monitoring, of course. There are many more. I knew the tool was flexible but, for the first time having this information available has been a real eye-opener.

The latest version of FrontlineSMS is being developed as we speak, with work on a new website underway. We have a fantastic product, a great vibe in the non-profit world, increasing publicity and a great donor in the MacArthur Foundation. There are also plans afoot for an exciting global launch at a major GSM Association event in Cannes next May. Momentum is at an all-time high, and proposals for the next phase of development, starting mid-2008, are already out.

From nothing, apparently, comes something...

Considering Africa

During the summer, sandwiched between the end of my first Stanford Fellowship and a trip to Uganda with Grameen, I was asked by the Corporate Council on Africa to give an interview about my work. They were putting together a feature on "ICT innovators" for their Africa Journal, and wanted to talk about FrontlineSMS. I'm always happy to talk about my work - after all, I rely on this kind of interest to get word out about what I do - and am constantly surprised at the level of interest I get.

This week I finally saw a copy of the Journal. They had chosen to interview just three individuals, quite likely due to time and space constraints, but I found myself in the company of a couple of hugely talented Africans doing great work to further the advance of ICT on their continent. Funnily enough, one of them was Nam Mokwunye, a good friend of mine from Stanford, running an ambitious project to connect 100 Nigerian universities. Being seen as someone "whose localised solutions have greatly contributed to Africa's ICT infrastructure" felt strangely odd since I don't generally see myself as doing that. I am happy to simply be in a place where I can help others achieve their own goals and dreams.

The community conundrum. Continued...

Last week I was called up by a Researcher at Berkeley wanting me to take part in a survey. After a conference in February this year, intriguingly entitled "The UN Meets Silicon Valley", a number of initiatives were now beginning to emerge (I was invited to the conference, but it didn't really seem like my kind of thing, despite having had the pleasure of working with the organisation recently). Yes, the gathering was over eight months ago, but we are talking the UN here (I did say this wasn't my kind of thing, didn't I?). According to the official conference announcement:

The United Nations meets the Silicon Valley to explore how technology and industry can bolster development. Prominent members of industry, academia, and the venture capital community will take the stage alongside members of the Strategy Council of the Global Alliance for ICT and Development to discuss the partnership between the public and private sectors in the field of ICT and development

It turns out that one of the key outputs from the conference was a call for the creation of some kind of community website, where technology companies in the Valley could connect with the ICT4D community 'out there' and become a catalyst for great things. The research taking place now hopes to determine what this community might look like, how it might work, and what it might actually do. Although its aims may be admirable, the thought of yet another community drives me to despair. I'll happily be proved wrong - I wasn't obstructive and did make a number of suggestions during my 30 minute conversation with the Researcher - but I can't help but wonder where our continued obsession with community lies and why it continues to be something we find so hard to crack.

I'm no expert, but I guess you can put online communities into at least two categories - those built around small, micro-specific interest areas - such as a ban on a particular product or company, or the running of a local sports club - and those at the opposite end of the spectrum, the macro-non-specific areas. There are probably millions of examples of the first category, but far fewer of the second. Facebook and MySpace are the two obvious global gorillas that spring to mind (interestingly, the Groups feature in Facebook quite likely provides the platform for many of the newer micro-specific groups, many of which are humorous in nature and seem to serve no specific purpose other than to be funny). When we look at building communities for the more serious ICT4D, or mobile-related communities, it does no harm to look at how the Facebook ecosystem works. Why, for example, has it proved relatively painless for me to attract over 850 members to the Social Mobile Group, a group I set up to tap into the wider interest in mobile phones beyond the activist and professional communities? What motivates people to join that group, rather than some of the others outside of Facebook (or even within Facebook, for that matter)? Tough questions.

For me, one of the key issues has always been one of motivation. You know, the "Why should I make the effort to register myself on this site?" conundrum. Very few sites have really cracked this because few have been able to effectively deconstruct this motivational puzzle. And even when people are convinced that it's worth their while registering on a site, getting them active is another thing. After all, you may be able to lead someone to a community, but you can't make them post. Maybe one key advantage of Facebook is that once you're registered you can show your support for multiple causes or interest groups with a couple of simple mouse clicks. If the act of registering is the problem, how to we get around that? No registration equals no idea who the members are, and what kind of community is that? Or, is knowing who's in a community a defining factor of that community?

My Facebook experiment has expanded recently with the creation of the FrontlineSMS Supporters Group. Within the next few months the main FrontlineSMS website will be re-launched with a range of new features for the growing family of FrontlineSMS users, and others interested in mobile use in developing countries. When it comes to building a true, active community around it though, I remain hesitant. But one thing's for sure - I'll continue watching what's happening on Facebook. I'm sure the answer lies in there somewhere...

(For an earlier Blog posting where I look at the more prominent mobile-based sites - community and otherwise - check out "View from the front row" in the August archive)

The unpicking of FrontlineSMS

Going by the title of this Blog post you might be expecting a little online session for prospective FrontlineSMS users. You know the kind - what it is, what it does, where it's been used and so on. Well, however useful that might be, this posting is more for my benefit. It's time for a spot of thinking out loud...

FrontlineSMS started life in 2005 as a classic example of evolutionary prototyping - in other words, the act of throwing something together and then sticking it out there and waiting to see what happens. Apart from a hunch and a small grant from a couple of early converts, there was little proof that anyone would be interested in the software, let alone make the effort to use it. I remember to this day talking about it during an interview with Charity Times in the early summer of 2005. I was still in Finland at the time, writing the code, when it dawned on me that it might be a good idea to put together a website if I was going to start talking to major industry magazines. (Incidentally, the Charity Times interview was already lined up - I just managed to convince them that it would be good to put out a "call for trialists" in the article). So programming was put on hold for a day while I very quickly put together a website. (In case you were wondering, the top banner on the FrontlineSMS website is actually the view from the lounge window where FrontlineSMS was written. It seemed kind-of relevant, in the absence of anything better to put there).

So, FrontlineSMS was let loose on the world during the last couple of months of 2005, and it was then a case of sitting back and waiting to see what happened. There never was a big plan, no big intention, no big vision. Not only did I not have the budget or capacity to do much else, I didn't know what else I could do. But herein lay the beauty of the project, for me at least. If it was going to be a success then the very people it was meant to empower would need to play a big part. I never wanted to force anything onto anyone, never wanted to have to "sell" the idea, so it was down to grassroots NGOs to somehow find out about FrontlineSMS and then find a use for it. If that didn't happen then there probably wasn't a need in the first place. If that was the case, I thought to myself, I'll let my hunch go and move on to something else.

Well, as it turned out the hunch wasn't a bad one, and FrontlineSMS has come on a long way since that heady Finnish summer two years ago. In addition to there being funding (thanks to the MacArthur Foundation), there now is a plan, and a vision. But despite there being more structure to the project, the software continues to surprise me - and that's why it's such a great project to work on. Okay, the Nigerian election monitoring was great, as was its use in the Philippine elections shortly after (this wasn't so widely reported) and the overall response from the community. But despite feeling more in control in recent months, it turns out that FrontlineSMS is doing some pretty exciting stuff out there that I'm only beginning to hear about. (Keeping in contact with grassroots NGOs working in pretty remote areas presents its own challenges, so I do have an excuse). So my learning continues...

So, what have I learnt recently? Well, two things in particular. Over the past few months it seems that FrontlineSMS has not only been merrily sending out security alerts to field workers in Afghanistan (a conflict zone if ever there was one), but it's also been providing market prices to several thousand farmers in Indonesia. None of this should surprise me - FrontlineSMS is a tool, after all, and it can be used for many different things. I've always maintained that the software would end up being used for things I'd never dream of, and on that note at least I have been proved right.

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...

Bridging the knowledge divide

A common theme in my work, and in many of my conference talks, centres around a very simple message - appropriate technology. It's nothing new, and as a concept has been around since the 1970's with Fritz Schumacher's defining book, "Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered". During my recent interview with Nokia's "New Horizons" magazine, however, it was interesting that the conversation was entirely appropriate-technology focussed. I was expecting questions about FrontlineSMS, my work on wildlive! and my developing-country technology experience. Instead, the interview was dominated by my focus on "needs-based", "human-centred", "grassroots" and "appropriate" technologies. Believe me, I was more than happy to talk about these things - I don't think enough people do.

It still surprises me - sometimes even saddens me - that we live in an era where there's a general tendency to over-engineer solutions. Not only is this a waste of time in my view, but it's a waste of money and effort. It also raises expectations. Believe me, there's plenty of this going on as we speak (sorry, read). I come across this at conferences where I meet hugely technically-abled people who spend their time trying to find homes for the very latest technical gadgetry. And because of where I work, and the circles where I mix, the home they are looking for is usually in a developing country. This only serves to exaggerate the problem.

Take the recent use of my FrontlineSMS system in the Nigerian elections. FrontlineSMS is not rocket science. It's so simple, in fact, that it slipped under most people's radars. One comment on Slashdot discussing its use highlights this over-engineering view well:

It's too simple. You guys don't know what you are talking about. Doing it all with one computer and an SMS modem? You can't future proof it that way. I want to see some mention of CORBA and SOAP. How can you have a system without middleware? Can you use dot NET? Everybody uses that these days. And what if I want to use it when I am already on the phone. Can't it have a WAP interface as well? I want to sell a thousand copies of this thing and nobody is going to pay a million bucks for something which doesn't use a single cutting edge technology

There is certainly no written rule that everything has to be cutting edge. Very little, in essence, is. Is Google cutting edge? There were plenty of other search engines around before they came along. All they did was see the opportunity, do it better and hit the target. Over the coming weeks I'm going to be spending a lot of time discussing mobile phone use, and web access, in developing countries. I'll soon be presenting a paper - the same one presented at W3C in Bangalore last December - at the 16th International World Wide Web Conference in Banff, and sitting on an expert panel at the same event. And my message will be the same as it has always been.

Although it should come as no surprise that there's a gulf between many developers and the realities of life in developing countries, there have been attempts to bring the two together. Some have worked better than others, but at least there's a realisation that a meeting-of-minds is needed. If you want a simple, effective example as to why, take a look at the handsets being used by the majority of rural people in developing countries (see photo, taken in India this January). Then have a think about how Java, Flash Lite, WAP and smart-phone applications would go down with these users. Okay, one day these technologies will become relevant, but right now I would argue that they're not. SMS is still the killer application, like it or not. And, on the subject of web access on mobile devices, I would also argue that we haven't quite mastered it ourselves yet. Generally-speaking the user experience still leaves a lot to be desired.

I'm not the only person who thinks this way. Far from it. And I'm looking forward to meeting the others, and our technically-minded colleagues, in Canada next month. Time to re-open the debate...

Citizen journalism or citizen empowerment?

It's been a funny old week. After last weeks Mongabay.com interview, news broke on another subject - the use of my FrontlineSMS system in the monitoring of the Nigerian elections this coming weekend. NMEM, the Nigerian NGO who are running the project, will be using volunteer observers to text in any observations (good or bad) as they go through the voting process. There has been a lot of talk in recent months (and years) about citizen journalism - people reporting on news in their area - but what is happening now, with software such as FrontlineSMS, is more citizen empowerment. The difference here is that with empowerment they not only report on their surroundings - they are suddenly able to fully engage and influence the outcome.

NMEM, whose mission is to "encourage the Nigerian electorate to participate in the electoral process", are a non-profit group of young professionals in Nigeria advocating for social change through good governance. NMEM had the mission, NMEM had the passion and NMEM had the commitment and vision to drive this forward. NMEM also found FrontlineSMS, and they took the software and ran with it. With the exception of several emails and the odd 3am phone call (!) they have been pretty much alone in this venture. The story is really theirs.

This is just the beginning. The future is not citizen journalism - it's citizen empowerment...

BBC: Texts monitor Nigerian elections

"We want to set a precedent," said Emauwa Nelson of the Human Emancipation Lead Project, a Nigerian NGO that helped set up the project."We want people to know that if they are trying to rig the election, there could be someone behind them and that person may send a text message saying what happened."

Read more on the BBC website.

FRONTLINESMS ALLOWS YOU TO TEXT MESSAGE WITH LARGE GROUPS OF PEOPLE ANYWHERE THERE IS A MOBILE SIGNAL.

A lack of communication can be a major barrier for grassroots non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working in developing countries. FrontlineSMS is the first text messaging system created exclusively with this problem in mind.

By leveraging basic tools already available to most NGOs — computers and mobile phones — FrontlineSMS enables instantaneous two-way communication on a large scale. It’s easy to implement, simple to operate, and best of all, the software is free. You just pay for the messages you send in the normal way.