http://www.google.com/reader/shared/02697373737674703637

Mobile Takeover: How cell phones are leading to economic and democratic progress
Professor Iqbal Z. Quadir (Founder, GrameenPhone)

• Professor Quadir works at the Legatum Centre for MIT which encourages entrepreneurship in developing countries as a means of economic growth.
• “For-profit is a healthy thing”
• “Concentration of resources is related to economic degradation” For example concentration of power.
• “Governments managing people” versus “People managing governments”. Democratization usually leads from the former to the latter.
• England’s move towards a more egalitarian state started from tax collection
• “The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it.” – Woodrow Wilson
• Commented on the title for The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists’ Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics by William Easterly. He was referring to the fact that economists can get away with being deemed adventurous where as other professions, such as say doctors, couldn’t possibly refer to their forays in health as adventures. Showing a stark difference in how we perceive health and poverty. Not much of a feedback loop when it comes to economic endeavors in the developing regions.
• “Connectivity is productivity”
• Myth debunking: “Poor people are resources” NOT “Poor people are recipients”
• Recommended reading: “Global Heroes”, The Economist; “The world turned upside down”, The Economist; “The Other Greeks: The Family Farm and the Agrarian Roots of Western Civilization” by Victor Davis Hanson

Katrin Verclas, MobileActive.org: Mobiles and Non-Profits

• Planning to read her report Wireless Technology for Social Change: Trends in NGO Mobile Use
• Interesting point: Phones are far more intimate than computers and this should be kept in mind when designing mobile campaigns.
• Case studies for mobile usage in advocacy:
  • Greenpeace Argentina – Text Messaging to Save Trees
  • It’s OUR Healthcare! (IOH) – How to Run a Text-to-Screen Campaign
  • Pathways to Housing: Interactive Texts Involve You in Public Spaces
• Reference to YouTube DIRECT which allows you to embed the upload functionality of YouTube directly into your own site.
• TXTual Healing: Projecting messages onto interactive SMS displays across urban areas.
• Requesting and receiving information via text message:
  • Climate Counts – Get climate related information for a company by using the keyword cc plus the company name to short code 30644 in the United States
  • The Blue Ocean Institute | Fishphone – “To find out about your seafood choice, text 30644 with the message FISH and the name of the fish in question. We’ll text you back with our assessment and better alternatives to fish with significant environmental concerns.”
• Mobile possibilities:
  • Blue-tooth advertising
  • Blackberry Messaging (BBM)
  • Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD): Short session based messaging e.g. for getting minutes for pre-paid phone plans.
  • Interactive SMS (iSMS)
  • FrontlineSMS
  • Mobile websites
• Preventing abuse: Mobile Marketing Association Code of Conduct
• Cost: India and South East Asia have the cheapest vendors as of now. Looking to see how Bharti buying Zain will affect markets elsewhere. PINK!. Sorry just had to. Every time I think of Zain I think of pink. Deep, vibrant, shocking pink!

Lisa Campbell Salazar, TakingITMobile

This was a remote presentation via Skype. Was a little difficult to follow but I got a better idea of what the aim was when I visited the project website. Mostly gathering data from a number of developing countries regarding how youth use mobile technology.

Michelle Hamilton Page Toronto Public Health, Proximity Marketing

• Hyper Tag: A wearable device which can broadcast / transfer information via blue-tooth. Michelle spoke about past and future campaigns utilizing this device. The phones receiving the information have to be set to discoverable and the user has the capability to accept or reject a transmission request.
• inspot.org: STD notification / encouragement for testing e-cards. This was a service one of the Toronto Public Health campaigns was promoting. The conversion rate (in this case the number of phones observed versus phones reached) was fairly high. However there seemed to be more of a focus on dissemination and less on the final goal. Michelle mentioned though that they are planning to improve their analysis methods.
• UrbanDNA: The company Toronto Public Health chose to partner with for this particular kind of campaign.
• Observation: Mass distribution did not work well for them and they found one-on-one got a lot more people involved.
• Short Code woes: Need to make sure you own them. Could end up in a situation where you lose them after they’ve been established as branding or marketing contact points.

Kelisha Peart, Black CAP

• Case Study: Focus groups in targeted regions within the Greater Toronto Area
• Interesting results. See website for more details

Hima Bhatavia for Jim Monis, Mobile Giving Foundation:

Company started in the United States and from what I gathered they proceeded to form partnerships with mobile carriers which allow users to use short codes to donate money to charities. The donation shows up on their cellphone bill at the end of the month. The Mobile Giving Foundation charges each charity around $350 to sign up and sends out checks every 60-90 days. Currently there seem to be a number of partner organizations which facilitate the process such as ZipGive.

Andrew D’Amico, ZipGive

• Currently running the Young Artists for Haiti campaign
• Maximum donation cap: Set to $30 since if a user chooses not to pay their bill, the carrier gets saddled with the cost.
• However there is the potential to activate monthly donations or a multi-layered pledge option for larger donations.
• Does not have GEO tagging capability (Important consideration pointed out by Dale Zak)
• Currently all text outs are handled by ZipGive. They have their own databases of users which can be populated by data you provide. I believe the software has the capability to allow companies to send out their own text outs, but for the moment it’s centralized to prevent abuse. But I think down the road there should be more control within the individual companies. It would probably cost less and save time spent communicating with the middle man.
• Feedback loops need strengthening i.e. a means of co-relating texts sent out with number of users who followed up on them
• Premium text messages: One of the audience members wondered why those are not being used instead of the short codes. Apparently there isn’t a cap on the donation amount in those cases. According to the presenters, the charities do not get a 100% of the proceeds of premium text messages and some carriers have chosen to disable this option since it has been known for abuse.
• SMS vs QR Codes: Unfortunately I don’t know much about QR codes but according to the presenters these tend to be restricted to applications within smart phones. If any of you have any addition information, feel free to use the comments sections of this post.

Measuring Success on Mobile, Katrin Verclas (mobilebenchmarks.org)

Kartrin recently launched a website which is related to collecting, analyzing and disseminating information about metrics related to using mobile technology for advocacy, fund raising etc. MobileActive partnered with M+R Strategic Services for this project. Some interesting things which came up during this conversation:

• Keyword opt-in is really low
• Even though you may have blocked your cellphone number so that people can’t see it when you call, it will still be displayed in you text message them.
• Important to consider churn rate (rate at which mobile numbers go bad)
• A re-opt in is required if you switch carriers even if there is number portability
• Incentive to participate can be good e.g. free airtime.
• Emphasis on the FailFast concept i.e. by all means try but know when to quit.

Mobile Volunteerism Dale Zak Apps4Good.ca

I could not make it for this one since it was at the same time as Katrin’s but be sure to check out the website and I’ll try and post up any related presentation material as soon as I can get hold of it.

Workshop: Building Mobile into My Communication Strategy, HJC

By this point I was a little wiped out. There were some interesting projects people were working on but all in all I don’t think many people had come with a specific project in mind. Most seemed to be considering the potential.

Random Observations at the Conference:

• Everyone had a Mac with the exception of one Thinkpad and my Dell.
• Majority had iPhones and Blackberrys. Katrin and I seemed to be the only ones with Android based smart phones.
• The digital installation was AWESOME. It was called SEED and the idea was that you could call in a local number and a seed would appear on the screen which was attributed to you. You could then use phone keys to grow and spread your tree. After you were finished, your virtual tree would be added to the virtual forest and Evergreen would plant a real tree in lieu of the one you created virtually.
• Marigolds & Onions: I really liked lunch so here’s a shout out to the caterers.
• Twitter tag for the conference: #ncwk
• Last but not least shout out to the organizers for a great event!
• And yes I know there are not enough pictures primarily because I forgot to take along my SLR.

One of a websites I worked on a couple of months ago is now on TTC streetcars and other vehicles!

TechKnowFile 2010 was held on the 26th of May at University of Toronto. It was basically a one day conference with the usual keynote speaker and multiple breakout sessions you could choose from. In this post I am going to be sharing some highlights and my thoughts on the content.

Oddly enough I wasn’t supposed to be presenting, only facilitating a demo. Yet it somehow worked out that I ended up having a fair bit to say. Interesting experience.

Scholars, Scholarship and the Scholarly Enterprise in the Digital Age
Richard Katz, Vice President, EDUCAUSE

The event kicked off with a keynote from Richard N. Katz of EDUCAUSE and ECAR. The primary focus of the presentation was on scholarship then and now. He drew from his own experiences in research and compared them to current scholars who could get access to primary sources over the internet within a fraction of the time it would have taken him 20-30 years ago. He also discussed open universities such as University of Phoenix which has approximately 300,000 students and how University of Toronto has to keep all this in context when planning for the future and being competitive in the modern world.

One other topic he touched upon was the rise of private/public institutions other than Universities which are being given equal importance of late when it comes to being experts in certain fields. In his view, they tend to be pursuing their own agenda unlike supposedly institutes of higher learning which are more broad in their approach. I don’t necessarily agree with this though. Universities of late are becoming more and more focused on the financial bottom line and very often research is based on which industry giant is willing to fund it. Obviously the company/industry involved is only going to end up funding projects which work in their favor majority of the time.

One thing I did like about his talk though was his emphasis on how fast things change. He referred to the current crisis in the newspaper industry and how whilst they were still working towards improving presses, the internet completely took over and got rid of the need for presses in the first place. This again was a recurring cautionary tale across the conference.

Vegan Cats and the Oncoming Tsunami – Marden Paul

Marden Paul was probably the most engaging speaker I’ve come across in some time. Flew off tangents every five minutes but on a larger scale his concepts seemed to be a cohesive whole.

The vegan cat phenomenon stemmed from meat requiring more energy to process it than that required to process vegetables. Around 9 times as much. So eventually meat will become a commodity and cats being one of few entirely carnivore beings could be in a bit of fix. Preparing for the future, one may choose to slowly encourage cats to eat vegetables and maybe eventually push evolution to the point that you end up with vegan cats. This was more of a metaphor for planning for the future in a number of spheres and his suggestion for being Bifocular i.e. managing to look at the immediate and the distant future simultaneously. There was a sarcastic reference to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe SEP (Somebody Else’s Problem) concept too.

There was also some discussion on how other universities are changing the way they do business. For example Arizona State University which has outsourced all information technology services. This may seem extreme but could potentially work well in areas often disrupted by natural disasters, thus less loss and existing infrastructure to turn to when rebuilding.

One of the questions from the audience was a bit thought provoking. A gentleman suggested that there is a tendency among universities to be either leftist or centre focused with regard to their policies and that does at times shut out other opinions.

Yet another suggestion from the audience regarding matching profiles to courses similar to match.com got me thinking about an android application aggregating course information using web services from each department. Unfortunately that went up in smoke when the realization hit me that majority of the departments still set up course calendars manually and don’t have database back ends.

eMarX – Extending functionality in ROSI Express, SWS with UTM web applications  – Andrew Wang & Cesar Mejia

This was my department’s presentation and the one I ended up doing the demo for. Basically a rewrite of an existing mark collection, approval, amendment application from a Perl stand alone to a java based portlet within a portal. Over the past six months the software stack was Liferay as the portal, Glassfish as the server, EJB 3.0, Java Server Pages and Seam with ICEFaces adding ajax functionality.  However of late we seem to be moving to Tomcat and UPortal primarily due to more concrete efforts by the university to eventually go Kuali.

Network Monitoring with OpenSource Tools – Glenn Attwood

I was interested in this specific session since I’m probably going to be in East Africa next summer working on the Millennium Villages Project. From my past experiences living on the continent, from the context of the computer person per se, one ends up troubleshooting a lot of network and hardware issues in addition to whatever software task you get assigned. So brushing up on one’s knowledge of low cost solutions is always a good thing.

Glenn covered a number of open source tools which the University of Toronto Scarborough Campus (UTSC) uses:

RRDTool (Red Robin Database Tool): UTSC is using the Perl binding and uses it primarily to track trends over time.

SmokePing: Used for switches and works by sending pings at regularly intervals to specified locations. Can also set up a slave which does the pinging and sends data to a central data collection server. The graphs are quite useful for seeing fluctuations in package transfer and loss. You can also set it up to send notification emails based on specified thresholds for ping loss.

MRTG (Multi Router Traffic Grapher): I was a little lost on this one since my network acronym knowledge is somewhat limited and Glenn got a little technical.

NETDISCO

One of the major questions asked at the end of the session was why UTSC chose to stick with open source when they are commercial options available. Glenn pointed out there is definitely a cost element but also commercial tools tend to be fully integrated and may require more upkeep and less possibility for customization.

Core vs. Context: Lessons From the Trenches of Application Development – Mark Hume

I wasn’t impressed with this session. It seemed to be more a demonstration of a CMS and suggestions/recommendations were aimed at the layman. There was also some discussion at the end about why NGSIS (Next Generation Student Information Services) is not a good idea. The argument given was that it’s a new system scraping all existing systems and replacing them. However there seems to be some miscommunication since the web services he was referring to was pretty much what NGSIS is planning to do. Even PHP applications will eventually be able to communicate with the ROSI DB via web services if all goes according to plan. In addition the potential introduction of Kuali is likely to change the dynamics quite a bit.

CIO’s Address, Closing of the conference Robert Cook, CIO

Rob Cook basically just went over current plans at U Toronto such as:

• NGSIS: Next Generation Student Information Services
• Network Renewal: Wireless
• Data Centre Upgrade

And it was all wrapped up with all kinds of prizes which were mostly mice and headsets.

Food (More for feedback purposes):

• Breakfast: Loved the abundance of fruit
• Smoked Chicken sandwich: Dry. I’d go for the egg next time
• Cookies: Good
• Snack: Those Welsh’s gummy bears were pretty awesome but the rest… nah.
• Networking buffet: Apparently the whole food budget got spent here. Really good dips, shrimp, spinach pastries. Although not enough sushi because I was only ten minutes late and didn’t get any.

In short, muchas gracias to the organizers. All in all I enjoyed it and it was interesting finding out more about what’s happening across the university tech wise.

Website: http://techknowfile.org/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/techknowfile
hashtag: #tkf2010

a) A separate feed for tech. jobs in the global south and the not-for-profit sector.
b) More detailed posts on initiatives under way.

Maybe right after I write up a decent app. for Skype on Android. Fring is bloody buggy.

Website: http://www.acdi-cida.gc.ca/iyip

The International Youth Internship Program (IYIP) is a program for Canadian graduates (ages 19 to 30 inclusive), part of the Career Focus stream of the Government of Canada’s Youth Employment Strategy (YES). Canada’s YES provides Canadian youth with tools and experience they need to launch successful careers.

– From the IYIP Website

I recently worked on a website for the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) Customer Service Review Panel with Julie Tyios from Red Juice Media and Matt Blackett of Spacing Magazine. For any of you who use the subway, streetcars or buses within Toronto, this is your chance to give input regarding your experiences and submit suggestions for its improvement. The link to provide feedback can be access here.

Presenter: Ben Yan
Date: 7th April 2010

“Seek First to Understand, then to be understood”

– Stephen Covey

This was a fairly short presentation, barely spanning an hour. Interesting however due to the myriad examples presented with regard to day to day interactions based on cultural differences. Ben compared culture itself to a large tree with dense roots where the above ground component of it was equivalent to the obvious characteristics such as language, attire etc. While the roots signified the hidden expectations, prejudices and so forth. Detailed observation, interpretation and comparative analysis were the key steps outlined for working in a cultural context. In short it was definitely a workshop I would recommend that companies and businesses invest in for their employees, especially in this era of globalization.

As an aside, there was an interesting point he made about how different cultures view crisis. Apparently the Chinese word for crisis contains the characters for danger and opportunity which I found to be a far more positive approach. Although admitted after looking it up on Google, apparently there are a number of people who feel this is incorrect usage.

Image Credit: The Cherry Tree by Gwarf

This blog section is primarily going to focus on technology, sustainability and international development. Potentially with odd news briefs I find far too amusing to ignore.