More Tech Salons About Mobile Phones
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If you had 90 seconds to answer a question you did not know the answer to, what would you do? Admit to the gap in your knowledge? Take a guess at the answer? Or Google the answer on your phone? The majority of people would opt for the later. Technology has not only changed the…
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NGOs and social service organizations are increasingly turning to mobile technology as a tool for designing and delivering services to the poor, whether in health, education or any other sector. And of course a major element of these services is often the delivery of cash transfers, for which mobile money can play a critical role….
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Internet access, in particular via mobile technology, gives citizens a medium through which to exercise their political voice. It can be used to challenge preexisting power systems and is a potential game-changer in countries with undemocratic regimes. As we’ve seen with the Arab Spring, citizens can use Internet tools to place the fates of governments…
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Just as the Internet changed the communications world in the 1990s, 3D Printing is the set to change the physical world. This new technology is revolutionizing the way that we make products, by bringing the factory into the community and allowing computers and the Internet to become the new conduit for skills, innovation and creativity…
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We looked at the role of mobiles in youth financial inclusion at our March 11th Technology Salon in New York City. Tim Nourse, Making Cents; Peter Goldstein, Intermedia; and Jamie Zimmerman, Bankable Frontier Associates; joined as lead discussants. Though mobile financial services are seen by many as inevitable, some Salon participants felt that, like in…
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At the December Technology Salon, the word “Local Content” emerged as multifaceted term that has different definitions across development organizations and sectors. Priya Jaisinghani and Jonathan Dolan of USAID, and John Garrity of Cisco, led the discussion about what orgs are doing in regards to Local Content. Participants’ definitions of Local Content ranged from news,…
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Let us start with the classic (borderline cliché) development proverb: if you give a man a fish, he eats for a day, but if he is taught how to fish, he will eat for a lifetime. It was this analogy that got conversation started at the latest Technology Salon, “Are Mobile Money Cash Transfers the…
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According to the latest GSMA statistics, nearly 50% of people own a mobile phone in the developing world and almost 70% have access to mobile phones. With mobile access increasing daily, opportunities to use mobiles in development initiatives continue to grow and expand. The area of Mobiles for Development (M4D) has attracted investment from all…
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At the first Technology Salon in London, we had a very thoughtful discussion on the implications of gender in using mobile technologies to stimulate social and economic development.
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The March NYC Technology Salon offered an opportunity to discuss how mobile technology can transform workforce development and to hear how mobile is improving the reach and impact of existing initiatives working with girls and young women.
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At the recent Technology Salon on “How Can We Get Beyond Access and Really Empower Women and Girls with Mobiles?” we had a room full of thought leaders and decision makers in the gender and mobiles space debating how women and girls can be truly empowered through mobile technology.
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I am Josephine Mutugu and at the Nairobi Technology Salon on What is the Next Mobile Development App that Will Scale? we launched into the discussion with a brief summary of the iHub report “Mobile Phone Usage at the Kenyan Base of the Pyramid.” In particular, we wanted to explore what the next development app…
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Let us be honest with ourselves. Most of the shiny, flashy new technology is not designed for the developing world we care about. Technology is designed for the rich Hardware designers in rich countries are turning out super light laptops and tablets of glass to impress their rich peers. Software developers are creating apps for…
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The November 14, 2012, Technology Salon NYC focused on ways that ICTs can support work with children who migrate. Our lead discussants were: Sarah Engebretsen and Kate Barker from Population Council, and Brian Root and Enrique Piraces from Human Rights Watch. This post summarizes discussions that surfaced around the Population Council’s upcoming Girls on the…
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You might think that the topic of collecting data via mobile devices would be a rather dry discussion of data management and statistical methodology. You would be very, very wrong. The Technology Salon all but came to blows as we wrestled with privacy issues, total costs of ownership, and other elephants in the room. When…
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Civil society has been working for years on participation, transparency, accountability and governance issues. Plenty of newer initiatives (small and large) look at new technologies as a core tool in this work. But are these groups talking and learning from each other?
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Terms like mobile money, mPayments, and M-PESA are all the rage in International development these days, but what do they really mean for the national development of countries we attempt to help? Menekse Gencer of mPay Connect will lead us in a discussion of mobile financial services, the full gamut of finance that is now…
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I am Charles Kenny, and I spent part of yesterday at a United Nations Foundation meeting with Dr Maura O’Neill, Chief Innovation Officer at USAID.
There was a lot of discussion of development applications using mobile phones (m-development) and how to do them better – things like interoperability and collecting models in an ‘m-app marketplace.’ And there was the usual back-and-forth between those who wanted to see more transformative projects where IT reformed whole agencies and ministries and those who thought that way madness (or at least obscene overruns) lay.
But I thought the most interesting discussion was around learning from experience -particularly in an area where technology is evolving rapidly, so a robust evaluation may not be completed before the project itself looks as dated as an integrated rural development scheme or a structural adjustment loan. The randomized trial result suggesting limited evidence of educational spillovers from a distribution program of Nintendo 64’s might not carry too much weight for those wanting to hand out Wiis as part of a youth fitness program.
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Today’s youth population is the largest in the history of the world, and 90% of these young people live in developing countries. The global youth unemployment rate is the highest on record, and we’re seeing discontent and disenfranchisement play out on the news each day. In fact, the revolution in Tunisia started with an under-employed…
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As part of this month’s Educational Technology Debate on mEducation initiatives, the Technology Salon will be looking at ways to apply mobile phones in education, and scale them across organizations with an mEducation Alliance.
