Technology Salon DC was founded in 2007 by Wayan Vota and it is the largest Salon, with over 3,000 members that span the gamut of development and technology disciplines.
Salons serve as sounding board and focus group discussions for emerging topics in ICT for social change. We tackle tough topics in a safe space that sparks cross-sectoral learning. Our monthly meetings are driving policy and implementation decisions across international development. Be sure to sign up to get invited and RSVP quickly – we always have a wait list.
You can contact Wayan to suggest a topic or lead discussant for a future meeting.
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Unlike our usual Technology Salons, which are not recorded, the ICT4D, Innovation, and Millennium Development Goals Salon at the UN Week Digital Media Lounge was taped by Mashable for your viewing pleasure.
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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.
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There has been a great deal of media attention on the ‘One Laptop Per Child’ (OLPC) project since the announcement of a “$100 laptop” over five years ago. Most of this attention focuses on its potential to address the educational challenges in developing countries. Much less is known about what is actually happening on-the-ground with…
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While everyone is amazed at the quick proliferation of mobile phones in the developing world, here’s a startling statistic which should check our unbridled enthusiasm for m-everything: 73% of women in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia do not have a mobile phone. Across all developing countries, adult women are 21% less likely to have a…
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Over 300 million women are being left out of the benefits of mobile phone ownership as it becomes the most ubiquitous technology in the developing world, which has major implications given women’s role in social and economic development. Furthermore, the potential value of cell phone ownership increases as mobile services (mServices) including health, finance, and…
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Where the last SMS4D Technology Salon reminded us of the unique gift of mobile technologies to be implemented in the field, The Cloudy SMS4D Salon really drove home mobile phones as a multifunctional tool whose true impact is tied more to the usage than the technology itself.
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Now that your interest was piqued with last month’s SMS for Development Technology Salon, get ready for SMS4D-2: the Cloudy Salon.
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The SMS4D Technology Salon focused on the power of Short Message Service (SMS) text technology to create scaled impact, starting at the local and regional level. We went through an inspiring round of implementations and use cases of on-the-ground efforts using FrontlineSMS in cross-sector development situations.Throughout the examples, we were constantly reminded that mobile phone-based…
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Text messaging is a quick and targeted way to reach beneficiaries in the developing world. But you already know that. Yet have you seen an SMS router close-up? Experimented with proven solutions that you can use in your existing programs? Or brainstormed on how SMS could add sizzle to your next proposal?
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On April 15th, we had a lively discussion on public-private partnerships with Robert Schneider, Senior Alliance Advisor, in the Office of Development Partnerships, Private Sector Alliances Division at USAID. Rob is the ICT partnerships lead for ODP/PSA, or as many may recognize better, the Global Development Alliances (GDA) office.
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Global Development Alliances (GDA’s) are USAID’s innovative public-private alliance model to mobilize business and civil society to stimulate economic growth. Yet GDA’s and Private Sector Alliances (PSA’s) can be confusing and intimidating, especially when a proposal deadline is approaching too quickly. Successful alliances take commitment, so invest a morning of your time learning how to…
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We at SSG Advisors are currently incubating a new approach to the delivery of higher education services that leverages both new technology and disruptive business models. We presented this model at last week’s eLearning Technology Salon and I am very grateful for all of the thoughtful and useful input received The Salon was a great…
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Young people make up 18% of the world’s population today, or 1.2 billion in absolute terms. Of these 15-24 year-olds, 87% live in developing countries. At the same time, their basic educational needs are not being met. More than one-third of all youth around the world are not in the classroom – 73% of youth…
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The Girls and ICT Technology Salon was a great opportunity to get an amazing group of thinkers and do-ers in the same room to debate around a particular topic. I’m Linda Raftree, Plan International West Africa Regional Office, Advisor for New Technology and Social Media. I was honored to lead 20+ people in a conversation…
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In the developing world, girls need new skills and capacities for the 21st Century. They need to have the ability to be flexible, adaptive, and innovative to grow into positions of influence in their communities and countries.
Does ICT education help girls?Yet – as we learned in the Gender Equality in ICT Education discussion – just getting girls to secondary school is a challenge, and once there, girls often shun ICT’s unless they have strong mentors and female role models.
Please join us Thursday, January 28th, as Linda Raftree, Social Media and New Technology Advisor for Plan International‘s West Africa Regional Office, leads us in a discussion of three pertinent questions:
- How can the technology and international development communities support the development of girls?
- What role does ICT play in facilitating girls’ growth?
- And where are the concrete examples that prove ICT is a net positive for female progress?
We’ll also try to identify case studies, partners, and further research around girls development and ICT for inclusion in Plan’s 2010 Girls and ICT Report, now underway.
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Competitive private companies know that just adopting the tools of ICT will not magically lead to productivity gains – it takes much change and investments in business processes to really reap the rewards that ICT can bring. But this basic tenant can be lost in the hype around specific devices or technologies.
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Whew, I think this was one of the most intense and contentious Technology Salons yet! After an hour of lively discussion around what “sustainability” and “scale” means to information and communication technology programs, we were just starting to pull back the layers around the topics.
(Want to attend the next Technology Salon? Then subscribe to our meeting announcements to be invited.)
Sustainability Means Many Things
We quickly found that there were many definitions of sustainability and scale. Maybe too many, as these terms differed wildly across implementers and donors. It was even suggested that in the realm of ICT, development has an unbroken string of failures since none of the projects have scaled to the extent of mobile phones.
Before we cast out the entire body of work to date, much of ICT4D is done as experimentation – there is an expectation of failure while we figure out models that would work. At least we have mobile phones to show that there are ICT models that can scale, sustainably.
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What do you think is the single most important issue at the intersection fo technology and development? Recently, the twin issues of sustainability and scale have come to the forefront in many conversations, with both peaking in October in several forums:
Is it only about money?- Sustainability: This month’s Educational Technology Debate is focusing on ICT4E sustainability and at an IADB meeting, virtually everything that USAID does was suggested to be unsustainable.
- Scale: I was recently reminded that while there is an incredibly vibrant mobile phone industry, after 15 years of PDA and mobile phone pilots there are few, if any, sustained mobile technology development projects that are more than 5 years old, continued after funding ended, and scaled beyond pilots.
But what do we mean by “sustainability” and “scale” in ICT4D?
Now here’s the real issue. What might be our shared definition of both “sustainability” and “scale” with information and communication technology programs in international development?
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In our September Technology Salon, we took on James BonTempo’s pertinent question of What Does the “m” in mHealth Really Mean? in a spirited debate with technology and development practitioners.
Is this mHealthcare? (photo: Data Dyne)We were seeking a better definition of mHealth than the current focus on devices, and specifically the hype around mobile phones. As one participant bemoaned, it seems that every health project with a mobile phone or PDA, no matter their usage, is now an mHealth project.
So we sought to put parameters on what could be called an mHealth project, and through that, come up with a new definition for mHealth. After an hour of vibrant debate, we developed these four aspects for mHealth projects:
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In a recent Twitter exchange, James BonTempo asked a very pertinent question about the current mHealth buzz:
The only mHealth definition? (Img: DataDyne)Should definition of #mHealth include devices (wondering specifically about netbooks) or simply the concept of mobility?
He followed up his initial query with a simple poll that asked if mHealth should include a list of specific platforms or just the concept of mobility. So far, Twitterers agree, the “m” in mHealth should represent mobility, regardless of form factor.
But that’s different from the general notion of mHelth, represented by the mHealth Wikipedia entry, which focuses on equipment “mHealth is a recent term for medical and public health practice supported by mobile devices, such as mobile phones, patient monitoring devices, PDAs, and other wireless devices”
In our next Technology Salon, we’ll explore what the “m” in mHealth means for those who actually practice mHelath, with these field-experienced experts: