Around 150 participants joined the Open Aid Data Conference in Berlin. The event was full with discussions and exchange on how open data can be used to achieve more transparency in the developing aid sector. The first day was split into two workshops – an ‘Aidinfo Data Training’ and ‘Hackday,’ to explore potential data sets and applications to make developing aid more transparent.

In this post I would like to share my experiences from the Hackday as a co-organizer. There was an interesting mix of participants, from different backgrounds, who worked in teams on different issues greatly facilitated by Marek Tuszynski from Tactical Technology Collective. Here is a link summarizing the discussions, some available data sets, and these are the main questions we dealt with:

- What do we need to know about Open Data for aid transparency?
- What data is out there?
- Who benefits from developing aid? Organizations?
- How does an organization implement Open Data?

The last question was answered by one of the groups and put together in a document.
Other teams took a look at the kind of data offered in the German development aid sector. To begin with, the status of information is disappointing and proves the main purpose of the conference: Information is fragmented, almost no data is offered as open, and detailed data for financial spending is not available at all.

It is also impossible to find a list of organizations (NGOs, Government Institutions, etc.) funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). Not to mention a list if disbursed funds for each project. That led to one outcome at the Hackday: To initiate a freedom of information act request to the BMZ.

Another team found out that not a single German developing organization offers project information in an open data format, so that it could be easier analyzed. Furthermore, it is very difficult to find out in which countries all these organizations have projects. It can only be found out by clicking through all the websites of hundreds of organizations funded by the BMZ. Imagine how long that takes and how non-transparent that is!

However one interesting database is offered by the OECD, which is called Creditor Reporting System and offers project information for over 50 years. Member countries such as Germany contribute their data about their funded activities under the umbrella of the Official Development Assistance (ODA). We took a look at the data and potential visualizations.

As an outcome of the Hackday, it became clear that we need to invest more time into data analysis to bring more transparency in the sector. Therefore, I will start developing a data catalogue to monitor German aid money better. More to come soon.

Related posts:

1. Open Aid Data conference and Hackday Berlin The past year I have written on many occasions about...
2. Who to feed? The open vs. the commercial race for data Google Maps has been an incredible service in the past...

Bing bird's eye view of the Brandburger Gate in Berlin

Digital cartography has made map making a lot easier. But If a map contains a lot of data or specific data, it can become a complex or costly adventure. Despite the efforts around open data, still the majority of data is not publicly available, and if so only for high costs. Crowdsourcing is one alternative to collect data for maptivism, but maybe some of these approaches will not soon be needed if automated mapping is further progressing.

Automated mapping

It is quite impressive and a bit scary to see the pace of innovation around digital recognition. Its aim is to make more information available from the offline world. Google is on the frontrun of digital recognition with another example: 3D trees in Google Earth. Google has chosen parks in 50 cities around the world to identify in an automated process trees out of satellite images.

“With 3D trees in Google Earth, we’ve brought characteristic trees to life, from the palm trees that dot San Francisco’s bayfront Embarcadero Street, to the olive trees that cling to the Acropolis in Athens, to the flowering dogwoods found in Tokyo’s parks. All told, there are around 50 different tree species to explore in Google Earth and counting!”

Consequences for mapping

A while ago I blogged about the crowdsourcing Urban Forest Map in San Francisco. Its goal is to map all trees in the city. Now at least the work for the park is not needed anymore if Google is giving out the data. Thousands of people from the Openstreetmap community use satellite imagery from Yahoo to draw shapes of buildings into maps. Is that becoming obsolete soon? What needs to be manually mapped? Of course a lot, because most of such data will not necessarily be publicly available. One example is real-time data. Check this post on maptivism: live tactical mapping for protest swarming.

Here, we are also getting in a dilemma. Such a virtualization of trees can contribute to the protection of forests. Imagine the mapping happens within days and deforestation in the rain forest can be act on quickly. However, what else can be mapped? If trees can be classified, all kind of objects can be classified if digital recognition software becomes increasingly powerful. Check for example the bird’s eye view from Bing, where you can see detailed aerial imagery (see image), not to mention Google street view.

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The polyglot Internet is potentially possible, but often limited by its language barriers. A tiny percentage of the Internet content is translated. While famous US American blogs are read worldwide, Chinese, German, French or Indonesian blogs are often not noticed outside of their countries.

There is an interesting presentation from Ethan Zuckerman at TED, where he describes that we are too often “stuck” in our own language domain even though there are so many opportunities to read information or news from different countries, beyond our own. Still, automatic translation is improving year-by-year and many translators worldwide help to bridge the language gap.

Therefore, I was glad to see that a recent German article I wrote about Maptivism in the magazine Kulturaustausch, which was also published on the Kooptech Blog, has been picked by the European blog portal Wikio and translated into four different languages. (All my blog posts on Maptivism)

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If you sit in front a long list of information, it is often difficult to make quickly sense of it. If you look at a map of the same data, you might get a picture of it rather quickly.

1,470,000 US gallons of oil were leaking from an oil pipe of British Petrol in the Gulf of Mexico everyday. What does that tell you? When you look at this map from ifitweremyhome.com, then you get a better sense of it. The oil spill size was as big as Southern UK.

ifitweremyhome.com

If you do have some data, you can start working with a new great tool called openheatmap.com, however if not, then you need to collect it yourself.  One way is done by the grassrootmapping.org project, which has done a great initiative to document the oil spill on the coast line. Another one is the Oil Reporter from the Crisis Commons group. You “only” need an Iphone or Android driven phone and you can get the app to report where oil is found.

urbanforestmap.org

www.mappiness.org.uk

Context is king and therefore some other projects want you to share information to find out more about your environment. One example is the Urban Forest Map project: “The Urban Forest Map is a collaboration of government, nonprofits, businesses and you to build an inventory of San Francisco’s urban forest.” Citizens create an inventory of trees in their city and get exact information about the ecological impact.

Another mapping & crowdsourcing project is a research project, which founds to create a location based happiness index. Through an application, volunters are asked throughout the day about their mood and that information plus the location is then collected. Mappiness shall help to understand “how people’s feelings are affected by features of their current environment—things like air pollution, noise, and green spaces.”

A similar project called Mapumental, done by Mysociety. Watch the video for that amazing idea.

In Germany a similar project, called Mapnificient, has been done. At the moment we try to implement the same for Create Frankfurt.

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A while ago I was asked, by Markus Beckedahl, to present something on maptivism at the re-publica conference.  And even though I am still exploring this new field, I tried to give an overview of the fascinating world of maptivism.

Here is a video of my presentation (33 min.), which also shows the slides I have included below. The first two minutes are in German (in the beginning I forgot I wanted to held the presentation in English in the first place). The presentation covers a lot of what I have been blogging about here and there, but I also included some other great examples. The re-publica took place this year and, thanks to the organizer,  a lot more international and inspiring people got together in Berlin. It was great discussing digital activism with Sokari Enkine, Sam Ben Gharbia, David Sasaki, Rolf Kleef and Tobias Eigen.

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What are politician’s decisions about your neighborhood? What does usually happen in my street and what could be done better? In Frankfurt, Germany, there is now a website called Frankfurt-Gestalten.de (Create Frankfurt), which makes local political decision more transparent and offers a new space for citizen to participate.

The idea is to offer citizens helpful information services and this way motivate them to connect locally, to discuss and brainstorm on how to change their neighborhood. Already, after two weeks, I have learnt a lot of lessons. As usual online communities often develops in a direction you have not anticipated. It is incredible to get a lot of feedback right away and people taking responsibility. Makes me enthusiastic to explore further potential for collaboration.

The project was inspired by these great initiatives: theyworkforyou.com and fixmystreet.com. Thanks to Tom Steinberg and Rob Mckinnon from theyworkforyou.co.nz for there support. The website received already some nice publicity and we hope it will make German public authorities think about the potential for open data. Frontrunners are the USA and UK with Data.gov and Data.gov.uk. In the UK the city of London has started with an open data initiative too.

Luckily, the German scene is not passive: Abgeordnetenwatch (Member of Parliament Watch), participatory budgets for local communities or the API Germany (Deutschland API). The Open Data Network, where I am member of, does some great work to push the agenda for open government. One result is a Hacks4Democracy, a hackday on open data.

What fascinates me about the Frankfurt-gestalten.de project is that it has a lot of potential and can develop in many directions:

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Cairo

Johannesburg

In this blog post, I will dive into the latest buzz: Google Buzz.

Google Buzz is a huge jump in location-based services as it happens all around the world at once. I have browsed through the map of Google Buzz’ mobile phone version, where statuses can be combined with your location – it is striking to see where all information pops up. Here are maps of three different cities – Johannesburg, Cairo and Mumbai – showing messages from the last 24 hours.

Mumbai

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The new opportunity to have activism through mobile phones is fascinating. I  have already often written about it. A while ago Sokari Enkine asked me to write a chapter for a recent published book funded by Hivos. I wrote about future trends and software developments, and then blogged about some possible trends and got some interesting feedback to use in the article.

I have also had some inspiring discussions with Ken Banks and Patrick Meier, resulting these in the coming up of some scenarios such as a growth in local mobile innovation in Africa. If we look at the topics and the discussion of the latest Mobile Web East Africa conference, we are witnessing a fascinating rise of creative mobile programming.

The Guardian wrote a nice review of the book and, although I also wrote about different types challenges too, the author Anne Perkins rated me as an optimist – I can live with that.

The trouble with people who know about mobile phone technology is that they are a lot better at good ideas than they are at explaining to non-techies what their good ideas are for. So I fell upon SMS Uprising: Mobile activism in Africa, a collection of essays by people who either write mobile applications or transfer them to the field, hoping that at last I would understand not so much what’s going on as how.

SMS doesn’t always work (sometimes texts are just too slow). But this is a handbook for the small NGO or social change activist who is daunted by technology. Help is at hand, and SMS Uprising will help you find it.

I hope the little introduction has made you enough curious by now! You can order the book directly at Fahamu or at other book sellers for around 15$.

Table of content:

• Introduction
  Sokari Ekine

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“But the maps provided something that the narrative and statistics lacked [...] We could articulate the case in words. [...] But when you’d put up the maps, they’d stop listening to you and look at them [as if to] say, ‘Is this really possible?’” Reed Colfax in an interview by Bob Burtman (water distribution example below)

There are a growing number of cases of Maptivism (Maps + Activism) around the world. I wrote about the great potential for engagement and transparency before. Although it is not a new method, it is certainly still quite different from the old school maps – because of the easiness to use digital maps. There are also more and more tools offered to either get geodata or to use existing data to visualize it more easily. GeoCommons is one such service for open geospatial data.

Western Africa

The West Africa Trade Hub, a USAID funded project did an interesting project. They questioned truck drivers in Western Africa about their experiences with checkpoints. The results were long delays and high bribes at region’s worst checkpoints (mapped below). A recent interview I did with Mark Davies indicated also some interesting insights from African trade and the potentials of social networks.

Courtesy of the West Africa Trade Hub project.

China

The China Real Time blog has highlighted an initiative by the Chinese blogger Guo Baofeng for a China Pollution Map:

“The chart (developed on Google Maps) allows viewers to mark spots associated with high levels of pollution or incidents of contamination, based on publicly available information. Since it was open for public participation last week, the number of views has more than doubled to about 5,000 compared to a week earlier, when it was first displayed online.”

Due to the recent move of Google to re-think its engagement in China, hopefully this map will not be censored any time soon.

China Pollution Map

(Hat tip to Giulio Quaggiotto)

USA

Bob Burtman highlights intriguing mapping work in his article by the Cedar Grove Institute for Sustainable Communities. Through surveys and public available data, they were able to produce the map below, which shows the partial distribution of water in city of Zanesville.  Read the full article about fascinating ways to combine data and mapping.

Courtesy the Cedar Grove Institute for Sustainable Communities

Brazil

Mapping can be particularly helpful for community development. Corinne Ramey reports form a project to map slums in Brazil through mobile phones. “By uploading information to the phones, the reporters are mapping the unmapped, one road and cafe at a time.” Once places are mapped they can be used for multiple purposes

Courtesy of wikimapa.org.br

Kenya

A similar, but more extensive project has happened in the biggest informal area in Nairobi: Kibera. A team of mappers trained cohabitants of Kibera to map the largest slum in Africa.

OpenStreetMap

Some of you probably know that I am particularly amazed about the OpenstreetMap project. Often, people ask me why we need such an open map, if we already have Google or Yahoo maps? Because it is not only about maps, but more importantly, about what we map and that we can use the data freely to use it the way it is needed. Or as Mikel Maron nicely puts it:”But the point is that with open source and open data, people everywhere don’t have to wait for Santa Google to gift them with new features ..”

When do you start mapping?

Mapping is really easy. I walk around in Mexico these days, during my free time and map streets and buildings with a GPS enabled mobile phone – a cheap GPS device is enough and costs under 100 Euro. That way you can already participate in tracking streets worldwide and upload them to OpenStreetMaps. Here is more information on how to participate.

Lastly, there is a great initiative by the tactical tech collective called Ten Tactics: “Exploring how rights advocates use information and digital technology to create positive change.”

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Location, mobile phones and the Internet, combined together, are becoming an attractive amalgam for new opportunities. There is a fascinating trend to see the convergence of mobile technologies connected to the Internet and the rising importance of location. This is not just another hype, but could really be interesting for the non-profit arena.

I have already written about the potential renaissance of the Internet of Things – how low-cost technology can be used for better transparency. In a recent paper Tim O’Reilly calls it the information shadow, which simply means “offline” things and their information are increasingly connected to the web. “All of these breakthroughs are reflections of the fact – noted by Mike Kuniavsky of ThingM – that real world objects have “information shadows” in cyberspace.”

At the recent KM4DEV conference, I tried to summarize my thoughts on these developments and their potential implications on development work and activism. I have uploaded the presentation, which is hopefully as self-explanatory as possible and, in this blog post, I would like to add some more remarks:

My initial attempt for the presentation was my reflections on “what would happen if the Internet becomes locational aware? What are the implications of the boost in geo-data? And, what are the consequences of the ubiquitousness of mobile phones?”

Presentation

I start with two interesting quotes:

“It is estimated that as much as 80% of data contains geo-referenced information.” (Liping Di)

“It is not about mobile any more. It is the convergence from the social web with the mobile. The mobile let you interact within a network in a highly contextual way.” (Teemu Arina)

A jump to Uganda, where Google, Grameen, MTN and Brosdi have established an SMS service for health and agriculture tips. It has attracted over a million in the first months. I have heard that it was free in the beginning and maybe that was also a reason for such high use. Interestingly Google needed local institutions to get the content as it is not as easy to collect in the African context. For example, statistical data is not widely collected and, in particular, local content rarely digitalized. That might be a reason why Google has sponsored the Kiswahili Wikipedia Challenge.

Citizen journalism (action) from anywhere

The famous initiative around the mobile African reporters is just one way to use the mobile phone and report from everywhere. “Fix my Street” in Great Britain shows how citizens can report on street damages through their mobile phones and emails are send to public institutions. “Stop stockouts,” a recent project running with the Ushahidi software, allows citizens to report medical stockouts in pharamcies, which are obliged by law for a certain stock in Southern African countries. I have wondered for a while how these efforts can help to monitor and evaluate development projects in a different way?

What makes digital maps different?

I was recently invited to moderate an online dialogue on human rights and geo-mapping. It is fascinating to see how mapping can help to advocate human rights and also empower local communities to share their environment. One such project is Green Maps with projects all around the world or a Google Earth project with indigenous communities in the Amazon. Maps can reflect different perspectives, interests, constraints and demands for change. What are the implications of people worldwide mapping their environment and having access to these in any place through their mobile phone?

To get a further understanding of digital maps, we need to forget about the usual paper maps with typical street information. Digital maps can offer all kinds of information, but different to paper maps, they have all the underlying geo-data, which can be used in many other contexts.
There are countless things that can be mapped and might help others in the local context:

• Surveillance cameras in my neighborhood
• Accessibility of facilities
• Bike tracks in my city, etc.
• Environmental pollution
• Cheapest shoe stores

So we have:

1. Increasing geo-data available
2. Access to these data through maps or other applications on mobile phones wherever we are, and
3. Increasing contributions to this information base.

Such efforts can lead to all sorts of services such as the traffic information or to find public bus connections in Chennai, India, for instance, which I highlighted in my post on Maptivism.

Explosion of location-based services

There is an “explosion” in location-based services these days, and all big players have been buying map services. Apple has just bought a mapping company and Google has announced that they will offer free navigation services for Android phones.

The geospatial web

In recent years we have been able to see huge efforts to offer maps and geo-data. Big names such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft offer maps. OpenStreetMaps offers the geo-data behind it even for free because it is a worldwide voluntarily run project. Although Google has done some remarkable efforts to offer maps also in developing countries, I believe it is very important that such maps and the data behind them are a public good. A nice example is Kabul, which is only accurately mapped through the voluntarily run OpenStreetMap, and it is much better.

The geospatial web for development work

It is striking to see that so many development organizations seem to be sleeping when one looks at the potential for geo-referenced information. The World Bank is heading in this direction and the humanitarian and relief sector is doing a lot, as the recent crisis mapping conference showed. But many development organizations are still overwhelmed to offer their data in universal standards such as RSS or offer Application Progamming Interfaces to mix data.

We are struggling daily for better filters, particularly in development organization, but location could be a decisive third filter:
Information

• Filter 1: Topic
• Filter 2: Person
• Filter 3: Location

I finish with a great image by Andrew Turner, who has an inspiring, albeit rather technical presentation about the geospatial web. From global to local – lets get the Internet location aware.

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The Internet of Things is a rather old story within the web. But through simple, low-cost technology such as RFID chips (Radio Frequency Identification Tags) volunteers worldwide gain another potentially powerful monitoring instrument. Such crowdsourcing efforts can unseal environmental damage, give valuable data to advocacy organizations and development projects.

Internet of Things
Originally, the Internet of Things was thought for modern household. Household appliances are connected to the Internet, so that the refrigerator sends out a message when it is running out of orange juice or eggs, for example. Not surprisingly this advancement in technology has not made a big impact nor made it to the daily life of millions as yet. Such technology are RFID chips, which are low-cost, simple stickers, which can be put on commodities.

Things become connected
Businesses such as logistic enterprises use them to follow each article or package easily. These little stickers can store information. So, for example, logistic companies use them to document the travel route of a package. You only need to scan the piece within the range of a few meters and then see where it comes from. Environmentalists use the same technology to monitor the route that logged down trees from the rainforest take.

Barcoding to save the tropical forest
According to TreeHugger: Will Barcoding Trees Save Tropical Forests? This video shows how these barcodes can be used to find out where trees are really originally from and whether they are protected or illegally cut down. In this case, however, it is offered by a company. Of course, such barcodes can be removed, but they can also be as small as only a few millimeters.

Crowdsourcing transparency
Imagine that volunteers worldwide could check how products go along the supply chain. Another interesting project in this regard is Sourcemap, a collective tool for transparency and sustainability, which is looking into the unsealing of the supply chain of products. But this does not only have to be done through radio frequency identification technology. A project called Citizen Water works with inexpensive water quality test kits. Here, people check across any country the water quality, and then map the results in a transparent way in the Internet, to show the different levels of water quality in different areas.

So far, this technology has been used mainly by businesses or governments. Nowadays, more and more governments are planning on adding it to passports. Regarding privacy, these attempts are quite scary, since you as a customer or citizen cannot control what gets on or off thes echips nor who can or cannot read the stored information. It is time to use such technology for openness.

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It is estimated as much as 80% of data contains geo-referenced information. So, a lot of information can be displayed through maps. Digital maps allow easy ways to present large amounts of data and reduce complexity. Activists have found creative ways to use maps, but also development organizations have to deal with a lot of spatial information. Using geo-referenced through maps can improve transparency, and yet not so many organizations use it.

Difference of digital maps
Digital maps have brought three major changes.

1. Digital maps, in contrast to paper maps, can be combined with all kinds of data even in real time.
2. Nowadays, everybody can access huge data from the public domain and combine these with maps.
3. Citizen maps are created through voluntarily worldwide effort and participation, are freely available and offer new ways for transparency.

The Tactical Tech Collective has a great guide for beginners and comes up with a good description of why maps are so helpful:

“Advocacy organisations worldwide face great challenges. One of these is how best to communicate and disseminate information to communities, staff, founders, governments and other organisations in a world saturated with information, media and advertising. They may also need to keep track of complex and diverse information in their own work.”

By the way, there was also an interesting online forum by New Tactics on ‘information activism’ with many examples and exciting discussions.

But why are make maps so different?
Anders Peders has come up with some simple points in his presentation “Geomapping Making Invisible Data Visible”:

• Recognition: Ooh that’s the place we are talking about!
• A feeling of connection: It’s around the corner!
• Connecting the dots (topics) on complex issues.
• Engagement: This has to change! I want to help out.

Maps for activism and campaigning
Maps have a long history and since the early days maps have been used for many purposes, such as to show changes through bygone times and to manipulate them for propaganda. But never before it has been so easy for individuals and groups to use maps for own purposes. The Economist goes a step further and writes “mapping technology has matured into a tool for social justice.”

There are various projects using maps worldwide and here are a few examples:

Green Map System has engaged communities worldwide to map green living (nature and cultural resources). In one case, a map was created for the environmental hazards and challenges in the greater Banjul area in Gambia. Other maps from Europe are already interactive.

“Eight Maps” has been mapping people in San Fransisco, who donate for a campaign against a law that supports sex marriage, trying this way to put them on the spot. This example also shows how far such campaign might go into privacy issues.

Another great example comes from Worldmapper:

Ecological footprint of each country in the world

© Copyright 2006 SASI Group (University of Sheffield) and Mark Newman (University of Michigan).

Another nice, albeit printed map series, is an Atlas of Radical Cartography, “a collection of 10 maps and 10 essays about social issues from globalization to garbage; surveillance to extraordinary rendition; statelessness to visibility; deportation to migration.” My favorite map is of the only walking track left in Manhatten, where you are not followed by surveillance cameras.

One key role will be played by the OpenstreetMap project. Other than Google Maps, it offers all geocoded information for free and is, equally to Wikipedia, an open project. I am working these days on a local politics project for transparency. The richness of geodata was astonishing and very helpful. It all started with the city of London and is now a worldwide movement. I went to the annual State of the Map conference in Amsterdam, learnt a lot about mapping and filmed some interviews. It was great to meet finally Mikel Maron, foundation member of OpenStreetMaps, who gives fascinating examples of how open maps benefit people living in informal areas in India.

Fredy Rivera from Colombia describes the dangerous work of mapping in Colombia and how they plan to provide better geodata to indigenous groups in the rising competition around water resources.

Arun Ganesh has done some incredible mapping efforts for the city of Chennai in cooperation with the local administration. He even went a step further and build a great website to find public bus connections and organized the printing of maps to post them on local bus stations.

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Imagine if people were using social network sites such as Facebook not only for leisure, but to contribute to a good cause.  If engagement would go beyond Slacktivism to be part of a cause, and millions of people were contributing to a common for worldwide development work. Why doesn’t it happen like that with Wikipedia? Or am I wrong and perhaps we actually are coming close to mass collaboration?

If I look at the statistics and the incredible growth of social networks, I wonder how and when would these networks be used to join expertise, share ideas, do volunteer work, and mobilize people for social change?

Over at the web2fordev blog, I analyzed the potentials of social networks to address world challenges, which I extend in three posts. My assumption is that a lot has already happened, but most initiaves are still squattered around the web and the large group of “normal”, non social media enthusiasts, the majority of the web, is just tapping into online social networks.

The next Billion – the rise of social network sites in developing countries

Social network websites are becoming a global phenomenon. Millions now go online to engage in social networks. According to Wikipedia, there are some 1.5 billion members worldwide. Where is this growth taking place? What does this mean for web2fordev? And what role do mobile phones play. Almost a million people registered on Facebook in just three years for Egypt alone. According to Appfrica, South Africa has 1.1 million Facebook members, Morocco 369,000, Tunisia 279,000, Nigeria 220,000, Kenya 150,000,and Mauritius 60,000. The largest online social network is in China. QQ focuses on instant messaging and gaming with over 300 million active members. (Whole article)

The world becomes a village – implications of social networks

What happens when millions of people engage in social networks? Online communities are not a new phenomenon, but the creation of large online meeting spaces marks a new era and new dimensions.

What is happening in these social networks and what are the implications? A great analogy comes from Anand Giridharadas, who wrote an article by the title “Behind Facebook’s Success: It Takes a Village“. Anand argues that being in a social network is like living in a village, where you can share your thoughts, emotions, news, and more – something like entertaining neighbourhood relationships, with the difference that geographic location, physical distances and time do not matter anymore and interactions can occur on a global scale, 24 hours  a day and seven days a week. Once you establish your network with a multitude of members, “you are compelled, as in the village, to know their business. It’s strangely nice.”

From local to global – social networks address world challenges

Whether the environment, poverty or peace, almost all of today’s challenges are also dealt with in one or in another way  through the Internet. Online social networks play an increasingly important role in connecting people and offering spaces where groups of individuals can work on solutions and push for change. There are fascinating examples from local to global engagement.

What are the different forms of engagement and who takes part in them?

The ease of forming groups

There are two main pillars: Firstly, through the social web it has becomes increasingly easy to find and connect with people sharing common interests and worldviews. Secondly, it is getting easier by the day to set-up online groups online, attract followers and see them coalesce around a shared vision or common mission.

Clay Shirky highlights a social factor in his book “Here comes Everybody”:

“Ridiculously easy group-forming matters, because the desire to be part of a group that shares, cooperates, or acts in concert is a basic human instinct that has always been constrained by transaction costs.” “Everywhere you look, groups of people are coming together to share with one another, work together, or take some kind of public action. For the first time in history, we have tools that truly allow for this.”

Different forms of engagement

Participating in social networks can be very different, for example, from passive sharing to active problem solving. Gaurav Mishra has elaborated the “4Cs Social Media Framework“, which helps look at the different forms of engagement. I adopted it slightly and describe each level through different examples.

Content Sharing

It all starts with sharing information between people, by publishing content, to let each other know about certain issues and create conversations. It can be by simply sharing a common tag such as web2fordev to collect bookmarks or to use the same hashtags such as #iranelection when spreading news about the recent election in Iran.

Forming Networks

This way, far-off individuals can find each other in a spontaneous and informal manner and form networks. It has never been that easy to locate people with similar interests. Lisa Campbell did an interesting study about mobile social networks in Costa Rica and describes how Twitter and Hi5 are gradual forming networks of like minded people. She emphasises how these connections are increasingly fostered by interactions via mobile phones. For example Hi5 has a mobile version in 26 languages. Online networks engaged in development cooperation can be found with the spectrum of DGroups.org.

Co-Creation

At the higher level of engagement, people actually start jointly creating things by using text, audio or video. Such efforts are well represented by Wikis, such as the Water Wiki, with the contribution of many other organizations or on dot.sub where volunteers translate the subtitles of videos in their preferred languages.

Collective Action

Collective action can materialise in many ways. For example, people can act collectively in the name of a cause or for expressing their grievances. This happened last year when 50,000 Estonians where mobilized over the web to clean up garbage throughout their country in one day; or in Egypt, where a Facebook group grew to 70.000 members supporting the strike of textile workers in a matter of days. The group triggered a lot of discussion on democracy in Egypt but it did not lead to street protests due the unwillingness of the government to allow demonstrations. Another example is a campaign to rally against the FARC in Colombia. The Facebook group, “A Million Voices Against FARC,” initiated rallies that took place in 165 cities across the globe.

Communities

On a higher level, this collective action can generate communities, which differently from an ad-hoc network, have a sustained collaboration and a shared goal. Such is Nabuur.com, existing since 2001, where over 17.000 volunteers try to help villages in developing countries. This online help network is used by participants from around the world to discuss approaches to development, generate ideas, and obtain feedback. For example the “Zero Waste Management project” in Bweyogerere in Uganda can improve its immediate local context through such web enabled support. The Public Participation GIS community is another example with its close to 2000 members active across the globe and collaborating on a number of initiatives at different levels all dealing with participatory spatial information management and communication.

Examples of collective actions towards the implementation of a joint project or more specifically towards the development of a shared product are the communities populating the galaxy of free/open source software (FOSS). Notable examples are the communities which work on the development Content Management Systems like Joomla, Drupal, or other applications like Openstreetmaps.

Real Life Impact

So, higher forms of collective action can have spill-over effects to the real world, for example, improve a situation and create communities to work on more solutions for pressuring problems. One last interesting example exemplifying the whole above described engagement, is the project around Ushahidi, where human rights activists offer a platform that crowdsources crisis information. Although the tool itself has generated a lot of enthusiasm, equally interesting is how it has developed so far. It started with befriended bloggers, who as I understood, got to know each other through their blogs and formed a network of similar interests. That led to a collaboration in the post-election crisis of Kenya, where some of them took action and established a crisis monitoring tool. The people involved had not known each other before and got connected over the web. The tool was used then in the field and triggered a country wide collective action to document human rights violations. The success triggered the coalescing of a community around the issue of crisis mapping with developers and activists developing the tools further and replicating them elsewhere. This is an example on how web-enabled collaboration had real impact in the field. One other outcome is a crisiscamp, which took place recently in Washington. Another one is planned in the UK.

All these different phases  do not need to happen in a prescribed order and it should illustrate how much work and effort is needed to build up a community. These illustrate how much potential lies in these new group formations. The majority of interaction is mainly for leisure but with little means an individual engagement can grow for example to a larger campaign. But Beth Kanter has also indicated the difficulty to lead Facebook members to higher levels of engagement. A petition is quickly signed, but to contribute and interact on a regular basis is not happening on a massive scale yet. A critical mass of individuals engaging proactively, trust, animation and experience are needed particularly in often anonymous online interaction, which usually takes up time.

The potentials of social networks are not necessarily for the good. Extremist groups, even hoaxers,  are very sophisticated to exploit social networks for their purposes, so that “social networks and video-sharing sites don’t always bring people closer together“. Social network providers are not rarely overburdened to deal with all these different forms of activism.

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Why and how does the mobile phone play a role in activism in Africa? What makes it be different from other forms of activism? And what are the potentials and challenges behind it?

I tried answering these questions two weeks ago at the Medien Jour Fix,  an interesting German network around communication and development, organized by MICT. I presented the latest developments around mobile phones in Africa, which did not seem to have been that much noticed in Germany. In most of presentations the radio played a key role as an instrument for media work.

I had mused before about potential future trends of mobile activism, but this time I highlighted the differences between the all-purpose-tool, its different uses and its implications. I was curious to do such a presentation on ICT for development in front of a German audience, which was widely mixed with delegates from media, NGOs and scientists.

I uploaded my presentation here and thanks to Creative Commons License I found some great photos.



I began my presentation with the well known satellite image of the world at night. On it one can see how dark Africa is and it seems as if not much is happening there. But because it is always difficult to generalize about the continent as a whole, I chose some examples:

• Mobile innovation even comes from Africa such as mobile finances.
• The highest growth rate is on the African continent.
• 99%
 of 
Tanzanians 
are 
in

 direct
 reach
 of 
a 
mobile 
phone.
• The highest traffic to the BBC mobile website comes from Africa.

But what makes mobile phone so special?

It is so especial because it combines all former media, such as telephone, Internet, and even radio and television, and because one can:

1. Communicate and receive information (radio, television and Internet)
2. Document and collect information
3. Publish information in text, audio and video
4. Can network in different ways on a peer-to-peer basis

So a passive recipient can become an active user or citizen.

The excellent Pomise of Ubiquity report from Internews has some fascinating statistics such as the different media access. In most countries, 2008 signified a turning point as more people owned mobile phones than televisions. So, the mobile phone becomes a key instrument to receive information via Internet, listen to radio (FM mobile phone) and watch videos although the latter has not worked yet and is unrealistic due to high costs. Location-based services will be very promising.

“A world in which nearly everyone owns a mobile linked into networks advanced enough to offer video and location-based services is years, not decades, away.” Internews

Different spheres of mobile activism

I looked, during my presentation, at political activism and focused on four different spheres and examples even though there is still a lot more happening (and much more in many African countries than in Europe).

1. Public sphere
   The mobile phone will become an important tool to shape the public sphere. Two examples are Voices of Africa and mobile African reporters. I showed a great footage from Cameroon about a Guiness factory polluting water sources. This example shows the potential to report better from the local context. But I also wonder when will there be a critical mass of an audience for such reports?
2. Participation
   The radio still plays a decisive role, because it reaches many more groups of people and particularly illiterate listeners. Combining a mobile campaign with the radio can be a great package. The organisation AZUR in Congo launched a while ago an SMS campaign, where they asked women to report about cases of domestic violence. The answeres were then portrayed and discussed in a radio show.
3. Transparency
   For some years now, the monitoring of elections has been happening in different African countries such as Zimbabwe or Nigeria. Digiactive has a great comparative case study analysis. In Barcelona, I followed an insightful presentation by Ethan Zuckerman, where he describes a great example from last year’s election in Zimbabwe:
   “SMS is an effective tool for monitoring all sorts of large, dangerous mammals. You can make the argument that Morgan Tsvanagarai was able to challenge the first round of Zimbabwe’s presidential elections in no small part due to SMS. A change in polling law meant that every local polling station in Zimbabwe was required to post local voting results publicly. Zimbabwe’s opposition party, MDC, organized an effort to collect these results via SMS. As a result, the MDC knew, within a few hours after the close of polls, that they’d received more votes than ZANU-PF.” By the way, an organization called Sokwanele has also been doing some pioneering work in Zimbabwe for mobile activism. Another one is Kubatana, which developed the Freedom fone.
4. Networking
   A bit more than a year ago cotton-workers in the Nile delta striked for a higher salary. They went into strike for a few weeks long because of the inflation, which took most of what little was left. Unrecognized by media in Egypt and internationally, an Egyptian woman, who did not use to be an activist, decided to set up a Facebook group to solidarize with the strikers. The group grew in a few weeks to more than 70,000 members (Egypt has about around 700,000 Facebook members). There is an enormous potential to use social networks for campaigns and protests. I think these networks will be working over the mobile phone in the future as I described here. Nevertheless in this case the protest could not made it to the the street, as the Egyptian authorities hardly allowed any protests on their streets. But mobile phones play a decisive role in protest coordination. Patrick Meier, also from Digiactive, did a great presentation about Mobile for Advocacy and Activism.

Challenges

Unfortunately, there are numerous challenges to mobile activism in Africa and, therefore, it is even more incredible how many initiatives are happening.  Just to name a few:

• Usage
  The costs of mobile communication or SMS are still very high. Although rural areas a now much better connected, there is a disparity between rural and urban areas, where one part becomes only passive recipients of information.
• Government
  Mobile networks can be even easier controlled such as the Internet, because they belong to one provider. Recently, it came out that half state owned Vodafone in Egypt gave out its customers data about the above described strike to the Egyptian police.
• Mobile Provider
  As much as mobile providers have done positive for the dissemination of mobile phones , they have their own business interests, which do not necessarily fit and promote activism. Such are walled gardens, where companies can and want to control what is offered and exchanged.
• Activism
  Although mobile activism is at least 8 years old, since the Estrada campaign in the Philippines, it has just started and a lot of experimenting is happening. It is also clear that it can also be a tool for a mean and cannot be useful for any form of activism. A theatre group might have more impact on the issue of HIV/Aids than an SMS campaign.

The presentation lead to a discussion around the quality of information, which is a typical debate in Germany, where journalists and bloggers continuously battle over who is better. Ironically, a journalist from the Deutsche Welle, who hosts the annual Blog Awards, asked me how the information from mobile reporters could be verified or controlled. Luckily, that was an exception, as there were many interesting examples for media communication work presented from Laos and Cambodia.

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One of the major shift is not the growth of mobile phones, but its transformations to a multi-purpose tool and its ubiquitous nature. Being it a calculator, a translator or a broadcasting, sensing or analyzing medium – the mobile phone will affect much more daily life than personal computers did. Antonella Pastore looks at the latest ITU-report and asks “It’s a mobile world… and the end of the Web as we know it?”

“A world in which nearly everyone owns a mobile linked into networks advanced enough to offer video and location-based services is years, not decades, away.” (Internews report)

The potentials are various and if we want to understand them and think out-of-the-box, we have to exclude the traditional approaches through personal computers and the Internet. But the difficulty is to find out how mobile phones will be used in the future. Nathan Eagle points it out rightly: “people are going to do work on their mobile phones in Africa, we just don’t know what it is yet.”

Examples

To come a step closer, I have listed some innovative examples for mobile phones from around the world.

• Join Us! A mobile phone software management for enthusiasts (PDF) around ”flash mobs” interested in Performing Social Tasks. This application is developed on Android, an open source system introduced by Google, where you can find networks through your mobile for different causes like environment and interact solely through your mobile phone.
• From Britt Bravo, a nice list of nonprofit applications for iPhones:
  The Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Guide to help you make sustainable seafood choices.
• GoodGuide provides iPhone users access to the world’s largest and most reliable sources of information on health, environmental and social performance of everyday products and companies.
• Fixmystreet.com offers also an iPhone version, where you can now record a problem by using its camera and GPS, ready for checking and submitting to the council.
• WideNoise is an iPhone and iPod Touch application that samples decibel noise levels, and displays them on a worldwide interactive map (noise pollution).
• Escorio is on of the winners of the Google Android developer challenge that tracks your mobile carbon footprint. “Reduce and offset it. Inspire others to do the same.“
• Ushahidi “a platform that allows anyone to gather distributed data via SMS, email or web and visualize it on a map or timeline”, is (will be) also developed for an iPhone for complete access.
• Scientists from the University of California hacked a mobile phone to analyze blood, detect disease.
• GeoChat: Emergent Group Communication at the Edge of the Network
  The application is developed by Instedd. They also have a great news service around health and humanitarian work and technology.

Does it happen everywhere?

But is it really happening everywhere? Isn’t the iPhone just a tool for the northern hemisphere? Yes, and even faster in Asia and it might be even adopted sooner in developing countries. Opera has some interesting monthly statistics in this regard. For example  Jamaican access via mobile web, has already exceeded the access via PCs. Would you have guessed that 80% of mobile web traffic to the BBC comes form Africa? Also, in China students save their money to share a smart phone with flat-rate to do  their research. Now, there is even an sms based browser for mobile phones.

Lastly, I wonder how different innovations around the mobile phone will be? I think it will be even faster than on PCs, because mobile allow far more ways to hack it.

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The simplest and most powerful form of mobile activism in the future will probably still be ordinary communication. However, in all fields of activism such as advocacy, awareness, research and protest, the mobile phone can be a strategic tool for communication, collaboration, coordination and collective action. In this regard we have only started to tap upon the potential of this all-purpose tool, being it in ownership by a majority of Africans across the continent.
However if one wants to look at some likely future scenarios and potentials for advanced mobile usage, then 4 trends could be particularly promising for mobile activism.

The first trend is disruptive innovation around mobile phones especially in Africa. If it is hardware or software, the creativity and ingenuity is happening – through adapting or hacking, new means and uses are developed right where they are needed. Open operation systems allow to create various needed features for the local context in the respective language. Mobile software examples from Kenya show the potential that exists even in low-cost and older models.

The second trend is around the local context, where increasing mobile features such as videos, photos, sooner or later GPS or sensors allow to analyse and document the environment. The mobile becomes a research tool to give its user the capacity to collect and share information. Open information repositories can be created for advocacy work. One outcome is increasing transparency. Mobile phones can be key for collectivity contributing to new information systems and receiving all sorts of information. The example of Ushahidi shows strength in linking the collected information to geodata.

The third trend is the mobile as a publishing and broadcasting tool. Text, audio and video is already possible – its contributions can support own communication channels and coincide with existing forms of citizen journalism. Here we already witness overlapping with other information and communication technologies such as radio. Surely, some form of data exchange has to work for that, which still inhibits several challenges. But that form of information exchange will happen, whatever technology is behind it. Tools for information exchange solely relying on SMS prove this is possible for all phones.

The fourth trend is about the potential for peer-to-peer networking. Mxit in South Africa, a mobile social network application with more than 5 million members lets one engage in an own community independently from location and time. Engaging in a ubiquitous network is promising for activism: coordination, mobilization and collective action. “It is not about mobile any more. It is the convergence from the social web with the mobile. The mobile let you interact within a network in a highly contextual way.” (Teemu Arina) Or as anthropologist Jan Chipchase asks: “So what does it mean when people’s identity is mobile?”

Nevertheless, a lot of challenges still remain, such as high costs or illiteracy. The control of mobile phone networks can become a security risk, also there is the potential that activists have to compete with private sector and the government in these new channels, and it might become an echo chamber residing with the essential challenges of activism: the lack of participation.

What do you think? Do you agree with the four trends or do you think there are additional ones? I will investigate this topic further in the next weeks for an article in a book about mobile activism in Africa. Thanks in advance for any remarks, links and critic!

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The other day I watched some videos from the Web2.0 Expo in New York. I have to say I liked most presentations, but at the same time I was bored that it is all too often about business and just another start up. Therefore, I was surprised to hear Tim O’Reilly, who coined the concept  Web2.0,  made a very different and even more interesting presentation. He was demanding that it is about time to start using the web for social change and do good. This comes right in the moment when events are happening all over the place to make a difference.

Here I list some interesting things I have come across with during the past months. Please let me know if you know of more.

• Info-Activism Camp next year in February in India. Great initiative by Tactical Tech, who also did a seminar last year on mobile and activism. They are running a competition:
  Struggling to make an impact on your target audience? Are issues unresolved despite your best efforts? Do the internet, mobile phones or information design present exciting possibilities in advocacy but difficult to take advantage of? The Info Activism camp, to be held in Bangalore, India from February 19 to 25, offers rights advocates the chance to make a greater impact in their work.
•  In the UK a lot of different events have happened lately such as UKcatalyst awards, 2gether08 (a festival of ideas, popular technologies and progress). And soon to come, the Social Innovation Camp, which goes for its second round from 5th-7th December 2008. David Wilcox reflects nicely about the process behind the Social Innovation Camp.
• Africa Barcamps are taking place all over Africa – Uganda, Kenya and Madagascar. Erik Hersman has a detailed list of events. Their primary purpose is on technology and software development, but here and there already overlap with social action. Another initiative is Barcamp Africa, which takes place in Silicon Valley to bridge all the innovative minds in both continents.
• Mobileactive08 is happening next week. Over the years it has grown in size of participants, ideas and engagement. Particularly, mobile activism has been spreading lately with lots of fascinating projects. Check out the sessions. I need another post to develop more on the topic.
• In Phnom Penh, Cambodia, there was a Barcamp recently with topics such as free and open source software, localization and social development and citizen journalists.  From one participant, Thomas Wannhof,  I have heard there is another one already planned in Saigon, Vietnam.
• Here, in Germany, I have already blogged about the Social Camp and now there are regular meetings called Social Bar.

What I find intriguing is that all those events take full potential of the social web. The majority of people involved do not even know each other from before, so they coordinate mainly over the web to meet face to face. Not overall huge activities, but nice to see how it flourishes all around the globe.

It seems like a wide diversity of people want to make a difference. It is also quite amazing the transnational dimension, that creative minds connect worldwide for interdisciplinary approaches and new concepts to use information and communication technologies for change. One can say that the technological side of the web and ICT4D becomes finally a more social face or movement.

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Some days ago, I had a talk with a colleague from another development organization about web2fordev. We were asking whether web2.0 can really make a difference in development work? We both agreed it can, but we were unsure whether the organizational culture has to change first or the external pressure will push for openness?

When is the two way conversation coming then?

He made a great point — ‘blogs could provide a dialogue between headquarters of development organizations directly with projects and particular beneficiaries.’ A conversation could start about what has happened, what was accomplished and what do both sides think about it. I asked him how long does he think this could take to become reality, to which he replied, “ten years.”

I disagree and think it could take less time. Why? Because I think the potentials of the web will sooner or later unfold peer pressure. Don’t get me wrong. I do not mean by some small tools such as blogs alone, but the ease of engagement and the new potentials for collective action. The following example show possible implications for the development sector.

The power of mapping

Inspired from a post by Erik Hersman called Activist Mapping I came up with another thought or better explanation for this kind of pressure towards development organization, for example, looking at development results — the impact of foreign aid. Easterly describes it as a key challenge for development aid and monitoring results is high on the agenda of development organizations. Another example is the discussion around aid effectiveness and the Paris declaration.

The great potential of collective action for transparency

So, back to my thoughts. Check out first a project by Erik Hersman, Juliana Rotich and Daudi Were called Ushahidi and take a look at how they made it possible by all challenges that people in Kenya, during the post-election conflict, reported through their mobile phone about the critical situation. This way they collected information from all over Kenya and documented incidents such as riots, deaths, property loss, looting, rape etc. This degree of transparency was hardly achieved by the media and certainly not intended to be publicised by the government.

Bottom up measuring of development results

Now imagine the potential to measure development projects from a grassroot level. Or to collect information about how many governmental services have arrived in villages. This could be possible by harnessing the wisdom of crowd.

• Using mobile phones to collect information.
• Present all information on a website with maps and databases.
• Use the website to connect the people who send information and aim to get more accurate information.

Beneficiaries of projects could collect information in teams, send feedbacks to the platform and create their own map of development projects or their timeline with accurate information on how government services are fulfilling their duties. This kind of transparency should be an all-win-situation.

Some might think this will never happen, but I think it will. It is already happening and to my understanding we are just at the beginning of this kind of collective action. What do you think?

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Some weeks ago I wrote a post about a new initiative by UNHCR, which promotes the use geodata mashups to provide information about refugee camps all around the world. Today, I saw another initiative by the World Bank called geo.worldbank.org: “Our work around the world.” Again, it is a nice service, but does it offer much more than the website?

Paul Currions points it out well in his post that the UNHCR map “is useful because it starts to give people an idea of one of the key issues for refugee management and the complexity of running a refugee camp. The first thing I notice is that every time I click on a link for more information, it tells me how much it costs to buy school or farm equipment, and gives me a link to UNHCR fundraising so I can cough up right there. I think we should be doing better. Much, much better.”

I agree with Paul Currion and wonder why these services do not offer the following:

• Integrating other available sources of information to offer a broader perspectives on the given context. There are many other potentially valuable resources, which could enrich the visualization.
• There should be ways to contribute information, for example, by refugees themselves or beneficiaries of World Bank projects. Couldn’t mashups used to get feedback and to monitor projects and their impact?
• Gapminder.org illustrates nicely what further ways are possible to simplify complex data.

Interestingly, there are a lot of grassroot initiatives offered, which are often developed and maintained by a few people and sometimes even one person who accomplishes much more.

1. Tunesia Prison Map
   Sami Ben Gharbia put up together, already a while ago, the frightening Tunesia prison map, in which he has been using google maps. It shows where political dissidents have been locked up by the Tunisian government.
2. Theyworkforyou
   They work for you was developed by Rob McKinnon, whom I had the change to meet back in London. This inspiring project has a sister in the UK “that aims to make it easy for people to track the activity of Aotearoa New Zealand’s Parliament.” Basically, this site aggregates information already available in a form that makes it more transparent to follow the engagement of parliamentarians and topics. I am really impressed about his work and looking forward to see more of his ideas realized in the future.
3. UNdemocracy
   This is again a website which aggregates available information and offers it in a transparent way. It focuses on an easy access to the transcripts of the General Assembly and Security Council of the United Nations. The same people also did the Public Whip, a page tracking the voting record and attendance of parliamentarians in the UK.
4. Ushahidi
   This website was quickly realized through the recent Kenya crisis and maps the reports of the post-election crisis with all its different incidents such as riots, deaths, property loss, government forces etc. Kenyians can report such cases through their mobile phones by sms. This truly is a bottom up mashup.
5. Mapping the election conditions in Zimbabwe
   
   This is a similar initiative, which documents all types of manipulation during the latest Zimbabweans election. The map is a valauble resource and Sokwanele has been doing an impressive work for human rights throughout the the last years. Ethan Zuckerman wrote an in depth post about this project.
6. Healthcarethatworks
   Another Google map mashup, which shows the New York City wide status for hospitals and its disproportionate impact that recent hospital closures have on low-income communities.

Some more mashups in the enviroment field are summarised on Global Voices by Juliana Rotich. Lastly, Netsquared has on this year’s conference a mashup event, where promising new initiatives are presented.

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Blogs have started a little revolution — nowadays everyone with Internet access can publish content on the web. Citizens can articulate their perspective and exchange it within a network of blogs. The mobile phone, with its improved access to the web, gives new means for citizen engagement because one can connect from everywhere and engage and broadcast from anywhere. These are the three most influential factors:

Always online

There is a slow shift when the web loses its physical limitation. Although the web is all around the world, in most of the cases you have to go somewhere to be connected. The mobile phone, because it is easier to connect to the web, changes that — you are always online. The web is a constant follower that might be frightening to some. But a “blackberry for activism” lets activists get involved instantly. On a peer to peer basis, people are connected = protected. A recent case underlines the potential: “Twitter Saves Man From Egyptian Justice.” Jan Chipchase wrote in a recent New York Times article, “the cellphone is becoming the one fixed piece of our identity.”

Interacting from everywhere

Some years ago I read Howard Rheingold’s “Smart Mobs” and I could not really see these mobile peer-to-peer networks happening on a massive scale, but, nowadays, a connection to the web allows people to be part of social networks. There are many worldwide experiences for sms campaigns for political change. The New York Times recently wrote, “50 million people, or about 2.3 percent of all mobile users, already use the cellphone for social networking.” This is particularly important in developing countries, where mobile phones are the communication tool. The real benefit is not in the northern hemisphere, where through the recent years most mobile business models have been failing. It is in Africa or Asia where the mobile phone is the main communication technology. If this is connected through the web, it then allows interaction, coordination and organization on a peer to peer basis. The cvberactivism in the aftermath of political violence in Kenya is one example and another is the mobile social blogging network vipera.com.

Broadcast from everywhere

In re-publica.de I watched a fascinating session on video citizen journalism. Brian Conley presented a project in which people from Iraq broadcast from Baghdad over the web (Alive in Baghdad), and there is no media team around. This presentation reminded me of a recent new development: live video broadcasting. Two new services are very interesting: Qik and Mogulus. Yes, more new tools, but these ones represent a shift — with Qik you can broadcast alive from your mobile phone wherever you are. I first got introduced to it when David Wilcox interviewed me through his mobile phone at the Social Innovation Camp. And the other tool, Mogulus.com, can be set up easily in your own television station to be online, letting you broadcast on daily basis from it. Eduardo Avila writes a fascinating story from Ecuador:  My Mobile Voice and Citizen Journalism.

Citizen video broadcasting has two interesting facets: First, videos often have a stronger impact compared to texts. Second, citizen journalists, such as mobile reporters in Africa, go themselves to demonstrations and make interviews or film directly from areas where no media outlet goes.

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