The Paris Hilton of the Internet

During today's RiOS Institute's and UC Berkeley's School of Information lecture series New Wave Social ICT Impact, this is how Craig Newmark, of Craigslist fame, described himself.

He was talking to ischool student and faculty about his work at Craiglist, where he is taking care of customer service, a job that entails taking care of spammers and haters. One of his main takeaway from his 12 years with Craigslist is that humans are overwhelmingly trustworthy and good. this is reflected in the profoundly ethical moral compass by which Craigslist is run:
- treat people how you want to be treated yourself
- live and let live
- give others a break every now and then

Craig considers himself an 'accidental social entrepreneur,' but he does want to change the world, mainly by supporting and giving exposure to people and organizations who are working on worthwhile causes. One area in which he is particularly interested is the Middle East, where he is supporting microfinance organizations such as CHF International (he is a bog fan of microfinance in general), wants to finance internet cafes in the West Bank and also sponsored a latrine in the Hisham ben Adil Malek boys' high school in Jericho (you can see pictures of it on the September 10th posting on his personal blog cnewmark.

High-tech meets low-tech. He does believe in the special power of ICT to bring about social change, through providing Americans with information about other parts of the world, finding out about needs of others and possibilities to do something about it. The internet is getting people together to help, especially with resources and also allows for international cross-pollination of knowledge.

One of his new projects is to support people fighting the 'professional disinformation workers' and their products.

So, while Craigslist's credo seems to come down to Simplicity, Sincerity and Speed, Craig believes in the global power of nerds to change the world. As a self-identified nerd, he 'blindly plunges into things because he doesn't know any better and it seems to be working.' Keep on plunging, Craig.

You can listen to a podcast of the talk thanks to ischool volunteers Kevin and Alana.

Rule of Experts

Empowering Technologies for the Developing World

M. Bernardine Dias of TechBridgeWorld in an interview with Technology Reviewin how the


Helping the developing world isn't as easy as sending money and experts. Local values and customs have to be considered, and ultimately, the community has to become able to guide itself. M. Bernardine Dias is the director of Carnegie Mellon University's TechBridgeWorld, a group that partners with developing communities to create sustainable technological solutions to problems within those communities. In advance of her appearance at the Emerging Technologies Conference at MIT later this week, Technology Review talked with Dias about the role that technology can play in the developing world.

She talked about TechBridgeWorld's two golden rules of operation: "We never go anywhere unless we're invited--that translates to having a strong partner within that community. Second, what we do is always framed as a sharing process. We only go in as experts of technology, not to try to dictate where the community should head or what they should be doing, or should not be doing, on a larger scale."

Sounds good.

Anthropologists like Tim Mitchell have shown that expert knowledge is never as disinterested as it they seem and that the technocratic rationality they embody often works in the interest of the powerful, be they development organizations, governments, corporations - and their lastest embodiment of Public-Private Partnerships of which the academy is also often a part.

RiOS Institute and World Summit Awards Selecting World's Best e-content

NOMINATIONS FOR BEST U.S. E-CONTENT NOW OPEN
DEADLINE: JULY 20, 2007

RiOS Institute has been chosen by the World Summit Awards (WSA) to select the best in U.S. e-content. WSA is a global initiative to promote the world's best e-content and innovative ICT applications. It started in 2003 as part of the UN's World Summit on the Information Society; to date 168 countries are actively involved. WSA demonstrates the local diversity and creative use of ICT around the world, serving as a global platform to make today's information society more inclusive.


The winners of each of the eight categories below will be submitted to the global Grand Jury, which will meet in Croatia in September 2007 to select the 40 best global e-content projects. They will be honored at a winner's gala at the end of 2007.

In 2005, over 20,000 candidates from 168 countries participated, and the 40 winners were announced at a gala during the WSIS Summit in Tunis.

Best e-content will be selected for eight categories:
e-government
e-health
e-learning
e-entertainment
e-science
e-culture
e-business
e-Inclusion


RiOS is now accepting nominations.
Deadline for Nominations to be submitted: July 20, 2007

Please send your weblinks, together with a short description of your organization and its goals, to paul.braund@riosinstitute.org

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Muhammad Yunus leaves politics

News from the bbc

Bangladeshi Nobel Peace Prize winner and micro credit expert Muhammad Yunus has announced that he has abandoned plans to form his own political party.

In an open letter to his supporters, Mr Yunus said that he did not believe he had enough support for his movement, Nagarik Shakti (Citizen's Power). His party was formally launched in February pledging to clean up politics. Mr Yunus had planned to have candidates standing in every seat in elections for which no date has yet been set.

'Losing enthusiasm'
The vote was put off in January after violence between supporters of Bangladesh's two largest political parties. "I am standing aside from my efforts to form a political party," Mr Yunus in an open letter to the public. "I have seen those who initially encouraged me gradually losing their enthusiasm. "I decided to enter into politics because of your support," he said, "but I came to understand that it is not possible and so accepting this reality I decided not to go forward," he said.

Mr Yunus and his Grameen Bank, which specialises in lifting people out of extreme poverty by giving small loans to the very poor, were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last October.

'Not interested'

His decision to enter politics followed the crisis in January that led to a state of emergency imposed by a military-backed interim government.

"People gave me inspiration to enter politics (but) when I contacted them I did not get much response and they were not interested in joining the party. Others would not leave their existing political party," he said in the statement.

Mr Yunus said in February that his new party would offer an alternative to the two main political parties - the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and the Awami League - which have dominated Bangladesh's notoriously corrupt political system for more than 30 years.

But correspondents say that many people questioned whether he had over-estimated his popularity in rural areas, where his bank's high interest rates are disliked.

They also pointed to the difficulty of breaking the Awami League and BNP's stranglehold on power. Bangladesh's interim government has said it will only hold elections once corruption has been eradicated in the country. It has arrested scores of politicians, civil servants and businessmen as part of its anti-corruption drive.


OUr question is, what are the lessons from this failure?
Surely Yunus had the support of the poor of Bangladesh, who revere him for his creation of the Grameen enterprises, the most important of which are the Grameen bank - in spite of his interest rates - and Grameen phone, which have improved the lives of thousands of poor families in the country. He surely also had the support of the world community, who honored him with the Nobel Peace Price last year and who are inspired by his sincerity and humbleness.
But that was not enough to provide a viable alternative to the entrenched power structures of Bangladesh. Goodwill, idealism and broad support, even fame, are not enough if that cannot be translated into political power. (add money for the US).
We don’t know the whole story of why he quit politics, but one thing is for sure: it is a great loss for the people of Bangladesh as well as of other countries.

UC Berkeley ischool year’s end presentations

A couple of weeks ago, we attended the final project showcase of the Masters’ students at School of Information at UC Berkeley. The 15 projects, most of which entailed a software program of some form or another, spanned a wide variety of areas, reaching from more customer-friendly business registration services for the Californian government to several project to improve communication and evaluation within the university to a web-based collection browser for the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology at UCB to an online marketplace for the food industry.

Of particular interest to us were the two projects in the ICTD area, the Field/Mice Project by Andrea Moed and Owen Otto, which presented an English-language learning video game in which students using multiple mice on one PC learned to collaborate and take turns. With the help of Microsoft and the TIER program at UCB, Andrea and Owen went to Bangalore and tested the game in a number of government schools with 100 children aged 10 to 13.

The second project, called REACH, by Rowena Luk, and also supported by TIER, used a user-centered design approach to develop a software that allowed for social networking among Ghanaian doctors at home and abroad. The system emerged from the insights of several weeks of fieldwork in Ghana, that revealed the tight social network among doctors in Ghana, who use an informal social network to fill gaps in the existing medical infrastructure. Such a human-centered approach is also at the heart of our work, and our methodology of Human-Driven Design and Research (HDDR), which we teach through workshops and white papers.

While we enjoyed all of the presentations, and getting some hands-on playtime afterwards, we were left wanting for projects that really push the envelope in HCI and CRD. If graduate school is not the time to explore the edges of established practices, then when?

Nokia launches 'phones for the poor'

As reported by fin 24 from New Zealand

But at prices of 35 to 90 Euros, they are still not affordable to many people in India.


Stockholm - Nokia on Thursday announced the launch of seven low-end, new phones at an event in New Delhi, India.

The company said the phones will be available in the second and third quarter in select markets for estimated retail prices, before applicable taxes and subsidies, of between €35 and €90 (R331.96 and R853.75 respectively).

The Nokia 1200 and Nokia 1208 include a call-time tracking feature, which helps manage airtime costs by allowing consumers and village phone entrepreneurs to preset a time or cost limit on individual calls, automatically ending the call after the limit has been reached.

A multi-phonebook lets customers set up personal phonebooks unique to that user and save specific contacts to that user's phonebook, enabling an entire family to share a phone, and for each of the family members to manage their own phonebook.

The Nokia 1200 will be available in the second quarter with an estimated retail price of €35, while the Nokia 1208 will be available in the third quarter with estimated retail price of €40.

Entry-level phone Nokia 1650 also comes with the call-time tracking feature, as well as with a flashlight, music-on-the-go via FM radio and MP3-grade ringtones. Nokia estimates that the retail price for the Nokia 1650 will be around EUR55.

The Nokia 2660 features GPRS technology for e-mail and Internet access, Bluetooth support, music on-the-go via FM radio, MP3 ring tones as well as enough memory for a 500-entry phonebook. It will cost around €85. Both the Nokia 1650 and Nokia 2660 will be available in the second quarter.

The Nokia 2630 is the thinnest handset in Nokia's portfolio at a mere 9.9 millimeter. It aims to meet the needs of emerging market consumers and features a camera combined with Bluetooth technology allows images to be sent, shared, stored and printed, as well as e-mail, MMS, calendar, a calculator and FM radio.

The Nokia 2760 features a digital camera, giving many emerging markets consumers their first experience with digital photography, and Bluetooth technology to make it easy to share the photos that they capture. The Nokia 2760 also features video recording, video playback, and FM radio, as well as GPRS.

The Nokia 2630 and Nokia 2760 will be available in the third quarter. The Nokia 2630 will cost around €85 the Nokia 2760 around €90.

The Nokia 2505 is a CDMA phone and is expected to be available in selected markets in Asia/Pacific, Middle East, Africa, China and Latin America during the second quarter.

A Loss for the UN

RiOS recently received this email from a Silicon Valley social entrepreneur, with whom we had engaged in discussions about the possibilities of the UN and Silicon Valley working togther:
"I think I've invested a little bit of time in the UN so far, but it's not clear that it's worth more time. I think you've heard what I've had to say, and I'd rather move on to working on making real things happen. There are good people in the ... movement who invest tons of time in this work, and I don't think it adds anything to have me burn my limited cycles."

This is coming from somebody who is deeply rooted in the Silicon Valley culture of entrepreneurship and getting things done through real, grounded project. At the same time, he saw the importance of bringing the moral and social focus of the UN to Silicon Valley, in order to balance some of the region's zeal for profit. He was committed to working with the UN's Global Alliance for ICT and Development (GAID) in his particular area of specialization.

No longer. Part of his disillusionment came from the dynamics at the UN meets Silicon Valley Event in February at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View (See our blog in late FEbruary for a summary of the event). Here are his thoughts on the day:
"The lobbyists from the tech companies (who wrote the action items that came out of the day - see our blog entry)struggled with anything that isn't on the lobbying agenda. You see lots of mentions of creating an environment where SV can compete.
Open ICT ecosystems. Best practices (read: light regulation, no telecom monopolies).
Take the session I attended: We ended up fighting a long time to move the summary a bit. Example: "Identifying local resources to support local content and delivery of devices - taking a bottoms up approach." We got the bottoms up in there, but the initial version of this bullet gave you the feeling they were looking for local sales and support of their products.
Sorry to be so cynical, but I didn't see much commitment to the MDGs or poor people in these recommendations. It really read more like the American Electronics Association global lobbying talking points."

So the UN-GAID seems to be stuck between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, in order to work with (read: receive funds from) Silicon Valley institutions (read companies mainly), it needs to embrace more of the corporate values and ways of doing things. If it does so too much, it looses the people who are more socially committed and have the interests of people in developing countries at heart first and foremost, rather than developing new markets or products.

RiOS is committed to helping the UN-GAID learn to walk this tightrobe, and while we regret the loss of a fellow traveler, we take from it the need for more action and for greater attention to the needs of those the GAID was created to serve.

Global Catalyst Foundation

A week weeks ago, while conducting interviews for our UN-GAID working paper, I had the pleasure of meeting Kamran and Zohre Elahian, co-founders of the Global Catalyst Foundation (GCF). One of GCF's most recent initiatives is the Ghandi project, supported by the Skoll Foundation, which screens the movie "Ghandhi," dubbed in Arabic, in Palestenian communities and refugee camps. The goal is to promote non-violent resistance, which was so successful in liberating India from British rule. In helping Palestine free itself from Israeli rule, Israel would surely benefit from a lesson in non-violence too.

Another project of note is the Kasulu and Mtabila Internet Project in Tanzania, a three-year Public-Private Partnership Program that uses ICT, through internet access centers, to provide school and health education and income generating projects. One of the project sites is the Mtabila Refugee Camp for Burundian refugees, which was so successful that when Cisco was looking for locations in the country to set up its networking academy, it chose the camp because of its many computer-literate inhabitants.

This speaks to the power of long-term, hands-on involvement of project funders to ensure the success of their creations.

UC Berkeley at Google

Last Thursday, as part of the Discover Cal Series, Annalee Saxenian, Dean of UC Berkeley's School of Information, and Steven Weber, Director of UC Berkeley's Institute of International Studies spoke about Globalization and the Flow of Knowledge to an audience of about 250 Cal alumni living in the South Bay.
Saxenian drew on her latest book, The New Argonauts, to explain how immigrants returning from Silicon Valley to their home countries and opening businesses there are contributing to the development of "centers of skills" and "clusters of capabilities" that create innovation in developing countries. Rather than a zero-sum game to the detriment of Silicon Valley, Saxenian sees that as a benefit to the region.
Both speakers did acknowledge the growing inequalities in developing countries that come with an increasingly affluent class of knowledge workers. Interestingly, Saxenian argued that returning immigrants also bring progressive social changes to their home countries, and that this will ultimately contribute more to local development than the efforts of larger international development organizations. This corresponds to RiOS’ (and other) findings that homegrown solutions are often more successful than foreign imports.
Another interesting tidbit was that India recently allowed her citizens to hold double citizenship, and that google, which did a fabulous job of hosting the event, allows its employees to work on non-monetized areas for 20 percent of their time. That goes some way to explaining the company’s success, right up there with the way the company takes care of its employees.

Google Taps Rural Indian Market

This just in from rediff news

Google logs into rural India

Surajeet Das Gupta & Priyanka Joshi in New Delhi | BS | March 21, 2007 | 09:08 IST

The latest company to seek a fortune in India's rural markets is Google. It is developing with local vendors a simpler search engine, as well as content tailored to the needs of rural users.

The customised content for rural customers would include weather updates, crop patterns and other local data.

"How to make the search engine simpler and uncomplicated is a big challenge, but we will have an answer soon," Google Vice-president (Asia Pacific & Latin America) Sukhinder Singh Cassidy told Business Standard.

A steadily growing number of companies in sectors like FMCG, telecom and retail are investing in the rural market owing to its growing prosperity. Google is the first global Internet giant to seek a pie of this market.

Google is also betting heavily on the mobile platform (as PC penetration is low) and plans to introduce services like Google Talk (instant chat application), and Google Maps through tie-ups with Indian mobile operators.

Following the success of Orkut, a popular social networking site, in India, Google plans to introduce it in other Indian languages online and it might integrate it with its instant messaging service, Google Talk. Further, Google is planning to launch in India a mobile version of Orkut, which will allow users to post messages to their friends online through SMS.

Google will also introduce its online advertising model, called AdWords, on the mobile platform. The advertising platform allows companies to exploit the field of mobile marketing.

Google is further looking at licensing partnerships with Indian publishers, broadcasting companies and those that own Bollywood content that could be made available on its sites.�

WRI Teams Up with IFC for BOP Research

From One Billion to Four Billion

Moving from the usual one billion next customers to four billion, next Monday the World Resource Institute and the International Finance Corporation will be presenting their latest findings on the market at the base of the pyramid (see invite below).

Base is the more politically correct term for what C.K. Prahalad, who will be present, has called the bottom of the pyramid, for, as one of the participants at the recent UN meets Silicon Valley event asked the audience, would you want to live at the bottom of anything?

Invitation
The World Resources Institute and the International Finance Corporation cordially invite you to the presentation of the report:

The Next 4 Billion:

Market Size & Business Strategy at the Base of the Pyramid

Discussions of base of the pyramid (BOP) markets have relied principally on business case studies and rough estimates of market size. WRI, with the cooperation of the International Finance Corporation, has enjoyed unique access to national household surveys for the purpose of understanding low-income communities as economic actors. Drawing on income data from 110 countries and standardized expenditure data from 36 countries across the globe, the report is an important first look at the market opportunity represented by four billion individuals who make up the BOP. This briefing on the report and the follow-on discussion of business strategy and market research will be the first public review of the report and its data.

Date and time: Monday, March 19, 2007 at 11:00 a.m.

Location: International Finance Corporation Auditorium, 2121 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington DC, 20433

Featuring:
C.K. Prahalad, Paul and Ruth McCracken Distinguished University Professor of Corporate Strategy, Stephen M. Ross School of Business, University of Michigan

Nariman Behravesh, Executive Vice President and Chief Economist, Global Insight, Inc.

Michael Klein, Vice President for Private Sector Development for the World Bank and IFC, and Chief Economist, IFC

Jonathan Lash, President, World Resources Institute

UN-GAID and Silicon Valley Taking Steps Forward Together

These are the action items, again organized by panels, from the UN Meets Silicon Valley event. Although they are still quite general and moreover do not have any timelines and concrete responsibilities attached to them, they are hopefully the beginning of a fruitful collaboration between the UN and Silicon Valley.

Innovation Panel
• UN GAID to form working group to promote open ICT ecosystems
• Create “Environment Guidelines” to promote ICT and innovative entrepreneurs

VC Panel
• Support quality, financially sustainable mentoring of entrepreneurs to make them “Investor Ready”
• UN GAID to promote and publish best practices for ecosystem to support and scale innovation

Content Panel
• Make ALL UN and development agency publications available online and free of charge
• Open access to communication - Bring into Telecenter initiative
• Bring together KEY content providers – Form a network of Silicon Valley organizations to generate a common platform (UN GAID to catalyze)

There are programs already under way in Silicon Valley that do some of these things, such as the Reuters Digital Visions Program at Stanford University and the Global Social Benefit Incubator that are bringing social entrepreneurs from developing countries to the Valley to help them with developing and scaling their projects, respectively. Rather than reinventing the wheel, it might be helpful to go to them for some lessons learned.
RiOS Institute is looking forward to work with all interested organizations to bring these action items to life.

UN Meets Silicon Valley - Results

Results from the UN Meets Silicon Valley event is slowly migrating to the web. Intel posted the pictures taken by its official photographer and also sent a summary of the panel discussions to all participants.

Here they are, interspersed with some of our thoughts. (For panel participants, see the event agenda).

Innovation Panel

• Commitment and Coordination in Private Sector: Not enough major private companies committed to developing ICT for Emerging Markets and the ones that are committed aren’t coordinated

RiOS: It seems hard to believe that the emerging markets area is not soliciting more commitment, and shows the difficulty for large corporations to work in this disruptive area, as Clayton Christensen calls it. The lack of coordination among corporations also exists because for many this is a highly strategic area, and work here is not shared with potential competitors. It will be interesting to see how the GAID can work around this.

• Identifying local resources to support local content and delivery of devices – taking a bottoms up approach

RiOS: It’s good that people are coming around to the bottom-up approach, although it only goes half way if initiatives are still developed in corporate labs, even if they are located in India or China. What is necessary is finding truly local initiatives that grow out of local needs and then putting resources (financial, human, technical) behind them to scale them.

• Enabling access to simple devices with easy user interfaces via financing and education

RiOS: This implies that such simple devices exist already. Do they? How simple is the $100 computer or Intel Classmate? Cell phones are leading the way here.

• Lack of affordable and simple broadband connectivity

Venture Capitalist Panel

• Need to create a cohesive ecosystem to drive and incubate innovation in developing countries (requires analysis of funding gaps)
• Need a phased approach toward growing businesses (e.g. need mentors to help smallest enterprises grow to be VC ready)
• Need to share best practice in measuring blended ROI; create a feedback loop to learn from failures and wins

RiOS: This last point is crucial. It is difficult enough to measure the social return on ICTD programs, in a way that goes beyond the quantitative indicators of how many users, how many hours of usage, program retention etc, which on their own are not saying much of the difference ICT really makes. If on top of that this social return has to be translated into metrics that make business sense, ie. mainly financial, this proves even more tricky. When HP tried to do it with its e-Inclusion program, the company was not all that successful, as the demise of the program in 2005 showed. Are there any good examples out there?

Content Panel

• Local production of content – Incentive, Tools, Understand why important
• Overcoming barriers to consumption of content – Accessibility, Language, Literacy
• Lack of capacity building to creating local content – Training, Teaching, Tools

For RiOS, this whole question of local content is of primary importance, because this is what ultimately results in a meaningful difference for the people using ICT. Women and children in developing countried being able to go to the UN charters that give them rights is good, but can they read them, understand them, translate them to benefit their own situations? This kind of empowerment can only happen through local organizations producing content that makes these charters relevant. This is where the work of the Committee for the Democratization of Information Technology in Brazil is so powerful, because it starts with a local situation that people want to improve. Only then comes the application of ICT for solving this problem. The other way around would be putting the cart before th horse.

RiOS named by Investor's Business Daily as a key to Bridging Digital Divide

Last week, Investor's Business Daily ran an article about RiOS Institute. By bringing diverse groups of leaders and innovators in the ICTD area together, and supplying them with knowledge to which they otherwise might not have access, we are able to generate actions. The Silicon Valley Challenge Summit was one such occasion, and we continue to work in academia, with corporations, international development organizations and social benefit groups of all kinds to better harness ICTs for human and social development.
Thanks once again to Louise and Luma, our fabulous pro-bono media team at Ogilvy Public Relations.