MobileActive’s Mobile Tech 4 Social Change barcamp was the first event of this sort that I have been to. I’ve never experienced this style of event planning where you pick a theme, arrange a place, invite a bunch of people to come and then let them decide what the sessions would be that day. I have to say, there are elements to it that I really liked, and things I might do differently.

Ethan Zuckerman of Global Voices and Harvard University opens the Mobile Active Barcamp with a presentation via Skype.

This strategy of planning seems to fit what is happening with mobile technology and change pretty well in one striking regard. Things are moving so quickly in mobile technology that it is almost impossible to plan in advance where it will be on a given day. So, having a conference like this allows for that organic quality we see in this changing technology to come to life when a hundred or so people come together. There is an immediacy to this, capturing what is happening RIGHT THIS SECOND. We are all at this conference presumably because we have a passion for change and for using technology to accomplish it. And most of us are probably there because we want very much to get directly involved, deep, submerged, engulfed, entombed, up to our necks, whatever, in the conversations happening that are shaping this technology world. Naturally, having a forum where we can intermingle and spark ideas makes perfect sense. A barcamp, with its more fluid structure, really opens up participants to engaging themselves in the creation of the event.

And if you read what I had to say about the GPPN conference in Paris, you may have caught that I place a high value in making a conference engaging, and not just unidirectional for information flow. A barcamp is clearly a great way to promote this.

The thing I am not so sure on with an event like this is that it ensures people who are coming to the event are getting out of it what I would want them to get out of it. That is, if I were the one putting it on. Having organized sessions in conferences and multi-day seminars, I tend to feel like I want everyone to go home with something rather specific, predesigned, deeply conceived. Sure, I want there to be room to move within that framework so as not to suffocate serendipity. But, I do feel that it is important to take every step to make sure that people get out of it what I have in mind. At a barcamp, a LOT is left up to chance–particularly that enough people with enough good sessions will come prepared. That is too much chance in my book.

I left this barcamp with a feeling of “huh, maybe I could find a way to work some of this into future conferences I organize, maybe a hybrid, where most of it is set, but some of it is blocked out for people to create their own sessions in a more free form fashion.” Clearly there are some very good aspects to a barcamp, even if there are those that I might want to prevent.

Anyway, on to my day:

So, we, The Morningside Post, were at the barcamp with the intent of running some mobile technology activities to add another layer to the experience, and give a kind of “real time coverage on the fly” and “it’s almost like you’re there” feeling. We set up widgets on our site that we would be Tweeting to, and that would feed them in as they were happening. And, we used mobile phones and a digital camera to try and get some interviews and footage of the event.

The best part? Here we are, all at this event, talking about all these great technologies and the wonderful things you can do with them, and how some parts of the world, particularly developing countries, do not have access to the same equipment we do in America, and need solutions that work within their constraints, and all this time, we at TMP faced a fair amount of our own constraints. We didn’t have enough phones to shoot video, so we borrowed a Nokia N95 from Katrin Verclas, who was very kind to provide this to us. Unfortunately, there was a bit of a learning curve involved in trying to work with a phone we had no prior experience with. Some of the footage I shot got hung up periodically, making for really choppy viewing. With all the people in the large room with a concrete floor, the sound was pretty rough, too. And toward the end, when we were going to get some interviews, the battery died.

Another issue was the Twitter feed. We had a Blidget set up through Widgetbox, but when I tried it out on the day of the event, it didn’t seem to be working. In fact, I’m still not convinced it worked 100%–a lot of our Tweets with the hash tag of #tmp aren’t appearing on our site, though they are on Twitter itself.

Not to complain. Just illustrating that, with all of our great technology can still come real problems. I guess we aren’t as “developed” as we thought we were.

The event began with Ethan Zuckerman’s opening speech that was Skyped in. I heard he’d actually wanted to be at the event to give the speech, but couldn’t make it. Somehow having him on Skype was the more fitting of the two options. I’m sad to report, however, I wasn’t able to catch a lot of what he said. I was pretty busy wrestling with my technology issues. But, I was happy to hear him drive home the point that just putting technology into someone’s hands doesn’t mean they will use it the way you want them to (a tip of my hat at the One Laptop Per Child program).

He also said that we had reached a point where people are left out of democratic processes if they don’t have a cellphone. Cellphones have become a tool for communicating back to those in power through SMS, for example, and for organizing groups of people. Look at what is happening with Twitter all over the world. And look at what Obama is doing with these technologies. This theme was definitely part of the backdrop of the entire day for me.

FIRST SESSION  – UNICEF’s Rapid SMS Projects

I checked out the session by the crew from UNICEF and SIPA, who spoke about how they were using Rapid SMS and reporting platforms connected to cellphones to monitor and report on projects in Africa. In Malawi, they are using this to monitor child nutrition. One of the presenters, Christopher, noted that this is important because monitoring child nutrition in Africa, across the continent, really isn’t done very well, which is why it is important to find solutions that improve this. The strength of using cellphones to do this, they said, is that it can eliminate the chain of people that paper reporting typically has to go through. Instead of reporting to someone, who reports it to someone, who reports it to someone, who reports it to the end user typing up the report, which can take a long time and risks losing the data, the information goes directly to the end database immediately. Also, it reduces the risk of data entry error later in the series, giving the researcher much more control over quality assurance.

They said that their program goes a step further and puts the responsibility of reporting also on local people. Parents and children, too, send SMS reports on nutrition. Of course, that comes with a cost.  One way UNICEF has dealt with this is to provide a mechanism for crediting back their account, or even giving them a small monetary incentive.

In Nigeria, they are using Rapid SMS to monitor access to bednets, and whether or not bednets are getting to people, as designed by projects.

Two things about this project that really stood out in the positive for me:  1. They stressed that the program was built on the ground in Africa, and not in NYC, where people can easily be disconnected from the reality there; and 2. That they built this on a “lowest common denominator” philosophy, making sure people in the project countries had adequate access to the technologies being employed.

I do have some concerns about this. I always go back to my experience in Ukraine-what do you do in a culture where people generally think of information as something that should be hoarded and controlled, rather than freely transmitted, like is often the case in Ukraine? Or, what if there is a risk that someone in the community might have a stake in making sure that accurate information is not sent, and thus uses threats and coercion to prevent it? And on a more abstract level, what is being done to give this information back to the people it is coming from, since this information is theirs, in a way, and they often have so little access to it or control over it? So much data is hard to come by, and thus it can be hard to mount an advocacy campaign. What is UNICEF doing to make sure they get access to this information if they want to use it to make things better on their own terms? This last question came up, but they said they hadn’t worked it out yet, though it was a very important question to consider.

Whatever the case, I came away thinking their work was solidly conceived and could provide important guidance for those wanting to do something similar.

LUNCH

I have to hand it to Katrin-all tens on her lunch scorecard. Probably the best conference food I’ve had. If you are out there, Katrin, well done!

The other important thing about lunch, for me, was the demos. I got to see a demo by David del Ser on his Frogtek application. The gist is this. You are a shopkeeper, you don’t have the money for a computer, but you have a cellphone, because EVERYONE has a cellphone. You sell products, you buy products, and somehow you keep records of this. But what if you could do all of this on your cellphone? Thanks to Frogtek, you can! With their app, you can track your inventory, your sales, your purchases, your debts, your client and vendor information, and more.

Before I raise my one big concern about this, I will say that this looks like a phenomenal application. Especially because it is available in more than just English. My concern, however, is that, in a place like Ukraine, there are instances where shops keep two sets of books, one for the government, and one for themselves, and this application could make it harder for them to do this. In Ukraine, if you turn in your real book, you could face going out of business, because the tax rates there are so high. Yeah, I’m a proponent of transparency, no doubt. But transparency there won’t work without serious tax reform. Now, what happens if the government comes along and starts pushing this application? Or, what if they catch wind that this application is becoming the norm, and they decide to require it and get your records? Even if that doesn’t happen, you have to send that info on your phone somewhere, or else you risk losing it if, say, you kill your phone-just how many Ukrainians, as my example, are going to trust uploading their information to a server they can’t see the other end of?

SESSION TWO – Mobile Advocacy Success Stories

I chose this session to try to get a feel more for using these tools for advocacy, rather than development. I’m interested in both, but have studied the latter in much more detail.

I was a little surprised in the beginning of this, when the presenter asked us to talk to him if we were planning on blogging about the event, because he tends to be very free with his information. He didn’t really want his loose lips to sink ships, it seemed. Funny, given that we were at a conference that was, in many ways, all about using mobile technologies to free up information. Funnier that I had just told him that I was liveblogging the event through Twitter, as had been announced at the beginning of the conference as one of the events of the day. I would have thought that registering for this conference was an unwritten contract to let anyone share anything you said with the online world. Guess not?

What we got out of this session, among other things, was a real sense for how Obama had fully embraced New Media in his campaign. Sure, I’ve heard that, and seen it some for myself, but the laundry list we got here was impressive. SMS, Twitter, online video, the list goes on. As the presenter was going through the many ways (he had worked on the campaign), I couldn’t help but wonder what it would have meant to New Media had McCain won. First, there’s no way he could have formulated solid, forward-thinking policy on it, which could have meant real stagnation in building up the infrastructure that is seriously lagging here, particularly in broadband. Second, how discouraging would it be for people who went technonuts all those months only to lose this election? Would it all have just been a fad? Probably not, given all the different projects here, but worth considering.

The presenter pointed out that they had calculated the per person costs of votes gained through campaigning. Canvassing cost about $30 per person for a vote, while sending an SMS cost a startling $1.50 per person. For the cost of one vote through canvassing, you can get 20 votes through SMS! Could this finally mean the end of all that canvassing? I hoped so. Sorry, not a fan of being bugged by people with clipboards.

The trick to SMS campaigns, both to and from the person with the phone, is how to get people to become aware of the SMS campaign. You have to first get their number before you can send or receive. The conclusion was that you have to build it into your outreach strategy that people are already aware of and using. One person noted that it can be extremely hard to get all people on your team to incorporate the message of the SMS campaign. She also said that one thing you can do is, when they sign forms for your organization, like registration forms, etc., you can give them a checkbox that signs them up to receive SMS’s, kind of tricking them into it. Uh, no, probably not going to employ trickery.

We were told about a group in San Francisco, called “It’s Your Healthcare,” that ran a campaign to influence a legislative vote on a major healthcare issue. They set up a jumbotron outside of the legislative building where the vote was taking place, and had people SMS their views on the potential law to communicate directly to the legislators in a very public way. Brilliant.

A cautionary tale in all of this SMS campaigning, according to a couple of women at the session, is that often poorer people in the US don’t have unlimited texting plans, and have to pay for an incoming SMS. Definitely important to think about, particularly since it doesn’t appear that the US carriers have mechanisms for transferring credit through phones.

SESSION THREE – Ground Crew

I had to cut out early. I’d made a promise to my wife that I would leave by 4pm to make dinner with her parents. But, I was able to check out a very intriguing application called “Ground Crew” before I made my way.

Ground Crew allows you to organize volunteers to take action. You can gather together a roster of potential volunteers. In their profiles, they can say what they are up for, how much time they have, where they are, and more. Ground Crew then provides you with the ability to select people and offer them action based on your preferred characteristics. Say you need something to happen in the Upper West Side of NYC. For the organizer, you basically have access to a dashboard where you can see who is available, what resources they can provide, and what they can offer as a form of action or expertise, and get in touch with them to mobilize. Or, if you have an hour to spare, and maybe you are a lawyer, you are sitting in an airport, and you’d like to kill time by offering advice, you can let make yourself available. This is for both ends of the action spectrum, organizer and organizee. The best part? You can accrue points for your action, which gives you not just the fun of all those points and their status, but credibility for future action possibilities. The interface even looks like fun-something between Google Earth and Sim City.

It is definitely a next level platform for organizing people via the Internet, and makes Facebook Events look very 1999. It warrants keeping tabs on where this is going.

But then, someone raised the requisite question that I was asking myself all day. There are all these groundbreaking technologies at our disposal, but are they really breaking ground? They are all great ideas. But are they going to really facilitate the kind of change we want? Are we devoting too much collective time to building all these tools that are largely variations on the same theme, and not enough to employing them? Is it all becoming noise? Or, are we still in the very beginning, and the weak will be weeded out in time? Are we trying to accomplish too much by trying to make it so easy to bring so many people together? Is there a diminishing return at some point? Is there a plateau?

And what if all of these innovations last, and splinter us off in all these different directions, segmenting action into subsets of people, rather than great big coalitions? What if our countless smalltime solutions to development challenges, like monitoring whether a kid is getting enough nutrients, is resulting in a list of possibilities so large that we limit the potential of any one to do more than the rest? What if that’s a good thing? I could see a world where all these relative ease of techno innovation we have reached, in which everyone in their brother can make something kinda new and kinda different, could help keep action kinda small and kinda local, in a way. And that could save us from a sort of tyranny of the techno masses. Because dear god how horrible it would be if any one technology ruled. We have enough problems with the Microsoft god as it is. And Google’s probably next.

It can be good when a technology takes over, of course, because it can make way for compatibility, which can be vital to techno interactivity and transfer, no doubt. But I also see something very good in having a wide variety of competing technologies, too. The bigger something gets, the farther removed from local reality it tends to get. Just look at Wal-Mart. So maybe it’s good that we have all these technonuts going technonuts to build the next great change mousetrap.

These are the things that raced through my mind as I tried desperately to keep up with all the ideas bouncing spinningly around the room at this barcamp. As I left the conference, I tried to make some kind of value judgment of my experience, and the truth is, I can’t. And shouldn’t. Because it’s technology, and it’s constantly changing, and we aren’t going to be able to evaluate it until it history plays out, which won’t happen until it actually plays out. And that, for me, is what is so exciting about it all-not only is all this technology creating change, it is creating the potential for change.

That, for me, is what makes this moment in our history so incredibly cool.