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Here is the big announcement on MobiChange I had promised earlier: I am delighted to welcome Ken Banks and Dina Mehta on the MobiChange team.

Ken Banks runs kiwanja.net, an organisation that helps grassroots non-profits around the world figure out how to use mobile technology in their social change work. Ken’s FrontlineSMS project has previously received grants from William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, MacArthur Foundation and the Open Society Institute.

Dina Mehta is a partner in Mosoci (research for web 2.0 strategy) and Explore Research & Consultancy (qualitative market research). Dina has contributed to building several communities on the internet, such as Worldchanging, Tsunami Help, KatrinaHelp, WorldwideHelp Group, SkypeJournal and Global Voices Online.

Both Ken and Dina are widely acknowledged as thought leaders in the mobile for development (Mobile4D) and social media space, write regularly on their blogs about these topics, and are frequently quoted in the media.

The MobiChange founding team now combines a rare set of skill and experiences: (1) expertise in the emerging markets in Asia and Africa, (2) understanding of the emerging mobile social networking space, and (3) experience in using mobile and social media applications to engage non-profits and grassroots communities.

I have some good news: MobiChange is through to round 2 of the $5 million Knight News Challenge 2009.

MobiChange is my work-in-progress muse project: an open-source, multi-lingual mobile social networking platform, accessible by voice and SMS, designed to support local communities and help mobilize social change. I had earlier written about submitting MobiChange for the Knight News Challenge.

The Knight News Challenge is a great fit for MobiChange both in terms of the stage the idea is in and amount of funding required to realize the idea. Other contests like NetSquared USAID Development 2.0 Challenge and Vodafone Americas Foundation Wireless Innovation Challenge either offer a very small grant or fund projects in a different development stage. So, getting funded by Knight News Challenge may be the most important thing for MobiChange now.

Of course, the Knight News Challenge has multiple rounds of screening and the winners will only be announced in Fall 2009. MobiChange itself is evolving as an idea, I’m still in the process of putting together the rest of the team, the actual development work may only start in Spring 2009, and my grand vision for MobiChange may only be realized by end of 2010. So, MobiChange promises to be a very long journey of (self-)discovery for me.

I’m all set to submit MobiChange to Google’s Project 10^100 (see my earlier post on Project 10^100), but before I hit the submit button, I want to ask for your help in improving the idea. So, here is my complete submission. I’ll be grateful if you take out ten minutes and tell me what you think about it.

- The name of the idea: MobiChange

- The category of the idea: Community

- The idea in one sentence: An open-source mobile social networking platform, accessible by voice and SMS, designed to support local communities and help mobilize social change.

- The idea in more depth: Communications technologies play an important role in development by enabling better economic decisions, building capability at both the individual and the institutional levels, and having multiplier effects across economic sectors. The mobile phone, by the virtue of being the only truly accessible and affordable communications technology available in many developing countries, is increasingly being seen as the key to bridge the digital divide and unlock the economic potential of developing Asia and Africa.

I’ll be speaking about my off consumption experiment at the Mandala NYC event on October 16th.

Mandala seeks to –

transform the cultural conversation to one that has meaning and depth

– by organizing “performance parties” that provide the context for meaningful conversations.

Do read about the previous Mandala events in August and September and do check out the profiles of fellow speakers — relationship coach Michael Jascz, artist Steven Hirsch and green energy guy Jonathan Colby.

By the way, my belief in serendipity was reinforced when organizer David Friedlader invited me to speak at the event. I’m attending another event in NYC on the same day — The Feast Social Innovation Conference –

The Feast will gather 150 of the world’s leading creative mavericks, entrepreneurs, revolutionaries, radicals, and innovators together to inspire action to change the world. Anchored in innovative ideas with a focus on action, The Feast will take a cross-disciplinary look at digital answers to global problems, social design solutions and successful triple-bottom line business models.

If you are in NYC on October 16th, do drop in to one or both of the events.

Google is inviting innovative ideas that will change the world and help the highest number of people. The initiative is called Project 10^100 (10^100 is a way of expressing the number “googol,” a one followed by one hundred zeroes) and Google has committed $10 million to realize the selected ideas —

Here’s how it works. You submit a short description of the idea (and maybe a video) by October 20th, under one of eight categories (community, opportunity, energy, environment, health, education, shelter, and everything else). Google will put up a selection of hundred ideas for public voting and shortlist the twenty most popular ideas. Finally, an advisory board will select up to five final ideas and Google will use an RFP process to identify the organization(s) that are in the best position to implement the selected ideas.

So, Project 10^100 is not a social entrepreneurship venture fund — it is meant for people whose desire to see their idea being brought to life is bigger than their desire to bring it to life themselves. I know how powerful that desire can be — because I feel it (suffer from it?) myself — and I applaud Google for tapping into it.

The second panel at the TRPC Conference used the OECD Ministerial Conference on The Future of the Internet Economy as the starting point to discuss a research agenda for an international and multi-stakeholder approach to information and communications technology (ICT) policy.

The panel was moderated by Prabir Neogi and the panel members included Andrew Wyckoff, Andrew Odlyzko, Jonathan Cave, Richard Simpson, Joseph Alhadeff, Marc Rotenburg, Nancy Weiss, and Robert Atkinson.

Some of the areas for future research highlighted in The Seoul Declaration for the Future of the Internet Economy overlap with our own fellowship research —

- Analysing the future development of the Internet Economy, namely: i) the important role and contribution of the Internet and related ICTs as a driver of innovation, productivity and economic growth; ii) the economic, social and cultural impacts of emerging Internet technologies, applications and services, including virtual worlds, sensor-based networks and social networking platforms.

- Improving statistical systems to measure the changing access and use of the Internet and related ICT networks by citizens, businesses and institutions in order to provide reliable measures of evolving uses and the impact of the Internet on economic performance and social well-being.

I’ll be live-blogging all weekend from the TPRC Conference at George Mason University.

The first panel is about to discuss Jonathan Zittrain’s book ‘The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It’.

Jonathan Zittrain’s book is about how the real power of the internet is its open, generative, innovative nature and how closed appliances like iPod, iPhone, TiVo and XBox are threatening to lock it down.

The panel is moderated by Philip Weiser and members of the panel include Gigi Sohn, Scott Hemphill, Maureen Ohlhausen, Pamela Samuelson, Christopher Yoo and Link Hoewing.

The panel is mostly focusing on the regulatory responses to closed application platforms and the possibility of a ‘malware-triggered Internet 9/11 crisis that will inspire an Internet Patriot Act’.

I believe that closed appliance based application platforms are important because they give companies the financial incentives to foster innovation. However, the movement from a closed application platform to a open (source) platform is almost inevitable, as we are seeing in the case of iPhone and Android. So, there’s an innovation curve in play here, with closed application platforms creating new markets followed by open application platforms opening up the market.

The Marketer Who Went Off Consumption had a busy week, thanks to my talk at Interesting NY.

First, Rob Walker, the author of Buying In, mentioned me in his shout-out for Interesting NY –

The one (speaker at Interesting NY) that caught my attention is The Marketer Who Went Off Consumption. That would be Gaurav Mishra, who writes: “On March 23, I decided to go off consumption for a year to understand an increasingly important subculture whose members refuse to define their identity by buying things.” Here is Mishra’s blog — which turns out to be a book in progress. I was a little surprised to see the top post is about “How to market to consumers who define themselves by their anti-consumerism.”

So I suppose he’s the marketer who went off consumption … in order to become a better marketer? I’m not sure how I feel about that.

But … there’s some other interesting stuff in the blog, which I’ll have to examine more closely a little later, and if you live in New York and want to pay $35 to hear from him and the other presenters at this event, I’d be curious to hear what you think.

I had written a piece on my off-consumption experiment for Time Out Mumbai a long time back and it came out last week — Bye Buy.

Here’s the full text of the story –

Bye buy
Gaurav Mishra explains why he’s given away everything he owns. Photography Amit Chakravarty

On July 27, I gave away everything I had to five strangers. When I say everything, I do mean everything – furniture, electronics items, books, DVDs, – all the accumulated acquisitions of an intellectual yuppie.

I also gave away the life I had built over the last six years. It was a perfect life, with a fast-track corporate career, and a sea-facing house in Cuffe Parade, a short walk away from office.

I’m in month six of my year-long experiment in why we choose to consume, or not.

We derive our identity (and our happiness) basically in four ways — from the things we own, from the experiences we have, from the people we relate to, and from the meaning we create. These four elements are arranged in a “hierarchy of identities” that is not only different for each one of us, but also changes for each one of us over time.

I spoke at the Interesting New York conference yesterday and I totally loved it.

Here’s the final version of the slides I used for my talk –

– and here’s a transcript of my talk –

[SLIDE 1] Good afternoon! My name is Gaurav Mishra and I’m the marketer who went off consumption. I know… I know… it’s weird enough to say “off” and “consumption” in the same sentence and if you add “marketer” to the mix, it become so strange that it’s almost sublime.

Well, I found myself in the unenviable position of having to explain it all to a twelve year old girl the other day and I all I could do was to talk about dolls.

[SLIDE 2] So, let’s start with a story about dolls. But, first, let me ask all the lovely women in the audience: how many of you have owned a doll? [most women raise their hands] Great! How many of you have owned a hundred dolls? [one or two giggles] Come on, don’t be shy, raise your hand. [one woman raises her hand] Great! Wow! A hundred dolls!