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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.

As I work on my MobiChange application for the second round of Knight News Challenge 2009, my thoughts return to two recent posts on building social mobile applications.

Ken ‘Kiwanja’ Banks wrote a great post last week on the mistakes techies make in developing social mobile applications for the emerging world –

Progress in the social mobile field will come only when we think more about best practices in the thinking and design of mobile projects and applications, rather than obsessing over the end products themselves. By then most of the damage has usually already been done.

Ken gave some great advice, based on his own FrontlineSMS experience: understanding the need gap before entering development, learning from other tools/ players, prototyping early and cheap, partnering with grassroots non-profits, staying lean, being flexible, encouraging local customization, focusing on text and voice, starting small, working closely with early users, and building conversations and community over time. My own approach to MobiChange is similar and I’ll try to follow most of Ken’s advice in the months to come.

It reminded me of another great post in which Russel Southwood critiqued the social mobile space (via Katrin Verclas) and raised several important questions around usability, impact, scale and sustainability –

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.

(Cross-posted on my fellowship blog and MobiChange)

The story on using mobile innovations for development in Africa has been unfolding for a while now, but it has become even more prominent since the Surprising Africa special at the Picnic 2008 conference in Amsterdam and the MobileActive 2008 conference in Johannesburg.

Here’s what some of the people who are writing the story on mobile-based social innovation in Africa have to say about it.

Ethan Zuckerman from Golbal Voices –

If Africa is surprising, then you’re not paying enough attention.

Jonathan Gosier from AppAfrica (link) —

For social entrepreneurs and investors, the innovation occurring here is a huge sign of progress that could potentially change the continent’s world standing forever. The most exciting aspect for me, however, is the decreased reliance on developmental aid and foreign groups to provide these solutions. The number of African developers who are beginning to create applications that offer solutions for their own communities is increasing and that, more than anything else, will shape the future of Africa.

Eric Hersman from Ushahidi (link/ slides) –

Apart from Google’s Project 10^100, I’m also submitting MobiChange at the Knight News Challenge. Here is the full text of my submission to the Knight News Challenge Garage. As you can see, some of the ideas here are based on your feedback on my Project 10^100 submission. As before, I’ll request you to take out ten minutes and share your thoughts on how I can improve my submission,

Describe your project:

MobiChange is a social entrepreneurship venture that will leverage mobile social networking for mobilizing social change.

Even as the ubiquitous use of mobile phones bridges the digital divide between the developed and developed countries, another digital divide — digital divide 2.0 — is opening up between the haves and have-nots. Digital divide 2.0 is not about access to communications devices; it’s about the ability to leverage the power of group-forming social communications technologies to collaborate with others, self-organize into grassroots communities and create crowd-sourced content that is relevant for these communities.

MobiChange will enable disadvantaged communities to benefit from the power of group-forming social networks by bringing these technologies to the $50 mobile phone that can only be used to make voice calls and send text messages.

I’m totally delighted with the great feedback I have received on MobiChange.

Ben Turner commented on the post:

You might want to… focus on another angle: increased robustness of tools through lowest-common denominator design, then seeing if that leads us in any interesting, innovative directions.

@Ben: You hit the nail on the head. Lowest common denominator design is indeed the key to MobiChange.

Lavanya commented on the post –

It would be good if you give an example in words and not just diagrams. So take an NGO by name and say how it will connect to everyone else. The idea is easy to follow, but making it simpler will not reduce its value.

@Lavanya: You are right. I should illustrate the idea with examples of use cases. Coming up soon.

Ranjan Varma commented on the post –

What are the actionable deliverables for this great idea? Everybody wants to learn but doesn’t want to be taught. So, how do you address the challenge of providing relevant content for the idea?

@Ranjan: I’m sure that learning/ teaching will be one of the use cases for MobiChange, but I don’t think that it will be its primary use case.

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.

(Cross-posted on my fellowship blog - How International Values Shape Communications Technologies)

In a recent post I wrote about the promise and challenges of leapfrogging 2.0 –

If the value of a “social” network (Reed’s Law) is indeed exponentially higher than the value of a telecommunication (Metcalfe’s Law) or a broadcast network (Sarnoff’s Law), there is significant leapfrogging potential available to BRIC countries. A social network (like MobiChange) that mimics the any-to-any nature of Reed’s network on SMS can create tremendous value in the BRIC countries. However, the more I read about leapfrogging the digital divide, the more convinced I am that leapfrogging is much easier in theory than in practice.

Leapfrogging is the idea that poor countries can skip over stages in technology adoption (especially large-scale, industrial, infrastructure-heavy technologies) and directly adopt newer, better technologies (especially light-weight, distributed, ecologically sustainable digital technologies).

The classic example of leapfrogging is the ubiquitous adoption of mobile phones in the developing world.

However, it seems that mobile phone adoption is the only valid example of leapfrogging and the widespread diffusion of most digital technologies is dependent on the existence of a solid social, economic and industrial infrastructure.

(Cross-posted on my fellowship blog - How International Values Shape Communications Technologies)

While reading through chapter 2 of Howard Rheingold’s ‘Smart Mobs’, I started thinking about how the three laws of networked technologies (Sarnoff’s Law, Metcalfe’s Law and Reed’s Law) relate to social media in BRIC countries –

1. Sarnoff’s Law: The value of a broadcast network is proportional to the number of viewers (n).

2. Metcalfe’s Law: The value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of users of the system (n²).

3. Reed’s Law: The value of a group forming network (or a social network) increases exponentially, proportional to 2 raised to the power the number of users in the network (2ⁿ).

In Sarnaff’s network, the only communication possible is one-to-many. In Metcalfe’s network, the only communication possible is one-to-one. In Reed’s network, all types of communication are possible, including one-to-one, many-to-many and some-to-some, so it’s effectively any-to-any.

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.