October 19th, 2008
Thank You for Sharing Such Great Feedback on MobiChange
Welcome back to Gauravonomics Blog! Subscribe to my feed now and you'll never miss a single post!
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.
When I think of how MobiChange will be used, I imagine a twenty-something carpenter or plumber or shop assistant or courier boy in Mumbai who has spent two weeks worth of his salary to buy a $50 mobile phone. He can read the English alphabet but doesn’t know how to write or speak a full sentence in English. He has seen a computer but doesn’t know how to use it. I imagine him struggling with the supposedly intuitive multi-lingual SMS based menu of MobiChange because one of his friends has told him how useful it is. After a week or two, I see him learning how to use it and doing some of the things we take for granted on social networks — meeting new people with common interests, finding new ways to entertain himself, benefiting from new opportunities for learning and earning, even sharing his own knowledge and skills with others.
I don’t yet know how MobiChange will look or work, except that it has to be simple enough to be intuitive to the lowest common denominator, but I that’s how I imagine it being used.
Manuscrypt shared links to the UN Foundation/ Vodafone Foundation report on Wireless Technology for Social Change and RWW report on MobiActive ‘08 conference.
@Manuscrypt: Thanks for sharing these two wonderful resources. MobileActive is an amazing resource for mobile enthusiasts and I follow it really closely. Most of the present ‘mobile for social change’ projects, however, use the broadcast network and telecommunications network applications of mobile technology, not the group-forming social network aspect of it.
Jana Branch wrote to me by e-mail —
Adoption is the question. Is there some short statement about how mobichange.org would be different from other mobile networks in driving usage/ adoption? What’s going to push its momentum to the point it gains that viral energy?
Perhaps something to address the human element that is always at the heart of technology — a network of “in the virtual field” organizers who help communities or NGOs get up and running with a set of ready-to-go templates for different types of campaigns?
@Jana: Yes, you totally got it. I’m sure that designing the open-source code base for MobiChange will be only 10% of the work. The other 90% of the work will involve working with local communities offline to build functionalities that solve real problems in the context of their everyday lives.
Solomon-Hopewell Kembo wrote to me by e-mail –
I am an open source enthusiast based on Mozambique, originally from Zimbabwe. I see the potential of Mobichange and if you ever require help to spread the Mobichange message and also to translate anything free of charge in this side of the world, I am your man. As someone who is also working on NGO-based open source projects you have my support.
@Solomon: Thanks for your offer; I’ll take you up on it immediately. I’m more of a thinker than a coder myself, and I’m looking for geeks who can build on some of the projects I have mentioned in the post and develop the open-source code base.
Abhilash commented on SlideShare –
Honestly, I love the idea of mobile social networks. The point is, however, most of us do realize its value – and what everyone’s interested in, is how mobichange.org is going to penetrate the market. There are mobile social networks today, with low penetration. mobichange.org is better. Multilingual voice support. Open source. But what is the killer push required for penetration into local communities?
@Abhilash: I’m sure that MobiChange will not go viral and spread on its own. A project like this will require grassroots outreach in local communities with the help of organizations that already have an offline outreach infrastructure. For instance, if I was to pilot MobiChange in Mumbai, one of the first people I’ll speak to will be Karmayog.
Codelion commented on Twitter (this is the same question Shripriya had asked me earlier) –
What does mobichange do which cannot be done already by using twitter or other micro blogging solutions?
@Codelion/ @Shripriya: Twitter, as great as it is, offers really limited social networking functionalities. For instance, it doesn’t allow groups, it doesn’t offer multi-lingual SMS support and it isn’t voice-accessible. Moreover, it isn’t open source and a vibrant API ecosystem isn’t the same as a vibrant open source developer ecosystem. Open source platforms like Laconica and the Drupal SMS Framework are closer to what the MobiChange code base will look like, but even they haven’t been designed for the lowest common denominator user.
It’s great to be part of this conversation. Do keep the ideas coming.
Originally posted as a comment by Gaurav Mishra on Gauravonomics Blog using Disqus.
