Being a developer on Ushahidi has meant that I’ve spent most of my time behind the computer, writing and perfecting new code. It was great to have the opportunity to engage with the people who are involving Ushahidi in their projects. Organizations as big as the UN and the World Bank and as small as an activist group in Phoenix, AZ have seen the value that Ushahidi can provide. Without performing a scientific survey, I came to the conclusion that roughly half of the participants at the conference are either looking at or have already implemented Ushahidi as an integral part of their projects.

In a traditional non-profit, fundraisers will fundraise, marketers will market and developers will develop. While it’s difficult to break down these roles entirely (a fundraiser may not be able to write software), Ushahidi does its best to give core staff and volunteers a wide range of responsibilities. For instance, we are encouraged to engage the public through our blog, IRC chat and forums, regardless of our position. Beyond virtual conversation, we are also given opportunities to interact face-to-face with the people who will ultimately be operating with our software in the field through conferences like ICCM. These interactions with our customers help to give us software developers a better understanding of how our software will be used in the field.

I’ve spent the last couple days holed up in a room in scenic Salzburg, Austria with 20 other people from both traditional journalism and new media backgrounds. Our goal: discuss strategies for more effective engagement and investment in “tomorrow’s media“. Having this mixture of “old school” journalism professionals mixed in with those of us who are only embedded in the blogging and social media fields, but with no classical training in journalism, has led to some very interesting conversations.

Quality

One of these sticking points has been around the journalist’s emphasis on the need for quality in reporting via new media (citizen media, like blogs and social networks). It’s a good point, we all want more quality reporting in any medium, whether it’s by a blogger or a newspaper. There is a stated need for education and training in solid journalism practices.

That might be true. However, it misses one important point, especially when we compare how we talk about the West (US/Europe) and everyone else.

Critical Mass

In the West, there has long been access to computer, the internet and social media tools. There’s a critical mass of bloggers and influencers who use social media tools like Facebook, YouTube or Twitter. You have to ask the question then, has access and familiarity with these digital tools led to the vibrancy that allows greater transparency to happen?

Is it due to having access, and your peers usage, that allows self-learning to take place with the new media and social tools which are available to everyone? Kids, students and the general populace tinker in the space and grows the space organically.

Put another way, a statistically inconsequential number of bloggers and social media influencers from the West were trained in journalism. Why are we expecting that training and education, rather than simple, open access to social media tools will make a difference “over there” when it didn’t to anyone in the West?

[Sidebar: Quality and critical mass are not mutually exclusive. As a new medium and new users get comfortable and grow, quality is evolutionary and grows as well.]

“Leveraging mobile platforms, computational linguistics, geospatial technologies, and visual analytics to power effective early warning for rapid response to complex humanitarian emergencies.”

Patrick Meier, along with Jen Ziemke, has put together the first CrisisMapping Conference, which will run this October 16-18, 2009 in Cleveland, Ohio.

Of course, here at Ushahidi we’re so deep into this space that we’re planning on having David, Juliana and Brian be there. AndChris Blow, who has been a part of the community since the beginning, is also going to be in attendance. Not to mention the fact that Patrick Meier, the event’s co-curator, is a long-time adviser to our team. (Ory and I will both be at Pop!Tech that week, so we can’t make it)

If you can make it, sign up now, as I’m told that they’re beginning to run out of space.

You can see my notes from the talk here.

Just in Time Data

I’m here to talk to you a little about gathering real-time information from normal people. The organization that I co-founded is Ushahidi, we began last year in the midst of the post-election violence in Kenya to just this. One of our main goals was to create a simple way for ordinary Kenyans to share with the world what was going on to them, or around them.

[History on Ushahidi]

So, as you can see we care a lot about getting information and disseminating information back out to people. For us, it’s about creating simple tools that work. Though we’re technologists, what we think of is the end user and what will work for them.

Macro Level Drivers

There is a huge influx of mobiles into the developing world. Here are just a few statistics on the African market (which is where my expertise lies). Clearly, we’re here doing this panel because of these numbers.

The mobile phone is THE default device (in developing regions of the world).

There are a lot of details that are hard to discuss in just a few minutes, but one that I think needs calling out for most of the developing world is the difference between user-types, accessibility and processes needed when comparing rural and urban areas. The pictures you see here are from Liberia, and there is a stark contrast in the ability to collect information from citizens in each area.

Rural:

• Few towers, limited connectivity
• Language and literacy
• Community and social group relationships

Urban:

• Better phone availability
• More Java apps
• Good connectivity

Simple. Works.

A number of industries use mobile phones and PDAs for data collection, analysis and re-distribution of information. What I think is interesting is learning from products that are already working in the consumer market. What works in these areas that can also apply to human rights? Here are just a couple fields that I think are worth calling out:

Mobile payment systems – the best ones (like Mpesa in Kenya) are working purely off of SMS with person-to-person interaction as intermediaries. Security, trust and individuals are important, just as in human rights.
Fighting counterfeit drugs – Simplicity. A way to use SMS to track and authenticate inventory. A simple solution for a complex problem.
Agricultural markets – A free service for farmers in West Africa to see local agricultural market prices around their region. It enables farmers and traders in agricultural commodities in Africa to conduct business through the use of SMS.

Use what’s in people’s pockets. Use patterns and processes that people are used to doing. What we don’t want to do is create any more barriers to entry than there already is for people to submit information.

Example tools

Finally, I’d like to leave you with a couple of examples.

There are a number of good tools available for human rights groups to work with right now. All of them downloadable, open source and free to use. Depending on needs, different tools work better. You have to think of closed groups vs using the public for information gathering. You have to decide if you want unstructured messages (like we do at Ushahidi), or if structured data is needed, in which case you’ll need an application that can create/use forms, and the corresponding devices that are needed for that purpose.

• FrontlineSMS: Forms – A simple way to synchronize forms and send data via SMS
• InSTEDD’s SMS GeoChat – Creating SMS based chat solutions, and mapping them
• Datadyne’s Episurveyor – Java and PDA forms creation and send/receive tool
• Cartagen – SMS-based mapping

Myself and David have been at SXSW Interactive (South by Southwest) in Austin, Texas this weekend. It’s a strange mixture of conference, parties and meetings. David and I were here to talk on the “Emerging technology for emerging markets” panel. With us was Jon Gosier of Appfrica, Teddy Ruge of Project Diaspora and Rose Shuman of Question Box. I’ve been on a number of panels, and I have to say that this was one of the better ones, if for no other reason than everyone here really knew their stuff.

It was interesting to see how Ushahidi has become an example of how Africans can develop their own projects and products for their own needs. At the same time we see Jon Gosier setting up the Appfrica Lab in Kampala, Uganda where he is developing products for groups both inside Uganda and others from the outside.

We’re coming into a new age in the African tech space, where there are now enough quality developers and enough business internally available in Africa, that the number continues to grow. That, on top of the growing need for mobile and web technology products by organizations in Africa, means that developers will be working at capacity for the next few years.

Lastly, like we always say, Africa is a tough and trying environment to work in. For technological, environmental and bureaucratic reasons. However, that also makes it a great place to build, for we know if it works in Africa, it will work anywhere.

While at MobileActive ’08, Mark and Andy used the first two days to survey a number of the attendees asking questions like:

What is your organization’s policy on open source software in your mobile work? Nearly half, 46% said that they just “use what works”.

See the rest of the slides (slides number 11 & 12 are so interesting):

Ethan Zuckerman uses Ushahidi as an example of interesting stuff coming out of Africa. I’ll be speaking tomorrow with Ethan at the, “Surprising Africa” day here at the PICNIC festival in Amsterdam. He famously quips:

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