Atif Mumtaz’s Tele-healthcare project, Jaroka, was short-listed for DHL’s YES Awards.
He is among the five finalists in the social sector in Pakistan and the only with a medicine related project. You can learn more about the award by visiting Atif’s blog
Ken Banks’ organisation, kiwanja.net, in collaboration with Stanford University, has been awarded a $200,000 grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to build on its work with FrontlineSMS. The MacArthur Foundation is a private, independent grantmaking institution dedicated to helping groups and individuals foster lasting improvement in the human condition. Read the rest of this entry »
Ken Banks has just returned from a ‘Mobile Activism in Africa’ workshop organised by Fahamu and Tactical Tech, held in Nairobi, Kenya. The purpose of the meeting was to enable activists to exchange experiences and plan strategies to support their work. There are also plans to establish an African regional network of social justice advocates who use mobile technologies, and to facilitate an ongoing support network for these organisations
Following a successful presentation at the W3C Workshop in Bangalore last December, Ken Banks was interviewed about his work with kiwanja.net in Africa for Nokia’s “Emerging Horizons” magazine. “Emerging Horizons” is a quarterly newsletter targeted at anyone interested in new growth markets and reaching the next billion subscriber milestone. It also provides industry insights from different players, including operators, regulators and research companies. A PDF of the interview can be read here.
FrontlineSMS has been shortlisted in the “Messaging Application/ Service: Public Sector/Not-for-profit” section of the 2007 Mobile Messaging Awards. The winners will be announced at a Gala Awards Dinner in Monte Carlo on the 5th June 2007, immediately after the first day of the Global Messaging Congress.
“The Loose Wire Blog”, written by Wall Street Journal columnist Jeremy Wagstaff, has reported on the use of Ken Banks’ FrontlineSMS system in last months Nigerian elections. NMEM, the group who used the software, have just released a report (available by clicking here) detailing the monitoring process and their findings. FrontlineSMS and NMEM’s report was also showcased on the White African website, which specialises in the use of ICT on the African continent.
Tomorrow night, through a videoconference, the Digital Vision program will meet online with students from Tokyo’s Keio University Research Center for Foreign Language Education. This will open their English language teleconferencing program (called the E-Lounge).
Their announcement is here.
John is talking about online communities & gaming tomorrow at the Stanford
Humanities lab from 3-4:30 on the 4th floor of Wallenberg.
RSVP with Henrik Bennetsen - bennetsen@gmail.com
Ken Banks’s interview with Erik from White African through Skype is now available. White African is a popular blog on Africa and technology. The interview is available here.
Following news of its recent use in the Nigerian Presidential elections (see below), FrontlineSMS has been featured on the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) website as “ICT Success Story” of the month for April. The WSIS “ICT Stories” portal is designed to highlight some of the ongoing and successful ICT development projects taking place around the world.
John Kuner, Saori Fotenos, Neerja Raman, Cathy Healy, Netika Raval and Adam Tolnay all spoke at 2007 Digital Stream conference, themed “Emerging Technologies in Teaching Languages and Cultures.” Their talks were very well attended. In addition, John’s paper is available for download here.
Following news that FrontlineSMS is to be used to monitor the forthcoming Nigerian elections (see previous news item), Ken Banks has been invited to talk about the technology, and the story behind it, on the next edition of “Digital Planet”, the weekly BBC World Service programme that reports on technology stories from around the globe. The programme will be available via Podcast at the end of April. The news was also reported in the Technology section of the BBC Online website. You can listen to the podcast at Ken’s website here or at the BBC here.
John Kuner, from Project VIEW, has created a videoblog entry each day of the week as part of Videoblogging Week 2007. The subjects range from Second Life to sushi, and there’s even a music video. You can check it out at his blog.
Over the past few weeks Ken Banks has been helping a Nigerian NGO work with mobiles to set up an election monitoring system for the Presidential Elections. They are using his FrontlineSMS system.
This is the accompanying press release:
The Network of Mobile Election Monitors of Nigeria(NMEM) is set to activate its teaming numbers of volunteers spread through out the country to monitor and evaluate the effectives of the upcoming presidential pools on the 21st April 2007 in Nigeria. Read the rest of this entry »
Ken Banks’s podcast for his interview at Tech Tuesday in San Fran on 13th March is
now out. It is available via:
Ken Banks has been invited to speak at the W3C workshop in Banff. More information about the workshop can be found here. The talk there will be about keeping users in mind when developing mobile applications for developing countries, so is very much an anthropological approach. This is the same presentation as he gave in Bangalore last December (if you want to remind yourself about that then it’s on the www.kiwanja.net/news.htm page).
Ken Banks has just returned from a three-day Amnesty International workshop held in New Delhi, India. The short workshop was designed to train and educate a number of young Control Arms campaigners from the region. Thousands of people are killed, injured, raped and forced to flee from their homes as a result of the unregulated global arms trade. The Control Arms campaign is calling for an international, legally-binding Arms Trade Treaty to ease the suffering caused by irresponsible weapons transfers. Read the rest of this entry »
Trailer for Marvin Hall’s Project Now Available as a Podcast
Marvin Hall’s Halls of Learning Podcast is now available in the Apple iTunes Store. It can be found here.
Ken Banks speaking at Tech Tuesday in San Francisco on March 13th
Ken Banks and Darian Hickman (”Village Game”) have been invited to talk at Tech Tuesday in San Francisco on Tuesday 13th March.
The second Tuesday of each month, social change-makers and web innovators get together to network, socialize and share ideas at Net Tuesday, an event produced by NetSquared, http://www.netsquared.org, a project of TechSoup, http://www.techsoup.org. Read the rest of this entry »
Ken Banks presenting at W3C Workshop
Ken Banks, RDVP Collaboration Fellow (2007) will be presenting a paper on Day Two of the W3C Workshop on the Mobile Web in Developing Countries, due to take place in Bangalore, India, on 5th/6th December. He will also be Chairing a meeting on the first day discussing Network Technologies. Read the rest of this entry »