Impressive pilots and the need to combine efforts
October 13, 2008
After the first plenary, it becomes more clearer what are the main challenges of the field of mobile phones for social change (which has a cross section of ICT, development and business people interested in it).
Sustainability
Many pilots come up with interesting findings; however, they often go along with high upfront investment, which in replication often raises questions about sustainability.
Costs in general
With mobile operators often having a powerful position within their markets, many participants felt that the costs of having and using a mobile phone is an issue. Also note the different between cost of SMS and costs of GPRS connection in Africa, with GPRS getting cheaper and likely effecting the use of mobile phones.
Open source versus software / service business model
For many specific projects you find approaches using open source and others using software / service as business model. While the business option has its own set of advantages (for example further product development and potentially high quality of service, usability), it comes with a costs and some participant voiced concern on this.
Collaboration
In summary, many pilots demonstrate great ideas, good models, and some progress. However, the field remains scattered and would need collaboration to be able to show as a group of people (together with their organizations) the usefulness of mobile phones for social change.
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Mika | October 14, 2008 at 1:12 am
One point to the collaboration theme is the different roles of many of the actors in MobileActive08. In order to “create an enabling environment for using mobile technology for social change” requires undoubtedly a wide variety of actions ranging from lobbying service providers to capacity building of people in rural communities. Depending on what each NGO/company/actor is ultimately striving for defines the different approaches to above mentioned goal. Do we actually need a consolidated efforts or are the constantly bubbling actions an organic way to bring about enabling environments and eventually social change?
2.
matz2008 | October 14, 2008 at 10:34 am
I see what you mean Mika. For me the question remains if it is still possible to get to a common goal, which might speed up the process of mobile & social change being recognized. It is valid though to question if it is indeed desirable to have a common goal (and rather concentrating on the rich ideas) and are there other, perhaps more innovative processes to “elevate and promote ideas”.