Wayan Dot Com

Surprise! There are more ICT4D Job Opportunities than Quality Applicants

2012-04-24T12:35:26Z

Last year, I started the ICT4D Career Network to help people start and grow their career in information and communication technologies for development. At first, I thought there would be more ICT experts than employers with job openings. Now I know better.

There are more ICT4D jobs than ICT experts

Recently, I spoke at an ICT4D Career Workshop, where employers almost outnumbered those seeking jobs. Each was hungry for quality applicants to staff their many job openings and all told of hardship in finding ICT4D experts.

In fact, I publish dream ICT4D job announcements every day, and yet there seems to be more job opportunities than I can keep up with. Yet there are still only a handful of people looking to start an ICT4D career.

You too have the needed ICT4D skills

Interestingly, most people assume they need to know how to code software or install communications hardware to get a job in ICT4D. However, the majority of employers I talk to are not looking for these "hard" technology skills. IT techies can be found all over the world now.

What employers are looking for is staff with the "soft" skills like clear, concise writing, which is always a critical skill in a development organization, and people skills, which is really flexibility and adaptability. Another key skill is the ability to tell pie in the sky tech ideas from on the ground reality, and the ability to innovate within the real life context of the beneficiaries you work with.

If you've been working in the developing world, or in the fast-paced technology field (and not even as a techie) then most likely you have the needed skills to success at ICT4D. So what is stopping you? Start networking and jump start your career today!

Wanna get job search advice & ICT4D job opportunities? Subscribe to the ICT4D Career Forum!

Wayan Vota Joins the VSO International Board

2011-12-13T15:05:18Z

Picture a dusty, hot Saturday afternoon in Kaduna, Nigeria, the buzz of cheap Chinese motorbikes filling the air. In the backroom of a small community foundation, I introduce myself to the two people told to me as the "hardest working loan officers at Fantsuam Foundation." Bent over their laptops, sweat dripping on their brow, two Kenyan VSO volunteers are doing intricate financial modeling in their role as loan officers for the foundation.

This was my first introduction to of Volunteer Service Overseas (VSO) volunteers in the field and I was immediately impressed with them and VSO in general. Peace Corps volunteers work hard (I was one, briefly) but not on Saturdays. And to see Africans volunteering in Africa gave me great pride and renewed hope.

Great pride in seeing the dream of Geekcorps become a reality; Africans empowered with high-level information and communication technology (ICT) skills able to grow and succeed on their own terms. Renewed hope in the belief that through this empowerment, we all - North, South developed and developing - can work together towards greater economic and social advancement.

So it is with great honor that I announce that I am now an international board member of VSO, as part of the appointment of a new Chair and six new trustees to its International Board. My ascension to the board is part of VSO's transition from a U.K.-based volunteering organization to a global development charity that engages people from all over the world in the fight against poverty. As Marg Mayne, CEO of VSO says:

"I'm excited to be working with the new trustees, all of whom are from outside the UK and nearly half from the global south. Their appointment shows how we're implementing this more global approach at the highest level."

Through its "People First" strategy, VSO is now more than just volunteering. VSO's approach has moved away from direct service delivery to a greater focus on strengthening systems, developing policies and building capacity in the 34 countries that play host to roughly 1,600 VSO volunteers, most of them mid-career professionals with an average age of 43. A VSO volunteer is now just as likely to be someone from Kenya, India or the Philippines as they are someone from the UK, Ireland or the Netherlands.

As an international board member, I plan on upholding the efforts of those two Kenyans I met in Nigeria by contributing to the continued shift at VSO and support VSO's global development impact with cutting edge skills and information and communication technology.

The $35 Aakash Tablet Will Fail Education Just Like the $100 OLPC Laptop Did

2011-12-08T21:00:34Z

Recently, the CEO of Datawind presented his case to the World Bank on why the Aakash tablet computer will revolutionize education in India. During his talk, he presented this slide as justification that his tablet was not the XO and that Datawind would be more successful in reaching a 5 million units sold milestone than OLPC.

While I agree that Suneet Singh Tuli's business plan of selling tablets directly to consumers based on clear market advantages is more sound than Nicholas Negroponte's idea of selling millions of laptop to governments based on a handshake with presidents, I do not see a better education plan. In fact, I see none.

What I do see is Datawind and OLPC focusing on hardware sales. OLPC started the netbook revolution - cheap laptops for everyone, and Datawind is starting a "netlet" revolution - cheap tablets for everyone. Congratulations to both. But without a serious focus on educational software and content, and the integration of both into the national curriculum and into teachers' daily instruction, the Aakash will have the same issue as the OLPC:

It will be a cool gadget that pushes boundaries in computing, and leaves education as moribund as before.

My ICT4D Postcard from Wuse Market in Abuja, Nigeria

2011-11-04T14:29:25Z

Dear Mom,

Whenever you hear of how poor, hungry, or desperate Africa is, I want you to think of this photo. This is innovation happening in real time in Nigeria. Two teenagers have a business with a laptop and an SD card reader. They take DVD movies people buy in the market and convert them to digital format. Why? Because few have DVD players but many have mobile phones, and these two found opportunity moving data from one to the other.

Replicate this over a country, a continent, and believe that Africa is not a basket case, nor makers of just baskets. Africa is dynamic and money is being made everywhere.

Love, Wayan

This is my entry in Ken Bank's ICT4D Postcards project. Join us with a post card from your perspective

The Challenge of Defining ICT4D Or Why Erik Hersman is ICT4$

2011-11-03T13:30:09Z

Yesterday, Erik Hersman (aka. White African) dropped a blog bomb into the sometimes contentious debate around the term ICT4D - information and communication technologies for development. In his The Subtle Condescension of "ICT4D" post he says:

I have cognitive dissonance over the term "ICT4D". The term "ICT4D" is confusing, hypocritical and has a whiff of condescension that makes me cringe. As I understand it, it's what NGO's do in places like Africa and Asia, but if the same things are done in poor communities in the US or Europe, it's not called ICT4D, it's called civil society innovation or a disruptive product.

To be honest, at first I felt Erik was being confusing, hypocritical and condescending himself, as he is the co-founder of a very successful project, Ushahidi, which is an amazing free-to-the-user grant-supported tool for crowdsourcing information and visualizing data that was sometimes thrown into an emergency as an instant cure-all to those under served and misrepresented - the best and worst of ICT4D all in one.

But then I calmed down, thought about how ICT4D might look like to the average African. They might be seeing it as OLPC, the poster child for all the wrong ways to go about ICT4D. I spent six years of my life kicking OLPC in the shins to try and change their approach as I believed that they we sullying a good idea with their foolishness.

Now I will take six minutes of my life to change the ICT4D debate to make sure good ideas are better understood.

ICT4D and ICT4$ are two whole different industries

Let us not confuse two whole different uses of ICT. In the tech start up world, ICT is a means to make money. Software developers code products like MXit or M-PESA and hope to sell them at a profit to to venture capital funders and people that are currently under served by the market place. The focus is on $. This is ICT4$ and they should be proud of their efforts.

In the international development world, ICT is used to deliver education, healthcare, etc more efficiently. We have great products like FrontlineSMS, ChildCount+, and Ushahidi, and sell them to donor funders so we can deliver them free or subsidized to those under served by government or in market failure situations. The focus is on impact versus $. This is ICT4D, and I am proud to use the term.

Notice the different focus. In no way should a tech startup and its funders seeking to maximize profit seek to work in ICT4D, just like it would be laughable for a development organization (funder or implementer) to run a tech startup to be the next Facebook.

Projects can be ICT4D and ICT4$

Having said that, there is overlap. A product can be both ICT4$ and ICT4D. Let us take Mxit and Ushahidi as examples.

MXit is certainly ICT4$ - its sole aim it to create wealth for its developers. At the same time, MXit can help promote literacy, expand needed communications, and be a foundation on which development organizations do their efforts more efficiently. That would be an ICT4D use of an ICT4$ product.

Ushahidi certainly started as ICT4D - its sole aim was to help those without a voice be heard. At the same time, it can be sold as ICT4$ as a tool for business to increase their profitability. Say Coke uses it to track stockouts or customer satisfaction - in Africa or Arkansas. I would cheer on that usage of Ushahidi just as much as Haitians did after their earthquake.

Neither ICT4D nor ICT4$ is perfect

Now Erik does point out that there are many development workers who parachute in, talk too much, then leave too quickly to have their projects make any real difference. The same can be said of a number of software developers too. We've all met arrogance in every field.

Erik also points out that many ICT4D projects are not financially sustainable - they exist as long as the grant funding does. The same can be said about startup companies. The current Silicon Valley metric is that only 20% of startups succeed. The World Bank says 30%-60% of theirs succeed.

Now we can argue what "success" means, but the greater point is that failure happens everywhere. We should not be ashamed of it - in fact we should celebrate failure. At least we're doing something.

ICT4D and ICT4$ should be symbiotic

I am firm believer that ICT4D has the same overall goals as ICT4$ - to do well by doing good. We are all here to make money, even if we do it different ways. And we want to feel good about our work, regardless of the end client.

So I wish Erik all the best in keeping his distance from ICT4D while a co-founder of a great ICT4D project. I remember a conversation we had once where he reminded me he is a web technology professional first, and made more from that than Ushahidi. I'll be the first to tell a venture capitalist that they should invest in his next startup, or in any African software developer's big dream. There is real money to be made in Africa. I support efforts like VC4Africa and Coded In Country every way I can. And I have certainly pitched the idea of investing in African companies to VC's before - often to jeers and laughter.

But VC's dismissal of African opportunities hasn't stopped me from investing my time and efforts into a nonprofit tech startup, Inveneo, which is combining the best of ICT4D and ICT4$ the best we can. We sell our consulting services, we sell hardware, and gladly take grants and donations. We are certainly mercenary in our business approach - there are no "charity" projects. Yet our services are all designed to do good while we do well.

We work through local ICT companies, who often make much more than us on projects, and a few have even grown larger and more profitable than Inveneo itself. We do not "parachute" anywhere - if a project is not designed sustainably, we don't do it (yes, we have walked away from projects and left cash on the table). And we tirelessly promote good ICT4D practices, because Erik is right, "ICT4D" can be a loaded term to some.

I work every day to make sure the load "ICT4D" carries is a positive one that benefits those who need it the most, first. I ask you and he to do the same.

The 10 Levels of Failure - a framework to fail in everything you do

2011-10-21T12:17:02Z

After recently hosting Fail Faire DC to great success, I give you the 10 levels of failure as a framework for ICT interventions, with great deference to Jamer Hunt for starting the meme on the types of failures and David Roy for building on it. May you fail at reaching #1.

Catastrophic failure
Failure a scale so vast as to encompass the lives and livelihoods of generations to come. Examples: the meltdowns at Fukushima Dai-1 and Chernobyl; building codes in Haiti before January 2010. Possible future catastrophic fails: asteroids, climate change.
Abject failure
This failure marks you and you may not ever fully recover from it. People lose their lives, jobs, respect, or livelihoods. Examples: British Petroleum's Gulf oil spill; mortgage-backed securities.
Start-up failure
A big bet backed by money and momentum, that wipes out both when the market shifts or the business model hits reality. Examples: Pets.com; Jumo.org; Solyndra LLC
Structural failure
It cuts - deeply - but it doesn't permanently cripple your identity or enterprise. Examples: Apple iPhone 4's antenna; Windows Vista.
Glorious failure
Going out in a botched but beautiful blaze of glory - catastrophic but exhilarating. Example: Jamaican bobsled team.
Epic failure
This is a failure that brings joy to all and perhaps even fame and stardom for the fail succeeder. Examples: Celebrity antics; Youtube videos of people falling down; FAILblog
Common failure
Everyday instances of screwing up that are not too difficult to recover from. The apology was invented for this category. Examples: oversleeping and missing a meeting at work; forgetting to pick up your kids from school; overcooking the tuna.
Version failure
Small failures that lead to incremental but meaningful improvements over time. Examples: Linux operating system; evolution.
Predicted failure
Failure as an essential part of a process that allows you to see what it is you really need to do more clearly because of the shortcomings. Example: the prototype -- only by creating imperfect early versions of it can you learn what's necessary to refine it.
Opportunity Failure
The failure to take risks that leaves you wanting and is usually associated with sentences that begin with, "I should have..." Examples: Not buying Apple stock in 2006; Not selling Nokia stock in 2010; Not getting off your butt today.

What fails or failure examples have I left out? Tell me in the comments.

Fail Faire DC 2011 - a celebration of failure

2011-10-03T13:35:42Z

Fail Faire DC 2011 is a celebration of failure. We will have great speakers with fun, fast, Ignite-style presentations of their professional failures. Audience participation is not only encouraged, it is mandatory! We are all peers and none of us is perfect. Expect much laughter as we navel-gaze at where we have all gone wrong in ICT and international development.

Yet we will LEARN from failure. Failure is no reason to be ashamed, and there is great value in examining our mistakes. So while we encourage irreverence and humor, we will be improving our profession too.

We will have light refreshments to lubricate the conversation and there will be an after-party to continue the celebration. However, an RSVP is mandatory for attendance and space is limited, so sign up today!

Fail Faire DC 2011 will happen on October 13th at the World Bank.Those that RSVP will be sent the specific room location just before the event.

Fail Faire DC 2011 is brought to you by theWorld Bank, Development Gateway, and Inveneo.

Agenda:

6:00pm: Welcome and drinks
6:30pm: #FAIL-Slam
7:30pm: Open Discussion
8:00pm: Mingling, learning, networking, more drinks

Featured Speakers (so far)

Dr. Tessie San Martin, CEO, Plan International USA
The World Bank on their 70% ICT4D failure rate
Ian Schuler, Internet Freedom Programs, U.S. Department of State
You? Apply today!

Remember, you must RSVP to attend.

Announcing the ICT4D Jobs and Career Forum

2011-09-20T13:35:22Z

Do you want an international development job in information and communication technology? Or to improve your ICT job skills and long-term career? Then join the ICT4D Jobs and Career Forum to get career tips, employment ideas, and job offers in ICT4Dev.

The ICT4D Jobs and Career Forum is an ongoing global support network via moderated emails to help you understand the international development and foreign assistance employment landscape.

In the paid email newsletter members ask questions, which are anonymized and then shared with select experts who give detailed feedback on how to improve job searches, expand employment options, and advance careers. In this way, members can participate anonymously on individual questions, yet we all gain from the collective employment expertise.

This advice and support comes from leaders in ICT4D and will help you find new and amazing ICT4D jobs, and most importantly - start and grow your ICT4Dev career. The advise and support you receive should reduce your job search by at least a month, and your input will help others who are also looking to grow their ICTD career. All that for just $5 per month

Oh and we have a September special - Your first month free!

Where to Find Wayan in September (hint: everywhere)

2011-09-07T15:03:44Z

Today I have the honor of announcing a flurry of conferences and events I will be participating in this month. Please join me for all those that are pertinent to your focus area:

September 7-8: At the Global Youth Economic Opportunities Conference I will be chairing a panel on How Is Technology Causing Breakthroughs in Youth Economic Opportunity?
September 15th: I am hosting ICT4Ag - Enriching rural coffee farmers via iPads at the September Technology Salon
September 23: At the Tech@State: Data Visualization I am chairing a session on Mobile technology and new media: trends and opportunities and I am hosting the ICT4Drinks after party

So far, October is not looking as busy with one exception: Fail Faire DC - a celebration of failure I'm organizing and you should be attending on October 13th.

What are the best ICT4D Books, Journals, Blogs, and Websites?

2011-09-06T17:27:15Z

Recently my friend Sabahat asked a very intriguing question about information and communication technologies for development (ICT4D) that I could not answer quickly:

Hello Wayan - I am interested in the ways that technology can enhance dev work but I'm not a techno geek. What books and/or journals would you recommend to someone like me so I don't sound like an idiot when talking with the tech folks on an ICT4D project?

I'm not a complete moron when it comes to tech stuff. It's just that up to this point, I've been more of a consumer than "producer" of technology.

For someone who professes to be an expert in ICT, I was a bit taken back that I couldn't reel off a dozen resources quickly. As a blogger more than a book reader, the best I could do was point to ICTworks.org, Educational Technology Debate, and the ICT4D RSS Feed I use to find content for both sites.

What I am missing are ICTD books and journals, and other blogs and websites. So please, do me a favor, list your favorites in the comments below. Especially books and journals, which are a big blind spot for me. I will compile everyone's entries into a shared master list.

Thanks in advance.

Digital Divide to Digital Inclusion at ICISTS-KAIST 2011

2011-07-12T13:23:24Z

I am proud to announce that I will be speaking at the 2011 International Conference for the Integration of Science and Technology into Society at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology - South Korea's premier engineering university.

ICISTS-KAIST 2011 theme is "Metamorphosis: The Future of Human Society Information Era" with a focus on the interrelation of science, technology, and society in the information age. The conference will explore how:

The Information Age, with it's rapid developments in information and communications technology and electronic media, is constantly changing our everyday lives.
The miniaturization of electronics and widespread availability of wireless networks are transforming public and private space, and further tearing down communication barriers of time and distance.
The proliferation of social network services is redefining human relationships and social interaction.

Yet we all know these changes are not uniformly distributed. While a select global elite may read this post on tiny gadgets as they are whisked around the globe in relative luxury, there are billions who have never seen the Internet, much less benefited from its informational cornucopia.

So as part of the overall ICISTS-KAIST 2011 theme, I will be leading a discussion around the Digital Divide - the barriers to the Information Age, their impact, and what the leaders of today and tomorrow can do to break down these barriers, instigate positive social change, and create a digitally inclusive society. The conversation will begin well before my actual talk, continue throughout the conference, and extend beyond the physical attendees into the digital realm.

I cannot do this alone. I ask you to help me in creating a learning environment for us all - participants and presenters. Please submit your suggestions, subtopics, ideas, themes, links, and articles you believe will help inform this discussion in the comments below or via the #ICISTS hashtag on Twitter.

Address Book Business Opportunity: Contact List Cleaning and Updating

2011-05-10T12:13:39Z

I have a problem that I think is not unique to me and could be a money maker for the right entrepreneur - address book cleaning, cross checking, updating, and general verification. Below I define 3 problems I have with my contact lists, with the Address Book cleaning the most important. And since importing in/out of Apple's Address Book is problematic, the Address Book cleaning would need to be done on a Mac as well.

The Main Problem:

In Address Book I have around 3,000 entries, many with the following 4 issues

duplicate entries with the same info (two separate and identical entries)
duplicate entries for the same person with different info (2 different emails, or one for phone and one for email)
entries w/o First Last name defined (just the email address)
entries with errors in first/last name from email address syntax that use of (), -, " in name
contacts w/o company reference in the contact info yet the company name in the address (bob@usaid.gov for example).

I'd love these cleaned up and corrected so I have 1 entry for each person, with company name, and multiple emails and phone numbers if needed

A Second Problem:

In a mailing client I have several hundred contacts in two different lists. For both lists, I'd like to have:

First/last name & if possible company added - this can be helped by cross referencing between lists and Address Book
All members of both lists imported into my Address Book

A Third Problem

I have over 1000 contacts in LinkedIn but not sure how many of those are in my Address Book

Download the LinkedIn contacts and have new contacts added to my Address Book

Why this is a business opportunity

I know for a fact that I am not the only person to suffer from Address Book messiness and willing to pay to have someone clean it up for me. I personally would love to have this cleaning and updating of my lists at least once a year - quarterly if I could afford it. I also know that anyone with an Address Book as big as mine is scared of just handing it over to Plaxo or an Amazon Turk worker - I don't want my list getting copied and passed around to "affiliate marketers". Yet neither Samasource nor Digital Divide Data can handle this Mac-based task.

So there are two values a smart entrepreneur could offer:

The physical task of cleaning and updating an Address Book on a Mac
Trustworthiness that the contacts would not be stored, copied, or shared with anyone else.

Do you think you could manage this? What do you think you'd price for this work? I'm happy to be a test subject for what I am sure would be a very profitable business. A gut feel says somewhere around $.02 a contact based on total list size would be a easy price to pay for this service - maybe $.03 for the initial cleaning, which would take much work, and $.01 for an annual contract of quarterly (4x year) cleaning for maintenance. Again, based on the full Address Book size.

What do you think? Would you want this service? Could you perform this service? Either way, let me know.

Digital Divide or Digital Bridge: Can ICTD Alleviate Poverty?

2011-03-30T13:43:45Z

The past decade has seen great interest in information and communication technologies applied to international development, an endeavor sometimes abbreviated ICTD. Can mobile phones be used to improve rural healthcare? How do you design user interfaces for an illiterate migrant worker? What value is wireless technology to a farmer earning a dollar a day?

In this panel, four prominent thinkers active in ICTD debate the potential for electronic technologies to contribute to the socio-economic development of the world's impoverished communities.

Eric Brewer is a UC Berkeley professor who develops wireless technologies to connect rural communities.
Megan Smith is vice president of new business development at Google and managing director of Google.org.
Kentaro Toyama is co-founder of Microsoft Research India, and a computer scientist turned technology skeptic.
Wayan Vota is a senior director at Inveneo, a non-profit that works to provide information technology to underserved communities of the developing world.

Digital Divide or Digital Bridge: Can Information Technology Alleviate Poverty?
Wednesday, April 6, 2011, 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm
School of Information
University of California, Berkeley
102 South Hall
Berkeley, CA 94720-4600

Wayan Vota: DevEx 40 Under 40 International Development Leader in Washington DC

2010-10-01T13:40:35Z

Wow! I've been named a young international development leader by DevEx, the world's largest community of aid & development professionals.

Devex just published a first-of-its-kind list of the top 40 international development leaders in Washington, DC who are under 40 years of age. And I'm on it.

I was selected based on ~~my ballot box stuffing skills~~ influence on the development agenda and impact on development results. The list includes a diverse array of leaders from the international development field and I am honored to be among them.

Here is how they highlight and celebrate my work inspiring the next generation of leaders in the international development community in Washington, DC.

Wayan Vota Senior Director, Inveneo

Wayan Vota says he's been a "backpacking geek" since his hippie, globe-trotting parents gave birth to him in Indonesia. As a young adult, he jumped from the Peace Corps in Russia to Silicon Valley dot-coms, the collapse of which led him to transition to international development with some incredible technical skills.

In 2004, Vota joined IESC Geekcorps, a non-governmental organization that promotes global development through information and communication technology. Three years later, he was appointed a senior director at Inveneo, a similar NGO with a broader reach.

"It's great to be able to work with the coolest kids on the block in a dream job and have it stable and growing," Vota said.

Information technology as a development tool is growing, not just for Inveneo but for its local partners. He and his team not only deploy computers to some of the world's poorest, they teach them how the equipment works and, their local partners earn money in the process.

Following this year's earthquake in Haiti, Inveneo built a long-distance Wi-Fi system to support humanitarian NGO's work. Inveneo is now pushing that network beyond Port-au-Prince and helping rural companies develop a fast-growing Internet industry. Similar scenarios are transpiring throughout the world. Inveneo now reaches 1.5 million people in 25 countries, with a particularly strong presence in Africa.

"Our partners are starting to eclipse the work of Inveneo itself," Vota said.

It has taken more than techie brains to do it.

"I'm a geek-to-wonk interface, so I'm able to translate between what technologists are saying with what the development experts want," Vota said.

He said that would not have been possible if he had not suffered through countless nauseating bus and taxi rides in poor regions to meet with needy locals, aid workers and politicians to find out what's missing and what's logistically feasible.

Now, through his "Technology Salon," a monthly, in-person meeting in Washington and San Francisco, he is inspiring others to do the same. At each one, he brings development professionals and information technology gurus to a table to discuss ways to carry out their work.

And thanks to their face time, people in the developing world are able to have remote conversations for the first time.

What makes Vota glow, he said, is "the thousand-watt smile when they get online and understand they're part of the global community, or the overriding joy of a son [in a rural area] being able to talk to his father in the capital."

In the Company of Giants: I am an infoDev Mobile Apps Labs Implementer

2010-09-16T13:40:17Z

infoDev is implementing the ambitious "Creating Sustainable Businesses in the Knowledge Economy" program with the Government of Finland and Nokia to expand the impact of mobile applications in the economic and social advancement of the developing world.

A major component of the Creating Sustainable Businesses program are five regional mobile application laboratories, in Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe. These "mLabs" will facilitate demand-driven innovation of breakthrough low-cost, high-value applications through a web of inter-related activities to help entrepreneurs, investors, mentors and partners share knowledge, experience and perspective.

After a series of RFP's to identify organizations that will implement this program with infoDev, I am happy to note that infoDev announced that CSIR Meraka Institute and *iHub_ will be the two African mLabs. I have also learned that Vital Wave Consulting is advising infoDev and the mLabs on sustainable business models. In this mix, yours truly will also play a role.

I am honored to announce that I will be working with infoDev and its mLab partners to create an international community of practice for those working on mobile applications for development. While the exact scope and goals of the community are still being developed, early indications are that it will consist of a range of mLab community news and networking opportunities, including promoting local offline gatherings.

I am very excited to work with Meraka Institute, *iHub_, and Vital Wave Consulting. Principals at latter two I've known for years and always admired.

To hold my own with them, I plan to draw on my 15 years experience with every aspect of Internet publishing, from hand-coding commercial websites, to starting blogging before the term "blog" existed, to using multiple social networking tools, to building communities of practice that bridge the real and virtual worlds.

This includes developing the following four international communities of practice - each a leader in its field:

Educational Technology Debate - a discussion of low-cost ICT devices for educational systems in the developing world, and one of infoDev's flagship online communities of practice.
ICTworks - a premier knowledge resource for ICT practitioners deploying sustainable technology interventions, already central to over 300 entrepreneurs around world.
OLPC News - the leading independent analysis of the One Laptop Per Child program. It is now the largest community of OLPC supports, recognized as such by Nicholas Negroponte himself.
Technology Salon - a monthly meeting of ICT and development experts to discuss the impact of ICT in the developing world. It is so prestigious the UN Foundation's Technology Partnership with the Vodafone Foundation now sponsors the Salon.

My key learning from all four of these communities? No matter how fancy the platform or its social networking capacity, it's engaging personal contacts and timely and relevant content that form the basis of a successful community. Both are also interrelated as the best content comes from the best contacts that are outstanding because they have thought leadership and share it through good content.

To that end I hope I have your trust and support to help me develop and launch the infoDev mLabs community - I surely can't do it alone!