We are all busy. But you should never be too busy to experiment, explore, and build something new, especially something new that could be a new income stream or professional achievement.

I call this the 20% project.

Yes, that implies you should be spending 20% of your time on new projects, be they for work or outside of it. My earliest 20% project, Belly Button Window opened up a world of friends that helped me cross the earth in style. My most successful 20% project was OLPC News, that beget a whole new career focus for me: 6 years as a thought leader in ICT for education.

Now I am juggling two 20% projects: Technology Salon, which I am working on rolling out as a private company in 2013, and an MBA, which is a long-term 20% project.

But don't think I am the only one.

In thinking about 20% projects, I asked around to see what others are up to. Here are a few of the responses:

• Ian Thorpe says: two things 1. internal UN "transformation" network 2. #post2015agenda public conversation platform
• Linda Raftree says: kids, running, capoeira, TSNYC, curric on Visual Literacy, blog, mYWD research, FLSMS brd
• Mike McKay says: PouchDB is an html5 offline capable DB with full sync. Phones, tablets & dev countries. me =>80%
• And Christine Prefontaine says: Maybe too meta, or maybe because I'm a freelance, but I don't think 80/20.

Christine brings up a good point. If you do it right, your 20% is your 80% - you are able to build innovative projects as your job, and that's when you know you're doing it right.

So... what's your 20% project?
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As one of my last acts at Inveneo, I helped design and launch their new website. Well, I did a bit more than that. I spent the last two years bemoaning our old website and lobbying for a new one.

For a small company that sold best though in-person meetings, it was hard convincing others that we needed to invest in a new website. In addition, there was a perception that websites were expensive - at least $100K. So there was a long road to get the green light to change Inveneo.org

I am proud to say that we came in pretty much on time and on budget - and our budget was a tiny fraction of what they thought it would be. I will have to thank Lee Heidel of Heidel Design for both helping me demonstrate that websites can be built for very reasonable investments and actually building the new site within the expected costs. (Yes, I highly recommend him for your web needs)

But enough about the backstory - that's not as much fun as the visual feasts this cake represents. Now dig in to http://inveneo.org!

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Four and a quarter years ago, I joined Inveneo with the dream to accomplish three goals with the company. I aimed to grow the local ICT partner program to a market differentiator for Inveneo, raise the company's profile in the Washington DC market, and get Inveneo on large USAID programs.

I am proud to say that I've achieved each of my goals.

1. The ICIP program grew to be what sets Inveneo apart from all other ICT companies and has become a major reason we are sought out as a partner and implementer. Now under the leadership of FJ Cava, the program has achieved success in Haiti and around the world beyond my expectations and has inspired similar efforts at other organizations.
2. Unquestionably, Inveneo is now known in Washington DC. Today, it's rare that I have to explain what Inveneo does or even hand out a business card. All the major players know of Inveneo, many of their staff have met Inveneo staff personally, and the conversations start with "How can we partner?" - with real business opportunity in mind.
3. Inveneo is now sought out as the preferred technology partner for major USAID RFPs and IQC's, to the point where Inveneo is on multiple primes' proposals as the exclusive ICT solution designer and implementer.

In addition, Inveneo now has a deep pool of staff that can support its Washington, DC business. Sybille Fleischmann has ICT in education deployment experience from Microsoft and in Haiti that eclipses my own. Lisa Lin brings deep experience with USAID contracts beyond any level of detail I would ever want to have. Kristin Peterson and the sales team know their way around the different contracting vehicles and how to read the proposal and partnering tealeaves.

Moving On

So it's with the satisfaction of knowing I've propelled Inveneo into the highest levels of international development that I now take my leave from the organization. I am moving on from Inveneo on September 7th with a full heart of goodwill and happiness for the organization and my departure from it.

I feel truly blessed to have worked at Inveneo for the last four years. I loved, LOVED, every minute of it, often to the point of tears when I saw our impact on the communities we serve. It was truly the best job I've ever had.

I will cherish the working relationship I've had with the Inveneo team. I will especially miss Kristin and Mark, who were more than my bosses - they became great friends to me and I appreciated their continued support and endless patience.

The Next Challenge

Yet its time for me to take on a new marketing challenge with another organization. Starting September 10th, I will be joining Development Gateway in Washington DC. They develop results monitoring and big data ICT solutions for bilateral and multilateral donors and national governments and are instrumental in supporting the growing momentum around the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI).

Not to worry, I will still be in the ICT4D space and I will not forget Inveneo. I will continue to be a tireless advocate for both. I will start by suggesting that you subscribe to ICTworks, one of the many initiatives I started at Inveneo that I know will live on well past my exit.

I am often asked to speak at conferences, meetings, and workshops on Information and Communication Technologies for Development - ICT4D. My goal is to be a lively presenter, engaging the audience as active participants in the discussion. I am succeeding at my goal from feedback like the responses above on the Learning@Hand back channel.

So what is my secret to getting kudos like that in talking about technology and development? Here are a few guidelines to being an engaged, exciting presenter.

1. Start with a storyline: The first step for any good presentation is to develop a storyline. Know the story arch you want to present and build an outline of key points based on that story arch. Note the focus here - in a story. As the great Seth Godwin says, a presentation excites, motivates, inspires. You will educate the audience in the course of the talk, but don't make it the focus. That's a workshop, not a presentation.
2. Think in photos: Woe to the presenter who puts more than 5 words on a slide. They are confusing a presentation with slide notes. Your slides should accentuate your point, not be Cliff Notes to remind you want to say. Your audience can and will read your words faster than you, and just be annoyed that you read so slowly out loud. Instead just use big, evocative photos that demonstrate your point. Google Image Search is your friend here. And for those that worry about image rights - if they didn't want the image used freely, they shouldn't put it online. For my presentations, I have a goal of less than 5 words for the whole presentation - including my title slide.
3. Be animated: No one likes to watch grass grow, so don't just stand there clutching the podium. Grab the microphone and move out into the audience. Talk with emotion, point to your photos, point to people in the audience, raise & lower your voice, get excited, cry, do whatever the presentation calls for to get and keep your audience's attention. Trust me, they will remember your point if you make it memorable.
4. Convert the audience to participants: I love asking questions to specific audience members, especially the engaged ones. Also, I do pop quizzes asking for answers to be shouted out. I make people vote by raising hands or standing up. I ask for gadget examples from the audience, like who has the oldest phone or newest tablet. Anything to make people feel they were part of the presentation, not passive receivers.
5. Get personal: Big topics, like ICT4D, can often be impersonal and seem remote to the audience. I like to break through this barrier with personal stories - events or actions I experienced that tie the big, global narration to common themes we can all relate to. One of my current favorites is that yes, everyone is on Facebook, even my mom - and she "likes" every single one of my posts. Also, stopping mid-story and asking the audience what they think should happen next, especially when the next step isn't logical or expected, is a good way to make a personal story participatory.
6. Go funny and positive: I love making people laugh. And if they're laughing, people will accept critique and criticism in a positive light. Often, I am discrediting theories and actions that are popular but ineffective, so the humor goes a long way to get the point across without being booed off the stage. In fact, I know I've hit the mark when the crowd erupts into laughter and then goes "oooo" when they realize the joke it on them for perpetuating these misconceptions.
7. Be short: No one ever leaves a presentation saying "I wish that talk went on for another hour!" So be brief. Finish early, and spend the extra time getting mobbed by your new fans.

In general, I think I am a pretty good presenter now, or as I like to think of it, a lead discussant, by following these simple rules. Then I happen to see a presentation that really rocks and yet again humble me. Here is one of my favorites, which I re-watch often to learn from: Mark Congiusta on Power Point Failures

In fact, if you only watch one video to improve your presentation skills, please let it be this one. It gives great guidelines on how present with the right mood: funny, informal, yet highly informative.

I'm proud to announce the publication of USAID's First Principles: Designing Effective Education Programs Using Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Compendium, to which I contributed during its formation and development. Yes, I am even listed as an author on the back cover with Anthony Bloome, Ed Gaible, Analice Schwartz, and Janel Hoppes Poché.

Designing Effective Education Programs Using ICT provides important overview guidance for designing and implementing education programs that use technology. The principles and indicators are primarily meant to guide program designs, including the development of requests for and subsequent review of proposals, the implementation of program activities, and the development of performance management plans, evaluations, and research studies.

The First Principles series are intended to help USAID education officers specifically, as well as other stakeholders--including staff in donor agencies, government officials, and staff working for international and national non-governmental organizations--take advantage of good practices and lessons learned to improve projects that involve the use of education technology.

The guidance in this document is meant to be used and adapted for a variety of settings to help USAID officers and others grapple with the multiple dimensions of ICT in education and overcome the numerous challenges in applying ICT in the developing-country contexts. The last section provides references for those who would like to learn more about issues and methods for supporting the education of the underserved.

Designing Effective Education Programs Using ICT is based on extensive experience in, and investigation of, current approaches to technology in education and draws on research literature, interviews with USAID field personnel, and project documentation. It also includes profiles of projects funded by USAID and others.

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!

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.

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

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.

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.

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.
2. 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.
3. 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
4. Structural failure
   It cuts - deeply - but it doesn't permanently cripple your identity or enterprise. Examples: Apple iPhone 4's antenna; Windows Vista.
5. Glorious failure
   Going out in a botched but beautiful blaze of glory - catastrophic but exhilarating. Example: Jamaican bobsled team.
6. 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
7. 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.
8. Version failure
   Small failures that lead to incremental but meaningful improvements over time. Examples: Linux operating system; evolution.
9. 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.
10. 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.