Wayan Dot Com

Vital Wave Consulting has asked my opinion a very simple, yet profound question:

What should the donor community do to expand national health information systems in the developing world?

Speaking as a technologist on a mission to change the way international development employs information and communication technology (ICT) to reach its aims of economic and social development, I am honored for the opportunity to present the key activities I believe donors need to engage in immediately to better implement national HIS.

Recognize Problems Are Human, Not High-Tech

In Washington DC, I convene the Technology Salon a monthly conversation between international and technology professionals, and recently we tackled the barriers to effective deployment of national health information systems. After a hour of debate, we came to the conclusion that the key national HIS success technology is change management.

That is deploying a national health information system successfully does not necessarily require the high-end technology resources available to richer countries. The major hurtles to successful national health information systems are human, not high-tech.

Having a clear goal of improving data quality, and a solid change management approach to achieve is the critical success factor. And this can be accomplished in countries as varied in resources as Belize, India, and Sierra Leone, regardless of what technology or technical approach is used.

So Move Beyond Shiny Flashy New Thing

If we accept that its not the information or communication technology that matters most, but old school change management, then donors need to get past their infatuation with the newest shiny, flashy gadget.

mHealth is a great example. While mHealth more than just mobility, and mobile phones are revolutionizing ICT in Africa, do we really need yet another program that tries to be mHealth? Is it really the answer to every health problem? You would think so by all the recent donor focus on it in lieu of the larger health initiatives that can be empowered by technology.

It even propelled Karl Brown of Rockefeller Foundation to ask, "Will mHealth eat eHealth and spit out its bones?" I sure hope not, as we should be talking about health - not focus on the letter in front, be it e, m, p, q, or z.

And Get Back to Building Human Capacity for Change

Then how can donors effect greater adoption of national health information systems, if not by focusing on the technology? By supporting a structured approach to transition Ministries of Health staff into accepting, even demanding data-driven decision making - the ultimate national HIS outcome.

This means a shift towards human capacity building across health ecosystems. Using the ADKAR Model for change, Donors and their implementing partners (consultants, NGOs, and the private sector) working together with all health stakeholders in the slow but effective community organizing process to articulate the need for data-driven decision making, and create a real desire by the stakeholder to change to it.

Then, via in-person training and workshops, give stakeholders the knowledge and ability to make the change at an individual level, and finally, ensure that Ministries of Health will reinforce the change to data-driven decision making at the organizational level through its hiring and budgeting processes.

Notice there wasn't one mention of information and communication technologies in any of those steps. Why? Because if the donor community really wants to expand national health information systems in the developing world, it needs to recognize the inhibitors are human, not high-tech, stop focusing on the shiny toys, and build human capacity to accept change. Its only then, we'll see any real impact from national HIS, no matter the technology.

This post was original published on Insights on Health Information

At the end of November, Twitter came out with a new retweet feature that supposedly solved a number of problems with the usage of retweets (RT) on Twitter; attribution confusion, mangled tweets, redundancy, and untrackability.

It is our stated option that the new RT is service degradation. Why? Because...

• Attribution confusion: While Twitter felt we users were confused by who wrote a RT, we were not. We saw faces we trusted recommending information - the best attribution any tweet author could ask for.
• Mangled and messy: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and where some see mess, we saw art of the Tweet Sculpt - adding our own value to the original tweet to give greater relevance to our followers.
• Redundancy & Noise: For those that have either, you follow too many people. Those of us who live for social media know how to select voices to listen to - ones that only RT value. And by RT'ing the same content, but with new value to each, all RT's gain value.
• Untrackable: To this we simply say "search"

But above all what galls us the most is the forced RT without commentary or annotation. To rip from our control the ability to add value to a tweet, to give it relevance to our followers - to make it ours. For this there is no excuse. Not for its implementation nor usage.

So we hereby issue the #RTFail Manifesto:

That's right - if we follow you, and you use the auto RT function 3 times (you will be warned) then you're unfollowed. Love ya, but no exceptions. The new RT's are Twitter spam, and until they are fixed, they shall be scorned in streams and in apps (looking at you Tweetie2).

For those that agree - join us in the #RTFail Manifesto in these simple ways:

• Get at RTFail Twibbon
• Issue your own #RTFail Manifesto warnings
• And of course, RT the #RTFail Manifesto, but only with a classic RT:
  -your snippet here- RT Join in the #RTFail Manifesto - Bring Back the RT! http://bit.ly/RTFail

We the Twitter RT'ers

Washington, D.C. -- December 1, 2009 -- Facebook today announced that Wayan Vota, the last social networking expert without an active Facebook account, has finally acquiesced to the need to be "friended" by those known and unknown to him through the world's largest social networking site. See Wayan Vota's Facebook here

"We are honored that Wayan Vota got off his high horse and accepted the reality that Facebook is driving adoption in Africa. To continue to lead an exploration at the intersection of technology and international development, he needed to have a presence with us," said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.* "We've worked hard to bring more than 200 million people - 70 percent outside of the U.S. - onto Facebook to share with friends, family and co-workers. Wayan Vota represents the pinnacle of that effort."

Wayan Vota concours, "It was time that I entered the Facebook. I am excited to expand its ability to connect and share with thought leaders in both the information and communication technology (ICT) industry and the international development community. This will be a wonderful voyage of discovery for both initiatives."

Wayan Vota will continue his work with Inveneo - a social enterprise that puts the tools of ICT (like Facebook) in the hands of those who need it most in the developing world. In fact, he's already developed the ICTworks presence on Facebook to empower Inveneo's Certified ICT Partners in 21 countries across Africa and South Asia.

About Wayan Vota
Wayan Vota starting blogging from before it was a word and now publishes seven different websites and commands LinkedIn, Flickr, YouTube, and Twitter from his world headquarters in Washington DC.

About Facebook
Founded in February 2004, Facebook's mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected. Anyone can sign up for Facebook and interact with the people they know in a trusted environment. Facebook is a privately held company and is headquartered in Palo Alto, Calif.

*To the best of Wayan's knowledge, Mark Zuckerberg has no clue who Wayan Vota is - but he should!

As a new father of a young daughter, the recent Educational Technology Debate on Gender Equality in ICT Education was a very personal for me. I look at the strong women I see in technology and I hope, dream, that some day my Hanalei will be a leader in whatever profession she chooses.

So was with great interest that I read about how Brooke Partridge and Karen Coppock found inspiration for their achievement in ICT. To complete the triptych of women in ICT that I admire, I also interviewed Kristen Peterson, a co-founder of Inveneo and now its CEO.

She's built the organization from just an idea in 2002 to a leading ICT4D organization I so admire, that I pretty much begged her to hire me (and she's now my boss). Here, I interview her about how she came to be in the technology industry:

Its interesting that she noted the importance of parents & mentors, especially her early mentor source: TV. Through this often maligned ICT, Kristin saw powerful women role modes to emulate and give her inspiration. I hope that times have changed enough that my Hanalei can find her own inspiration in real women she sees leading the world.

Back before there was One Laptop Per Child and the 4P Computers it spawned, we had to hunt for information on ICT projects. Finding low-cost devices or the initiatives behind them was a challenge only solved by infoDev's comprehensive Quick Guide to low-cost computing devices for the developing world.

I can remember pushing to get the Geekcorps' Desert PC listed, and the pride I had in our entry. Flash forward five years, and I'm now tasked with updating this list. Time has changed more than my involvement with ICT, its also changed the entire ICT field. Now, new 4P Computing devices are coming on line every day.

Yet so are great data gathering tools, like this Google Docs form below. Please let me know what's your favorite ICT device via this simple interface:

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And be sure to spread the word far and wide via email, Twitter, and the like. You can even re-tweet the survey using this handy, short snippet:

Help update @infoDev's Quick Guide to low-cost ICT devices - please RT and add your favorite 4PC today! http://bit.ly/ict_device_survey
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Mary Lou Jepsen of Pixel Qi has a stunning gift for 4P Computing this Christmas. In December she will start production on the 3qi, a revolutionary new display technology just for 10-inch netbooks.

Imagine reading a computer screen in bright African daylight that has 3x better resolution that what you're looking at right now. A screen that reflects light, just like paper, with similar high contrast and ease on the eyes. And when in that reflective mode, adds over an hour to your netbook battery life.

This is the promise of Pixel Qi's new dual mode 10-inch netbook display, the 3qi.

Based on the OLPC XO-1 dual mode screen, the 3qi can go from full color to black and white reflective mode at the flip of a switch. In that reflective mode, the laptop screen's back light is turned off, which greatly reduces power consumption and in the case of 3qi, greatly increases resolution and therefore readability. Here's a comparison with other screens.

In a recent interview with Mary Lou Jepsen, she revealed that the 3qi screens are going into production in December. This means we should be seeing dual screen laptops for sale in early 2010. But she also said that 3qi screens can be retrofitted into standard 10-inch netbooks that use 40 pin LDDS connectors in about 10 minutes.

While Pixel Qi isn't set up to sell individual screens, she was intrigued by the idea of a distributor selling just the screens, which could herald a flourishing of hardware retrofitting. That HP Mini which you now shield from any glare? Imagine a 10 minute retrofit that gives you full daylight readability.

This is the Pixel Qi promise I can't wait to be fulfilled.

Today I went to the Wuse Market in Abuja, Nigeria to check on the ability of entrepreneurs to find business opportunities using 4P Computing platforms. I found an innovative mix of using computing power to enable mobile phone content, at a profit.

Young men who invested in laptops are selling music, movies, and ringtones to market visitors at a tidy markup. Now ringtones and music sales is not new. Back in 2004, I heard of techies in the wilds of Mali selling ringtones and I got a few Gig of African tunes for a few bucks at a Senegalese cyber cafe.

What I found innovative was the movie sales.

The entrepreneurs had a selection of movies, or you could buy your own VCD or DVD and have them convert it into a video file. But why pay to convert a VCD or DVD? Wouldn't you already have a compact disk player, or if you're wanting to convert to a file, your own computer?

It seems people do have their own computer on which they want to watch movies, but this computer cannot convert them from VCD or DVD to .avi or .mp4, as its a mobile phone. Yes, people pay to convert VCD's and DVD's into files watchable on a smartphone.

Charles, the young techie I spoke with, said he makes around 4,000 Naira a day in profit with his laptop, or about $20 of ringtones, movies, and music. At that rate, he's looking at about a 4 month payback period on the laptop purchase. Maybe a month more if you take in his anti-virus expenses - software and every other day software update and laptop cleaning at a cyber cafe.

Still, a quick way to pay for a new laptop.

I'm headed to Africa soon for three weeks of meetings and trainings in Nairobi, Abuja, and Accra for Inveneo. I'll be in each city about a week, and would love to meet up with those in the technology and development fields. Of special interest would be those who are involved with OLPC, 4P Computing, and the health and education aspects of ICT deployment.

See, while I am a fanatic proponent of web-based discourse - I'm publishing at least six different blogs right now - I'm convinced that online discourse is an amplification of offline, in-person meetings.

In fact, I believe that online conversations are not possible without some level of face-to-face discussions between participants. Or as a friend once said "meatspace has the highest bit rate"

I'll be traveling through meatspace in accordance with this general itinerary:

• Nairobi the week of July 27th
• Abuja the week of August 3
• Accra the week of August 10

If you're in any of those cities when I am there, or know someone I should meet, then please let me know via:

• Email: wayan at wayan dot com
• Twitter wayan_vota
• Skype Call: wayan_vota
• Yahoo IM: wayan_vota
• Google Talk: wayan.vota

I am proud to announce that the Technology Salon is now officially sponsored by the United Nations Foundation's Technology Partnership with the Vodafone Foundation.

In April of 2008, I started the Technology Salon as a forum where technology and development professionals could share there opinions on emerging trends in information and communication technologies and international development in an intimate and informal discussion around:

• technology's impact on donor-sponsored technical assistance delivery, and
• private enterprise driven economic development, facilitated by technology.

A year later, as we've grown towards a community of practice, the Technology Partnership came to see the Salon as an effective way to increase the discussion and dissemination of information and communication technology's role in expanding solutions to long-standing international development challenges.

With agreement that the Salon will maintain its key attributes and its humble host, it became part of the Technology Partnership family. The Salon also got a whole new look - I created a new online presence to reflect its new status: TechnologySalon.org. Please redirect your Salon attention to this new site.

But don't get too excited - their sponsorship is just free donuts and coffee, as its our collective input that really powers the Salon. And along those lines, the views and opinions expressed on the site and in the Salon do not necessarily reflect those of the UN Foundation or the Vodafone Foundation.

Mobile phones are an amazing success story in the developing world, bringing transformative opportunities to many underserved communities. But they do not reach out to remote rural villages - where there is demand and purchasing power, albeit limited - and a scaleable micro mobile teclo solution could transform communications and development for the poorest of the poor.

So what might be the business and technology models that would allow entrepreneurs to roll out mobile phone systems to these underserved communities? And could development organizations play a role?

Which technology would be best: GSM? WiFi? WiMax? What's the business case: Handset sales? Subscriptions? Airtime only? Could voice services be augmented with data? Even broadband?

How might an entrepreneur serve 400 customers with $10 per month revenue or $48,000 per annum? And should aid organizations seed these businesses?

Please join David Ferguson on Thursday, April 2, for a lively discussion of possible micro mobile telco models and expect to hit the whiteboards with your ideas. Our gracious host is the UN Foundation and I'll have coffee and donuts for a good morning sugar rush to wake everyone up.

Designing a Micro-Mobile Telco
April Technology Salon
Thursday, April 2, 8:30-10am
UN Foundation Conference Room
1800 Mass Avenue, NW, Suite 400
Washington, D.C. 20036 (map)

Do note that seating is limited and the UN Foundation is in a secure building. So the first fifteen (15) to RSVP will be confirmed attendance and then there will be a waitlist.