as a child I really didn’t know what I
wanted to do I wanted to do everything
so I really ended up trying to do
everything and I have a very sort of
checkered career I’ll let you guess
which one of these lovely children is me
these are my brothers and sisters and I
think because of my interest was it was
technology it was the world around me it
was conservation Gerald Durrell said his
world-famous zoo up on jerseys I was
exposed to exotic wildlife from very age
or very interested in development and
all sorts of other things I ended up
with a fairly mixed bag of a career so
25 years in IT 17 years living in
working in eight or nine different
African countries running primate
sanctuaries in Nigeria doing
biodiversity survey work on Uganda doing
school building in Zambia hospital
building in Uganda taught English in
Finland did a degree in social
anthropology and it all kind of came
together the ideal job for me was to
combine all those interests and the job
didn’t exist so I had to make it and
that’s really what I’m doing doing now I
think I ended up at the end of all of
that dough at two in 2003 working in
South Africa in kruger national park and
we were looking at the time at how
mobile phone technology was starting to
emerge in rural communities now this was
seven and a half years ago it was
nowhere near it is now it’s phenomenal
what’s happened in the last seven odd
years but back then people had a hunch
that things were happening and these
mobile phones that were appearing in the
hands of people earning two three
dollars a day actually might become
something very very useful this was a
report that I co-authored in 2004 one of
the very early attempts to try and
document what was going on and it was
hard a lot of anecdotal evidence a lot
of blood of hunches but I think today
we’ve seen and we continue to witness
this amazing revolution really that
mobile technology is bringing but it
also brings a challenge I think if you
if you ask people in the u.s. what
innovation looks like it looks like this
it’s like the iphone 4g announced
yesterday it’s this very high-tech very
sort of power-hungry data hungary
applications things we carry around in
our pockets and things that make our
lives easier i’m not sure if people
really stop to think whether or not we
really need ipads because we can do most
of the things that we can do on that on
a on a laptop after all the problem with
this so is if we think about innovation
in these terms we forget that
for most of the world this stuff is
totally irrelevant it doesn’t really
make any difference to them at all if
you think about places like this is
bushbuckridge it’s an area on the age of
Kruger National Park where I was doing a
lot of my early work now iPads and a lot
of the technology where roaring away
with doesn’t work in places like that it
doesn’t work in places where there’s no
internet there are places in the world
believe it or not where there’s no
internet and and we almost struggle to
comprehend how we would live without our
gmail and twitter and all these crazy
social media things that we use it also
doesn’t work on old phones and and you
know very old models of Nokia phones and
monochrome screens and ones that don’t
don’t allow you to download apps and do
all this kind of fancy stuff and many
people are still using these phones this
is quite a modern phone in the terms of
the kind of things I see when I’m out in
the field but these phones are old and
don’t do anything really really smart at
all also these technologies don’t work
in the kind of places where mobile
manufacturers are having to think about
advertising their phones as tortures
because one of the main problems people
have is a lack of light at home that’s
an amazing picture I took I think about
four years ago in Uganda and it looks
like a torch ad but it’s you know by the
way you can also make phone calls on
this thing if you really really want to
and this is how people are thinking
about how you sell to an audience and a
market which is very very different to
the one that we live in and I think we
need to be aware as we march ahead that
this world does actually exist the the
big moment for me I suppose that there
were a couple of big moments but the
early one was doing the work in kruger
national park and they wanted to set up
a system to start sending messages to
the communities around the park to
reengage them in the conservation effort
arrange meetings are some questions just
generally start to talk to him a little
bit more and they were starting to get
phones and they said to me can we set a
system up that allows us to send 200
texts to go up to 200 people and you
know we can do elephant alerts as well
an elephant’s break defense all that
type of stuff and I looked and I
couldn’t find anything that worked in a
place like Kruger National Park
everything needed the internet it needs
lots of money need a training and it
just didn’t make any sense so that was
kind of the gap and the other part
really for me was that kruger national
parks were going to control this system
and we’re not speaking to the
communities you very quickly realize
that in fact they were the first ones
who would know if
elephant 2 Broke an offense because
they’re in their fields right and they
don’t have that button to press the
people are going to press the button and
do the alerts for 100 miles away and it
made no sense so I was thinking about
where is the control if we’re building
these things and we try to think about
building technologies to help rural
communities who presses that big red
button and often it’s somebody far far
away and very detached from the
situation that’s the wrong button there
we go so the solution for this for me
was this software called front on SMS
this was a second aha moment I was
sitting at home watching football with a
bottle of beer one Saturday night and I
just thought about hey you know this
idea started to come through my head and
it really turned out like this it’s why
not set up a communication hub but it
runs off of the mobile phone network
which exists which doesn’t require the
internet so by installing a software on
a laptop you plug in a phone with the
cable put numbers of the farmers
healthcare workers communities into that
system you can send them all the message
and it’s very easy and it works pretty
much anywhere and and funnily enough it
does work in places like this where many
many tools weren’t working because they
required things like the internet and
high-tech equipment the nice thing for
me about I think what we’ve done I
always felt very uncomfortable traveling
around and being seen as somebody who
had all the answers to all the problems
I think very few of us really have many
answers at all you find the people on
the ground in the communities of people
that have HIV or the farmers who are
struggling they have their own thoughts
and their own ideas and nonprofits are
the working with them and many of whom
have worked with them for a very very
long time actually no i’ll have a pretty
good idea how they can go about solving
these problems so rather than barreling
in and actually trying to take over why
not give them tools that allow them to
do what they do better they know the
language the culture the geography
everything there’s someone like I do not
know and this is a really really nice
quota thing for me which which sums up
what the software is allowing these
people to do we provide it we step back
we let them get on with it and the users
have been pretty bewildering a lot of
sense when Hannah was going through the
list of the kinds of things people are
doing with this I’ll give you a few
examples now but it’s actually
staggering for me if you actually trust
people enough to do the work themselves
they actually can do some pretty
innovative things election monitoring
Nigeria Philippines Malawi was using the
Filipino
again this year used in Afghanistan I’ll
just touch on that in a few minutes as
well these are local groups who wanted
to monitor and get a sense of how their
own elections when they don’t want the
UN to come in and do it they didn’t want
international organizations they wanted
to do it themselves Nigerians were sick
and tired of other people coming in and
doing it for them using this tool they
were able to set their own systems up
for the very very first time in 2007 and
do that in Zimbabwe it’s being used to
send information to rural communities
who are completely starved of any
meaningful news or perhaps any news at
all and also gives them a voice back you
can ask them how they feel about things
what’s happening in your area very very
useful when when Mugabe is flattening
people’s houses and doing the slum
clearing and people just don’t have a
voice and in many cases using tools like
this gives people a voice for the very
very first time people that are finding
that drugs they need to help their
children who may have diarrhea or
antimalarials going to clinics and
finding their out of stock many East
African governments deny there’s a
problem of supplying essential drugs
through clinics this is a map of places
where essential drugs are not available
the bigger the red blob the bigger the
problem this is great for government
transparency someone can go into a
clinic try and buy a drug if they can’t
get it they can text in it can be mapped
and visualized and it can really change
the game really governments find it very
hard to deny there’s a problem when they
see maps like that in Afghanistan as
Hannah mentioned it’s being used to send
security alerts to field workers it’s
been used for many years now almost from
the beginning to do that when I blogged
about this recently I was was writing
about it and I got this email that night
it was quite spooky but got an email
that night from one of the users and two
Red Cross workers have been killed in a
Taliban attack and this for me to the
drove home how crucially useful and
important a simple dumb 160 character
SMS can be if it’s sent at the right
time and you’re in the wrong place and
it can help get you out of places and
it’s kind of humbling in a way to think
that we’re solving these problems but it
just shows that these tools I think
really are needed in Iraq as well Taylor
a key using it to spread news around the
country they’re the first international
news organization since the fall of
Saddam and anti-human trafficking prod
you can embed these systems within the
communities so communities can set their
own systems up and they can control them
they can put them in their own languages
they can adapt the messaging and that’s
very very empowering the mall the latest
use of this was in Haiti after 30
American aid workers or religious group
members tried to take some children out
of the country and many of you may have
heard of that there’s a lot of concern
around doing that but using the simple
technology you can embed these systems
into the communities and you can
actually allow them to control and run
them pumps to farmers there’s actually
some great pumps and the exhibition
around the round the back there the
design for the other ninety percent
exhibition which is fantastic but
farmers who’ve expressed an interest in
the pumps give their mobile phone number
they can then be put into systems and
they can be texted when the special
offers or when there might be a
demonstration in their area or to ask
them how they gal to god on and that’s a
very nice social business use of it and
these pumps have quite a significant
impact for the farmers and in
Afghanistan this was when it was used
last year to help monitor the Afghan
elections and again these were local
Afghan media groups that were doing this
it wasn’t done by any large
international donor and it gave a voice
to the people this whole thing about
citizen reporting and allowing people to
actually say how they feel about things
and their own particular experience if
you marry that with the international
news you do get this amazingly fresh and
new exciting angle on what’s happened in
these kinds of events and of course
elections in Afghanistan are probably as
hard as any other place you could you
could imagine when Obama visited garner
a few US embassies use the software to
text out to communities when the radio
address was going to be on I should
probably charge the State Department for
using the software for everyone else
it’s free but you know hey and in Malawi
this is a really interesting case this
is the last example here a student from
Stanford University went to San Gabriels
hospital in Malawi a couple of years ago
and he installed the software and this
is Alexander who’s the head nurse he’s
running a rural healthcare network for
quarter of a million people through that
laptop the community healthcare workers
hundreds of maga phones and they
communicate through SMS through the
whole thing they’re the 112 service in
their village they can ask about
information about drugs and it’s
actually had a profound effect and it’s
it’s got a lot of attention as it
rightly should saving
thousands of dollars in unnecessary
journeys where people were traveling out
to give patients injections who died the
night before for example silly dumb
stuff but really really essential
communication which has revolutionized
the way this hospital now delivers
health care to those people there’s two
doctors for quarter million people so
you really wanna use those resource as
well it’s never come front on SMS medic
which is a spin-off organization which
is now applying our software
specifically in health another one now
is applying it in microfinance you can
run a bank from a laptop now and
disperse and receive money from rural
communities and small borrowers and
lenders and another one is applying it
in bullying in schools so schools can
download complete anti-bullying systems
from the internet with all the equipment
and everything leads by from the shop
and then they can run their own
anti-bullying or bullying reporting
systems this is a world map of coverage
no money for marketing or anything this
is viral spread users using it doing
cool things telling other people people
going on the web and downloading it we
don’t get involved in any of this stuff
so these people have done it on their
own we’ve won a bunch of awards and
being here is fantastic recognition I
think of the work of the users more than
anything because they’re the ones that
have the stories and we’ve been in the
media and this isn’t bad actually for a
piece of software that I wrote in 2005
from a kitchen table in Finland that’s
the view I head out of the window had no
money nothing but just had a hunch that
this was useful and I think the message
there is you do not need lots of money
lots of resources and to know big names
to actually get these things done if
you’re passionate and you find a
solution you believe in and you stick to
it after maybe five or six years it will
pay off I wish it had paid off a little
bit earlier perhaps quickly what’s
coming up next is a USB stick version
the computer is a bit of a barrier for
most NGOs let’s have it on a USB stick
you can go to an internet cafe plug it
in do your stuff how about running one
off the phone so you don’t need a
computer at all you just carry this
messaging hub in your pocket on the
phone and we’re adding picture messaging
this month which will allow farmers and
healthcare workers to transmit pictures
around the network which could actually
really help farmers and healthcare
workers deliver better services very
very quickly if you build these
technologies to work in these places
make sure that the bits and pieces
people have to buy are available locally
not things they have to order from very
very far away make sure they plug
together well maybe ikea is not a great
example because i always end up with
does
bits and pieces left over when I try and
build the table but make sure things
plug together and people can understand
how that works make them free or cheap
don’t put a price barrier up if you
brought a technology barrier down
because he’s still got a barrier make
sure it can replicate allow people to
talk and share and spread news and
basically help each other out forget the
Internet absolutely forget the internet
if you forget the internet you can do a
lot and also allow them to connect and
provide online services if they can get
online to talk to each other and to
share experiences and stories we’ve
managed to do that too and go outside
your comfort zone so I just love this
cartoon it’s a second Gary Larson
cartoon of the morning actually funnily
enough but if you’re a techie go outside
your techie box if you’re a social
scientist go outside of your social
scientist box I think that’s absolutely
crucial and think appropriately this
book was written in 1973 and it still as
valid today in a world that didn’t exist
when this book was written and don’t
compete kids don’t care who vaccinates
them did you want to get a vaccination
so let’s work together and genuinely
cooperate and then the logo this is a
kid doing the front minister mr. logo
it’s an empowerment theme we decided for
a branding agency called wieden kennedy
that empowerment was a key theme this
kids doing that logo it’s actually this
it’s a textable logo backslash 0 forward
slash which represents that that logo
and we’re getting pictures of users
doing this logo which is quite random
and strange I actually have a whole load
of benches with me today if anyone wants
one of these badges are incredibly
collectible and we have users in the UK
as well who are also doing this so we’ve
got something going on here and it’s fun
but I think it shows a connection we’ve
made by trusting the users and allowing
them to do what they do and not get in
the way in interfere and I think let’s
go back really to the beginning and just
think about all the innovation we see
around us in the countries that we live
in this part of the world and we just
forget sometimes I think there’s
actually another world out there where a
lot of what we’re doing doesn’t make any
sense and the technology that we’re
using does have immense power whether
it’s a security alert to a field worker
in Afghanistan or whether it’s a health
message to a HIV sufferer in rural
Zambia those things can be really really
crucial so let’s not let’s not not get
too carried away with the exciting ipad
iphone stuff
that’s maybe just pause a moment and
just ask the question who are we really
innovating for thank you very much
wanted to do I wanted to do everything
so I really ended up trying to do
everything and I have a very sort of
checkered career I’ll let you guess
which one of these lovely children is me
these are my brothers and sisters and I
think because of my interest was it was
technology it was the world around me it
was conservation Gerald Durrell said his
world-famous zoo up on jerseys I was
exposed to exotic wildlife from very age
or very interested in development and
all sorts of other things I ended up
with a fairly mixed bag of a career so
25 years in IT 17 years living in
working in eight or nine different
African countries running primate
sanctuaries in Nigeria doing
biodiversity survey work on Uganda doing
school building in Zambia hospital
building in Uganda taught English in
Finland did a degree in social
anthropology and it all kind of came
together the ideal job for me was to
combine all those interests and the job
didn’t exist so I had to make it and
that’s really what I’m doing doing now I
think I ended up at the end of all of
that dough at two in 2003 working in
South Africa in kruger national park and
we were looking at the time at how
mobile phone technology was starting to
emerge in rural communities now this was
seven and a half years ago it was
nowhere near it is now it’s phenomenal
what’s happened in the last seven odd
years but back then people had a hunch
that things were happening and these
mobile phones that were appearing in the
hands of people earning two three
dollars a day actually might become
something very very useful this was a
report that I co-authored in 2004 one of
the very early attempts to try and
document what was going on and it was
hard a lot of anecdotal evidence a lot
of blood of hunches but I think today
we’ve seen and we continue to witness
this amazing revolution really that
mobile technology is bringing but it
also brings a challenge I think if you
if you ask people in the u.s. what
innovation looks like it looks like this
it’s like the iphone 4g announced
yesterday it’s this very high-tech very
sort of power-hungry data hungary
applications things we carry around in
our pockets and things that make our
lives easier i’m not sure if people
really stop to think whether or not we
really need ipads because we can do most
of the things that we can do on that on
a on a laptop after all the problem with
this so is if we think about innovation
in these terms we forget that
for most of the world this stuff is
totally irrelevant it doesn’t really
make any difference to them at all if
you think about places like this is
bushbuckridge it’s an area on the age of
Kruger National Park where I was doing a
lot of my early work now iPads and a lot
of the technology where roaring away
with doesn’t work in places like that it
doesn’t work in places where there’s no
internet there are places in the world
believe it or not where there’s no
internet and and we almost struggle to
comprehend how we would live without our
gmail and twitter and all these crazy
social media things that we use it also
doesn’t work on old phones and and you
know very old models of Nokia phones and
monochrome screens and ones that don’t
don’t allow you to download apps and do
all this kind of fancy stuff and many
people are still using these phones this
is quite a modern phone in the terms of
the kind of things I see when I’m out in
the field but these phones are old and
don’t do anything really really smart at
all also these technologies don’t work
in the kind of places where mobile
manufacturers are having to think about
advertising their phones as tortures
because one of the main problems people
have is a lack of light at home that’s
an amazing picture I took I think about
four years ago in Uganda and it looks
like a torch ad but it’s you know by the
way you can also make phone calls on
this thing if you really really want to
and this is how people are thinking
about how you sell to an audience and a
market which is very very different to
the one that we live in and I think we
need to be aware as we march ahead that
this world does actually exist the the
big moment for me I suppose that there
were a couple of big moments but the
early one was doing the work in kruger
national park and they wanted to set up
a system to start sending messages to
the communities around the park to
reengage them in the conservation effort
arrange meetings are some questions just
generally start to talk to him a little
bit more and they were starting to get
phones and they said to me can we set a
system up that allows us to send 200
texts to go up to 200 people and you
know we can do elephant alerts as well
an elephant’s break defense all that
type of stuff and I looked and I
couldn’t find anything that worked in a
place like Kruger National Park
everything needed the internet it needs
lots of money need a training and it
just didn’t make any sense so that was
kind of the gap and the other part
really for me was that kruger national
parks were going to control this system
and we’re not speaking to the
communities you very quickly realize
that in fact they were the first ones
who would know if
elephant 2 Broke an offense because
they’re in their fields right and they
don’t have that button to press the
people are going to press the button and
do the alerts for 100 miles away and it
made no sense so I was thinking about
where is the control if we’re building
these things and we try to think about
building technologies to help rural
communities who presses that big red
button and often it’s somebody far far
away and very detached from the
situation that’s the wrong button there
we go so the solution for this for me
was this software called front on SMS
this was a second aha moment I was
sitting at home watching football with a
bottle of beer one Saturday night and I
just thought about hey you know this
idea started to come through my head and
it really turned out like this it’s why
not set up a communication hub but it
runs off of the mobile phone network
which exists which doesn’t require the
internet so by installing a software on
a laptop you plug in a phone with the
cable put numbers of the farmers
healthcare workers communities into that
system you can send them all the message
and it’s very easy and it works pretty
much anywhere and and funnily enough it
does work in places like this where many
many tools weren’t working because they
required things like the internet and
high-tech equipment the nice thing for
me about I think what we’ve done I
always felt very uncomfortable traveling
around and being seen as somebody who
had all the answers to all the problems
I think very few of us really have many
answers at all you find the people on
the ground in the communities of people
that have HIV or the farmers who are
struggling they have their own thoughts
and their own ideas and nonprofits are
the working with them and many of whom
have worked with them for a very very
long time actually no i’ll have a pretty
good idea how they can go about solving
these problems so rather than barreling
in and actually trying to take over why
not give them tools that allow them to
do what they do better they know the
language the culture the geography
everything there’s someone like I do not
know and this is a really really nice
quota thing for me which which sums up
what the software is allowing these
people to do we provide it we step back
we let them get on with it and the users
have been pretty bewildering a lot of
sense when Hannah was going through the
list of the kinds of things people are
doing with this I’ll give you a few
examples now but it’s actually
staggering for me if you actually trust
people enough to do the work themselves
they actually can do some pretty
innovative things election monitoring
Nigeria Philippines Malawi was using the
Filipino
again this year used in Afghanistan I’ll
just touch on that in a few minutes as
well these are local groups who wanted
to monitor and get a sense of how their
own elections when they don’t want the
UN to come in and do it they didn’t want
international organizations they wanted
to do it themselves Nigerians were sick
and tired of other people coming in and
doing it for them using this tool they
were able to set their own systems up
for the very very first time in 2007 and
do that in Zimbabwe it’s being used to
send information to rural communities
who are completely starved of any
meaningful news or perhaps any news at
all and also gives them a voice back you
can ask them how they feel about things
what’s happening in your area very very
useful when when Mugabe is flattening
people’s houses and doing the slum
clearing and people just don’t have a
voice and in many cases using tools like
this gives people a voice for the very
very first time people that are finding
that drugs they need to help their
children who may have diarrhea or
antimalarials going to clinics and
finding their out of stock many East
African governments deny there’s a
problem of supplying essential drugs
through clinics this is a map of places
where essential drugs are not available
the bigger the red blob the bigger the
problem this is great for government
transparency someone can go into a
clinic try and buy a drug if they can’t
get it they can text in it can be mapped
and visualized and it can really change
the game really governments find it very
hard to deny there’s a problem when they
see maps like that in Afghanistan as
Hannah mentioned it’s being used to send
security alerts to field workers it’s
been used for many years now almost from
the beginning to do that when I blogged
about this recently I was was writing
about it and I got this email that night
it was quite spooky but got an email
that night from one of the users and two
Red Cross workers have been killed in a
Taliban attack and this for me to the
drove home how crucially useful and
important a simple dumb 160 character
SMS can be if it’s sent at the right
time and you’re in the wrong place and
it can help get you out of places and
it’s kind of humbling in a way to think
that we’re solving these problems but it
just shows that these tools I think
really are needed in Iraq as well Taylor
a key using it to spread news around the
country they’re the first international
news organization since the fall of
Saddam and anti-human trafficking prod
you can embed these systems within the
communities so communities can set their
own systems up and they can control them
they can put them in their own languages
they can adapt the messaging and that’s
very very empowering the mall the latest
use of this was in Haiti after 30
American aid workers or religious group
members tried to take some children out
of the country and many of you may have
heard of that there’s a lot of concern
around doing that but using the simple
technology you can embed these systems
into the communities and you can
actually allow them to control and run
them pumps to farmers there’s actually
some great pumps and the exhibition
around the round the back there the
design for the other ninety percent
exhibition which is fantastic but
farmers who’ve expressed an interest in
the pumps give their mobile phone number
they can then be put into systems and
they can be texted when the special
offers or when there might be a
demonstration in their area or to ask
them how they gal to god on and that’s a
very nice social business use of it and
these pumps have quite a significant
impact for the farmers and in
Afghanistan this was when it was used
last year to help monitor the Afghan
elections and again these were local
Afghan media groups that were doing this
it wasn’t done by any large
international donor and it gave a voice
to the people this whole thing about
citizen reporting and allowing people to
actually say how they feel about things
and their own particular experience if
you marry that with the international
news you do get this amazingly fresh and
new exciting angle on what’s happened in
these kinds of events and of course
elections in Afghanistan are probably as
hard as any other place you could you
could imagine when Obama visited garner
a few US embassies use the software to
text out to communities when the radio
address was going to be on I should
probably charge the State Department for
using the software for everyone else
it’s free but you know hey and in Malawi
this is a really interesting case this
is the last example here a student from
Stanford University went to San Gabriels
hospital in Malawi a couple of years ago
and he installed the software and this
is Alexander who’s the head nurse he’s
running a rural healthcare network for
quarter of a million people through that
laptop the community healthcare workers
hundreds of maga phones and they
communicate through SMS through the
whole thing they’re the 112 service in
their village they can ask about
information about drugs and it’s
actually had a profound effect and it’s
it’s got a lot of attention as it
rightly should saving
thousands of dollars in unnecessary
journeys where people were traveling out
to give patients injections who died the
night before for example silly dumb
stuff but really really essential
communication which has revolutionized
the way this hospital now delivers
health care to those people there’s two
doctors for quarter million people so
you really wanna use those resource as
well it’s never come front on SMS medic
which is a spin-off organization which
is now applying our software
specifically in health another one now
is applying it in microfinance you can
run a bank from a laptop now and
disperse and receive money from rural
communities and small borrowers and
lenders and another one is applying it
in bullying in schools so schools can
download complete anti-bullying systems
from the internet with all the equipment
and everything leads by from the shop
and then they can run their own
anti-bullying or bullying reporting
systems this is a world map of coverage
no money for marketing or anything this
is viral spread users using it doing
cool things telling other people people
going on the web and downloading it we
don’t get involved in any of this stuff
so these people have done it on their
own we’ve won a bunch of awards and
being here is fantastic recognition I
think of the work of the users more than
anything because they’re the ones that
have the stories and we’ve been in the
media and this isn’t bad actually for a
piece of software that I wrote in 2005
from a kitchen table in Finland that’s
the view I head out of the window had no
money nothing but just had a hunch that
this was useful and I think the message
there is you do not need lots of money
lots of resources and to know big names
to actually get these things done if
you’re passionate and you find a
solution you believe in and you stick to
it after maybe five or six years it will
pay off I wish it had paid off a little
bit earlier perhaps quickly what’s
coming up next is a USB stick version
the computer is a bit of a barrier for
most NGOs let’s have it on a USB stick
you can go to an internet cafe plug it
in do your stuff how about running one
off the phone so you don’t need a
computer at all you just carry this
messaging hub in your pocket on the
phone and we’re adding picture messaging
this month which will allow farmers and
healthcare workers to transmit pictures
around the network which could actually
really help farmers and healthcare
workers deliver better services very
very quickly if you build these
technologies to work in these places
make sure that the bits and pieces
people have to buy are available locally
not things they have to order from very
very far away make sure they plug
together well maybe ikea is not a great
example because i always end up with
does
bits and pieces left over when I try and
build the table but make sure things
plug together and people can understand
how that works make them free or cheap
don’t put a price barrier up if you
brought a technology barrier down
because he’s still got a barrier make
sure it can replicate allow people to
talk and share and spread news and
basically help each other out forget the
Internet absolutely forget the internet
if you forget the internet you can do a
lot and also allow them to connect and
provide online services if they can get
online to talk to each other and to
share experiences and stories we’ve
managed to do that too and go outside
your comfort zone so I just love this
cartoon it’s a second Gary Larson
cartoon of the morning actually funnily
enough but if you’re a techie go outside
your techie box if you’re a social
scientist go outside of your social
scientist box I think that’s absolutely
crucial and think appropriately this
book was written in 1973 and it still as
valid today in a world that didn’t exist
when this book was written and don’t
compete kids don’t care who vaccinates
them did you want to get a vaccination
so let’s work together and genuinely
cooperate and then the logo this is a
kid doing the front minister mr. logo
it’s an empowerment theme we decided for
a branding agency called wieden kennedy
that empowerment was a key theme this
kids doing that logo it’s actually this
it’s a textable logo backslash 0 forward
slash which represents that that logo
and we’re getting pictures of users
doing this logo which is quite random
and strange I actually have a whole load
of benches with me today if anyone wants
one of these badges are incredibly
collectible and we have users in the UK
as well who are also doing this so we’ve
got something going on here and it’s fun
but I think it shows a connection we’ve
made by trusting the users and allowing
them to do what they do and not get in
the way in interfere and I think let’s
go back really to the beginning and just
think about all the innovation we see
around us in the countries that we live
in this part of the world and we just
forget sometimes I think there’s
actually another world out there where a
lot of what we’re doing doesn’t make any
sense and the technology that we’re
using does have immense power whether
it’s a security alert to a field worker
in Afghanistan or whether it’s a health
message to a HIV sufferer in rural
Zambia those things can be really really
crucial so let’s not let’s not not get
too carried away with the exciting ipad
iphone stuff
that’s maybe just pause a moment and
just ask the question who are we really
innovating for thank you very much
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