Recently, while working in Haiti for our Notre Dame Haiti Program, I had an incredible opportunity to meet some amazing folks doing great things in aid and development to assist the Haitian people. This group also shared a common interest in the FrontlineSMS application in their respective work. It’s quite an interesting story on how this came together and the resulting benefits.

FrontlineSMS users gather in Port-au-Prince

This all started when I found I’d be traveling to Haiti and two additional Tech Change TC105 students were already working in the country, so we discussed an informal lunch meeting to discuss mobile tech and more specifically, FrontlineSMS. Our TC105 moderator for Team Deserts, Flo Scialom (of FrontlineSMS in the UK), offered her expertise in community building to help pull us, and others together. Each day, as we criss-crossed Port-au-Prince and Leogane with meetings at various ISP’s and Mobile Network Operators, I’d get an email from Flo, “Tom, do you have room for one more?”, “Do you have space for another?”…etc…So what started with three or four for lunch, turned into 17 individuals, representing five continents and eight countries – and a full blown FrontlineSMS user group luncheon at the Babako Restaurant in Port-au-Prince. We had organizations at the table representing public health, microfinance, sexual violence, IDP camp resettlements, human rights abuses, education, and others. It really was inspiring to look around that table and realize how many Haitians were benefiting from the work of these individuals and their organizations. A true force multiplier! Of those at lunch, there were only a couple of groups that had FrontlineSMS instances up and running, but the others were interested in using it in their respective work, including us with the Notre Dame Haiti Program.

Discussing mobile technology for development

After some not-so-brief introductions (remember we had 17), we discussed issues around getting started with the software. This included everything from modem hardware compatibility, to running FrontlineSMS on MacOS and problems sending and/or receiving SMS messages. We also covered local resources within Digicel in Port-au-Prince that can prove helpful in choosing the right modem, and any possible setup issues.

Next, the talk revolved around other mobile and open-source tools in the development space, such as RapidSMS, Ushahidi, OpenMRS and more. So this group was not so much about a single software application, but more about affecting change with any technology – a community of practice around ICT4D/M4D.

ND Haiti staff discuss FrontlineSMS

Finally, as we finished lunch – btw the food at Babako was as delicious as the conversation, we talked about the importance of working together, sharing our successes & failures, and staying in touch. The big win was looking around the table, as diverse as our needs and applications are; we all shared a common purpose, enthusiasm and a collective knowledge, to affect positive change with mobile technology.

Call it community of practice, collective passion, or human synergy. This was a testimony to The Awesome Power of Connecting People! We are stronger together!

Haiti FrontlineSMS user group

peace,

Tom

\o/

ND Haiti Program

One of the first topics I started investigating was the use of mobile money for the program in making payments to the workers in the salt fortification plant. This was just as mobile money services were being launched in Haiti, so much of this was very new and exciting – this is something I wrote about in a previous post and again here. Of course there were some small scale IT equipment donations, Wifi routers, printers, projectors, etc…but I was really looking for big impact. What could we do as an IT organization to amplify their affect of their mission.

Eventually, after all of the discussions about where their needs existed, we started developing some direction on how exactly we could help the program from a technology perspective. This led to the recent visit to Haiti by two of us from my department to conduct further research and development on these ideas.

The main objectives of the visit included the following:
1) Overall IT assessment of the four facilities used by the program.
2) Use of FrontlineSMS for mobile data collection.
3) Mobile money and payroll for the salt factory employees using Digicel Tcho Tcho Mobile.
4) Meetings with ISP’s, Mobile Network Providers and other technology stakeholders.

Even though we are still processing much of this visit, we are working towards the final report for our leadership and that of the ND Haiti Program. We hope this is the start of forward progress with technology and some great things for the ND Haiti Program.

More posts to come on this topic.

peace

Here are some of the topics I plan on covering in the next couple weeks.

1) AHECTA
2) ND Haiti project (there are several posts here)
3) FrontlineSMS user group luncheon
4) Video streaming with Ustream and Wirecast
5) MBA Deep Dive for BOSCO-Uganda

I think there are more, which is why I should write more often – but oh well.

peace

FrontlineSMS is quite familiar to me as I’ve conducted a lot of testing and also serve as a FLSMS forum support volunteer. Furthermore, Ushahidi and specifically the Crowdmap (the Ushahidi in-the-cloud service) application have always been of interest to me. There have been several Ushahidi deployments that have garnered global attention, one notable example is “Project 4636″ for crisismapping following the earthquake in Haiti in January 2010. The Ushahidi blog has a nice detailed graphic summarizing the dataflow of Project 4636.

There were a few things I wanted to test:
1) Syncing FrontlineSMS to Crowdmap.
2) Gain more experience with the Crowdmap configuration.
3) Receive SMS messages into Crowdmap, analyze the reports and plug in the user supplied location data for mapping.
4) Receive Tweets tagged with #flsms2ush, with user supplied location data and map those reports.

FrontlineSMS sync to Crowdmap

On the Ushahidi blog there’s a helpful write up of instructions on how to sync FrontlineSMS to Crowdmap. Here’s my Crowdmap site, with the results of the SMS messages from FrontlineSMS and all tweets tagged with #flsms2ush, of course location data was provided in the txts and the Tweets.

Finally, this turned into a wonderful learning experience for both applications and it allowed me to gain a better understanding of how they compliment each other. In addition, there’s a good possibility I’ll be making use of FrontlineSMS and Crowdmap in an upcoming public health project.

peace

Personally, I would have to say spirituality and values both play a role in my thought and work practices. To me spirituality can encompass both faith and values – one does not have to be a “religious” person to be spiritual. As a matter of fact, some of the most spiritual and kind individuals I’ve ever met don’t actively practice an organized religion. Myself, I was raised Roman Catholic, attended a Catholic High School and work at one of the most well known Catholic institutions of higher education in the United States. Now, I don’t regularly attend church services, but I do experience spiritual growth in other ways, through how I choose to live my life, my actions, as well as how I interact with my family and friends.

I’m involved in several activities both at my workplace and on my own, that give me the opportunity to use my knowledge, education and passion to build spiritual fulfillment, and make a positive impact. Or at least, I hope I’m making some difference.

A few of the values ventures I’m currently involved in include:
-My role as board member and technical advisor to BOSCO-USA. BOSCO is an NGO serving northern Uganda, focused on ICT4D communications infrastructure and technology enablement to break isolation for internally displaced peoples.

-I also serve as a volunteer “Hero” for FrontlineSMS, providing Forum support for social change users and organizations around the globe using open source SMS gateways to communicate and support their respective missions.

-Additionally, at work I’ve been co-chairing a Catholic Mission Team in my department. We focus on identifying and fostering opportunities to assist our staff in supporting the University goal of Catholic character. This presents a chance for our technology folks to reflect Catholic social teaching through various social good, service and volunteer activities. This one is just starting to gain traction, so I’m hoping for more growth here and I’m very excited about the possibilities.

-Finally, I’ve been working for some time with the ND Haiti Program on some technology initiatives. More on this one in a later post.

A big question I ask myself – why do I seek out these opportunities, get involved and find fulfillment out of these commitments? The short answer, I guess, is that I enjoy working in technology and I love helping people. It’s where these two areas intersect that I see my greatest professional and personal satisfaction.

-peace