ICTworks by Inveneo

Two weeks ago, ICTworks led the organization of Fail Faire DC, an amazing celebration of failure as a mark of leadership, innovation, and risk-taking in pushing the boundaries of what is possible in scaling ideas from pilots to global programs.

Our goal was to continue the Fail Faire movement started by Mobile Active, and make failure more acceptable in the international development community. So far, the impact of Fail Faire DC 2011 is greater than we anticipated. Yes, the event itself was amazing, and others agree, but more importantly, it spawned a greater conversation around failure and the need to fail if we are to expand our profession.

Here is a quick tour of the Fail Faire DC impact to date:

1. Learn about the 10 levels of ICT4D failure, including the "epic fail", better know as the face palm
2. Check out the FailFaireDC photos on Flickr. Relive your favorite slides and remember your favorite presenters.
3. Read the Slate.com article. We had a great write up, complete with the academic underpinnings to our erstwhile activities.
4. Read a presenter's first-person account. Tessie San Martin, CEO of Plan International USA was a FailfaireDC presenter and is proud of her failures
5. Learn how NOT to plan a FailFaire. Ian Thorpe explains that going big is not a path to success
6. And how to fail successfully. Or that's the boast from NDI Tech, who somehow failed to attend FailfaireDC.
7. Join Admitting Aid Failure, the second Aid Blog Forum. The aid bloggers are taking our idea to the Internets.
8. While "just say no" to admitting failure is the American Public Health Association's contribution, as talking about failure might scare off donors
9. Yet EWB admits failure annually and still somehow gains funding and buzz
10. Look for a FailFaireNYC. Mobile Active is teaming with Unicef to have a FailFaire in New York City this December.

Most of all, remember to fail in everything you do. Only then are you showing leadership and innovation in pushing the boundaries of what is possible in scaling ICT and international development.

Most people that I have met in the international development field have had strong opinions for or against involvement in the ICT field of the Peace Corps.  I've toyed back and forth over whether to pursue this path after graduation for personal reasons.  Most notably, I have questioned whether I'm willing to miss out on two and a half years of life with friends and family to live in a third world country where I know no one.  

As I've taken on new, independent challenges, this has become less of the issue.  Instead, through discussion with my network of new ICT4D friends, I have found that there are some career and sustainability factors that I should be taking into consideration.

Let's start out with the benefits of volunteering with the Peace Corps:

1. To be successful in a career in international development, you have to have international experience.  Sustainability is greatly jeopardized when individuals with no experience living in a particular culture attempt to create solutions for their problems.  Cultural understanding is absolutely vital for designing sustainable solutions.  The Peace Corps provides volunteers experience in developing solutions for a unique living style, emphasizing the importance of ethnography in design.
2. The Peace Corps offers training for tackling development issues.  Whichever field Peach Corps Volunteers (PCV) decide to pursue, they are given three months of training on the culture of the area they will be entering and on how to successfully implement projects in their field.  This is essentially free education.
3. Your extended period of time living in one community allows you to create a real attachment with the people of that community and allows for a complete cultural immersion.
4. The Peace Corps offers the best benefit package of any volunteer corps.  With a monthly living stipend, non-competitive government job placement, and partial student loan coverage upon completion of a Peace Corps tour, it is easy to see why most individuals interested in global development choose this route over others.  It is difficult to even get loan deferrals for volunteer abroad trips, let alone loan repayment.  While I'm sure these are not the main reasons any individual decides to devote a minimum of two and a half years of his/her time to life in a third world country, they are benefits that are weighed when choosing the best route.
5. The Peace Corps is a great opportunity for students right out of college to get a good amount of travel and life experience before settling into a stable career.

Taking all of this into consideration, the Peace Corps seems like a perfect way to get involved in international development.  However, there are a some vital points to take into consideration if the prospective volunteer's main goal is creating sustainable results.  The mission of a PCV is divided into three main goals (taken directly from http://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=about.mission):

1. Helping the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women.
2. Helping promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.
3. Helping promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.

Note how only one of these goals deals with development.  While cultural understanding both internationally and domestically is greatly beneficial and necessary for maintaining peace and sharing ways of life, individuals who have the main goal of seeing results in economic development are likely are not looking to devote 2/3 of their efforts to spreading culture.  This may be the goal for some, and that is great.  I, personally, want to see results and efficiency.

Even more importantly, sending one individual with no experience with a particular region and culture and only three months of training is unquestionably not the most efficient way to tackle development issues.  It's great that individuals are willing to donate their time to the noble cause of training men and women for economic growth, but without a strong foundation of knowledge on a particular region, a great deal of time is wasted on projects that do not sustain.  

This is particularly true in the ICT field where projects need to take into consideration all sorts of community aspects, from cultural dilemmas, such as language barriers, to physical barriers, such as broadband or electrical issues.  A better approach would be to send interested volunteers to areas where grassroots organizations and NGOs have already established projects and have people in the field that know a great deal about the culture of the region.  This way volunteers and field workers can bounce ideas off each other to create the best solution.

Please note that I have great respect for all PCVs and the work that they have devoted to development.  I am simply questioning whether this is the best model for my goals and vision.

Over at Inveneo, we've been looking at all the possible technology, ICT4D, and international development related conferences we could attend in 2011. In that process, we made a massive calendar schedule and thought we'd like to share it with you.

Presenting the Inveneo ICT4D Event Calendar for your scheduling happiness:

Do you see any conferences you like? Or ones you want to add? Fell free to jump in and add, edit, or expand this list. We'd love to have your input so we can know where to go in 2011.

Thanks!

Are you a technology or development professional who would love to converse with your peers in an informal, after-hours setting? Would you be in New York City, Washington DC, San Francisco, or Seattle?

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We meet after work for a lively conversation at the intersection of technology, development, and merriment. But you'll only know about these game-changing events if you sign up to get announcements using the form below.

On the Twitter social network, people use hashtags, the "#" symbol followed by letters and numbers or a word to signify a Tweet in relation to a specific subject. For example, the #ICT4D hashtag is employed to represent the use of information and communications technologies for development.

After an exhaustive analysis and multiple interviews with thought leaders, I've come to the conclusion that #m4D is the best hashtag to signify Tweets related to the use of mobile phones in the international development of social and economic advancement in the developing world.

Why #m4D?

Organizations can use mobile technology in many ways to promote societal advancement - they can be platforms for the transference of voice, written text, images, data, and who knows what else, over many different types of hardware, software, and protocols. The only real denominator is that its generally usable on a mobile phone-type device - therefore we should incorporate near-ubiquitous lowercase "m".

Yet mobile technology is a subset of overall information and communication technology (ICT) field. And both mobiles and ICT are subservient to the actual end goal of development - not mobiles for mobiles' sake, but mobile technology used for development. Therefore we should draw on the "4D" in the existing #ICT4D hashtag.

Which brings us to define #m4D as mobiles for development, which includes the full gamut of mobile technologies - infrastructure, hardware, devices, protocols and apps.

Now as I've noted before, #m4D and even #ICT4D do not exist in a vacuum. In fact, they are subgroups of larger communities. And there are even subgroups to #m4D - like #Apps4D, the specific use of mobile applications for development. Before you get confused, let us review the Venn Diagram of the intersection between ICT and development to see where each community resides.

Now here is each category explained, along with its placement in these respective communities:

• ICT
  Information and communication technologies represent the full array of solutions, from FM radio to cloud computing that the world uses to create and relay information electronically.
• Mobile
  Mobile technologies, from the mobile phone to the iPad are a subset of ICT that, like the name suggests, are primarily focused on allowing the user to interact with ICT while in motion.
• Development
  Often called "international development", its the industry seeking to increase the economic and social development of disadvantaged communities and countries.
• ICT4D
  Where the use of ICT is for the purpose of developing a community, its referred to as ICT4D (ICT for Development).
• m4D
  Where mobile technologies are used for development, this is called m4D and is a subset of both mobile and development.
• Apps4D
  Where software applications interact with mobile technologies, often but not always as software on the mobile device itself, for development, it is Apps4D.