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Return from JerusalemMonday, May 5. 2008 I've just returned from a short trip to Jerusalem where I had the honor of participating in some meetings with health officials from both the Palestinian and Israeli governments and from the United States. I was able to get in a few hours of touring as well, and my head is still spinning from all of the impressions during the 4-day adventure. I hope to post some more concrete online community-related ideas later, but wanted to share this photo from the Mount of Olives lookout as we drove around the outskirts of the old city walls. Quick impressions: I really had no idea what to expect as a first-timer to Israel. It certainly seemed a lot safer than I would have thought. Thanks to media and other warnings, I was skeptical of how safe I really would be. But security at the airport and on the borders is exceptional--I have heard they are often used as models for top-level airport security and believe it after passing through 3 checkpoints on my way out. During my brief trip in the old city I passed by people from many religions and nationalities. I met Muslims running the market; Christian Americans; and nuns from all over the world; American Jews and Israeli Hassidic Jews; Polish Catholic pilgrims; Russian Orthodox visitors; Palestinian merchants and shoppers, some whom I learned cross the border daily to sell fine art and jewelry; and local Israelis with a wide array of backgrounds. To the naive observer it seems that everyone goes about life in a very peaceful way, which (unfortunately) surprised me. We were fortunate to have the opportunity to listen to the Israeli Minister of Health speak to our small group, and he was incredibly warm and charismatic. Most Palestinians are able to visit Israel for only one day at a time. This means it is very difficult for people to receive longer-term medical treatments such as chemotherapy in Israel, or even to visit family who happen to live on the other side of the border. I learned that there are many dedicated people from both sides who work tirelessly to obtain legal passes for people in dire need of medical or other kinds of assistance. Internet-wise, Israelis are very well connected and use tools we use every day. No surprises here. I'll share some other thoughts on online collaboration in another post! 
Trends in internet and mobile users worldwideThursday, April 17. 2008 Following Joe's post about the Unite for Sight conference, I thought I'd share some statistics from a presentation I gave at our panel discussion on 'Global Health and the Internet' on Saturday. I showed three charts from December 2007 showing the status of worldwide internet users (Courtesy of www.internetworldstats.com): The charts on www.internetworldstats.com shows the total number of internet users worldwide: 1.3 billion. That number has grown by over 1/3 in the past 2 years. So this means that over 1/6th of the world is connected. Africa and the Middle East have much smaller numbers than other regions – but still they total nearly 80 million people: 71% of North Americans are connected. 4% of Africans are connected. And the percent of growth over the past 7 years has been 920% growth for the Middle East and nearly 900% in Africa. But that’s just the internet—mobile phone usage is huge in Africa and does help close this gap in connectivity significantly. Dr. Joel Selanikio of DataDyne.org provided us with some very interesting statistics on mobile phones: Approximately 82 million Africans had cell phones by 2004, and the average annual subscriber growth for Africa was 58%. (ITU 2006 Report) Mobile devices are a very relevant way to reach a lot of individuals who do not have computer access...and may not in the foreseeable future. Joel encouraged our audience to think creatively about what can be done with these mini computers that so many--even the very poor--are managing to acquire. His group is working in this area, and it is indeed something we must remember as we continue to need innovative, practical ways to include developing country audiences in our online communities, our dialogues, and our global development work. He argues that the technology is there--we just need to generate good ideas. To put it into context, look at the capacity of the very first computers released in the 1980s, vs. today's common mobile devices: Then: IBM PC (1981-1987): 4.8Mhz, 640K RAM Apple Macintosh (1984): 8Mhz, 128K RAM [Aside: My dad bought us the first Apple Macintosh in the 1980s and I remember sitting at the desk waiting for the floppy disk to churn and churn while it saved my very fancy papers--which was all it ever got used for. Talk about expensive word processing.] Now: Palm Treo 650 (2004-Present): 312MHz, 32M RAM Apple iPhone (2007-Present): 620MHz, 8 G RAM I heard recently that today's cell phones have more technical sophistication than the first space ship we sent to the moon. When we look at these numbers, Joel is right. The capacity has grown astronomically. There surely have to be creative, and perhaps life-saving widgets/tools/uses that can be devised so that the divides between us--north and south, rich and poor, educators and those who need to learn more, health care providers and patients--can slowly diminish. It's an exciting time to think about what all of this connectivity means in the global health context. Feel free to share thoughts or links!
Play a New Online Interactive Game & Send a Bed Net to AfricaTuesday, April 15. 2008
---------------- Hi, I’d like to share with you something I’ve been working a lot on and am very excited about - a new interactive game (hopefully you will tell a friend or two about), Deliver the Net, that our Nothing But Nets campaign has made to educate people about malaria. The game is part of the lead-up to World Malaria Day on April 25. Those who play the game and sign up will have a$10 life-saving bed net sent to Africa by Nothing But Nets on their behalf. You may know that malaria kills more than a million African children a year – a child every 30 seconds – and costs African economies over $12 billion. We’ve already helped cover seven African nations, including Zimbabwe and Mali, and we have our sights set on more. I hope you’ll be willing to help us get the message out and take advantage of the generous donor who will send a $10 bed net for every signature. Thanks and I hope you enjoy the game! Shannon Raybold Internet Director P.S. If you are interested in seeing downloadable banners and a widget for the game to see http://nothingbutnets.net/its-easy-to-help/banners/.
Global Development Commons: Wiki Launched to Shape the DiscussionMonday, April 7. 2008 Forum One Communications has launched a wiki (at www.developmentcommons.org) as a space for collaboration to define and start work on the Global Development Commons (GDC). The concept of the GDC is for a space / infrastructure / system to enable the virtual and physical sharing of information among people around the world working in international development. The GDC concept was first discussed, as far as we can tell, in 2007 by US Agency for International Development's Administrator Henrietta Fore, and is outlined on a USAID web page. USAID deserves a lot of credit for promoting the concept of the GDC. At the same time, for the GDC to take root and succeed, it cannot be an initiative launched (primarily) by USAID. The GDC is going to need to have the participation of a wide array of groups apart from USAID - NGOs, multi-lateral organizations, international organizations, non-US government donors, technology businesses, academic institutions, and others. So, we've set up and are hosting this wiki as a neutral space for any players in the development sector to share ideas about what the GDC could become and how it can grow. We outline on the wiki some initial thoughts on the structure and approach for the GDC, and other "commons" efforts. Excerpt from wiki:
Our ideas on the wiki are still developing, and we are eager to have others contribute! Please register and add your own ideas. And if you want to blog about this - use the tags gdc and devcommons Technorati Tags: Global Development Commons GDC DevCommons
Online Game Launched for World TB Day (Today): Whack TB!Monday, March 24. 2008 An interesting group called Families USA based in Washington, D.C. has launched a fun interactive learning game for World TB Day (today) called Whack TB! to help raise awareness and encourage action on the issue. "TB is moving around the world—on planes, trains, buses—and in the air we breathe. There are almost 9 million new cases of TB each year; about 500,000 of these cases are resistant to the best TB drugs available to fight them." Take a quick break and whack TB -- and tell your friends!
Online Conference This Week: Social Marketing for Health in the Developing WorldMonday, March 10. 2008 The Private Sector Partnerships One project (PSP-One) and the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Office of Population and Reproductive Health are hosting a global online conference on social marketing in the developingworld from March 10-17, 2008. The conference is open to all interested professionals. Participants will share ideas, results and lessons learned with social marketing professionals. They'll listen to or read presentations on Behavior Change Communications approaches, What’s New in Social Marketing, and Building Effective Public Private Partnerships. And there is an Expert Exchange Forum featuring thought-leaders in the field of social marketing from big players in this field: Abt Associates Inc., AED, Constella Futures, DKT, HLSP, and PSI. The PSP-One project hosted its first online conference of this sort in the fall of 2007, and had an amazing turnout: 450+ participants from nearly 70 countries. This event has over 600 participants subscribed as of today, the first day of the event--from at least 60 countries. These numbers are fantastic, in this sector. I think it's evidence of a shift we're seeing in the international development field towards a willingness to interact online. (A contributing factor is certainly that donor organizations like USAID are stepping out of their comfort zones and are willing to support and participate in these kinds of events.) This particular USAID-funded project has focused a lot of attention online over the past 4 years, and now has a very active web site that houses a robust community library and a growing database of private sector projects that help professionals learn and connect. Forum One has the pleasure of working with Abt Associates on this long-term initiative. Feel free to join in on the discussions this week if this is a topic that interests you!
Global Development Commons / Document Freedom DayThursday, February 21. 2008 We're pretty excited about the "Global Development Commons" concept that USAID's Administrator Henrietta Fore is recently promoting (see her video on this below). And an upcoming "Document Freedom Day" I think shows a key potential path to build the GDC with a focus on open standards. The GDC concept is, in brief, for virtual (and physical) infrastructure to enable efficient sharing/collaboration among various players in global economic development - government and public sector, private sector, academics, etc. The virtual aspect of it is where I see the most potential - to create a framework which allows multiple global actors to create and share tools and information. USAID writes: The GDC builds and improves on the existing development information architecture (websites, portals, blogs, chat rooms, conferences, gatherings, etc.) to create a comprehensive network that allows users to search for information, facilitate dialogue, and trade or exchange products and ideas. USAID is playing an important leadership role here, which is great to see. But USAID seems to envision a strong role for major IT infrastructure, major IT players to create the GDC, as discussed at their November 27th event? We're hoping that the role of these major IT players (Microsoft, Google, Cisco, etc.) is to help provide leadership, and not pieces of infrastructure. We're more convinced that the GDC will succeed with an open-standards approach. An open-standards approach will lead to more robust and innovative efforts than an approach which is specific to certain platforms.  And an interesting example of an open-standards approach is the upcoming "Document Freedom Day" on March 26th. DFD seeks to raise awarness of, and adoption of, the ODF (Open Document Format), as a way to enhance access to and the flow of information across platforms. The siloed nature of online information in the development business (see separate web sites and services of the World Bank, Development Gateway, DfID, USAID, GTZ, ADB, IADB, PAHO....) is a prime example of the problem that ODF can help solve. The ODF site explains: ODF(OpenDocument Format) an ISO standard created with the aim to provide an open XML-based document file format for office applications to be used for documents containing text, spreadsheets, charts, and graphical elements. ODF is defined via an open and transparent process at OASIS and has been approved unanimously by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) as an international standard in May 2006. Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel ODF reuses established standards like HTML, SVG, XSL, SMIL, XLink, XForms, MathML, and Dublin Core. Another example of valuable sharing and collaboration which will be enabled via open standards is the Grants Fire initiative, which Kurt Voelker blogged about here. From GoogleCode: GrantsFire is a searchable database for philanthropic grants. It aggregates data from foundation web sites published in the hGrant format (http://hgrant.org/). The code is written using the Perl Catalyst framework. What do you think? Interested to hear more about how the GDC can get up and going. More info: USAID Advisory Committee On Voluntary Foreign Aid (ACVFA) meeting on February 28th which will discuss the GDC Sun's Simon Phipps blog post on ODF Technorati Tags: ODF Global Development Commons Open Document Format
Slideshow of the Day: Nothing But NetsMonday, December 17. 2007 A few weeks ago, we were privileged to host several expert speakers at our latest Web Executive Seminar, Global Health and the Internet: How Can We Save More Lives? We now have the speakers' presentations posted to Slideshare.net -- many with accompanying audio. (Slideshare was neatly summarized by TechCrunch as PowerPoint + YouTube, as I've blogged previously.) Only a few days after posting, one our speaker's presentations was selected by Slideshare's staff as a "Slideshow of the Day." Shortly after its posting to the home page of Slideshare, the presentation quickly received over 1,000 views! Previous WES presentations generally see a few hundred views over a period of months, not just days. This wide viewership was richly deserved. The presentation by Shannon Raybold of the U.N. Foundation, described the fantastic success of Nothing But Nets campaign, which has raised over $14 million to deliver 1.4 million bed nets to people at risk of mosquito-transmitted malaria. If we had merely posted her presentation to our own site, it would have never enjoyed such reach. It's yet another example of what can happen when you post compelling content to the right social site. And Shannon's presentation is extremely compelling. It should be useful to anyone interested in online fundraising, global health, or using the web to focus attention on a critical issue. See and hear for yourself. Her presentation is below.
Bill Gates: "Saving the World is Within Our Grasp"Tuesday, November 6. 2007 |
This is a letter from an acquaintance of mine, Shannon Raybold, from the UN Foundation, that I thought I'd share: