Category — Fun

One of the more fun things about sharing our work at conferences, workshops and ICT4D gatherings is witnessing the reaction to our FrontlineSMS “\o/” logo. There’s something of a story behind this, and the badges that we take on the road with us have been enthusiastically gobbled up in their thousands. I will never again doubt the brilliance of the talented people at Wieden+Kennedy.

We’ve also been getting reactions from users in the field, and among our supporters, in the shape of photographs. We’ve got a growing collection, and we’ll soon be updating our Flickr page with the latest additions, and plan to make a short video of the best of them.

Talking of videos, hats off to @chrissiy for spotting this great Mercedes SLS advert which could, with the exception of the final few seconds, be the perfect advertisement for FrontlineSMS.

If you want to join in the fun, send us photos of you, your family or friends doing the \o/ and you could be a star in the first genuine FrontlineSMS video! Just email them to videopics [at] frontlinesms.com and we’ll do the rest. And if you want to take it a little further, how about trying some fun photos with the FrontlineSMS:Medic and FrontlineSMS:Credit logos? \+/ and \$/?

House moves are always fun, particularly the things that re-emerge from old boxes years after they’ve been buried away. While most of it turns out to be useless, unwanted junk, sometimes you stumble across something which ended up having a bigger impact on your life than you ever imagined. Here are three objects, recently unearthed, which have done that for me.

Writing

I must have been about 10 or 11 years old when my mother bought me an old, ridiculously heavy Olympus typewriter from the “Under £10″ section of our local newspaper . It was my first ever typewriter – I later ‘upgraded’ to a new model from Boots once I’d saved up enough money from my paper round – and I don’t remember much of any conversation we had before she bought it. But what I do know is that it unleashed my passion for writing. Homework was never the same again, and I must have written the majority of my poems on it, something I did a lot of in my younger years.

In 1978, the Amoco Cadiz ran aground off the Channel Islands, and for several months I took an unusually strong interest in the subject of oil – how it was found, where it came from, how much was left, how often spills happened, and so on. The culmination of this fascination was a ‘research project’ bound in a small A5 folder, imaginatively entitled “Oil: By Kenneth Banks”, which I still have to this day.

Today, writing remains a passion and is an important expressive outlet for me and my work. I’d never have imagined back in those days that I would end up writing for the BBC website, or PC World. I have a lot to thank that Olympus for. And my Mum, of course.

Computing

There was never really much to do on the estate where I was brought up, so the opening of a local club by Mr. Cooper was a main outlet for many of the children. It was a big estate, however, and the club had a waiting list. When I did eventually get the nod to join, Mr. Cooper had been using Commodore PET computers for some time in his other job – helping children with learning difficulties. During club hours we were allowed to play games on the PET, and were allocated around ten minutes each because of the high demand.

These amazing machines were powered by cassette players, and we quickly learnt the two commands we needed to use them. “LOAD” loaded the game, and when that was complete, “RUN” would execute it. I knew there had to be more to it than that, so during my short spells at the screen I’d try and figure out what else I could do. “LIST” was a revelation – a command to display the code. I soon realised that if I changed anything here, if it didn’t break the program it made it do something else. A programming career was born.

After a short while I was writing my own teaching programs for Mr. Cooper and earning extra pocket money from it. I have a lot to thank him for. Computers were hugely expensive in those days, and he gave me the opportunity to learn something which was only just starting to be taught in schools. Without this, a central pillar of my work today would never have been formed, and it’s highly unlikely I’d ever have been able to talk my way into an IT career, which I later did.

Travelling

By 1993 I was out of school and – thanks to Mr. Cooper and a few other lucky breaks – working in the local IT industry. I’d already decided that a career in finance wasn’t for me. By a few twists of fate (described later on this page of my website) I found myself on a Jersey Overseas Aid project that summer, helping build teaching accommodation in Northern Zambia. It was a life-changing experience, and took my life and career into a totally new and unexpected direction. An interest and fascination – and later, career – in development was born over those few short weeks, and I’m still as engaged in it as ever, 17 years on.

Since that first trip I’ve had the pleasure and honour to live and work in a number of other African countries – Uganda, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Cameroon, South Africa, Mozambique, Kenya among them – and have made some incredible friends and even more incredible friendships along the way.

By September 1993, the month I returned from Zambia, the impact that trip was to have on my life was still largely unknown. Which makes it even more remarkable – perhaps strange – is that I kept a pair of socks from that first visit wrapped in a sheet of newspaper. These socks resurfaced during my recent house move. Some of my very first steps on the African continent are bound up in that marvellous red dust.

So there you have it. Three objects and three meanings that have helped define a life. Funny when you look at it like that.

What three objects define you?

The UK’s Guardian newspaper ran an interesting photo gallery last week showing mobile phone masts ‘dressed’ up as trees. For a while it seemed these might catch on as increasing numbers of people complained about the appearance of ‘ugly’ metal masts in their neighbourhoods. While inner-city masts can be hidden, in the country there are fewer options. Disguising them as trees is a favourite.

More images and descriptions on the Guardian website gallery here.

After months – maybe years - of badgering by good friend Erik Hersman (he of White African fame), late last December I finally moved my blog over to WordPress. I actually began blogging in February 2006, but started with a plain-old HTML page on the kiwanja website. Shortly after I moved over to Blogger before finally seeing the light and moving to the king of blogging platforms. (Erik – you were right). 

It’s been great seeing the readership grow, and with a neat calendar year of invigorated blogging behind me I thought it would be fun to throw together a list of the top twelve most read posts of 2009. These posts are the most read, rather than most popular (usually measured by number of comments, Tweets, etc):

1. Bones for mobile phones (1466 reads)
2. Anthropologists! Anthropologists! (946 reads)
3. A mobile database that brings it all together (806 reads)

4. The making of an SMS icon (727 reads)
5. The Million Dollar Homepage (639 reads)
6. Dispelling the myth? (603 reads)

7. Time to eat our own dog food? (564 reads)
8. Mapping medicine availability via SMS (547 reads)
9. FrontlineSMS: Now with Forms (540 reads)

10. Step inside the laptop bank (538 reads)
11. Grameen’s AppLab comes of age (533 reads)
12. Radios. Batteries. Solar. Implications (529 reads)

And three personal favourites which didn’t make it to the list:

13. “Inappropriate” appropriate technology?
14. Why does this picture trouble me?
15. A glimpse inside social mobile’s long tail

Interesting that three of the top six posts are anthropology-related (as is one of my favourites). Anyway, happy new-year-blogging to everyone! Thanks for reading. Here’s to 2010!

Standing proud, but with only each other for company, I spotted these on my way home earlier today.

It got me wondering the last time I used a public post box, or a payphone. Or how many children today have ever used one? How times – and “technologies” – change.

Eleven days and 8,500 miles ago I stepped on a plane to Washington DC (I’m about to do a final 3,500-odd miles back to London). It’s been a hectic but very productive few days.

To kick things off, I spent a couple of days with the Institute for Reproductive Health helping them design a prototype “standard days method” texting service using FrontlineSMS. It was exciting and interesting work, and I’m looking forward to following their future progress.

The following day saw me speak to around 150 leaders from Latin America who had gathered for a workshop at George Washington University. It was the first time I’d spoken to an exclusively foreign audience accompanied by a live translator, but at least I now know my jokes translate well. Next I headed to the west coast and spent the weekend working with an interesting bunch of computer scientists who had gathered at Berkeley. You can read my thoughts and reflections on that in a blog post here.

After spending a couple of extra days catching up in Palo Alto and San Francisco (one of my favourite places for taking photos, incidentally), I headed back to Washington DC to speak about innovation on a panel at the UN Youth Assembly. It was the first time I’d been to the UN, let alone spoke, and it looked and felt exactly as I’d expected (see photo, above). It was a great experience, and after the short talk I was totally cleaned out of \o/ badges by the delegates.

Today saw a final – and slightly random – parting event when I featured on the BBC “Test Match Special” cricket website, which had earlier in the day been discussing the demise of Tophill Joe, a championship breeding sheep. The image (below) comes from an earlier tweet of mine in the week when I saw what can only be described as a “niche” publication in a bookshop in Palo Alto, California.

It was a nice way to end a fun and productive – if not tiring – eleven days on the road and in the air. Next stop Cambridge, i.e. home.

The San Francisco Bay Area. Open your eyes to a world of [photo] opportunities…

More images on kiwanja’s Flickr pages. Mobile-related images are available in the Mobile Gallery.

Some of the best ideas are so incredibly simple that, after-the-event, we’re all left wondering why we never came up with them. When I first heard of The Million Dollar Homepage back in October 2005, that’s precisely how I felt (like millions of others, no doubt).

Alex Tew was a student trying to figure out how to pay his way through university. Short of money and short of socks, he scrawled “How can I become a millionaire?” on a notepad and, twenty minutes later, The Million Dollar Homepage was born. The concept was simple – create a website and charge people a dollar-a-pixel to place an image on a grid a thousand pixels wide by a thousand high. ‘Selling’ all million pixels – if he could pull it off – would net him a cool one million dollars.

Launched towards the end of August 2005 the idea was so novel, quirky and brilliant, the least I felt I could do was part with a little of my own hard-earned cash and buy up a few in a show of support. At that time the site was far from full, and it was still unclear whether or not all the space was going to sell. Today, the completed image is something of an internet icon.

Around the same time Alex was raking in the dollars, I was putting together the final touches of a little project of my own. Somewhere in those million pixels you’ll find a couple of hundred dedicated to FrontlineSMS (no prizes, but see if you can spot them). Like Alex, I had no idea back then whether my idea was going to get any serious traction.

Looking back, neither of us needed worry.

All great journalists immediately put you at ease. Clark Boyd, someone I’ve been extremely fortunate to have spoken to on a number of occasions, is one of them. Interviews feel more like chats over cups of coffee in the dentists waiting room than recorded interviews set to go out over the airways in the US (and beyond).

Clark recently got in touch and asked if I’d be interested in giving a little careers advice – not to him but to people interested in mobile, technology, Africa and so on. Never one to turn down the opportunity, we recently sat down for coffee at my village dentist and chatted over coffee. Since these are the kinds of questions I regularly get asked by students and others interested in my work, it seemed sensible to re-post it. So, here you go. Apologies for Clark’s choice of picture. The original post is here.

Ken Banks: Cell Phones on the Frontlines

I’ve done stories on a number of Ken’s efforts in the past few years. The one that really grabbed my attention is a project Ken’s been working on called FrontlineSMS. So, for this Wide Angle Podcast, I begin by asking Ken to describe FrontlineSMS in his own words:

(Picture comes courtesy of Ken’s friend, another guy with a cool tech job, Erik Hersman)