Ever wondered where the original idea for FrontlineSMS came from? Find out in this fun 50 second video put together by National Geographic as part of their 2010 Explorers Symposium.

For more information on our work with National Geographic, check out our profile page.

Whenever I find myself in front of a group of students, or young people aspiring to work in development, I’m usually asked to share one piece of advice with them. I usually go with this: Get out there while you can and understand the context of the people you aspire to help. As you get older the reality is that it becomes harder to travel for extended periods, or to randomly go and live overseas.

In the early days of ICT4D and m4d – and development more broadly – it may have been seen as a luxury to understand the context of your target users (many solutions were seen as “universal”, after all). Today I’d say it’s become a necessity.

In my earlier days I did a lot of travel, mostly to and around Africa. (One thing I regret never managing to do was walk across the continent, something I started tentatively planning a few years ago). As our organisation has grown and my role within it changed, I spend more time today travelling to conferences giving talks than actually doing the work. My last major piece of extended fieldwork (i.e. longer than a week) was back in the summer of 2007 when I spent a month in Uganda consulting with Grameen’s fledgling AppLab.

There’s more to it, though, than just “getting out there”. What you learn, sense, pick up and appreciate about the place you’re in and the people you’re with largely depends on the kind of traveller you are. The truth of the matter is you’ll rarely get a real sense of a place staying for just a few days in the capital city behind the walls of a four or five star hotel. Quite often the more you get out of your comfort zone the more you learn.

I’ve been hugely fortunate to have lived and worked in many countries – mostly in Africa – since I set out to work in development almost twenty years ago. And during that time I’ve developed quite a few “travel habits” to help me get the most out of my time there.

Here’s my Top 15:

1. Stay in a locally-owned or run hotel (or even better, guest house).
2. Spend as much time as possible on foot. Draw a map.
3. Get out of the city.
4. Check out the best places to watch Premiership football.
5. Ignore health warnings (within reason) and eat in local cafes/markets.
6. Buy local papers, listen to local radio, watch local TV, visit local cinemas.
7. Use public transport. Avoid being ‘chauffeured’ around.
8. Take a camera. Take your time taking pictures.
9. Go for at least a month.
10. Visit villages on market days.
11. Spend time in local bookshops, libraries and antique/art shops.
12. Read up on the history and background of where you’re going. Buy a locally-written history and geography book.
13. Be sure to experience the city on foot, at night.
14. Wherever you are, get up for a sunrise stroll. It’s a different, fascinating (and cooler) time of day.
15. Don’t over-plan. Be open to unexpected opportunities.

Finally, if you’re looking for advice on what to take on a trip to Africa, good friend Erik Hersman (aka WhiteAfrican) has an excellent post here.

Additional suggestions

Rebecca Harrison (@rhrsn on Twitter):
16. Seize any opportunity to visit homes, especially at meal times.

It’s not every day that you stumble across something which blows you away, especially when you don’t quite understand why. It happened to me on Sunday, and I’m still more than a little fascinated.

Described by MSNBC as “a site that will make you call your Mom”, Dear Photograph is a beautifully simple idea. Find an old picture, go back to where it was taken, hold it up, line it up, and re-take it. For loved ones long gone, it almost brings them back. To re-live good times (or bad), it almost brings them back. I can imagine that for many people doing this, it’s quite an emotional exercise. There’s something magical and challenging about re-living – and re-imagining – the past.

The site has only been going a short while, so it’s unclear if it’s going to “go viral” or not. Either way, it reminds me a little of PostSecret, which did turn out to be a huge success.

If you decide to give it a go, you can submit photographs to dearphotograph@gmail.com. They’re also @dearphotograph on Twitter.

This time last year I was on my way back from Washington DC where I’d spent a week at the National Geographic Explorers Symposium. It was one of those am-I-really-here? events where you randomly share a lift with the likes of Bob Ballard – who discovered the wreck of the Titanic – or Spencer Wells, who’s trying to figure out where we all came from.

I couldn’t be there this year, but I did receive a nice surprise in the mail from a friend who works for National Geographic Traveler Magazine. At this year’s event they produced a deck of cards with the names of each of the Explorers and Emerging Explorers. I love what they’ve done with ours.

All that’s missing is the \o/ logo.  ;o)

That aside, hearty congratulations to everyone who made the Explorers Class of 2011!

Close friends will know that I’m a bit of a walker. In fact, a few years ago I did start to put down tentative plans for a walk across the African continent, but a Fellowship at Stanford put pay to that. I rarely use public transport when I’m on the road, preferring to remain above-ground and on-foot to get a better sense of where I’m staying. And although I’ll sometimes carry my camera with me, I almost always carry my iPod.

Most of my thinking is done while I walk, and most of my blog posts take shape that way, too. I carry a note pad a lot of the time, stopping often to jot down ideas. This post came together while I was listening to music, walking through Cambridge earlier this year. That walk witnessed the birth of the “Ultimate Music Awareness App”, and Apple’s announcement of iCloud this week prompted me to dig it out again.

So, what would my app do? Well, it’s quite simple really.

• It would have an option to plays songs written on that day’s date, or which reference that day’s date
• It would be location-aware, and create an auto-playlist of songs written about the place I’m walking through, or with name-connections
• It would play songs by artists who were either born, or lived, in the area
• There would be an option to play songs based on that day’s news headlines (for example, if a study found annual rents were increasing – or decreasing – then it would play “Rent” by the Pet Shop Boys). A summary of the news story in question would also be displayed on-screen for context
• All of the playlists would be compiled in real-time, and streamed/buffered from the web
• Playlists could be uploaded and shared on-line (and mapped) for other music lovers/walkers

If anyone ever developed this, I know I’d buy it. After all, it would be my ultimate music awareness app.

“Lost and found” meets street notices in a mobile world… Spotted on a lamp post in a residential area outside Cambridge in the UK.

Here’s wishing friends, staff, partners, donors, readers, users, followers and all-round good people a happy holiday and a prosperous new year. Thanks for all your support throughout a frenetic twelve months.

See you for more in 2011!

Tim Smit may be an extraordinary individual, but he’s no ordinary entrepreneur. Founder of The Eden Project – described by some as the “Eighth Wonder of The World” – Tim has taken an unconventional if not fascinating path. By all means read those Business Bibles – but then tear them up. Read Marketing 101 – but then toss it aside. In the sometimes rigid and stuffy world of social entrepreneurship, Tim is a breath of fresh air. And his short talk last weekend at Emerge 2010 in Oxford was nothing short of inspirational.

Courtesy of Twitter, here’s a short summary of a “lucky 13″ key points that stood out most for me.

Context: Never forget what you were like as a child. Push the boundaries of your imagination, live out your dreams, find that one thing which truly “switches you on”. And then relentlessly pursue it.

Context: Don’t get caught up in the lingo. Buzzwords mean little if they’re not backed up by very real action.

Context: Inspiration and innovation can happen any time, any place. No person and no structure have exclusive rights over the best ideas. Unconventional can be king. It usually is and, what’s more, it will usually come with the most compelling story.

Context: Seize the moment – it won’t last forever, and there will likely never be a “best time” to execute your idea.

Context: Not everyone will be able to take that “big risk”, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be able to join you on a journey. Inspire others to join you. Don’t travel alone. Build it, and they may just come.

Context: In ICT4D we talk about silos. Take every opportunity to step outside yours. Be open minded. Meet people who, on the surface, have very little in common with you. Explore new horizons. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Context: If you don’t follow your instincts, you may always regret it. Don’t put yourself in that position. Success is just as much about “positive thinking” as “positive doing”.

Context: Make the art of the possible seem possible for everyone. If people can imagine themselves in your shoes then your story will not only resonate, but will gain a reality and life of its very own.

Context: Organisations are only as good as the people who show up every day to work for them.

Context: Actions speak louder than words. Anyone can talk about anything. Creating and building doesn’t happen on the sidelines. Beware of the inexperienced “expert”.

Context: If you have good fortune, pass it on. Use it to help others. Think about who you were, not what you’ve become.

Context: For some people, anything they haven’t had a hand in is rubbish. Quite often, they’ve never actually done anything themselves. Avoid negativity. It’s a cop-out. (Note: Negativity is different to constructive criticism).

Context: Language is EVERYTHING.

This is the second time I’ve had the pleasure of hearing Tim speak. If you ever get the chance, grab it. After all, Tim might be the person you never knew you were meant to meet.

Today sees the start of Pop!Tech 2010, an annual gathering of kindred spirits in the picturesque town of Camden, Maine. Pop!Tech is always full of surprises, and yesterday proved no exception when about twenty of us found ourselves standing in a field in Augusta helping Colin Rich launch his latest ‘balloon’.

For those who don’t know, this is what Colin does. And it’s pretty incredible.

Yesterday’s launch was the “Secret Session”, one of a number of warm-up events designed to set the scene before the real conference kicked off today. And this is what we ended up doing – launching a balloon with a mannequin’s head attached. Here’s the head (with the orange GPS device exposed) next to a map displaying the ‘expected’ path the device was going to take.

After an hour’s drive out of Camden, Colin checks that the cameras are all switched on and working, and the GPS device has a fix.

Once all the electrics are go, time to dig out the helium and inflate the balloon.

After a final set of checks, and a short wait for the wind to die down, Colin releases his icy grip.

Going, going… Gone.

If all goes to plan, over the next two-and-a-half hours the balloon will capture pictures and video as it rises to approximately 100,000 feet. At that point the balloon should burst and the device will fall back to earth. The fall alone will take about half-an-hour. Colin will then head off and try to track it down, based on the co-ordinates transmitted by the GPS embedded in the mannequin’s forehead.

Who said science was boring?

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.