Last year I had the pleasure of attending ICT4D 2009 in Doha, where FrontlineSMS and Ushahidi were represented in the “Technology Showcase”. The event was a bit of a gamble. The Agenda had a strong academic focus, and I for one usually tend to avoid these kinds of gatherings, which are more often than not dominated by people simply standing up and reading through papers.

As it turned out, it was largely that. If anyone was previously in any doubt, by the second day it was abundantly clear that there was, indeed, a divide between the practitioners at the event, and those who spent their time evaluating what the practitioners did. Much of the research presented made little sense to those “out in the field”, and in some cases there was such a mismatch in language that practitioners hardly recognised their own projects when they were discussed.

Last August, I attended a related event hosted by UC Berkeley in which selected members of the computer science community sought to identify their role in the practicalities of the ICT4D world. It was a fascinating event which I blogged about in “Computer science, meet global development” shortly afterwards.

There is little doubt that a number of mobile-relevant disciplines have traditionally lived largely in their own silos – practitioners, social scientists, academics and computer scientists among them. Later this year a workshop will be held in London at ICTD 2010 designed to break at least one or two more of these down. According to “Qual Meets Quant“:

The increasing ubiquity of mobile phones in developing economies has enabled the capture, for the first time in history, of massive amounts of behavioural human data in areas of interest to international development. Proper analysis of such data could provide important insight into areas from health and education to microfinance and agriculture. Unfortunately, much of the research related to mobile phones and development has been done in methodological silos: technical researchers focus on quantitative analysis; ethnographers perform in-depth qualitative research; and policy makers extrapolate policies from published research

It looks like being a great workshop, not because it’s particularly fascinating from an academic standpoint (although it could well be), but because it seeks to bring down practical barriers in how disciplines approach and study ICT4D – and aspects of mobiles-for-development in particular. The Programme and Organising Committees boast some big names in the space, with Kentaro Toyama, Nathan Eagle, Jenna Burrell, Tapan Parikh, Bill Thies and good friend Juliana Rotich among them.

Further details on the Workshop, and how to submit papers, can be found here [PDF, 100Kb].

It was a cold evening last October when I heard from National Geographic that we’d won an Emerging Explorer Award for our work in mobile. Seven months is a long time to keep a secret, but now news is out it will hopefully be the ideal platform to help us spur further development of FrontlineSMS, and increase interest in wider circles around the potential for simple, appropriate mobile technologies to solve some of the more pressing problems people face in the world today.

Although it’s wonderful to get this kind of recognition, it also makes it a good time to clarify a few key points about the work we’re doing.

Exploring

First, I believe National Geographic took a bold step picking a mobile project as one of their Awardees. Explorers are usually associated with more physical, tangible acts such as climbing, diving, flying, discovering and so on. Trying to come up with a new approach to applying mobile technology to a problem is a different way of thinking about “exploring”, and I think it raises a number of very interesting questions. Something for a future blog post, no doubt.

Approaching

Second, first and foremost I believe the Award is recognition of our approach. Over the past five years – yes, it’s almost been that long – we’ve developed a clear methodology based on “handing over our technology and stepping back” (as one conference delegate once put it to me). The National Geographic article summed it up perfectly:

The key, Banks believes, is a hands-off approach. While his website provides free support and connects participants worldwide, users themselves decide how to put the software into action. “FrontlineSMS gives them tools to create their own projects and make a difference,” Banks notes. “It empowers innovators and organizers in the developing world to reach their full potential through their own ingenuity. That’s why it’s so motivating, exciting, and effective”

If we look at what’s happening today – with very little of it controlled by us – we’re seeing something of an ecosystem developing around FrontlineSMS. Sure, the software isn’t perfect and it’s constantly improving and evolving, but people are being drawn to it because it allows them to do what they do, better. It’s something they can build on top of, something they know of and to a large degree trust, and something which allows them to immediately tap into a wider community of users, donors and supporters.

It can act as a springboard for their own ideas and visions in a way other solutions aren’t. And only a few of these people are technical, and that is key. “Focus on the users and all else will follow” is something we seem to come back to again and again, but without it – and without users – all we have left is a bunch of code and a Big Idea.

The FrontlineSMS ecosystem is witnessing the creation of increasing numbers of plug-ins – medical modules, microfinance modules, mapping tools, reminders and analytical tools among them, and we’re hearing more and more from established, well-known entrepreneurial organisations who have chosen to implement and integrate FrontlineSMS as one element of their work. Laura, our new Project Manager, is just beginning to reach out and make sense of this activity, much of which we currently know very little about. Allowing users to take your platform and just run with it is empowering for them, but creates a unique set of challenges for us.

Recognising

Third, and finally, are the recipients of the Award. I may have been fortunate enough to have got the fledgling FrontlineSMS concept off the ground way back in the summer of 2005, but it’s been a truly monumental, global effort getting it to where it is today, recognising – of course – that we still have a long way to go. From bloggers to donors, from developers to journalists, from testing partners to users, people have stuck with us and supported us in ways I would never have imagined.

Sure, the software can do some pretty neat things, and thanks to Alex and Morgan (our two developers) it continues to improve. But what really draws the majority of people to our work is the approach. For five years we’ve remained 100% focussed on the end user, and have not been distracted by newer, sexier emerging technologies. People really seem to get that. We’ve also concentrated on building, and on remaining positive. There is much wrong in the world, but that should never stop anyone making a contribution, however small.

So, a big thank you to National Geographic for putting their faith in our work; to Laura, Alex, Morgan and Josh, our dedicated core team; to the MacArthur Foundation for taking a gamble on a guy living in a van in 2007, and to the Hewlett Foundation, Open Society Institute, HIVOS, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Omidyar Network for helping us continue to develop and grow.

Finally, thanks to everyone who has supported us, spoken about us, written about us, promoted us and helped us, and thanks to the users for taking our software and doing some truly inspirational things with it. We owe all of this to you.

Today, the Omidyar Network announced a two year investment of $350,000 for future FrontlineSMS technical and organisational development, the result of several months discussion and planning. Omidyar come on board as our fifth donor, with funding already in place from the Hewlett Foundation, Open Society Institute/HIVOS, and the Rockefeller Foundation.

After three years with a mainly software and community focus, the second half of 2010 sees us turn more of our attention to organisational development, and it’s already been something of a growth year.

After bringing Josh Nesbit on board in late 2009 (using the OSI/HIVOS funding), in the past few months we have hired two full-time software developers – Alex and Morgan (thanks to Hewlett and Rockefeller) – and brought on board a new FrontlineSMS Project Manager – Laura (also funded by Rockefeller). The diversity of donors and the breadth of support is testament to the work everyone is doing, particularly our increasingly innovative and growing user base. No-one said this was going to be easy when we started out way back in 2005, but we’re making good progress.

We’re also hugely grateful to the management at Wieden+Kennedy who have made room for us in their central London office, and provided us somewhere to base our growing team, all at no cost. Often corporate in-kind support like this can be overlooked (and the office is very cool, too).  \o/

Today’s Omidyar investment will support three specific activities.

1. Firstly, it will bolster our efforts to increase user adoption, and will support the work Josh and Laura are doing to create sector-specific communities (based on the use of FrontlineSMS in agriculture, human rights, the media, and so on).
2. Secondly, it will help further the work started using the Rockefeller funding to formalise and build on the growing FrontlineSMS developer community. Last week, for example, saw the release of a much-requested Reminders Plugin for FrontlineSMS, and other add-ons are in the works.
3. Finally, the new funding will help with much-needed organisational development, and allow us to explore other non-grant sources of income.

Further details on today’s announcement are available on the Omidyar website.

Many thanks to Omidyar for their faith and support, from everyone at FrontlineSMS! We look forward to working with you over the coming two years.

For some time now users have been asking how they can schedule SMS reminders in FrontlineSMS. Well, now they can thanks to some great work by Dale Zak on a ReminderManager plugin. Not only is this great news for the community, but it’s great news for us, and is testament to the growing interest external developers are taking in the software

“FrontlineSMS is powerful open source software that turns an ordinary laptop and mobile phone into a low cost communications hub. It’s used by NGOS around the world to send and receive text messages for such efforts as human rights monitoring, disaster relief, education programs and fundraising campaigns. It’s also at the heart of FrontlineSMS:Medic which is revolutionizing global health by empowering rural healthcare workers.

So when my friend Lucky Gunasekara asked if I could develop a much requested reminder plugin, I jumped at the opportunity. For one, it gave me an excuse to dive into the FrontlineSMS source code. And two, it would benefit the entire community.

The FrontlineSMS Reminders Plugin allows you to schedule email and SMS reminders for a specific date range occurring once, hourly, daily, weekly or monthly.

There was a bit of a learning curve to develop the plugin, especially with my somewhat limited Java, Hibernate and Thinlet experience. Thankfully Alex Anderson and Dieterich Lawson were great help answering my questions on the FrontlineSMS Google Group.

The plugin definitely has room for improvement, and I already have a few ideas for additional occurrence types – Every Weekend, Every Weekday, Every Sunday, etc.

You can checkout the source code here:
http://github.com/dalezak/FrontlineSMS-Reminders”

You can read the original article here. Thanks to Dale for kindly giving us permission to republish.

The FrontlineSMS team is growing. In this Guest Blog post, Laura Hudson – the new FrontlineSMS Project Manager – tells us why she came on board, what she intends to do in her new role, and outlines some of her early thinking.

“It’s exciting and a bit nerve-wracking to represent something as revolutionary as FrontlineSMS at the best of times, but two-and-a-half weeks in to a new job as Project Manager for FrontlineSMS, attending the World Bank’s Innovation Fair on Moving Beyond Conflict was an eye-opening experience. The Fair was attended by innovators and technical experts from all over the world, and was a great opportunity to swap stories and questions, make connections, and plan future collaborations.

Five years on from the first version, and thanks to Ken’s tireless work to raise awareness, FrontlineSMS is a familiar name to many in the mobile and social entrepreneurship field. Still others had heard about it and were keen to try it, and I met at least one implementing partner I hadn’t encountered before!

Lots of our discussions had to do with what you do after you’ve had the great idea – how to get it from concept to reality, to operating ‘at scale’. So much of the success of FrontlineSMS has had to do with just two things: a great concept; developed with the support and input of a strong user community. I wanted to reflect a bit on what we’re doing to continue to develop along these lines, and we’ll hear more in future from our lovely developers, Alex and Morgan, on the next few months in the FrontlineSMS labs.

In some ways FrontlineSMS is already scaling – the software has been downloaded from our website over 6000 times, and we have a  number of organisations working directly with us to build on the FrontlineSMS brand and software to develop plugins and implementations in specific sectors – including FrontlineSMS:Medic and FrontlineSMS:Credit. The field is so fast-moving and collaborative that new possibilities pop up every day – so much so that it could be hard to settle down and focus on our core business – developing the software.

In the coming months, we’re going to work on a strategy that will set our direction for the next five years, and support an operational plan for the next two years. We’ll be looking at how to consolidate our support to users (more on that in a second) and what we should be looking at next – picture messaging, for example, or examining what sort of interface might be useful with online services like Mxit in South Africa.

Since the beginning, Ken’s mantra has been ‘support the users, and all else will follow‘. Priorities for the next year include improving our support to our users, and providing more online resources and step-by-step help, such as decision-making trees and thematic guides. And as for any organisation, it’s important to know what we’ve achieved.

As a service provider, supporting those who deliver on the ground rather than delivering ourselves, this will take the form of figures and case studies on how many projects using FrontlineSMS, how it’s going, and if possible, approximately how many people they are reaching. To find this out we’ll be contacting users directly, running competitions, and linking users direct to donors in innovative ways – watch this space.

It’s an exciting time for us and for all those out there helping our project and others like it to achieve great things and hopefully, and most importantly, help to make a real difference to people all over the world”.

Laura Hudson
Project Manager
www.frontlinesms.com

The Tech Awards is a prestigious Silicon Valley-based international awards program that honours innovators from around the world who are applying technology to benefit humanity. In 2009, FrontlineSMS was the recipient of a Tech Award in the “Equality” category.

Read more about the Award in a blog post here.

In the twenty-first in our series of FrontlineSMS guest posts, Laura Hartstone – one of the organisers behind the “3 Peaks 3 Weeks” Challenge – updates us on their recent use of FrontlineSMS to provide daily climbing SMS updates to supporters around the world

“Keeping in touch with family and friends while in Africa can be a challenge, and even more so while climbing Africa’s highest peaks. Remarkably, mobile phone connections can be picked up from the tall grass plains of the Serengeti to the tallest summit, Uhuru Point – Mount Kilimanjaro.

Every January a team of a dozen women from all areas of the world unite in East Africa to take on three of Africa’s highest peaks. After fundraising the previous year for three “peak” issues affecting Africa – namely health, the environment and education – the teams aim to use their time in Africa as a holiday. Coined the “3 Peaks 3 Weeks Challenge“, the team must complete all three mountains (Mount Kilimanjaro, Mount Kenya and Mount Meru) within 21 days.

To stay in touch with family and friends during the climbs in January this year, the 3 Peaks team used FrontlineSMS. With shaky internet connections in town and heavy power rationing in the cities this past year, the base camp computer was strategically placed in the Serengeti. At this location, the use of solar power and battery banks ensured that both internet and electricity were reliable.

The team then chose a phone (with the support of GSM Association) that had a small integrated solar panel to ensure the team could keep it charged while hiking. All that was then needed was a Safaricom SIM card that provided the team with mobile phone connectivity in both Kenya and Tanzania.

Ready to go, with mobile phone in hand, the team set off for Mount Kenya. Family and friends had subscribed to their FrontlineSMS group list and eagerly awaited updates. Luckily for all, along the way the team sent various SMS reports on their status.

Our sun dances are not working yet. The rain persists and snow arrived this morning. All well regardless and en route to summit tonight

All 11 of us just reached the top of Mt Kenya to a magnificent sunrise

Team was greeted by a beautiful sunrise on the summit of Mount Kenya yesterday morning. Have just arrived at Met Station (alt 3050m) and were greeted by some amazing singing by the porters. All doing really well and having a great time. Also a monkey ate our soap

After Mount Kenya the team traveled across the Kenyan border to Tanzania. They had a quick two days of rest and then headed up Mount Meru, a four day climb. Again with their mobile phone in hand, they kept all of their supporters well informed of their status.

Texting you from the summit of mount meru! Yeehaa! All tired and elated

The number of subscribers increased as the team headed for their final peak – Mount Kilimanjaro. And as they climbed higher, the texts got more and more interesting.

Celebrating Australia Day up here. Just reached top of Barranco Wall. Please send more milo!

We are preparing for summit night on kili tonight. We’re all excited and a little nervous too. The weather has been good so hoping for a beautiful sunrise in 12 hours time. Wish us well

And perhaps the most exciting message was received the next day.

We ROCK! All 11 of us summited Kili this morning at 715am. Delighted, excited and exhausted!

Many thanks to FrontlineSMS, the GSMA and Safaricom for helping make our LIVE updates brilliantly easy and exciting for our supporters to receive. 3 Peaks 3 Weeks is excited to use them again next year!”

[This story was also covered by the GSMA on their Development Fund blog].

For more information:

The “3 Peaks 3 Weeks” website: www.3peaks3weeks.org
More on live updates: http://3peaks3weeks.wordpress.com
Contact me: laura@3peaks3weeks.org

Following our recent recruitment drive, this month we’re bringing on board a second software developer and a new FrontlineSMS Project Manager, both based out of our new (donated) London offices. Expect an announcement on that soon. In the meantime, as we continue to build our team – and capacity – to respond to the growing demands and interest in FrontlineSMS, we’re now looking to fill an exciting new position for an Intern.

If you’re creative and enthusiastic, with an eye for detail, an interest in the social potential of mobile technology and experience/interest in building online communities and networks, you could be the person for us. For this part-time position we’ll need you to be based in our London offices for a minimum of three months.

For further details on the position, and how to apply, check out the job description here (PDF). We look forward to hearing from you!  \o/

Kubatana.net – a Zimbabwean NGO who work to strengthen the use of email, mobile and the Internet among local NGOs and civil society organisations – were the very first FrontlineSMS user way back in October 2005. This initial contact lead us to work together on an early prototype of “Dialup Radio”, an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) service they’re now about to fully launch as “Freedom Fone”. As the service nears release, Amy Saunderson-Meyer – Media and Information Officer at Kubatana – talks about the tool and how they see it helping civil society in Zimbabwe and beyond.

“Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP) strategies are viewed in many contemporary business circles as the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. BoP refers to the 2.6 billion people who live below the $2 a day breadline and many business strategists argue that if targeted correctly, these consumers can offer businesses a main line into one of the fastest growing markets. Even if the price of products and services has to be reduced, profits can be made up and surpassed in volumes sold.

A more neutral view of BoP strategies is that they are not simply a means to make millions, but a pragmatic appreciation that through commercial profit making activities, sustainable solutions can be developed that help alleviate poverty. With thought, the poor can be incorporated into the system in a mutually beneficial manner – not only as consumers but also as producers, partners, entrepreneurs and innovators.

Freedom Fone’s BoP strategy focuses on building and promoting an open source software platform for information sharing that is intuitive, cost-conscious, internet independent and ultimately targets all kinds of phone users. Deployers of the Freedom Fone platform can be small or large NGO’s or service organizations – even individual information activists. The goal is to broaden the base of audio information providers and facilitate the development of two-way communications with communities which have traditionally been underprivileged, marginalized and sometimes even stigmatized.

The Freedom Fone platform can be used to assist with education, learning, healthcare and medical support for chronic diseases like HIV/Aids, TB and malaria. Voice menus conveniently provide information on demand services, making them a useful additional channel for community radio stations and emergency response initiatives. It can be used to provide information on the full spectrum of issues including sanitation, the environment, agriculture, fishing, business, finance, marketing, community, arts and culture news. Its ‘leave-a-message’ and SMS functionality can be leveraged for citizen journalism.

Essentially Freedom Fone is a simple but novel medium for addressing social development. The currency we are working with is knowledge, the tool we are using is the mobile phone and the mobile function we primarily leverage is audio, through Interactive Voice Response (IVR).

Freedom Fone has focused on knowledge sharing because in a globalized information age, access to relevant information is pivotal to development and vital for survival. Content is king and knowledge is power! However the people who need information the most are often the ones at the bottom of the pyramid, and they tend to remain on the fringes of our society. For instance, in developing countries, information flow is often blocked by restricted infrastructure, lack of resources and limited unreliable access to computers, email and internet. Other factors such as language barriers and low literacy levels exist, and in certain developing countries this information alienation is further compounded by restrictive and authoritarian governments.

Freedom Fone has focused on the mobile phone as the medium of communication because according to a UN report, 60% of the world’s population has mobile phones. By 2009 there were already over 4.5 billion mobile phone subscriptions in circulation and developing countries account for over two thirds of these mobile phones. In contrast only 25% of the world’s population has internet access and in Africa there is only a 6.8% internet penetration rate. Thus the wide use of mobile phones bridges the chasm between the haves and the have nots. Their use cuts across the ‘digital divide’ and they have the potential to act as information access equalizers. For example, in Zimbabwe, barely 5% of Zimbabweans have access to the internet but there are over 3 million mobile phones contracts in a country of 11 million, which represents a penetration rate of roughly 27%. In South Africa – which offers a good indication of future development patterns in Africa – only 7% of the population has internet access, but there are approximately 36 million active cell phone users, which is roughly 80% of the population.

To address the limited access to and the high cost of internet connectivity in many developing countries, Freedom Fone has been designed so that it does not require any access to the internet to function. The Freedom Fone server can be connected to mobile phone SIM cards, landlines and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) numbers. Callers can phone in from a landline, basic mobile phone, or soft phone like Skype. If uninterrupted power is provided, the system can be available to callers 24 hours a day, providing a valuable information on demand channel, as well as a vehicle through which the public can contribute information or queries 24/7.

A number of Freedom Fone’s core features focus on interactive voice menus and callback functionality. By consciously marrying the mobile phone with IVR, Freedom Fone extends this previously business-oriented tool, into the arena of social development and social media. By simplifying the user interface and minimizing the technical alternatives, we predict that information providers will find building voice menu-based information services intuitive rather than intimidating and cost-effective rather than costly.

Providing an alternative to the limitations imposed by the 160 characters allowed in an SMS is likely to be liberating. Freedom Fone provides a do-it-yourself platform for increased two way communication, facilitating the contribution of rich audio files by both the operator and caller. Its audio orientation offers similarities with radio programming – however there are dramatic differences in the start up costs, required technical know-how and government regulation. It is interactive as it enables end users to become information providers by contributing questions, audio content and feedback in response to the voice menus. Audio files also have the enormous benefit of surpassing the issues of literacy, going beyond language differences, as people can create and manage information in their own dialect. For deployments in Africa, audio is also strongly aligned with the oral traditions of story-telling.

Importantly, Freedom Fone has been designed to run on and with low-powered equipment to facilitate its deployment using solar power.

As Freedom Fone services the BoP, it is essential that deployments offer affordable, cost-effective access to information. Sadly, in Zimbabwe the cost of local mobile calls is $0.25 per minute making call-in costs a major challenge for local deployment. The same hurdle does not exist for deployments in East Africa where competition exists between mobile network providers and call costs are minimal. In countries where Voice over IP (VoIP) is legal further opportunities pertain, as VoIP cuts costs and facilitates scalability.

The Freedom Fone platform offers the potential for cost recovery through advertising which can be incorporated into the voice menus as short audio clips. Another option are premium numbers which can be negotiated with mobile network operators. In time we hope to source funding to build features that facilitate micro-payments for accessing voice menu content or receiving SMS updates.

Freedom Fone aims to put information in the hands of the public by simplifying and popularizing information outreach via IVR and SMS. It is a tool for content creation, by the people for the people. It shifts BoP solutions beyond profits, by giving the punch of informative power to the people”.

Amy Saunderson-Meyer
Media and Information Officer
The Kubatana Trust of Zimbabwe and Freedom Fone
www.freedomfone.org

Today at Mobile World Congress, Vodafone announced “the world’s cheapest phone”. At $15 it certainly scores low on the price tag – which is good – but it also scores low on functionality – not so good. Not only is this a problem for any end user who might need (or want) to use it for things beyond voice calling and SMS, but it’s also perpetuating a long-standing problem in the social mobile world dating back over five years.

With the ICT4D community putting an increasing focus on “smarter phones” – ones which feature downloadable applications and allow for cloud-based solutions, for example – where do phones like today’s Vodafone 150 fit in? Aimed specifically at emerging markets, these are the kinds of phones Vodafone are hoping will end up in the hands of the very patients or farmers the ICT4D world is itself working hard to reach.

Low-cost phones have certainly achieved one thing – low cost – and in price terms they’ve done exactly what they said on the tin. Over the past five years or so, prices have indeed steadily dropped, as we can see if we pick an early “emerging market handset” winner from 2005 (the Motorola C113), a ZTE phone widely available in East Africa in 2008, and today’s Vodafone 150.

The prices may have changed, but functionality has largely stagnated. You couldn’t browse the web on the Motorola in 2005, nor the ZTE in 2008, and today you’d have the same problem on the Vodafone 150. You can’t download applications onto any of them, either. They all have monochrome screens and look pretty-much-the-same despite having a five year gap between them. Very little has changed other than price, it would seem. Voice and SMS remain king at the bottom of the pyramid, or so it would seem.

The real trick is to reduce the price of these phones whilst at the same time increasing (or at very least maintaining) functionality, a combination which no manufacturer has yet managed to crack. Nokia’s announcement last week of their cheapest 3G-enabled phone for the Indian market shows prices are shifting downward for data enabled phones, but at $90 it’s still some way off what most would consider affordable for the remaining 1.5 billion people in the world without a phone.

From today’s announcement, a sub-$40 smart phone – which really would change the game – looks to be as far off as ever.

[Related post: "The Digital Divider"]

Update 24/02/10: Applications now closed. Please don’t apply for either of these posts. Thanks! \o/

After four years of steady growth, FrontlineSMS has witnessed a dizzying rise in activity over the past few months. One full-time position has increased to three with the hiring of Josh Nesbit as our FrontlineSMS Ambassador and Alex Anderson as our lead developer. And thanks to new funding from the Rockefeller Foundation last month, we’re now looking to build our team further and fill two more positions – in Software Development and Project Management.

Thanks to the seemingly inexhaustible support of our friends over at Wieden+Kennedy, we’ll be locating our small but growing team in their amazing central London offices – a hotbed of creativity, if ever there was one. As a result, we’re limiting our search for new team members to London and the surrounding area for now, but will look further afield as we get further established as an organisation.

So, who are we looking for?

Project Management

This might not be the best title for a role which requires the candidate to have a wide array of interests – software testing, fundraising, website maintenance, creating promotional materials and brochures, training, and helping scope new projects. We’re also going to need them to help out with community-building and support, and to run smaller specific FrontlineSMS-related projects as they arise. This position is a real moving target and, as part of a small team the candidate will have the opportunity to shape the role for themselves. All we ask for is hard work, dedication, a passion for social mobile, and a strong desire to help see our organisation grow.

Software Development

We’re also looking for a Junior/Intermediate Java Developer to assist with the maintenance and development of new features on our multi-platform desktop Java application, FrontlineSMS. There will also be opportunities to help out on another exciting web-based project we’re working on in partnership with the GSM Association and Accenture, and to help us explore the potential of iPhone, Facebook and Symbian extensions to our projects. Above all, we’re looking for someone with a passion for exploring the social potential of mobile technologies, and a willingness to contribute to all stages of the software development process, including architecture, UI, testing and deployment.

If you’re based in or around London and interested in either of these positions, click here for further details and then get in touch as soon as possible! Feel free to share a link to this post with any lists or individuals you think might be interested.

With hopes of further funding on the horizon, these are unique opportunities for individuals interested in mobile technology and social change to join and influence a small, active, growing team. Join us on our journey, and you never know – it may well be the start of a new journey all of your very own. \o/

One of the most exciting things about my work is the incredibly talented people I get to meet. Up-and-coming entrepreneurs with a never-say-die, get-up-and-go attitude. I’m continually inspired and more than happy to offer my help in any way I can, particularly to those looking to implement FrontlineSMS one way or another in their work. Today, two of these projects have made it through to the next round of a major competition and are looking for your help. I hope you feel equally inspired to show your support – it’s only a few mouse clicks away and costs little.

What’s it all about?

The Unreasonable Institute unites up to 25 high-impact social entrepreneurs from around the world, who attend an intensive 10-week summer institute. There, entrepreneurs incubate their ventures with rigorous skills training and expert mentorship. At the end of the ten weeks, the Institute connects the Fellows with start-up capital and a global network of support. In short, the opportunity provided by the Institute will make a significant contribution to the growth of these early-stage initiatives.

Finalist #1: FrontlineSMS:Credit

FrontlineSMS:Credit, run by Ben Lyon, is one of the finalists. FrontlineSMS:Credit aims to make every formal financial service available to the entrepreneurial poor in 160 characters or less. By meshing the functionality of FrontlineSMS with local mobile payment systems, implementing institutions will be able to provide a full range of customizable services, from savings and credit to insurance and payroll. Ben is currently in Sierra Leone testing his system, and signing up local organisations for early pilots. Visit Ben’s page on the competition website and support his pioneering work!

Finalist #2: Light Up Malawi

Light Up Malawi – run byRaina Kumra – is a venture which aims to bring 100% alternative energy to Malawi through policy reform and the creation of a sanctioned pilot program for all manufacturers of solar, biomass, and wind energy products. In a sign that collaboration is alive and well even among competition finalists, one of the key systems they plan to deploy is FrontlineSMS:Credit, which will be used to assist with the setting up of rural distribution programs, and allow for the creation of finance systems for village entrepreneus. Please show your support for Raina’s work  by visiting her competition page here.

Both projects need pledges of just $10 from 650 individuals. The first 25 projects from the 37 finalists to raise $6,500 will secure their place on the summer program. Please take a moment to show your support. You pledge now and pay later, and it only takes a minute. Thank you!

(You can read more about how the Unreasonable Marketplace works here).