Social mobile gets its own “roadmap”

After three workshops on three continents, conversations and meetings with countless NGOs, academics, researchers and technologists, and many hours of conference calls, W3C this week released their “Mobile Web for Social Development Roadmap”, a comprehensive document which sits at the heart of the wider work of the Mobile Web for Development Interest Group (MW4D).
According to the Roadmap document, its purpose is to help:
“… understand the current challenges of deploying development-oriented services on mobile phones, evaluate existing technologies, and identify the most promising directions to lower the barriers of developing, deploying and accessing services on mobile phones and thereby creating an enabling environment for more social-oriented services to appear”
The Roadmap is split into two distinct sections. The first covers challenges and issues in developing mobile tools for social development, and the second looks specifically at technology options. The primary audience are individuals, organisations and entrepreneurs interested in social mobile; the mobile industry itself; academics; international organisations and, finally, policy makers and regulatory bodies.
The Roadmap is very much a work-in-progress, and the MW4D Interest Group welcomes comments, recommendations and suggestions to help shape it as the work moves forward.

After three workshops on three continents, conversations and meetings with countless NGOs, academics, researchers and technologists, and many hours of conference calls, W3C this week released their “Mobile Web for Social Development Roadmap”, a comprehensive document which sits at the heart of the wider work of the Mobile Web for Development Interest Group (MW4D).

According to the Roadmap document, its purpose is to help:

“… understand the current challenges of deploying development-oriented services on mobile phones, evaluate existing technologies, and identify the most promising directions to lower the barriers of developing, deploying and accessing services on mobile phones and thereby creating an enabling environment for more social-oriented services to appear”

The Roadmap is split into two distinct sections. The first covers challenges and issues in developing mobile tools for social development, and the second looks specifically at technology options. The primary audience are individuals, organisations and entrepreneurs interested in social mobile; the mobile industry itself; academics; international organisations and, finally, policy makers and regulatory bodies.

Question time in Sao Paulo (2008). Other meetings were held in Bangalore (India) in 2006, and Maputo (Mozambique) in 2009. Photo: Ken Banks, kiwanja.net

The Roadmap is very much a work-in-progress, and the MW4D Interest Group welcomes comments, recommendations and suggestions to help shape it as the work moves forward.

On the eve of India, fame at last? ;o)

I’m not sure if anything I’ve done before has ever made homepage news. Maybe FrontlineSMS when it hit the streets late last year? Or maybe wildlive!, backed by the ‘Vodafone factor’? Homepages have moved on, so I’ll never know…

So maybe the news of my impending trip to India, on the Reuters Digital Vision Program website, is my homepage debut. It’s only taken 13 years.


In just two days time I fly to Bangalore, my first ever visit to the Asian continent, to talk and Chair and scribe at the W3C Workshop on the Mobile Web in Developing Countries (they’re making the most of me over the two days, for sure). I was invited to apply, which is a new experience for me. Usually I have to beg, steal and borrow to get to these kinds of things, so some kind of recognition of my work is certainly a welcome change to my own personal little status quo. Being offered funding to fly there was also a new experience. And, of course, I’ll be planting a tree to offset my carbon emissions. Although it’s a long flight, so maybe that’ll need to be two?

I usually get extremely frustrated at these kinds of gatherings – lots of talk and hot air and often no tangible results to show for all the cost and effort. I’m hoping that this one will be different, and with such an active involvement in proceedings I have the best opportunity yet to have a positive impact. My presentation, not surprisingly, is about keeping the mobile web relevant. Because let’s not forget that this is not just about technology – at the end of that mouse, or mobile phone, is a real person. Someone with their own problems, issues, concerns and needs. By being there I hope to represent these people, and give them a voice in something which is more than likely, at some stage in their future, to have an impact of some kind on their lives.

You can find out a little more about the workshop on the W3C site, including a sneak preview of the presentation I will be giving. Lucky you.