May 2010 - change - Mailing Lists

HCI Researcher position at IBM Research
by Yaw Anokwa 21 May '10

21 May '10

Job Description: We are looking for a PhD (not necessarily a fresh graduate) in the area of Mobile HCI to work on the Spoken Web project. Details of the project are mentioned in the next paragraph. The candidate is expected to work in New Delhi in the area of mobile interactions, multi-modal interfaces, multimedia information retrieval, audio content analysis. A strong background and publications in HCI conferences would be required. Spoken Web: This is a research project at IBM India Research Lab, the aim of which is to create a parallel of the World Wide Web, for developing countries. The concepts revolve around providing phone-based access to "VoiceSites" that have audio content. A majority of the world population does not have access to the internet and is low in literacy. This is the target for Spoken Web. Spoken Web navigation, browsing and search are some of the many technical aspects that the research group is focussing on. A high-level description of the Spoken Web is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trFfrOiCSWQ.

1 1

m-kesho
by Brian DeRenzi 20 May '10

20 May '10

http://whiteafrican.com/2010/05/20/mkesho-linking-banks-and-mobile-payments/ erik hersman has a post about a new service being rolled out by safaricom called m-kesho (kesho is the swahili word for tomorrow). they are teaming up with a bank in kenya to tie m-pesa accounts to bank accounts to offer micro-savings. seems very pertinent to our conversation from a couple of weeks ago about m-pesa and mobile banking in general. brian

1 0

Ryan Hartford on VillageReach
by Eleanor O'Rourke 18 May '10

18 May '10

This Thursday at Change, Ryan Hartford will be discussing his work at VillageReach (villagereach.org) VillageReach saves lives and improves well being in low-income countries by increasing last-mile access to healthcare services and medical commodities through an integrated solution of a dynamic information management platform, efficiently designed logistics programs that improve cold chain performance and delivery of other medical commodities, and profitable social businesses that help sustain essential infrastructure services.   The organization has conducted programs in India, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria and Senegal. VillageReach’s unique capacity to significantly improve community health outcomes is enabled by vrMIS, its logistics management information system that leverages wireless networks and devices for public and private health systems to efficiently monitor and analyze supply chains in real time, ensuring appropriate types and quantities of vaccines, medicines, and equipment are available when and where they are needed. vrMIS, the VillageReach platform – based on the “openLMIS” open source software – serves to improve: - the quality of data capture - real-time responses from the health system - health worker performance monitoring - inventory management - forecasting - HR requirements, personnel training, and - management accountability via superior information access VillageReach proposes to present an overview of its model and technology platform and a brief summary of system performance results and community health impact. What: Ryan Hartford on VillageReach When: Thursday, May 20th at noon Where: Paul Allen Center, Room 203

1 0

Booz Allen International Development Opportunity
by Edwin Shao 17 May '10

17 May '10

Dear Change Practitioners, To introduce myself, I have been passionate about international development for several years and did my CMU senior year research in the realm (see: http://graphafrica.com/) I also started a student organization ( http://dsoglobal.org) focused on the topic. So, no, I'm not a recruiter or headhunter. That said, I would like to alert all of you to an opportunity that I think you would find interesting. I am currently on the Diplomacy and International Development (DID) team at Booz Allen and we are looking to hire. It is a small team with large impact, consulting with almost all the major developmental headquarters in DC. I think this is an amazing opportunity to get an insider's view of a variety of development organizations and understand some of the challenges that they face on a daily basis. As an added bonus, the team dynamic is great: it really is a meritocracy and the people are all remarkably sharp. I took 6 months after I graduated to examine every major company and opportunity in the international development realm, and I can honestly recommend this opportunity. I wanted a job where I felt I could make an impact in an issue that I cared about. If this sounds like you, I'd highly encourage you to apply. If you are interested, please send me an email with your *resume *and *cover letter *attached. Of course, I would be happy to entertain questions beforehand. Lastly, feel free to forward this to any qualified friends. Looking forward to hearing from you. Best, Edwin

1 0

Booz Allen International Development Opportunity
by Yaw Anokwa 17 May '10

17 May '10

if you are interested in this gig, might also want to check out http://www.boozallen.com/consulting/civil-government-consulting/internation…. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Edwin Shao <eshao(a)eshao.es> To introduce myself, I have been passionate about international development for several years and did my senior year research in the realm (see: http://graphafrica.com/) I also started a student organization ( http://dsoglobal.org) focused on the topic. So, no, I'm not a recruiter or headhunter. That said, I would like to alert all of you to an opportunity that I think you would find interesting. I am currently on the Diplomacy and International Development (DID) team at Booz Allen and we are looking to hire. It is a small team with large impact, working with almost all the major developmental headquarters in DC. I think this is an amazing opportunity to get an insider's view of a variety of development organizations and understand some of the challenges that they face on a daily basis. As an added bonus, the team dynamic is great: it really is a meritocracy and the people are all remarkably sharp. I took 6 months after I graduated to examine every major company and opportunity in the international development realm, and I can honestly recommend this opportunity. I wanted a job where I felt I could make an impact in an issue that I cared about. If this sounds like you, I'd highly encourage you to apply. If this is something you might be interested in, please send me an email with your resume and cover letter attached. Of course, I would be happy to entertain questions beforehand. Lastly, feel free to forward this to any qualified friends. Looking forward to hearing from you. Best, Edwin

1 0

vittana is hiring
by Yaw Anokwa 15 May '10

15 May '10

Vittana is looking for a scrappy, experienced Marketing & PR Manager who will help shape our public personality and take our mission to the next level. You will join a passionate, award-winning team (HuffPo: "#1 Game-Changer in Philanthropy"; Fast Company: "Top 10 Most Innovative Finance Companies in 2010"; NYT: "next new thing in charity") working to bring student loans to developing countries throughout the world. Vittana has presented at Change a number of times and they are doing incredible work. http://www.linkedin.com/jobs?viewJob=&jobId=957506

1 0

importance of ICT in low-resource settings
by Gaetano Borriello 14 May '10

14 May '10

"women in developing countries, and people of both sexes with low incomes or poor education, were most influenced emotionally by their access to technology" http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/10108551.stm

1 0

Fwd: ACM DEV 2010
by Yaw Anokwa 12 May '10

12 May '10

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: lakshminarayanan subramanian <lakshmi(a)cs.nyu.edu> Date: Tue, May 11, 2010 at 10:47 Subject: ACM DEV 2010 ACM DEV 2010: First ACM Annual Symposium on Computing for Development The First ACM Annual Symposium on Computing for Development (DEV 2010) will be co-located with ICTD 2010 and the focus of the symposium will be on new computing innovations for development. The scope of DEV 2010 is broad covering a wide range of research areas within computer science with a direct focus on development. ACM DEV 2010 aims to bring together all CS researchers with an interest in computing for development. The deadline for paper submissions is July 10th, 2010. We strongly encourage you to submit your best works here. The conference website is: http://dev2010.news.cs.nyu.edu Call for Papers DEV 2010 provides an international forum for research in the design and implementation of information and communication technologies (ICTs) for social and economic development. In particular, we focus on emerging contexts where conventional computing solutions are often inappropriate due to various contextual factors - including, but not limited to, cost, language, literacy, and the availability of power and bandwidth. Focusing on innovative technical solutions to these unique application, infrastructure and user challenges, DEV fosters exchange between computer scientists, engineers, and other scholars and practitioners interested in the use of ICTs for development. DEV provides a high-quality, single-track forum for presenting results and discussing new ideas. We expect paper contributions from different existing sub-areas of Computer Science and Engineering with a direct relevance to development. Papers should describe original and previously unpublished research. Three metrics will be applied to judge papers: (a) Relevance of the problem for development; (b) Novelty of the technical solution; (c) Evaluation of the solution, making a case for development-focused impact. All ACM DEV paper submissions should either provide or directly motivate a novel technical solution that has direct implications for development. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: Networks/Systems/Security/Architecture * Low-cost wireless connectivity * Intermittent networks and systems * Power-efficient systems * Low-cost computing devices * Mobile systems and applications * Security challenges in developing regions HCI/Applications * User interfaces for low-literacy populations * Multi-lingual computing * User-interfaces for low-cost devices * Participatory methods and user-centered design * Accessibility to disabled populations in developing regions * Design and evaluation of applications for health, microfinance, education, agriculture, entertainment AI/NLP/Data Mining/Speech/Vision * Machine learning techniques for large-scale data analysis in development contexts * Adapting content and applications to local languages and education levels * Understanding social relationships and information flows in disadvantaged societies * Speech interfaces and speech recognition for low-resource languages * Development of new AI-centric tools/solutions for development * Computer vision challenges in development We also welcome papers outside of these topics that address the DEV focus on computing innovations supporting social and economic development. Important Dates Registration Deadline July 3, 2010 Submission Deadline July 10, 2010 Paper Acceptance September 5, 2010 Final Version October 5, 2010 Conference December 17-18, 2010 General Chair Andrew Dearden, Sheffield Hallam University PC Chairs Tapan Parikh, UC Berkeley Lakshminarayanan Subramanian, NYU Steering Committee Saman Amarasinghe, MIT Gaetano Borriello, University of Washington Eric Brewer, UC Berkeley Deborah Estrin, UCLA Margaret Martonosi, Princeton Roni Rosenfeld, CMU Kentaro Toyama, UC Berkeley Program Committee Muneeb Ali, Princeton, USA Saman Amarasinghe, MIT, USA Richard Anderson, Univ of Washington, USA Ravin Balakrishnan, Univ of Toronto, Canada Simone Barbosa, PUC - Rio, Brazil Etienne Barnard, University of Pretoria, South Africa Michael Best, Georgia Tech, USA Gaetano Borriello, Univ of Washington, USA Eric Brewer, UC Berkeley, USA John Canny, UC Berkeley, USA Ed Cutrell, MSR India, India James Davis, UC Santa Cruz, USA Andrew Dearden, Sheffield Hallam University, UK Nathan Eagle, MIT & Santa Fe Institute, USA Deborah Estrin, UCLA, USA Neil Ferguson, Imperial College, UK Beki Grinter, Georgia Tech, USA Eric Horovitz, MSR Redmond, USA Ravi Jain, Google, USA Matt Jones, Swansea, UK Matthew Kam, CMU, USA Srinivasan Keshav, University of Waterloo, Canada Zhengjie Liu, Dalian Maritime University, China Gary Marsden, Univ of Cape Town, South Africa Vanessa Frias Martinez, Telefonica Research, Spain Margaret Martonosi, Princeton, USA Srini Narayanan, UC Berkeley, USA Bonnie Nardi, UC Irvine, USA Tapan Parikh, UC Berkeley, USA Balaji Prabhakar, Stanford, USA John Quinn, Makerere University, Uganda Nitendra Rajput, IBM Research India, India Bhaskaran Raman, IIT-Bombay, India Roni Rosenfeld, CMU, USA Umar Saif, LUMS, Pakistan Lakshmi Subramanian, NYU, USA Bill Thies, MSR India, India Kentaro Toyama, UC Berkeley, USA Terry Winograd, Stanford, USA

1 0

Natalie Linnell on improving interaction for Digital Green
by Eleanor O'Rourke 11 May '10

11 May '10

This Thursday at Change, Natalie Linnell will be discussing her work using mobile phones to improve interaction during Digital Green video instruction. In this talk I will discuss a project that uses mobile phones to increase interactivity in video-based agricultural extension. Digital Green is an NGO that increases the reach of agricultural extension programs in rural India by training local people to show educational agricultural videos in their village. However, the interactivity in these video shows is vital to engaging the farmers and their eventual adoption of the practices. I have devised a system that helps the person showing the video to create timely, high-quality interaction during the video shows. In this talk I will discuss the needs-assessment that led to the idea for the project, the technology involved, and lessons learned and preliminary results from a pilot deployment that took place in April. What: Natalie Linnell on improving interaction for Digital Green When: Thursday, May 13th at noon Where: Paul Allen Center, Room 203 http://change.washington.edu/2010/05/natalie-linnell-on-improving-interacti…

1 0

The Earth Awards - 7 DAYS LEFT
by Yaw Anokwa 07 May '10

07 May '10

The Earth Awards - Call for Entries DEADLINE: MAY 10, 2010 Submit your project here: http://www.theearthawards.org/portal/members/login The Earth Awards is a global search for creative, sustainable solutions and innovations designed for the 21st century. It provides a platform for individuals and organizations, enabling them to bring their visionary ideas to the eyes of a global audience. Held first in New York City in 2009, The Earth Awards will be hosted in other major cities around the world to promote its mission of bringing ecological thinking into popular culture. A prestigious and eclectic panel of creative thinkers have leant their support as members of our Selection Committee to judge the awards. All finalists will have the unique opportunity to pitch their project to world business leaders, who will help them to transform their designs into market-ready solutions. In 2010, The Earth Awards will be travelling to London where it will become a part of a world-class exhibition in sustainable design. We have assembled an eclectic selection committee of creative thinkers - including household designer names like Diane von Furstenberg and Philippe Starck, as well as entrepreneurs such as Richard Branson and Graham Hill, but also journalists and writers like Graydon Carter and Paul Hawken... - to review submissions. Please submit your project to The Earth Awards 2010 by May 10th; help us spread the word: distribute to colleague, students, designers,... for more information visit our website: www.theearthawards.org We are looking to engage a global audience of creative thinkers to drive positive change. Thank You. The Earth Awards Submit to a better world www.theearthawards.org www.twitter.com/theearthawards

1 0