Publicity from Dominican Republic visit

Carlos just sent this article from Fundacion Global, a non-profit where we gave a presentation in December. For non-Spanish speakers, the paragraph that mentions me reads (courtesy of Google Translate):

Steven Ketchpel spoke on the microfinancial services for the developing world. It emphasized the possibilities of reducing to the poverty through the microcredit and the way that lacks to cross. At the moment, in the world it has around 7.000 microfinancial institutions and the majority serves less than 2.500 beneficiaries as loans.

Fun fact: I'm not wearing a tie because we were running late from the previous visit, and making powerpoint slides in the car on the way to this talk...

RDVP Seminar: Peter Hart, Ricoh Innovations (5/18/2005)

Peter Hart, Chairman and President of Ricoh Innovations came to speak to the fellows about globalizing Co-invention. His starting point was the question of non-technical aspects that influenced adoption rates of technical products. He figured that as the fellows are focused on introducing technology solutions into markets where they haven't previously existed, we would be more cognizant than most of this co-invention process, the way that a target customer population takes an invention and uses it entirely unanticipated ways--changing work patterns as they adapt to this new technology. The feedback loops between different parties in the invention process were critical: between the technology provider and the technology integrator, but even more important, between the end-user and the technology integrator.

He cited 3 factors that influenced adoption rates:

1. Network Effects
   
2. The cost of labor relative to the cost of technology
   
3. Complementarities

These bear a bit more explanation:

1. Network Effects: Metcalfe's Law of the value of belonging to a network increasing with the square of its size. So, as more people have fax machines, having one becomes more valuable, because you can send your fax to more places.
2. Relative costs of labor and technology: He showed two historical plots (price of electric motors vs. assembly workers and price of PC's vs. knowledge workers). In each case, the rapid spread of the technology occured during a period where the price of labor was increasing quickly relative to technology. He pointed out that the correlation could be explained either by technology making the labor more valuable/expense (by making it more efficient) or by expensive labor making it wiser to invest in technology to leverage the employees' contributions.
3. Complementarities: From an economics point of view, this refers to a "negative cross elasticity of demand" (or, for those of us that don't speak fluent economics: the goods are used together, so a price increase in one (gas, for example) results in a decrease in the demand of another (SUV's)). The example that he gave was that although cities had been electrified for lighting, once they were, it became cheaper to use electricity for powering individual "unit drive" motors.

Building on the example of the electric motor, he pointed out that the original reason that Westinghouse brought them to market was increased efficiency in power transmission (through electrical wires rather than mechanical belts). In reality, this turned out to be a minor effect compared to the flexibility of adapting the workflow through a factory according to a logical production process rather than being forced to position machines according to mechanical constraints of belt drives. We talked about a couple other instances where novel customer uses resulted in unintended impacts of the original invention: podcasting for iPods, market equalization of prices once cell phones were more widely distributed, etc.

He also talked a bit about the need to carefully understand the user need and make sure that your product and service supports it. He used a couple of dot-com examples here: WebVan, and its failure to recognize that customers couldn't anticipate all of their shopping needs, so still needed to make a trip to the store, eliminating most of the savings of ordering online. His other dot-com example was Stamps.com, the online postage service. Compared to Pitney-Bowes, at first glance, it's a cheaper online solution. But, he argued, when you consider all of the steps required to mail a package, it's actually much simpler to use a Pitney-Bowes machine. Consequently, Pitney-Bowes' market cap is $10B compared to Stamps.com $350M.

During the Q & A session, he talked a bit about the reasons that Ricoh was investing in BOP research, and argued that Ricoh had often taken the "long view". Now, they're reaping the benefits of their "green" investments started 30 years ago.

RDVP Seminar: Motoo Kusakabe (5/10/2005)

Motoo Kusakabe of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is visiting Stanford as part of the selection committee for next year's group of fellows. He gave a seminar on ICT, development, and a National Innovation System. Starting from first principles, he chose a metric that he wanted to improve: per capita GDP. He showed a list of the top performers in terms of increasing GDP over the period from 1980 - 2002:

1. China: 8.2%
   
2. Korea: 6.1%
   
3. Ireland: 4.8%

Then he looked at different theories that might explain the difference between high performers and low performers. He felt that most of the earlier theories (Investment/Savings Gap; Structural / Macroeconomic Policy; and Governance) had not adequately explained the difference, and proposed to delve deeper into whether technology and innovation might explain it better. He further segmented the study into Lower Income Countries (annual per capita GDP < $2,936) and Higher Income Countries (above that rate). Since it was a study of development, OECD countries (already developed) were excluded.

With each category of factor, he determined the strength of the correlation between the 2002 data and their growth rate over this 22 year period. Some findings were surprising (most troubling to me was the NEGATIVE correlation between number of scientists/engineers in Lower Income Countries and their economic growth), others were more expected, if weaker than expected and not always consistent between Higher Income and Lower Income Countries. Some of the factors that Motoo cited included primary education, telephone lines (and installation waiting time), internet users, PC, internet servers, and (especially) government priority in ICT and cluster development; exports (especially of hi-tech and ICT equipment and services); governance factors; availability of credit and risk capital.

He did include the disclaimer that showing a correlation is not causation, and there were some additional suggestions from the audience that he should look at multi-variate correlations and data covering the same period (correlating 2002 data with long-range growth rates implies that if there were causation it was probably that long-term fast GDP growth caused the related factors rather than vice versa).

He moved on from the data to the recommendations, outlining a policy of investment and priorities that he felt governments of the Lower Income Countries and Higher Income Countries should pursue to achieve faster GDP growth. These priorities included education, IT literacy, teacher training, connecting the rural poor, microfinance, a payment system for rural areas, job creation, and an ICT focus in government to create a national strategy and regulatory framework, and set up a universal access fund and incubator. Higher income countries should also focus on ICT exports, and move up to higher scale efforts on universities, incubators and science parks, even a national innovation system that includes collaboration from academic, industrial, business, and government parties.

He concluded with a brief description and demo of an Open Knowledge Management System, a way of creating a portal for sharing information with editor functions. A sample is http://www.ictseminar.org.

RDVP Seminar: Karen Mullarkey (5/4/2005)

Karen Mullarkey of America 24/7 (the people who make the "Day in the Life..." coffee table photo books) came to speak about the power of photos and story telling. She started off with her own story, how she had graduated from college at a time when the only question a woman received in her job interview was "How many words a minute can you type, honey?" As she adapted to this environment and challenged it, after a brief detour through sales and market research departments, she ended up in the photo group, and continuously asked questions that were answered by the premier photographers and journalists.

She directed the photography departments at various publications (Rolling Stone Magazine, Sports Illustrated, and Newsweek) and then worked on the America 24/7 projects. She talked a bit about those projects, which are hugely expensive, and hard to make commercially successful. Rick Smolan transformed the business by lining up corporate sponsors to underwrite production costs. (For the 1995 "24 Hours in Cyberspace" project, Kodak, Adobe, Sun, Netscape, and AOL were sponsors.) For the recent 50 states project, some 1,000 photographers, plus stringers and amateurs submitted 250,000 photos.

After that she talked a bit more about how to use photos to tell the story of our projects. First of all, she encouraged us to use pictures (advice that didn't quite sink in for me if you look at my recent poster...) and choose pictures that "smack you in the face, are very beautiful or let you laugh a little bit" (they'll be more drawn to them). Start with a premise of what you want to show, and outline the story. She talked about self-publishing small books that can be distributed cheaply, as a way to make a project tangible for potential investors, etc.

She also finished off with a generous offer to share her expertise or contacts (photographers around the world to help record our projects), specifically mentioning CameraBits and ZoneZero.com.

RDVP Seminar: Howard Rheingold (4/29/2005)

Howard Rheingold came to speak about the need to start studying cooperation in a more formal way, a topic he treated in greater depth in a course he taught winter quarter. With an interesting background (and wardrobe), he is an entertaining speaker. At times, I felt that he glossed over the existing work in this area. Economists, especially in the area of game theory, problems of fair division, and coalition formation, have been studying this for years. (Indeed, a good part of the reason that I abandoned distributed artificial intelligence, another discipline very interested in cooperation, is that catching up to what the game theorists had already done would have taken years.) His dissection of the prisoner's dilemma and the tragedy of the commons, just scratched the surface and focused more on the "pop" articles rather than the academic ones, though Elinor Ostrom's Governing the Commons did look like an interesting book. More news to me was his report of neuroscience studies that showed that punishing cheaters excites the same areas of the brain as gaining rewards. "Altruistic punishment is the glue that holds society together," was his quote in describing the Ultimatum game. (One person is given $100 to split with a second person (with whom he cannot communicate). If the second person "accepts" the split, they get the money, divided as proposed. If the second person does not accept, they both get zero.)

All in all, I'm happy that he kept it high level, since that left more time, for the areas where I think Howard's viewpoint is unique: technology trends. He talked about the emergence of the cell phone as a way that 1.5B to 3B people will have broadband data access on a "just-in-time" basis, and the implications for information distribution, transactions, forming connections, and maintaining trust and reputation. He covered a laundry list of technologies that allow corporations to benefit from the cooperation of others (e.g., Open Source movement, Amazon API, Google Adwords, Wikipedia, eBay reputation server, ThinkCycle, Folding@home) as well as a set of technologies that make such volunteerism/cooperation that much easier (e.g., email, blogs, wikis, blog rolls, buddy lists, PageRank, etc.)

He also left quite a bit of time for discussion, which led to some interesting comments about migration: the move of people from the countryside to the cities where there may be jobs or from a poor country to a richer one. Technology is a new enabler, however, for these migrants to stay in touch with (and send money to) their home communities on a scale not previously possible.

RDVP Seminar: Peter Tavernise, Cisco (4/27/2005)

I had the sense that Peter Tavernise (see his Omidyar Network Profile) sees things a bit differently than the rest of us. He is a Senior Manager at Cisco Systems Corporate Philanthropy and Senior Program Officer at the Cisco Foundation. At times, I was prepared to dismiss what he was saying as looking through a biased, distorting lens. But at other times, it seemed that his comments were based on keen insight, because he's observing more closely than we are.

Certainly he came to the seminar better informed about the fellows' projects than most speakers. He had created an issue map that showed how he felt the different projects fit together within the overall context of disaster aid. He invited us to refine his draft.

As different topics came under his magnifying lens, he spoke his mind, but with such speed and assumed shared context that I often felt like I was trying to keep up with all the allusions of a rant by Dennis Miller.

His criticisms of the foundation/philanthropy world, especially as an insider, were eye-opening. His views that technology could help, and that it should be up to the funders to seek out and actively support the leaders of organizations that could effect needed change, were encouraging. He wondered why, after so much effort was made to select the best 5 to 7 projects in each of key program areas through the Tech Laureate awards, why all but one are sent home empty-handed? He criticized the stingy payout policies that lead some foundations to consider themselves perpetual memorials to dead people rather than active organizations addressing a key societal need. He pointedly asked why a small organization like Acumen Fund's A to Z Textiles' bed nets could be so much more effective than efforts funded by multi-lateral organizations for years with so much more money. He hoped that as technology permitted donors to recognize which organizations were being effective and which were not that donor-citizens would see that they should care about how organizations were using their money. Out of a $250B sector, Peter said that some $20-80B is being spent/wasted on overhead, redundant and ineffective organizations. The emerging trend of joint for-profit/non-profit models is innovative, but requires further exploration to figure it out, supported by legislation and tax and accounting reform.

Peter also talked about some successes (including the bed nets mentioned above). Global MapAid, incubated at the RDVP, was one. Using handhelds with GPS, collection of accurate GIS data in disaster situations helps aid workers better understand what they are facing. He said that Kofi Annan personally visited the Global MapAid offices during the tsunami relief effort, not for PR purposes but to get his hands on the maps they had!

A second was Active Voice which uses its VoIP and messaging service to provide voice mail boxes to people in need (homeless, job seekers, victims of domestic abuse) these Community Voice Mail services are available across the country and make a huge difference for the people receiving them.

He also mentioned The Foundation Center as a valuable resource for those of us looking to raise money from foundations. He also recommended 3 books:

1. Don't Think of an Elephant
   
2. Finite and Infinite Games
   
3. Confessions of an Economic Hitman

RDVP Seminar: Interplast (4/25/2005)

Susan Hayes, CEO, and Bill Schneider, Chief Medical Officer of Interplast, came to share the work this organization is doing to eliminate the hardship of living with conditions that can be treated through reconstructive plastic surgery. Cleft lip and cleft palate were two of the most common mentioned, but burn scar contractures (where tissue heals from a burn in such a way that the range of motion is limited) is another significant area, and doctors perform the full range of operations for their specialty. These volunteers treat about 3,500 patients per year. The patients are charged nothing.

Volunteer teams of about a dozen people (2 surgeons, 2 anesthesiologists, 4 nurses, 2 translators, 2 pediatricians) travel for a two-week period where they
might treat 20 patients per day. Other programs are "visiting educators" where a doctor makes a one-week visit to one location, covering a single topic. The volunteers are mostly, though not exclusively, Americans. Interplast also runs 7 outreach centers for training. Patients are taken for surgery only if they meet basic health requirements (since their conditions are not life-threatening, they must be in otherwise good health before a surgeon would operate). The Patient Care Improvement Program (PCIP) is designed to look for other ways to improve patient health, like providing iron supplements.

Interplast also focused on the contribution that IT could make--tracking statistics of patient data and enabling virtual collaboration among globally distributed colleagues. They maintain a blog. Their intranet site allows doctors to upload pictures and case histories of particularly challenging cases. But they were not hung up on technology: Dr. Schneider commented that through their expansion plans they have found it is the "individual that matters; a human being that is committed to making the program work locally." He cited the scarcity of plastic surgeons in other countries: with Zambia and Bangladesh each having 1 per 10 million people.

RDVP Seminar: Henry Lowood (4/20/2005)

Henry Lowood came to speak about computer games, of the Serious Games variety. Stuart invited him hoping that by using the interactivity and playful attributes that cause people to spend hours with regular games, we could create powerful tools to help end users engage with our project material. We learned a bit about the debate of "narratology vs. ludology" (are games about telling stories or just about playing?) and the challenge between the pedagogical aspect of creating a simulation versus playing one. I was also surprised to learn how widespread game playing is--in Korea there's a virtual world game that counts some 4M subscribers (out of a population of 45M). And of course, some of the "lurid details" of the gaming world came up: the sad popularity of violent games like Grand Theft Auto and the lack of games that focus on growth and development rather than conflict. Henry did talk about some games like September 12th, where the nominal goal is to shoot cruise missles at terrorists, but killing civilians by mistake generates more terrorists. The game is "rigged" to make it impossible to win--a statement that Lowood compared to a political cartoon. The author of "Kaboom" (suicide bomber simulation) claimed not to have a political agenda. "There's nothing political in my game. It's just about someone blowing himself up."

Perhaps a bit more relevant to the RDVP focus of the developing world was the real world sweatshops where low-paid workers are taught simple "farming" techniques in the virtual world to accumulate points that can be converted into weapons, etc, and sold (for real dollars) on eBay (See for example, their market in Ultima Online goods). Upset by the manipulation of the game, a set of vigilantes has sprung up, trying to eliminate these farmers by drawing monsters to where the farmers do their work. Untrained in defense, the farmers are killed. So now, the virtual sweatshop managers are training their workers in virtual self-defense, too. Sigh.

Henry shared in my nostalgia for turn-based model/data simulation games, but said that they have been in decline, out of favor after the advance of the "Quake" model of "experiential" (also called first-person shooter) games. Even real-time strategy games are becoming action/click-oriented, he said.

RDVP Seminar: Hong Lu, UTStar (4/13/2005)

Hong Lu, the CEO of UTStar, (and a member of Time Magazine's Cyber Elite) came to speak about expansion of telecom services in China, the technology, and the impact. The PAS system allows "traditional" (copper/wired) telecom providers to provide mobile service in a metro region. The service goes for $5-6/mo in China, compared to $6-8/month for Unicom, and $10-12/mo for China Telecom. A 1 minute phone call is less than a penny (I just got charged $.45/"over plan minute"...). There are about 66M PAS subscribers in China, with UTStar controlling about 60% of that market.
Hong talked about a series of predictions they had made that had come true, and seem like ground truth today, though were speculative at the time they were made:

1. All copper / narrow band will become fiber
   
2. Communication will move from circuit-based to packet-based
   

He talked about some of the developments in the telecom market, specifically comparing it to the US market:

	China	US
Fixed	300M	250M
Wireless	330M (+9M/mo)	170M

In 1995, it cost $3,000 to register for a cell phone in China, the purchase price for the phone itself was another $3,000. At that time, the monthly salary for an engineer was about $50.

Today, that same engineer makes several thousand per month (GDP in Shanghai is $6,000/capita, with talented, experienced managers breaking into 6-figure salaries). The 1,000 parking spaces they planned for their 5,000 employees are going quickly, and the black market is discounting the official exchange rate for the US dollar. Internet usage has grown from 620,000 in 1997 to 94M last year, and Hangzhou is starting a campaign to have fiber to every home within a year.

Hong also talked about the possible expansion to data-carrying service. Currently only about 5% of the revenue in China is related to data, compared to 20% in Japan. Although some technical details remain to be worked out, he suspected that TD CDMA could support 1-2 Mbps, charging $100/mo and being very profitable for both the mobile and wire carrier, in contrast to the $100/mo that is currently charged for DIALUP in some markets.

He also had some interesting charts comparing teledensity (ratio of fixed and cell lines to population) to the GDP, showing a correlation. Stuart asked whether he meant to imply causation as well as correlation, and Hong said yes. Although it was not perfect, it did seem to bear up. US and Canada had about 62% (must have been for fixed line only) while China had about 50%.

RDVP Seminar: Prof. VK Samaranayake RDVP fellow from Sri Lanka (3/30/2005)

Prof. VK Samaranayake, or "Sam" to nearly everyone, joined the Reuters Digital Vision Program as a visiting fellow for about 3 weeks. He was supposed to join earlier in the year, but his plans were thrown into disarray by the tsunami that struck on the 26th of December.

Sam gave a background on Sri Lanka, a nation I knew basically nothing about. It has 19 million people, and has previously been a Portugese, Dutch, and British colony. There are about 1M fixed phone lines, with cell subscriptions easily outpacing the number (with about 1.8M, and growing much faster). There are about 2.3M televisions, but only 240K internet users. Email usage is below 1%, and only about 3.8% of the households have computers. The IT workforce in 2005 is about 25,000 people.

Sam himself has an impressive background. He has a Ph.D. in particle physics, and essentially started the study of computer science in Sri Lanka. He's the chairman of the new ICT Agency, a private corporation that's owned by the government (structured this way at the request of the World Bank(?)). The School of Computing has grown to 50 staff members, 1,000 students and 5,000 "external" students who study on their own, and complete exams toward a certificate.

Digital Diaspora Collaboration

Sam's project is focused on bringing research-level expertise to Sri Lanka, though he recognizes that given the salary they could expect ($450/mo for a Senior Professor) few will make the move to Sri Lanka. Therefore, he's focused on leveraging info tech to enable virtual collaboration. He mentioned that he's continued to present a weekly radio program via skype and cell phone while he's at Stanford, and thinks that similar techniques for tele-conference for lectures could enable the diaspora of Sri Lankans around the world to contribute by spending just a few hours a week, or remotely mentoring students. The e-Sri Lanka project (supported to the tune of $53M by the World Bank) is to increase penetration and usage of information technology.

The Tsunami

Sam mentioned a couple of the realities of being "on the ground" at the site of the disaster. He said the harbor is still clogged with in-kind gifts from around the world, many unused and unusable. Though he was appreciative of the outpouring of support that came from around the world following the tsunami, he wished that the support would be sustained. Only with ongoing injections of expertise and funding will Sri Lanka be able to reach higher levels of development. He mentioned that the focus on measurements was impractical: there were too many redundant efforts, and things were changing too quickly to be able to make any useful actions based off the analysis of the data. He mentioned one project Sahana, an open source effort for disaster management (tracking resources, missing persons, matching supplies and needs, etc).

RDVP Seminar: Zack Rosen, Civic Spaces (3/9/2005)

A lingering event from before spring break that I didn't yet post notes for... On March 9th, Zack Rosen from Civic Space came to speak about this content management system for community organization. Zack talked a bit about his background (interest in technology and society pursuing a degree at University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign), as well as his experience in working on the Howard Dean political campaign. He was proud of what he called the innovation of the Dean campaign: opening the doors to anyone. But although the "Meetup" system brought Dean supporters together, it didn't provide the direction needed to have an impact on the election. The role of the campaign was not to direct a master plan, but to facilitate the grass roots discussions and plans.

Zack started with the "Hack for Dean" effort, focused on open source grass roots organizing tools. Starting with Drupal, and expanding it to a network of communities that could talk to each other. Zack cited Reed's law: The number of (potential) groups within a network grows exponential with the number of members of the network. So their focus became to form, build, network groups, share content, profiles and events across sites. By doing that, Dean was able to raise $15M in one fundraising cycle, compared to Clinton, who, as an incumbent, had raised $10M.

With the end of the Dean campaign, they attracted funding from Andy Rappaport and are now an independent non-profit organization with 6 full time people. They're refining their business plan ("a community organiaing platform that works with others to service verticals (like schools, churches, civic organizations) and sells services to vendors"). In March, there were 150 organizations using it. Now there are 187 (see current list of known sites).

In spite of the failure in the ballot box, Zack felt the Meetup idea was a success: it went against the mores of the time separating the virtual world from the real one. Zack saw it as one of the signs of increased political power of the online world, and pointed to South Korea's Oh My News (English Version) where users submit the content, and it is selected for inclusion by an editor. It is, he said, the news medium with the broadest reach in South Korea, and its political endorsements helped candidates win the presidency and congressial elections. Zack mentioned the project that Dan Gillmor is starting in the area of citizen journalism.

Mans, acting partially with his Reuters' hat on, warned against the danger when people start debating facts, rather than keeping an objective reporting, and confining advocacy views to an editorial page. Zack responded: "We're already there. They lied and they won."

And so as not to end on that grim note, Zack pointed out that there was a large market for these services: some $100M annually, currently being fulfilled by companies like GetActive and Kintera.

Emerging from Hibernation

I can't let a month go by with no posts without some explanation. Some of the silence was semi-intentional: Stanford had a couple of weeks of down time for the program (winter quarter final exams and spring break). Then the first few sessions of our classes and seminar upon the start of the spring quarter were more internally focused: looking at what we hoped the program would accomplish in our final quarter. As such, it was more for the fellows, and less of interest to outsiders who might be reading the blog. I may sprinkle a few comments in some of the related posts, but for the most part, I'll skip this.

A quick project update as well: after a gruelling RFP (Request for Proposals) process to evaluate different potential partners to build version 1.0 of Mifos, we're very close to reaching an agreement. We benefitted from recommendations from a number of contacts, and evaluated the different candidates based upon their responses: the technical merit, how well they understood what we were asking, how well we felt they would work with us, the quality of product they would produce, the timeliness of their efforts, references of people who had worked with them, and, of course, the cost. It was a great opportunity to hear from outsourcing companies as well as US-based companies that had chosen to outsource work. My assessment is that running a project with a remote team adds a number of challenges around communication, expectations, skills, schedules, and people. There is a potential cost advantage over US-based development teams, but finding the right group and making the project a success is no less challenging than hiring a local team--and probably riskier.

It is, I believe, the right decision for Mifos: by engaging a team, we'll likely have a more coherent view of the global system than we would if it were pieced together by many volunteers working part time. It will probably be faster. We will probably have more dedicated QA resources. And given our expected partner is in India, they will probably have greater access to MFI's than a US-based team.

A new form of government?

Over dinner last night with a few friends, we were bemoaning the politicazation and partisanship of the US media. Too often, citizens choose to consume only media that reinforces their own views and therefore have little opportunity to hear the true debate that should shape the political landscape and determine elections. Instead, spin-doctors and pundits from each political stripe immediately (post-debate) deconstruct the event, showing how their candidate "won", until the original event is forgotten, and the analysis becomes the reality.

"It's as if it's no longer a democracy at all. It's become a whole new form of government that needs a new name..." my friend begin.

"A Media-cracy" I blurted out.

I was chagrined to later find out that I had not been the first to coin this new word, it was already registered at Unwords.

Catch up post (3/22/2005)

Mifos Update

Although the RDVP program has officially been on spring break, it's still been a busy time for me. One of my Grameen colleagues, Ericka Lock, came down from Seattle for a couple days, as she, Steve Mushero, and I started combing through the Business Requirements Document, looking for ambiguities or things that weren't specified clearly enough.

The process continued for a week while I was in Seattle, though we did take a couple of days out to give our technical advisory board an update and gather information about the possibility of outsourcing the development work, probably to a firm overseas, in an area of the world where microcredit is actually done. Even after two solid days of plowing through a list of open issues, many still remained, so we’ve continued the process in the exemplary manner of a distributed team: two members in Seattle, a third in the Seattle area (but at home), one at Berkeley, and one at Stanford. For one of the meetings today, we added another continent, with Ericka calling in (via Skype) from Peru.

http://www.Namaste-direct.org

In addition to the Mifos activities, I sat in on a board meeting for http://www.Namaste-direct.org a microcredit organization started by Bob Graham. His vision is to use the power of the internet to attract donors and allow them to have a much more detailed view of the impact that their donation makes, by having their money directly fund a “Group of 100” (women borrowers) in places in Guatemala like Ixil or Villa Canales or
Chimaltenago. Team captains (primarily college interns from the US) will visit the groups, record the stories of the borrowers and share them with the donors that funded the group, giving donors a real sense of how their money was invested. I'm curious to see if some of the internet marketing techniques that I learned at Vividence.com will help boost online contributions and conversion rate.

MicroMentor

I also had a chance to meet David Rand, the Founder of http://www.micromentor.org, an online service to match micro-entrepreneurs in the US (for now) with mentors who can provide business expertise, such as advice in strategic planning, marketing, fundraising, networking. Micro-entrepreneurs self-register, mentors register on the site, and when approved, can search through the profiles of the entrepreneurs, and contact anonymously (via the site) the entrepreneur. If the entrepreneur (who sees a "blinded" mentor profile) agrees to the match, the site exchanges the contact information. After a two year pilot, Micromentor re-vamped last year (moving to the model just described) and is growing in a controlled fashion while they prove out the model.

RDVP Class: Mitra and Greg (3/7/2005)

Iranian Teacher's Network

Mitra gave an update on the Iranian Teachers' Network, showing a prototype and describing some of the recent thinking she'd done around content, the opportunity for teachers to earn money by selling lesson plans, and the challenges for fundraising. She got some pointers to potential corporate sponsors who might be interested.

Prototyping

Greg Wolff gave a talk about prototyping. The key insights were that:

1. You start with a period of observation, and record measurements of metrics that you will want to impact.
   
2. You create a few testable hypotheses (1 or 2 primary, and 2 to 3 dependent) about how to impact those metrics
   
3. Only then do you choose the technologies which will allow you to test those hypotheses as quickly as possible.
   

He encouraged the involvement of ethnographers in the first stage of observation, pointing out that simple questionnaires are insufficient, because people are bad at accurately reporting what they do. (I can corrobrate that from my experience at Vividence.)

The business people construct the hypotheses, though get the buy-in of key stakeholders from the research and technical teams.

The technical team is given the task of choosing technologies to test the hypotheses quickly. Since this is a prototype, the eventual production cost is irrelevant. You need to confirm that you are building the right thing.

Greg presented a simple graphical form to help enforce the division and clarity of thinking. Observations and measurements formed the left leg of an arch, the technologies to be used the right leg, and the bridge between them is the hypotheses.
It's a simple idea, but one I think will be effective for keeping conversations on track and reducing the scope of prototypes to the minimum required to test the hypothesis.