2007 Tech Laureate Showcase (Part II)

(see Part I for descriptions of other projects: cooking fuel pellets from seaweed, packed earth vaulted ceilings, P2P microcredit, P2P marketplace with a mobile interface, and a web-conferencing platform with VOIP for students.)

The other projects that I got to see were:

TakingITGlobal

This prize-winning project is a social networking software platform for youth interested in humanitarian issues. The site TakingITGlobal.org has about 170,000 members. Membership is free, and they have a global reach (living up to their name). I did a quick search to see how global, and did come up with 50 members in Mali, but after looking through the first 25 profiles, I'd say that maybe only 1 or 2 is still an active member. (They provide both create date and last login date.) They have an impressive number of languages (English, French, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Portuguese), but the English one was the only one that was really active (41,000 posts); French was runner up with 1,344, Spanish and Arabic had a few hundred each, Russian hadn't even broken into the double digits yet... But they do have good content on various issues (like the UN Millennium Development Goals) and ways for youth to connect with each other and learn about events. In addition to the "free" site, there's a way to use the platform in schools, with licensing costs at the school/district level.

Counterpart International

This project is primarily software for logistics management for humanitarian aid. It allows the tracking of pallets and bundles (sounded like USAID was a prime user, and the goods were rather varied...) from the shipper all the way to the recipient, with report back capabilities. The technology platform is Microsoft (.NET and SQL-Server) though it's not really a web application. (Given money, that's what Vlad, the key developer said he would work on next.) The project has been going for about 7 years, with Vlad Roshchin as the person providing continuity, over the life of the project. He said that it's about the equivalent of 1.5 FTE's per year, so about 10 person-years of effort.

Grameen Shakti, Empowerment Through Renewable Energy Technologies

I was a bit confused about what Grameen Shakti was doing; it seemed a sort of hodge-podge of energy related projects using microfinance to allow even the rural poor to buy solar panels, cooking stoves, etc. Fortunately, I'd grabbed one of the info packets with many pictures of a smiling Managing Director Dipal Chandra Barua receiving prizes around the world. From the booklet, I see they have installed 120,000 solar home systems in Bangladesh and are adding at a rate of 4,000/month. A case study said that a pharmacy owner had replaced his kerosene lighting with a 20 watt solar system. I'm extrapolating a bit here, because the numbers are sketchy, but it looks like he has to pay $13/month for 42 months, and had to pay 10% down (about $56). After the 42 months it's paid off, and he can get a service contract for about $13/year. Given that he was paying about $20/month in kerosene, this is a win, breaking even after 8 months. Plus, the light is better (7 watt CFL, plus 3 LED's) and better for both air quality and environment.

The cook stoves seem a similar benefit, reducing fuel needs by 50%, as well as venting less smoke into living areas. A third program that they run is biogas power generation, converting cow dung to energy and fertilizer. It seems that a "family-sized" unit (3 cubic meters) produces enough energy to cook 3 meals a day.

PATH, Vaccine Vial Monitor

A simple idea, really, but one that seems to work: vaccines spoil if exposed to high temperatures for too long. PATH has figured a way to make labels that contain chemicals that change colors if they've been exposed to temperatures that would ruin the vaccine. So before a vaccine is administered, the health worker confirms that it hasn't spoiled. It's also saved many doses that would otherwise be discarded to be "on the safe side" when refrigeration loses power for a short period. There are different labels that have different "warning" temperature / durations. They cost a few cents each to make, falling within the target of being less than 5% of the cost of the vaccine, especially when the labels are applied to multi-dose containers.

Vaxin Inc., Rapid-Response Bird Flu Vaccine

This seemed like a cool technical breakthrough. I didn't understand the medicine behind it, but the general gist I got from Dr. De-chu Tang was that:

1. You could produce vaccines for avian flu much more quickly / cost effectively
   
2. You could vaccinate chickens while they're still in the egg (much easier!)
   
3. You could potentially combine other needed chicken vaccines with it
   

Vaxin is a private VC-backed company (raised $25M, I think he said) headquartered in Alabama, and founded in 1997.

Mifos Bay Area Launch Reception (3/22/2007)

The Grameen Foundation had a reception celebrating the launch of Mifos, hosted at VISA, just down the street from me in Foster City. It was well attended, with 60 or so people. Mifos is the MIcroFinance Open Source project that I worked on during my RDVP fellowship. Two and a half years later, there are 4 MFI's working on implementing Mifos at their institutions, in India, Tunisia, Kenya, and the Philippines. The other exciting aspect is the development of the open source community to support Mifos. While I tend to think about the volunteers that are involved, George Conard (of the Grameen Foundation) and Brian Behlendorf (of CollabNet) both pointed out that it's important to recognize that there are developers that can make their living from working on it as well.

Alex Counts, President of the Grameen Foundation, gave a brief introduction. George Conard, the Director of the Mifos Initiative, spoke next. He gave a really good talk, with a few powerpoint slides, emphasizing the need for microcredit (using examples of both recovering from emergencies and funding purchase of raw materials), the importance of IT systems in microcredit (ability to scale to 1 billion prospective customers), the sorry state of the current systems (90% using a homegrown system, Excel, or none at all), the challenges (each homegrown system re-creating the wheel to accommodate the slight twist that they need to support their local methodology; or small vendors trying to support a system in a different language and timezone). Open source provides a solution: the ability to re-use code and for an ecology of support vendors to spring up around it.

Brian Behlendorf of CollabNet (who brought you SVN) and a key contributor to the Apache project, was the keynote speaker. I was impressed that he spoke about microcredit; I assumed that we'd get a standard (if privileged, insider's) view of the benefits of open source. But Brian went the extra mile, and put it in the context of microcredit. He mentioned that he'd been at Davos recently, and that had driven home to him the fact that microcredit worked (ie, that borrowers could put small loan amounts to work generating greater economic benefit) and that lenders were interested in making the loans, but they couldn't connect, and that, according to Brian, sounded like a software problem! He did a good job of describing the open source benefits of transparency, and also acknowledged the Grameen Foundation for the the critical role they had in funding the development. (He compared it to the role that IBM had played in bringing Eclipse to market or CollabNet's development of SVN.)

All in all, a fun event. Great to see the Mifos progress (can't wait until it actually goes live at Grameen Koota!) and thanks to a Grameen Foundation board meeting, plus the gathering for this event, a lot of people that I'd met over the years were there (Alex Counts, Peter Bladin, Emily Tucker, Susan Davis) from Grameen, another early Mifos volunteer Charlie Tomberg, plus people that I'd met through the RDVP fellowship from Cisco (Peter Tavernise) and Google.org (Rachel Payne). It was also great to meet Elizabeth Clarkson of Omidyar.net which made a sizable investment in Mifos.

Want to get paid to work on Mifos?

The Grameen Foundation has a job opening for a Seattle-based Technical Program Manager:

Technical Program Manager

The Grameen Foundation's Mifos Initiative is working to address key information management challenges in the microfinance industry through the development of an open source software platform for microfinance
practitioners. By making technology a key strength of microfinance, the Mifos Initiative will have an enormous impact on the capacity of the microfinance industry in our efforts to alleviate poverty around the world.

We are looking for an experienced technical program manager to drive the technical roadmap for the Mifos Initiative and to own the software development infrastructure for the Mifos platform. This position is critical to the success of Mifos and will ensure that both the functionality and the underlying infrastructure for Mifos are rock solid. The ideal candidate will have deep technical expertise, a passion for delivering tangible, customer-focused results, and experience working with open source software efforts.

The Technical Program Manager (TPM) for the Core Software Platform on the Mifos Initiative is responsible for the technical roadmap and architecture for core Mifos functional and infrastructure areas as well as the software development technology infrastructure, including the open source infrastructure. The Technical Program Manager will work very closely with the software development lead for the Mifos initiative. The TPM will drive key functional areas of the Mifos platform (such as reporting) and be the driver of the overall technical roadmap and architecture for the platform. In addition, the TPM defines and implements process and technical improvements to the build and test processes, manages the continuous integration, build, and other servers for Mifos, and facilitates community discussion around the underlying software development infrastructure. The TPM identifies key technical
issues and drives them to resolution.

This position is based in Seattle, WA.

Essential Job Functions:

• Develop and maintain technical roadmap for the Mifos platform
  
• Work with Mifos community to identify and drive technical enhancements to key product areas including system security, reporting, accounting integration, deployment tools, system administration tools, etc.
  
• Develop and execute strategies for release and upgrade management and test and build processes for Mifos platform
  
• Work closely with Mifos technical lead to drive overall improvements to the software development infrastructure
  
• Manage servers (test/demo, build, continuous integration, etc.) and open source infrastructure for the Mifos Initiative
  
• Identify enhancements to process and infrastructure that support software development activities and implement appropriate solutions
  
• Foster Mifos community discussions related to technology platform
  

Required skills and experience:

• At least 5 years technical program management experience developing technology solutions
  
• Demonstrated experience driving issues to resolution and shipping products; passion for delivering tangible results; able to juggle multiple priorities
  
• Experience driving technical architecture and strategy for complex applications
  
• Strong experience with Java-based application development tools (including build, test, and continuous integration)
  
• Experience with some or all of the following technologies preferred: Tomcat or Jetty, mySQL, CruiseControl, Selenium, Ant,Cobertura
  
• Experience with release and upgrade management
  
• Experience with open source software development, agile development methodologies and test-driven development preferred projects preferred; willingness to learn and utilize these methodologies required
  
• Passion for the mission of Grameen Foundation and microfinance
  
• Experience with financial systems a plus
  
• Previous exposure to developing world and/or microfinance a plus
  
• Engineering- or CS-related BA/BS or equivalent
  
• Strong written and verbal communication skills
  
• Ability and willingness to travel domestically and internationally
  

To learn more about the Mifos Initiative, visit http://www.mifos.org and
http://mifos.sourceforge.net.

To apply, send resume and cover letter to mifos@grameenfoundation.org.
No calls please.