Lowering barriers to adoption isn’t just one approach – it’s critical to real ‘scale’
This post is a write-up of a talk I gave at the recent Mobile Web East Africa conference in Nairobi, Kenya. Thanks to the team for inviting us to speak! Technology companies are in the business of changing habits. Creating a new tool, and getting people to use it consistently, means trying to change something about the way people get things done – moving from analogue to digital,... Read More
Our brand of ‘agile’
We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming to bring you a rare insight into operations at our secret developer base, deep in the bowels of a nondescript office building in Nairobi, Kenya. Warning: this post may be techier than usual, but we hope still intelligible to our readers… The FrontlineSMS Nairobi team hard at work before the launch of v2.0 Photo Credits: RickRoxburgh.com “Our... Read More
The Data Divide
Do you remember when grocery stores didn’t know you were pregnant before your parents? Or when newspapers couldn’t find naked pictures of you by looking through your phone? Boy, those were the days (When did I get this old?). Still, there’s no escaping it. Things are digitizing. Everywhere. Whether you’re registering to vote in Washington State using Facebook or banking... Read More
News Participation Starts at ‘Home’
Man standing on what was a boardwalk. Photo credits: Instagram, ncoronges Seemingly every major news event worldwide is heightening participation in news. People are eager to share updates and photos of an unfolding news event, ask questions of media outlets, and share important information. But there are two important aspects to this type of participation: (1) people are most... Read More
Social media and the rise of FrontlineSMS
It’s Social Media Week this week, and in recognition of this and our seventh anniversary next month, we asked our Founder, Ken Banks, to reflect on the role that social media has played in the history and development of FrontlineSMS. The FrontlineSMS Twitter page (credit: laurawhudson) In a recent BBC Future article I wrote about the “democratisation of development”.... Read More
Designing for the REAL 95%
As occasionally happens, Ken and I find ourselves on opposite sides of the world at conferences this week. Ken is at Mobile Web in Africa 2010, in Johannesburg, and I’m hereby asking him to tell you all about it here when he gets a minute. \o/ I’m at Design for Persuasion in Ghent, Belgium, with a room full of people who’ve never heard of FrontlineSMS – this... Read More
Your stories are our bread and butter
Friday morning saw me zooming up Portobello Road in west London, cursing the tourists and looking forward to a large flat white with some new acquaintances – I was meeting with a couple of people have just started to use FrontlineSMS for campaigning. This is an increasingly common, and always delightful, part of my job. I generally pepper people with questions, exclaim ‘that’s... Read More
Using SMS in disaster response – and preparedness
A view over Grahamstown from Rhodes U campus A couple of weeks ago I had the great pleasure, and honour, of joining a wonderful panel, including Carel Pedre, Haiti DJ and activist, and Rory Williams of Carbonsmart.com, at the 5th Digital Citizen Indaba in Grahamstown, South Africa. The brief was to talk about digital communication in the context of natural disasters and climate... Read More
Celebrating the ecosystem approach
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... Read More
Ushering in our Project Manager
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... Read More
