Mobile telephony: Empowering women and paving the way for m-development #ict4d

Jyoti Macwan, General Secretary, SEWA
Valiben Macwana, Executive Committee member
Smita Bhatnagar, Senior Coordinator, SEWA

When was the last time you met a truly empowered woman? Well, earlier in the week, I was lucky enough to meet Valiben Macwana, one of the 1.7 million empowered self-employed women's association (SEWA) members.

SEWA, based in Ahmedabad, India, is an organization of self-employed women workers who earn their living thanks to their small business. These women do not get a monthly salary, nor enjoy benefits like those of their sisters in the "organized labour sector". And to make matters worse, it seems like these women are "uncounted, undercounted and invisible".

What is amazing about these women, is their extraordinary will power and their openness to new ideas and innovations.

With a beautiful smile and a lot of pride, Valiben Macwana shared her inspiring story of the day that she received a mobile phone. Macwana's story is yet another example of the power and potential of how mobile telephony is a catalyst to eradicate hunger and poverty.

Her first experience with what transformed her business into a successful one was one of utter fear.

"I was so scared when the phone started moving, that I almost threw it out of the window", said Macwana. "I then gave it to my children, who know more about these things, and they explained that when the phone vibrates, this means I have a message. And you know what was the message? It was the price for the commodity I wanted to sell".

Macwana may be illiterate, however, she knows how to make the most of the information she receives on her mobile phone. She looked at the information on her screen and diligently transcribed it on a piece of paper. Thanks to this information, she then  decided it was a profitable proposition to make a journey to the local market.

"Thanks to my mobile phone, now I only go to the market when I know I can sell my products, this way I can save on the bus fare". Saving the bus fare may seem something trivial to some, however, for someone who lives on $1.25 a day, it means putting more food on the table for the family, or buying a pair of shoes for the children or sending the kids to school.

Macwana's mobile phone also acts as a mini Amazon.com, allowing her to take orders. Knowing the demand has allowed her to plant the right crop in the right quantities, thus avoid producing in excess and being faced with storage challenges.

There is no doubt that we moved from anecdotal examples of how mobile telephony and ICT4D in general are improving lives of millions of people. What we, as development workers need to do, is to make sure that  rural development and agriculture related activities include and embed ICT4D solutions and consider embracing and adopting m-development!

Exploring the untamable land of organizational learning #kmers

Last week my knowledge management journey took me to the fascinating and “untamable” land of organizational learning. I've embarked on this journey to get a better understanding of what it will take to better facilitate the capturing, sharing and generation of new knowledge.

Let’s start from the beginning. It was reassuring the see that when faced with the challenge of collecting information to undertake any type of activity and “to do a job” the inhabitants of the organizational learning land CONNECT with their peers and consult various sources to COLLECT information.

They seem to have well consolidated and reliable networks of stakeholders and peers who they connect with. They also manage to find their way through various sources to collect content. What remains a challenge and a gap for many, is SHARING the acquired knowledge. 

I am going to use Dave Snowden’s, the father of Cynefin framework and a remarkable KM mentor, seven rules of knowledge management as a framework to share my personal discoveries and reflections: 

• Knowledge can only be volunteered, it cannot be conscripted. What came out loud and clear from our conversations, is that people “volunteer” knowledge when asked and they do so more with those with whom they have established a trust relationship, otherwise, they share information and not necessarily knowledge (and yes, there is a difference between information and knowledge) 
• We only know what we know when we need to know it. This is my favourite, because it is so simple and so TRUE. The majority of us knows what we know when we need to know it. There are however, a number of colleagues who in their own words have “learning as part of their DNA”. They also make “time”  to learn.  That said, they learn about the things that they need to know and perhaps during that journey, they may cross boundaries and explore new territories. 
• In the context of real need few people will withhold their knowledge. I alluded to this earlier on. When someone asks us for something and we know they need it - hardly anyone withholds knowledge.  In Dave’s words “A genuine request for help is not often refused unless there is l a previous history of distrust. On the other hand ask people to codify all that they know in advance of a contextual enquiry and it will be refused (in practice its impossible anyway). Linking and connecting people is more important than storing their artifacts.”
• Everything is fragmented.  The conversations confirmed that most knowledge sharing is done informally, and that “informal” works. There was a plea not to formalize informal practices, as this may risk to stifle and kill any knowledge sharing moment. On this issue, here is what Dave says: “We evolved to handle unstructured fragmented fine granularity information objects, not highly structured documents. People will spend hours on the internet, or in casual conversation without any incentive or pressure. However creating and using structured documents requires considerably more effort and time. Our brains evolved to handle fragmented patterns not information.”
• Tolerated failure imprints learning better than success.  This topic is close to my heart, and I hope that sooner rather than later we’ll institutionalize the importance of learning from failures without falling in blame game trap. Dave argues that “attempting to impose best practice systems is flying in the face of over a hundred thousand years of evolution that says it is a bad thing.” I must admit, that while the word failure was never mentioned in our conversations, on the other hand we did talk about best practices and how we should be developing and sharing best practices. I am not going to venture in this mine field, however, I will say that we need to internalize that importance of learning from failures and that there is now enough evidence that success always starts with failure and that if we go about dealing with failures in the right way - that is to say understand the complexity of the issue at hand, we can definitely learn a lot and avoid to reinvent the wheel. I guess, without getting too overcomplicated, I am talking about “learning by doing”. At the end of the day, is that the best way to learn and how we’ve all learnt? 
• The way we know things is not the way we report we know things. There is so much truth and wisdom in this statement. This poses a big challenge to KM efforts, as when we become too process oriented we fail to share our tacit knowledge and stop at sharing the structured process which is is far less knowledge intensive and interesting than the tacit knowledge
• We always know more than we can say, and we always say more than we can write down. Dave considers this as the most important rule. Here is what he says on this one: “ The process of taking things from our heads, to our mouths (speaking it) to our hands (writing it down) involves loss of content and context. It is always less than it could have been as it is increasingly codified.” In our conversations,  time and again we heard colleagues talk about the challenge of analyzing, distilling and sharing in a compelling manner. Almost all of them indicated that they do not have time nor are equipped to do so.  They asked to have someone that could help them sift through their valuable knowledge, identify the pearls and share these widely.  Here is my dilemma, if this is done by a third party, is this a second-hand codification, which means a greater loss of knowledge? 

Recurring themes

Here are some of the recurrent challenges that emerged during this week’s conversations:

• Knowledge sharing as a behaviour and competency is not appreciated and rewarded
• We are consistently fighting to meet deadlines and unable to make the necessary time to:
• Reflect
• Analyze
• Take stock and learn from our own and each other’s experience
• Adjust
• Learn
• Unlearn
• Share
• Contribute to the learning loop
• Capture and cherish knowledge intensive moments
  There was a concrete suggestion to institutionalize systematic “reflection time” as a form of incentive to improve knowledge sharing culture
• People do not have time nor make time to read 
• Not everyone is skilled to analyze, write and share knowledge

There was a demand for help to tap into individual knowledge’s and experience and turn the tacit into explicit knowledge - in other words codify the knowledge - albeit the risk of loosing the real knowledge, as explained by Dave, nonetheless, it is better than doing nothing :)

More questions than answers

After these rich set of conversation and having spent some time reflecting on them and sleeping over them, I ask myself:

• Can we continue doing KM informally or is it a MUST to formalize everything and at what cost? 
• How can we increase the percentage of people who share knowledge beyond those who like to or believe in and continue doing so informally?
• Why is it that we can make time for things that we care about and not necessarily to share what we’ve learnt? And how can make sharing knowledge something that everyone cares about?
• Considering that colleagues enjoy learning from each other, why is it that people do not systematically take the initiative of organizing informal gatherings with heterogenous groups such as the ones we did last week and share their experience and knowledge?
• What are the risks of delegating distilling and anlayzing knowledge to third parties? 
• What are the pros and cons of using the same set of third parties (consultants) to do core business?
• Who ultimately holds the knowledge? The employee? The consultant? Both? and does it matter?
• Why do not we talk about failures? Do we sincerely believe that what ever we do is a success?
• How much of the knowledge gets lost in the codification process and what are risks?
• When was the last time we asked our stakeholders how useful is our codified knowledge for them, how did they use it and how did it help them do something differently or better?

One of the first things I learnt on my KM journey was that for knowledge management initiatives to be useful and meaningful, they need to contribute to and support organization’s corporate mission. This is why it really does not make sense to have knowledge management specific indicators, rather the KM indicators should be part and parcel of the overall organizational indicators! (I know this is a contentious issue...) I also learnt that for KM initiatives to be successful, at organizational level, knowledge sharing should be a corporate priority. 

None of what I am saying is new nor is it rocket science.  However, I still have to come across an organization that has managed to implement these simple statements seamlessly and effectively. I know it is not easy, as we are talking about how people interact with each other. So, if there is anyone out there who has managed to implement KM activities that contribute directly to the organization’s mission and where staff consider knowledge sharing a corporate priority and are sharing knowledge across organizational boundaries, please give a shout and share your wisdom!

After action review
In closing this blogpost, I want to do an after action review of the process we went through last week.

The small heterogeneous groups proved to be a smashing success. It allowed people to have a conversation. And I cannot underscore enough the value of having a conversation, instead of being talked at and talked to...... Asking colleagues to share how they as INDIVIDUALS go about accessing knowledge, allowed them to tell a REAL and PERSONAL story which was grounded in reality, as opposed to something hypothetical.  We should have allocated two hours instead of 90 minutes from the beginning. All sessions ended up being 2 hours anyways. I am sorry we did not invite colleagues from all over the house and focussed just on a limited subset.

What I learnt? Yet again, I learnt that nothing can replace the power and potential of a free-flowing conversation. I also learnt that it is hard for people to come together and they need someone to facilitate this coming together. At the beginning I had difficulty understanding this, but now I get it. 

A lot of people are  party animals, however, in real life, not everyone is throwing parties every night. But if you are a party animal and get invited to a party, you will definitely make a point to go to the party, or at least drop by. Using this analogy, I now have the proof that everyone wants to share something with someone and what we need to do is to jump start the process by playing party host and inviting people to come to the party. If the parties are consistently good, fun and add value to our work, we will keep coming and who knows, maybe sooner rather than later, we will start throwing our own parties!!!

We’ll have more conversations next week, so watch out this space for updates. I love to hear about your KM journey experiences. Please share your thoughts, aspirations and advice. And thanks for listening.

What does World AIDS day mean for you? #wad2012

Today the world observes World AIDS day.

We observe this day in the memory and in honour of the many who have lost their young lives to this pandemic.

We observe this day to pay tribute to the many committed and passionate scientists, virologists, activists, mothers, fathers, brothers, sons, sisters, husbands, wives, children, grandparents, uncles, aunts and friends who incessantly and tirelessly for the last 30 years are fighting against and raising awareness about this pandemic.

We observe this day to fight the infinite ignorance of many who see this pandemic as a stigma.

We observe this day to pay tribute to Willy Rozenbaum who thirty years ago came across a mysterious new syndrome that was taking the lives of young people and the best thing he could do was to ask  Prof Luc Montagnier for a consultation.

We observe this day to pay tribute to two colleagues of Global Programme on AIDS at the World Health Organization,  James W. Bunn and Thomas Netter and their boss Dr Mann who back in August 1987 came up with the idea of observing World AIDS day.

World AIDS day means a lot to me. And this is for a simple reason. I lost a cousin and many friends to this terrible pandemic.

I was angry when I lost them. Angry because at the time, being infected was a death sentence. And this terrible death sentence was not just medical one, it was a social death sentence. And that is what made me furious.

Thirty years later, science has made progress and now those infected have a higher life expectancy - albeit not all over the world.

BUT and there is a big BUT here...... The society has not made much progress. HIV and AIDS is still a stigma and those affected are subject to discrimination.

World AIDS Day message is Getting to Zero. Let's make sure that  getting to zero is not just in terms of infection, but also getting to zero in terms of discrimination. 

Sailing rough waters without a compass....

When was the last time you sailed through rough waters?

Sometimes such an adventure can be fun, other times it can be very stressful and draining. I guess the important thing is not to lose your sense of direction, navigate the unfriendly waters in a way that you survive and come out of the experience not badly bruised and hurt.

Sometimes when we are sailing unfriendly waters, we feel lonely, frustrated and irritated. There are many days we are surrounded by dark clouds, thunderstorms and hurricanes and we feel like we have lost our sense of bearing and keep going in circles.

The most annoying thing is that we know we are going in the wrong direction and do not seem to find the compass that can show us the right way.

And it is in these moments that our worse nightmares come true because we get caught in a downward spiral and in a web of negativity.

So how to can one change the trend? What can we do to take off the blindfold so that we find the compass and get back in the groove?

I am not going to suggest to check out the self-help section on Amazon, rather to start looking in your heart, go back to your vocation and passion.

Here is what happened to me. The other day, I was lucky enough to do something that I really enjoy..... I had the pleasure of sharing something I care about and really believe in with a group of people who were craving to learn and achieve something big.

Thanks to this rewarding experience, I realized that the compass was always there and that I was looking for it in the wrong place. I was so caught in the downward spiral that I was unable to see the walls which I could use to crawl back up.

This little miracle made me realize that one should never ever:

• stop pursuing one's vocation
• self censor oneself
• let the negativity and the meanness of mediocre and insecure people bring you down

A good friend of mine, recently told me, "when people want to shoot down your achievements, take it as an honor."

I must admit, only yesterday I really understood the wisdom of this statement.

So what did sailing rough waters without a compass teach me?

I learnt that in these moments there is no need to panic. You have to remember that the compass is in your heart. You need to find your vocation and pursue exactly that, as that is your strength.

I also learnt that one's convictions, principals, values, reasoning and logic can threaten the people around you, and thus as a result they go out of their way to make you become the person you are not.

So the best thing to do is to be true to yourself. Be the real and genuine person that you are.

My biggest take home message is to be true to yourself.... When you see you are falling into a downward spiral, stop, search in your heart and find the one thing you are most passionate about and that gives you most satisfaction and do exactly that.

Last but not least, honor yourself and never let the negativity and envy of others bring you down. You are million times more stronger than them and also worth million times more than them.

Remember, those of us who are true to our convictions, values will never ever sail rough waters without a compass!!!!

Is social media’s age of innocence over? Is the magic kingdom of social media at risk?

Lately I’ve been wondering to what extent social media has lost its free spirit and soul.

Remember the early days when we all shared our uncensored thoughts on twitter, when we could blog from our heart and show our passion about a topic; the wonderful days when it was safe to be controversial.

With time something has changed and it seem as if we’ve forgotten that social media is about conversations and about giving voice to people.

What is ironic, is that while we praise social media’s power and reach when it topples regimes which are not to our liking we do not do the same when it comes to accepting controversy and listening to opinions which may be different from ours.

Is the age of spontaneity of social media over? Is social media leaving its childhood and entering its adulthood – the age of restrained reasoning?

Are we inadvertently putting a leash on this global megaphone by restraining ourselves to share our personal views, aspirations, frustrations, dreams and ideas in fear of retaliation?

Are we inadvertently transforming the very tool that gave a voice to the voiceless to a lame mainstream mouthpiece?

Have we deliberately blurred the boundaries of private and public to safeguard the interest of the big boys and girls?

I do not know. What I do know is that there is definitely less controversial, thought provoking and innovative ideas floating around social media channels.

What we are seeing is corporations usurping social media channels to push out their products and their messages. I am not suggesting that there is anything wrong in them doing so, provided they are willing to engage in a conversation both with those share and do not share their same ideas, convictions, aspirations and ideologies.

For me the beginning of the end was two years ago when  Octavia Nasr was asked to leave CNN after expressing her personal opinion in a tweet.

Are we – the social media junkies of this world – going to let the rest of the world put a muzzle on us? Can we join forces and commit that we’ll continue to express our ideas freely and respectfully? Can we go back to the early days of social media, the days when we were all spontaneous, the days when we did not worry about social media guidelines and good practices?

Why are we accepting to restrict and restrain ourselves? Social media is our tool. We built our communities around it and with it….. If we do something wrong, the community will let us know. We are accountable to our community and do not need anyone else to tell us what we can and cannot do. Let’s not allow the bad guys invade our magic kingdom!

Fun facts and tidbits from #MashCon

• Last day of #MashCon, so far Googleplus was only mentioned once at #MashCon

• Did you know that Saturday morning is the best time to post on Pinterest?

• Did you know that if you put a + at the end of a bit.ly link you will get the statistics behind the link?

• Ran into Pete Cashmore a couple of times, but never saw him with an iPad, or any other hand-held device or a laptop for that matter

• Only once heard a phone ringing :)

• Absolutely amazing moments hearing all the #MashCon folks typing on their keyboads the soundbites from .@cindygallop and .@adorvasv talk which were both absolutely awesome and inspiring :)

• Definitely Apple has the lion share at #MashCon

If you can't explain it in 140 characters, your idea is too complicated! Most popular Tweet from #mashcon

June Cohen, Executive Producer, TED Media

WOW... Day two at Mashable Connect 2012 was an awesome experience. Where to start? We had the privilege of hearing from 14 inspiring and visionary thought leaders.  And suffice to say that despite being jet lagged and have slept only for three hours,  I managed to stay awake and cherish every minute of these 14 stimulating sessions.

I am not going to give a blow by blow of each session, because I would not be able to do justice and will probably I'll end up doing a lousy job.  

I think what I'll do is to share my take away messages from these thought-provoking sessions and share what were some of the common threads. And probably I will do so in installments :)

Evolution of TedTalks

June Cohen (@junecohen) Executive Producer of TED Media shared the behind the scenes and the backstory of TedTalks. Her talk was so inspiring that deserves to feature among the thousand other inspiring TedTalks. I wish she would  post it on TedTalks. 

Did you know that TedTalks started in 1984 and initially it was a techie talk? Is not it incredible how these talks have transformed. This was a great uplifting message. Because it shows that change can happen. June shared how this happened, and in doing so, I think she summarized what ended being the "fil rouge" of the day:

• feed the hunger of participation
• encourage sharing - no one has the monopoly of good ideas
• listen to your users 
• reach out to people everywhere
• do not forget to tell a story
• engage emotionally
• focus - no butterfly syndrome!

As a development worker, I got so excited when she shared the example of TEDx in the slums of Kibera, just outside of Nairobi in Kenya.  And I almost jumped out of my skin when I heard her talk about the TEDx in a box, 

June and her colleagues realized that TEDx events are a great learning opportunity and a source of inspiration for people in developing countries. However, lack of infrastructure often prevents them from  organizing such events. This is why they launched the "TEDx in a Box" programme. 

The programme is still in pilot phase. This magic box has a projector, a PA system, a DVD player, batteries and inverter, two camcorders, a tripod, a power strip and an SD card. It comes with a quick guide providing guidance on how to organize events and use the equipment.

It sounds like the best thing after sliced better, and is something that I would like to definitely explore and see how and where we can use it in my organization.

Leslie Berland,
SVP of Digital Partnerships & Development,
American Express

American Express goes digital

Those of us working in big organizations know that it is not always easy to herald in new ideas. 

Leslie Berland, SVP of Digital Partnerships and Development from American Express (@leslieberland) eloquently expressed the challenges we've all faced in her opening remarks: "When a big company enters social media, it's like giving birth". 

Sounds familiar? Leslie shared how American Express shed its old skin and successfully entered the digital and social media world and her nuggets of wisdom are very similar to how June and her colleagues are engaging with their audience at Ted:

• identify the unmet need. In other words ask yourself, is there a problem to be solved?
• prioritize the biggest business opportunities
• drive speed to market. This one is very dear to most of us who have helped our organizations embrace 21st century.
  Leslie talked about the need of changing internal processes to keep up with external realities, to think of what has not been done before and re-imagine how to do things. This very point came out loud and clear, in the afternoon during the futureproofing your brand session with Cindy Gallop.
  Cindy said we need to reinvent our business to do business in the modern world and need to change our business models so that we can engage with our audience. ENGAGE and FOCUS were among the key concepts of the day!
• maximize leverage. This point too, came out during the futureproofing your brand session, where Cindy talked about the importance of creating and nurturing a community
• create authentic relationships

Leslie talked about how for eight months, the Amex folks listened to the chatter to find out more about their audience and better understand their needs. Also, as a global organization to make sure their campaign succeeded they involved all their various country offices.

My take home messages from Leslie's talk was to ENGAGE and FOCUS. She said: "90% of our strategy is about what we do not know and what we do not do".  

The bottom line is, if you are going social, you may as well just focus all your energy on going social. As Leslie said, if your campaign is on Facebook, do your advertising there.... This is no-brainer, right? and yet, it seems to be a very hard concept to internalize for many!

She also said: "think like a start-up, be rooted in reality with an eye towards scaling". She then went on to say how important it is to identify those things which are not "non-replicable" and do them and while doing them, forge deep partnerships and stay authentic.

During the question and answer session, Leslie was asked how much Amex spends on its social media presence and how the team was configured. 

No one likes to talk about budgets... Suffice to say, that it was pretty clear that Amex is spending good money on it social presence. She also said that she will never outsource "community development", emphasizing the importance of the business staying close to its client-base. After all is not that called accountability and when you go social, you need to create and nurture a community.

Poter Novelli has done a great job summarizing Leslie's talk. So, make sure you read her blogpost.

#Mashcon soundbite of the day

I need to close this blogpost, or else I will be late. More to come later and I want to do so, with the  soundbite of the day which may be heresy for many... but whether you like it or not this is the reality.... so, just get your head around it!

 "If you can't explain it in 140 characters, your idea is too complicated!"