technology

SocialEdge kicked off a new discussion yesterday, led by Ashoka's own Rosa Wang.  Continuing on the heels of Tech4Society earlier this month, here's where the discussion starts:

"Technology & Social Innovations

Developing technologies that solve the right problems can be enormously challenging, and then bringing them to the people who need them even more so. Social entrepreneurs from around the world met in Hyderabad earlier this month to share what they have learned about the challenges and successes of technological innovation to serve the poor. Let’s take this further in our discussion here."

Rosa shares a bit about the attendees, connections, learning and conversations what went on at Hyderabad, and opens the same questions to the rest of us:

The Tech Awards, a signature program of The Tech Museum, honors innovators from around the world who are applying technology to address humanity’s most urgent challenges.

This is a great opportunity for social innovators in tech and invention, for funding and for recognition.  Last year, Ashoka-Lemelson Fellow Joseph Adelegan won the cash prize in his category for his "Cows to Kilowats" program, and Fellows Howard Weinstein and Bright Simons were named Laureates for their work creating the Solar Ear and mPedigree, respectively.

Image Source: Kopernik

Kopernik is a group of former UN workers and today, Feb 19th, they are launching Kopernik—www.thekopernik.org—an online store of technology designed for the developing world.

According to Ewa Wojkowska, Co-Founder of Kopernik:

"The technology addresses simple but critical needs—solar power, self-adjusting eyeglasses and quick water filtration, for example.  

As Haiti continues to clear the rubble, as a measure of stability comes to Sudan, as Sri Lanka holds a bitter peace, a new development opportunity presents itself in some of the world’s poorest and most troubled places."

Here is their press release announcing the launch:

When the website of an "appropriate" technology takes the time to explicitly state the user requirements taken into condsideration when designing and creating the device, I become all the more interested in their product.

The team at JustMilk has done just that. Their goal is to prevent the transmission of HIV between mother and child.
"Our approach is to modify an existing nipple shield by adding a non-woven disk (cotton-wool) containing a common microbicide compound that inactivates the HIV without harming the baby.  This allows the mother to directly feed the baby rather than having to collect and heat the milk, which can result in social stigma."

I came accross the JustMilk team last year and had the pleasure of chatting with them. Since then, they have started researching the application of additional vitamins and minerals to the textile disk, which currently acts as the mechanism by which the breastmilk is filtered.

In addition to the six user requirements the JustMilk team has identified, I encourage you to read the testimonials recieved by professionals in HIV-affected regions. The information they provided to the team is enlightening, straightforward, and extremely thoughftul.

Thanks to a tip from my colleague Beth Jenkins, I enthusiastically read The Harvard Business Review’s List: Breakthrough Ideas for 2010. The entire article is a nice, quick read that will get you thinking about a wide variety of issues – from how we can better license technology to manage people to financing energy alternatives. I immediately focused on the second idea on the list, “The Technology That Can Revolutionize Health Care”.

The author is Dr. Ronald Dixon, Director of Virtual Practice Management at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, MA shows how simple things like phone calls and email can have a dramatic effect on the care of patients – making it better, easier and ultimately cheaper.

While reading the piece, I was relieved to read his perspective – he knows that these tools can be very effective, but must wait until the rules change in order to fully capitalize on the system. The two main barriers -- a hospital’s need to be able to charge a fee for a doctor’s time (emailing, calling, etc.) and the inability of information from emails between a patient and doctor cannot be included in the patient’s health record – are significant. However, the examples of how these tools can really make a difference in a person’s care are significant.

Here's an upcoming event, put on in part by Ashoka and Changemakers:

Ashoka hopes that you can join us on January 24, 2010 for the kick-off of Sci Ed Innovators in New York City.  This event is bringing together a dynamic group of innovative people and organizations to plan an exciting initiative to transform the teaching of science education in the United States.

Sex::Tech is an upcoming conference dedicated to technology and sexual health, this February 26-27 in San Francisco, CA.

That's what you thought it was going to be about, right?  So the title earns it a little extra buzz—that's a great thing for something as important as sexual health.

From the Sex::Tech website:

"The Internet and mobile technologies have strengthened youth networks, provided new avenues for expression, and increased youth access to tools and information designed to improve their sexual health. Sex::Tech explores available tools and methods for reaching youth with culturally appropriate STD/HIV prevention and sex education interventions. Technology developers, accidental techies, educators, researchers, youth, public health professionals, activists are all welcome. It's time to show what you know and learn something new. Join us!"

Sounds like an excellent opportunity to learn about and share the latest developments and uses of technology in promoting sexual health, reaching audiences, educating youth and others, and making resources accessible.  Even if sexual health's not your focus, you might be able to learn about how to apply the same successful technologies and methods to your work too.

Road to Hyderabad Lesson #10

Capturing the Knowledge

One of the fantastic things about getting social entrepreneurs together is all of hte knowledge and lessons and trends that come out of those sorts of meetings.  One of the tricky things is how to go about capturing and processing that knowledge.

Sometimes the easiest way to draw lessons learned and trending topics out of a meeting is simply to record EVERYTHING and analyze it later.

But its one thing to have transcripts of the conversations and panels and meetings, its another to know what the mood and atmosphere was behind the words recorded.  When you have both, the word-for-word and the atmosphere, its much easier to draw conclusions about what's important to share and analyze.  Its possible to even pick up on trends that people didn't mention outright but that were touched upon by everyone.

Six months ago we started the AshokaTECH blog! Ashoka's blog about technology and invention.

And this was our very first post! Ah the memories!

One of my favorite subjects under the technology branch is how the intersection of anthropological research methods, like user studies, and engineering is being used to for social good. Like the work of Ashoka-Lemelson Fellow Pradip Sarmah--he observed two challenges for Rickshaw drivers in Rural India: 1) Rickshaws are typically very heavy, and 2) they are expensive.  He put 1 and 2 together and brought in a team of designers to come up with a light-weight, inexpensive version of the originals.  He even went a step further and created a lending system so that these Rickshaw drivers could own the vehicles and be self-sufficient.  Learn more about Pradip's work here. And if you are hungry for more Design and Social Change stories be sure to visit: Ideo, Design for the other 90%, Engineers without Borders.

Reaching the Audiences that aren't in the Room

Often times, your second-most important audience, maybe even your most important audience, is not in the room.

The point of a meeting or a collaboration, especially among social entrepreneurs, is usually to catalyze forward action on a new innovation, replication, or policy; but no matter what the goal, rarely is every important player in the room.  For a new innovation to truly take off, maybe it requires some sort of policy change or tax incentive.  Perhaps a potential replication partner couldn't make the meeting, what do they need to know to inspire them and enable them to move forward anyway?

Collaboration events and meeting inspire high hopes and calls for action, but even the best post-gathering intentions can quickly unravel if the right non-attendees aren't also somehow moved or touched by the content.