Reflections on ICTD 2012

Reflecting on the ICTD2012 conference, I think back to David Kobia's words what does the 'D' really mean in ICT4D. When people think about development they are thinking about people in 'poor' African countries using ICT to improve healthcare or farming. But what about dropping OLPCs in Alabama for kids that are struggling in inner-city schools or what about native American indians who don't have access to broadband Internet. I think a little self-reflection is important when US donars and NGOs are thinking about the 'warm fuzzy' that people get when a talk is given at an American University with pictures of white students with their arms around a black kid in Africa.

I have come to realize that ICT4D cannot even begin unless the whole human expeience is involved in the effort to improve peoples lives with technology. But long before the technology is even thought about, relationship needs to happen. This relationship can only start when you begin with humaility and servanthood. If you arrive in a community with an attitude of being a champion or a saviour or a master, you've failed before you've even begun.

We have received a grant for a project in Africa, with a concrete set of projects and outcomes and I am wondering if we haven't set ourselves up for failure before we've even begun. Ironically we've come pretty far in our US labs with all these projects. But they've been set up as technology projecs. We will fix X with technology Y. I am thinking that maybe they should be scoped as we will enable person/community X to be more succesful in doing Y and let the technology solution flow out of this. Of course funders deal with strict budgets, deliverables, skills development, in terms of PhDs completed. I wish they could be scoped based purely on impact and community empowerment.

I noticed a number of projects that often started with a fixed objective but discovered useful things on the way. The water can tracking project comes to mind, where they discovered outliers which were due to fetching water from polluted springs, information that would be useful to instill change in water collection behaviour to prevent water-born diseases but this was outside the scope of the project. I wish that all funders involved in ICT4D could follow the model of "participatory action research" in which the community, through "free attitude interviews" or other means become part of the research agenda. We may scope some broad set of outcomes but the details develop as we work with communities.

Currently I'm stuck between some technology and a hard place. I need to graduate with a PhD in computer science that needs to produce some novel knowldege in the networking for rural regions space, developing new wireless protocols in 'white spaces' - spectrum available in the TV bands, producing solutions that make the Internet more efficient in rural regions etc. But the part I'm grappling with is that all of this is pretty useless to the community we are working in if Internet costs don't come down. Its going to be a hard sell to show community memebers this wonderful fast link, if the original problem of cost is not solved. It makes me feel that I am approaching the community as a lab rather than as a servant. I don't knwo the solution yet - but I don't think I'm supposed to. I think when we approach ICTD4R projects we need to relinquich some of our 'problem solving' mindset that always wants to solve something quickly.

I am so grateful that I stayed in a youth hostel where a whole lot of ICTD conference attendees stayed in dormitories instead of isolated rooms in a fancy hotel. This way I got to have a lot more conversations with other practioners in the field. What I noticed is that whenever I spoke to researchers or entrepeneurs from Africa, the focus was always on 'who' rather than 'what' After a conversation with someone from Africa, I almost had a mental social graph of all the people working in this space and how they are connected to each other and what they can do to work more closely together. When speaking to US students it was always about what they had done. This was an observation for young people of the same age.

Yes protests also happen in California - lots of them

I thought I left all the rolling strike and protest action behind when I left South Africa in September, but I arrived in California to protests almost every few weeks on campus about a whopping 30% increase in student fees. Basically the state budget is in a serious crisis and UC which is a public school has to pass the buck on to the students. The only difference in South Africa is that people actually dance when they strike and protest - here they just stand around with boards and listen to speeches. I listened to one speech by a woman professor who was organizing a teach-in and she mentioned that she had done this in the 80's to protest against Apartheid. Remember the US and Great Britain were the last to impose sanctions on South Africa becuase Thatcher and Reagon liked the fact that we were fighting communism.

Hot springs and nudists

Sticking with the mountain exploration theme over the past 2 weeks - we went hot spring hunting today. Our neighbours across from us in family housing decided to join us. About 20 miles from our house near Gaviota beach that we visited a few weeks ago we found a spring called Gaviota peak hot spring. The trailhead was easy to get to and it starts through an amazing meadow of Oak trees. After a short 1 mile uphill climb you get to a narrow path which leads to the spring - you can smell the Sulfur long before you get to the spring. There was a nudist bathing in the spring and at first there was this awkward pause where we think what now - but we just decided to join him in our costumes - the water was really warm and the nudist turned out to be an very interesting environmental engineer from Berkeley who had been to South Africa - so I ended up having a long chat with him about SA.

Gaviota hot springs 8 November

We found some crazy neighbours on halloween that also like dancing

Our neighbors across from us in Family housing decided to join us on a halloween walk with our kids . They also have two small boys who were eager to "trick or treat" at all the houses. On the way back from amassing a full bag of cavity producing things wrapped in foil we heard some African music at our community hall so we decided to dance - here's a video. (Luke and their boy were dressed as vampires)

A hiking trail that starts in the backyards of the mansions of Montecito

We went walking today on McMenemy trail on the mountain slopes facing Santa Barbara where all the wealthy people live - its really weird because the trail starts by walking through the back gardens of all these mansions - I was also amazed to see an armed response sign - the first time I've seen this in Santa Barbara. Pictures are all a bit out of focus because I had Benjamin in a pouch and the light was bad and he was moving around while I was taking the pictures. You will also see the clavicle splint that Luke is wearing - looks like back back straps without wearing a back pack

McMenemy Trail Santa Barbara 1 November 2009

Carpinteria beach - the best beach in Santa Barbara country

I think this rates as the best beach we've seen so far. The water was a perfect 18 degrees celcius, the beach sand was white and not the oily grey that you see on many other beaches from the oil seeps.

Carpinteria state beach 25 October 2009

Fascinating rock formation on Gaviota Beach

We did our usual Sunday drive of discovery and found an unusual beach 20 miles out of Santa Barbara which have rocks which expose very clear perfectly angled rock strata. It also had a wonderful collection of star fish which entertained Samuel and Luke for hours. We wanted to continue our journey on this coastal road all the way to Lompoc but discovered that a large section of this coast consists of privately owned roads - really sad. What you will also find about 20 miles north of the beach we were on is Vanderberg Air Force Base which is the official West coast launch site for Space shuttles. No space shuttles that we know about have been launched from there but I have been told by somebody who went by train past the AFB that he saw a camouflaged full size military space shuttle on the launch pad which is completely off the record.

Gaviota state park October 2009