Hello all,

I am back from the 1st International Conference on "M4D": Mobile communication 
technology for development in Karlstad Sweden. http://m4d.humanit.org/

There were a lot of good presentations. Some of the presentations focused on 
specific projects while others (in particular the keynotes) were broader. John 
Traxler, Jonathan Donner, Katrin Verclas, Richard Heeks, Victor Bahl were some 
of the people there. My sense is that there were a lot of good mobile (or 
wireless) focused papers were presented. Jonathan and Katrin gave a nice paper 
on mobile development projects presented at the MobileActive conference where 
they developed a taxonomy of the focus of the projects, the technical basis of 
the project, etc. Richard Heeks also gave a keynote where he talked about the 
need for development projects that seek to play on the experiences and 
expertise of the people who are the users of the eventual technology.

I was also able to talk with Katrin Verclas from MobileActive 
(http://mobileactive.org/). It is an interesting group that is much more action 
focused than the more traditional research community. They are doing a lot of 
interesting work on the pricing of mobile telephony around the world. Some of 
this data is available on their site. In addition they are working in the area 
of mobile communication and the delivery of health in developing countries. 
Finally, Richard Heeks told about the upcoming ICT4D conference in coming up in 
April (17 - 19) in Qatar. Bill Gates will be the keynote speaker.

The mobile for development field as well as the broader ICT for development 
field is an exciting group of people that I am just now starting to better 
understand.

Rich L.



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