Project presentation at IAMCR 2015 in Montreal

I was pleased to debut a short film about our partnership development project at the International Association of Media and Communication Researchers (IAMCR) Conference in Montreal, on July 16.  We had a small but interested group at the presentation with lots of good questions about the role of the technology stewards in the project.

I'd like to extend my thanks to Ranmalee Gamage and the Dinesh Gunaratne from Skitworks for their contributions to the video.  Nuwan Waidyanatha also played an important role in coordinating the conversation as we planned and edited the video.

Digital Technology for Community Engagement: A talk at the University of Alberta Faculty of Extension

University of Alberta, Faculty of Extension, Engagement Talks

On Thursday, March 12 the project Research Team was pleased to present our preliminary findings at the University of Alberta Faculty of Extension Engagement Talks. The audience comprised researchers and students interested in the use of text messaging for mobilizing knowledge in communities of practice.

The speakers were challenged to a discussion on the choice of using text messaging over other technologies. The pre-campaign survey results on the Farmers' choice of technology use is illustrated in the bargraph in the image below. It clearly shows that voice calls and radio are the technologies used mostly for seeking agriculture information. The question was, "why did the campaigns chose FrontlineSMS to serve in the preliminary activities of the campaign?"

Ken Banks, Kiwanja Foundation, illustrates in his social mobile's long tail graph that simple + low cost implementations are probabilistically higher to replicate. Therefore, the participatory approach to the campaign design along with the rapid prototyping exercises realized that the simple to use FrontlineSMS text-messaging would foster an immediate win and confidence building for the Community, Technology Stewards, and the Sponsors. Freedom Fone Interactive Voice Response system was perceived to be relatively complex and the chances of replication proved cumbersome. However, now that the primary campaign activities are complete and have proven success, the Department of Export Agriculture and Rangiri Radio Station are moving in to IVR supported implementations.

Farmers' choice of technology and preliminary campaign's choice of technology

  Other discussions were on the stratification of gender and age in realizing the disparities in the survey results. However, out analysis shows that there were no noticeable difference between the two genders in their choice of answer. The farmers interviewed were all between the age of 35-50 and the surveys did not capture youth farmers, for example.

A training Workshop on Interactive Voice Response for Department of Export Agriculture

Another Freedom fone (FF) workshop was conducted to train the Department of Export Agriculture (DOEA) staff in Kurunegala branch on 28 Jan 2015 at Wayamba University of Sri Lanka. 

DOEA previously introduced FrontlineSMS text messaging technology as part of our communication campaigns. They were actively using the SMS technology to interact with their farmer groups especially sending common message to farmers. DOEA experienced a low texting response rate by the farmers, partly because farmers are reluctant to use texting in part due to language barriers.  However, most interesting thing was after receiving a SMS from DOEA, farmers usually call back to confirm the message and/or ask more information about that. So, DOEA has taken up this insight and wants to test an IVR solution.

They were familiarized with implementing Freedom Fone--a low cost Interactive Voice Response solution (IVR)--for their farmer extension program.  DOEA staff is now well trained to use FF. We put less emphasis on technical background of the FF because they have not previous exposure to the Linux environment. 

They quickly realized the cost benefits and incremental effectiveness they gain from this IVR system and are pleased to use it for farmer extension program.  During the workshop they created a sample voice menu and tested. They need to further discuss the voice menu and content structure design with their administrative personnel (especially with Janaka) at DOEA as they roll out their implementation. 

IVR workshop for DOEA satff

Gordon's Talk at the University of Alberta

Stewarding Technology for Inclusive Innovation

Solar Powering the Turnkey FrontlineSMS

The turnkey solution design is such that we want the simple click of the power button to activate a pre-configured system for use. This would be for Freedom Fone, FrontlineSMS, and Ushahidi software applications as per the low cost voice, text-ing, and mapping technologies used in the project, for knowledge mobilization.

In this instance our focus was on testing a FrontlineSMS 1.6.2  installation. It was installed on a 215 x 60 x 190mm 1.5Kg Mini-PC with a Intel Atom dual-core 1.86 GHz processor, 2GB DDR RAM, 8 GB SSD ROM. The Mini-PC draws a 20W load and requires a DC 12V and 5A of power supply.

Recently we tested the turnkey to run on Solar Power. We installed a 165 x 25 x 1.4cm solar panel on top of the RDS office roof in Kaddirweli, Batticaloa district. The panel can generate up to 130W of power. We used a 12V 35A car battery (not the recommended expensive deep cell solar power battery) to store that solar panel generated electricity. A 12V 10A Charger Controller regulates the current between the solar panel, battery, and the load (i.e. Mini-PC).

Since the Charger Controller load connectors deliver 10A and the Mini-PC (load) draws only 5A the surplus 5A would charge the battery. We expect a minimum 6 hours of strong sunlight (see weatheronline for Batticaloa monthly/daily average sunlight). During that the Mini-PC will run on direct solar generated electricity, during day time. The battery would supplement that with another 8 hours during night time, which gives us a total of 14hour, according to our calculation. The next step is testing expected power consumption patterns.

Of cause it is hundred times more economical to consume power through the main grid to simply power the 20W computer, if the infrastructure is available. The solar powered Turnkey's utility is higher when we offer options to power a couple of light bulbs and providing mobile phone charging outlets through the same system. Our thinking is that the Mini-PC does not need to run 24/7. The community can decide to run it at certain hours; thus, there may be a surplus of power to use for other purposes.

We are readying for a campaign in Verugal and Kaddirvelli belonging to the war torn area in the Batticaloa District, Sri Lanka. It will involve farmers from the two villages.

In October 2013, we consulted the two communities during an expedition in determining the information needs. They were particularly interested in trying three activities:

• sharing local crop prices
• alerting elephant attacks
• flash flood warnings.

A primary reason to power the Turnkey with Solar energy was because Verugal community does not have access to the main national power grid. We realized that shortcoming, among five others, during our first visit with the community. Nevertheless, a solar powered low-cost ICT system could always be handy during a long power outage, such as one caused by a disaster.

During our field tests we realized that starting up the Turnkey FrontlineSMS should include "auto detecting" the ZTE MF637U and then connecting to the Cellular network Short Message Service.

Unfortunately FrontlineSMS could "auto detect" the dongle. That would have been the final step for a ready to use FrontlineSMS Turnkey solution. Now we are back to the drawing board to figure out how to complete that step. Otherwise, a human operator has to navigate through a computer screen to click the FrontlineSMS "Auto Detect" button.

Yet another iterative community centric development cycle: design, build, test, and re-design. However, development cycles with our low-cost Turnkey text-ing technology is quite promising - being able to fully run a FrontlineSMS installed Mini-PC with a car battery charged by a solar panel.

turnkey enhancements, lessons from sept Kuru-Batti prototyping

Gordon, Chandana, and I drove across Sri Lanka (nearly 820km) mainly testing the FrontlineSMS software. At the Wayamba University Workshop, we had the opportunity to test the Ushahid mapping and FreedomFone interactive voice software.

From those prototyping and workshop lessons, the points below should be considered for future improvements, in relation to the turnkey solution:

1. localized mobile phones - we noticed many farmers to carry phones with keypad and screens in Sinhala and Tamil. It was evident that SMS text from these mobile phones in Sinhala or Tamil would not trigger keyword enabled FrontlineSMS message forwards. Hence, FrontlineSMS would need to be improved to handle those utf-8 characters. Perhaps GUIs may need to be localized as well with features to transliterate with any non-latin scripting language.
2. Freedom Fone - must be properly tested in; especially, with the dongles to make it cost-effective. The content upload feature must be simplified by introducing a well developed menu for instructional information.This is a high prioroty because both the Radio stations and the Department of Export Agriculture are keen in using it for localized (Sinhala & Tamil) large vocabulary continuous speech (descriptive) messaging to campaign with farmers.
3. Bundle Ushahidi - would mean to include Ushahidi with FreedomFone and FrontlineSMS boxes. Ushahidi instance should function as a local-host with fixed maps. Ushahidi and Freedom Fone (exceptional to FrontlineSMS 2.0) should be accessible through the Mini-PC wifi with the Mini-PC serving as a localhost.
4. Solar charger - farmers in Vakarai live on in the farm lands that are 10 - 20 KM away from their homes. They carry two batteries and charge the dead batteries when they go to town or visit home. We need to design a solar powered battery that can power the 20 Watt Mini-PC for daily use over 12 hours and an additional 5 Watts that can be used to charge phones when that capacity is not used to power the Monitor or other add-ons.
5. Grab-n-Go Box - Although all the equipment can be easily fit in a tiny back-pack; it is ideal to fit them all in to a tool box type plastic container for easy-of-use and rapid operationalization.

While  improvement no. 1 with localization would be more of a subsequent phase longer term activity, the remaining improvements 2 - 5 can be achieved during this phase of the project.

Mini-PCs to surve as low-cost Turnkey Mapping, Text-ing, and Interactive Voice Servers

The image on the left is a low hardware configuration PC (personal computer). It is capable of functioning in the capacity of a Server serving 2-5 simultaneous users. This is not a restriction on the number users on an application, rather it is a restriction on the number of web sessions such as more than 5 administrators accessing Freedom Fone to configure it. The box comes in two flavours: Windows and Linux.

We have tested it to serve as a FrontlineSMS, Ushahidi, and Freedom Fone host. A dongle or mobile phone can be connected to one of the USB ports to get FrontlineSMS activated. A mobigator modem or Freedom Fone recommended dongles can be connected to the USB to get the interactive voice solution activated. Ushahidi can be installed with a Static IP (e.g. 192.168.2.200/ushahidi) for anyone to access within a LAN by connecting through Mini-PCs WiFi. The box does have a RJ45 port to connect to a WAN or the Internet to function outside the local area.

• The beauty of it is that one can install FrontlineSMS for text-ing, Ushahidi for mapping, and Freedom Fone for interactive voice solutions, configure it, plug it in and let it run.
• It is small enough to squeeze inside a table drawer and lock it away; while it runs.
• The device has an area the same or less than the face area of a 10" tablet PC but about 5 times thicker than a tablet PC; nevertheless fits in the palm; like a think notebook. 
• It is cheap; a high end configuration would cost less than US$ 130.00 and a low-end configuration would cost around US$ 80.00.
• Unlike a laptop or notebook it does carry an expensive LCD screen because the screen is unnecessary for a server. 
• If the data storage needs to be expanded, the best option is attaching a 1-TB external hard drive(~US$80).
• Administrators or implementers can access the applications through the Wi-Fi (or a cross cable connected to the RJ45 socket) using tools such as "remote desktop", "team-viewer", SSH, so on and so forth; that is not hard. 
• A laptop consumes approximate 35-40W of energy and a desktop PC about the same; while the Mini-PC consumes 15-20W; making it relatively greener.

 We intend to use it in our Rapid Prototyping exercises; the steps are --

1. We would have a couple of these units pre-installed and configured; possibly a windows box for FrontlineSMS and  a Linux box for Freedom Fone; while Ushahidi could work on either one of them or both
2. At the onset of the meeting with the community, in a remote location, we can quickly initiate an instance or the 3 applications, by simply powering it up; then connecting to is through our laptops.
3. Then while interacting with the community determining their communication needs, implement those requirements to test it with them
4. Finally, leave the unit with them for several weeks for them to test their implementation; i.e. play with it.