Abstract presentation at KDU-IRC 2015 in Colombo

I was glad to present an abstract on our partnership development project in the 8th International Research Conference at the General Sir John Kotelawala Defence University, Colombo, Sri Lanka on 28^th August 2015.
I was the first presenter on the second day of the conference under the "Computing in Governance" session. Participants were interested on the Frontlinesms and FreedomFone FOSS and the "rapid prototyping, campaign concept".

watch on you tube

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.

Presentation notes - 7th International Conference on Communities and Technologies

I recently returned home to Brisbane, Australia after a whirlwind trip to Limerick, Ireland. It was a pleasure to present our Work-in-Progress paper at the 7th International Conference on Communities and Technologies as previously, previously posted by Gordon. This paper focused on our technology stewardship model for inclusive innovation.

I was the final presenter on the first day of the conference (June 29, 2015). The day kicked off with reflective initial keynote with Michael Gurstein, who initially developed the field of community informatics and is the editor of the Journal of Community Informatics. It was a full day, with a diverse range of presenters and lively panel discussion on communities and technologies. Despite being at the end of the day, participants remained engaged and there were a number of questions and comments on our presentation. 

The attendees & other presenters, being from a C&T and community informatics perspective, commented that our current technology stewardship model may build sponsor capacity more than community capacity. Another participant queried whether tech stewards were leaned on too heavily, asking "what happens if you develop highly capable tech steward, but then they leave?" Though critical, there was an overall positive reception to the presentation, the project and technology stewardship. 

The session chair wondered whether we had planned to develop a community of practice among tech stewards themselves, which is part of our future tech steward training plans.  

Would be nice to work towards a full paper at this conference next year. 

Work-in-Progress Paper presented at 7th International Conference on Communities and Technologies in Limerick

Today, team member Tim Barlott will present a work-in-progress paper at the 7th International Conference on Communities and Technologies in Limerick, Ireland.

We wish Tim lots of luck at the conference!

A copy of the paper is available here.

Poster Presentation @ CSCW2015

The 18th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW 2015) was held at the Westin Bayshore hotel in Vancouver, BC, Canada from 14^th -18^th March 2015. We presented our poster titled “Technology Stewardship, Text Messaging, and Collaboration in Agricultural Work: Preliminary Results from an Action Research Study in Sri Lanka” on 16^th March on this conference. 

Many conference participants were interested in our work carried out in this project. Some  of them were very keen on our technology use and the concept of technology stewardship. They were surprised as to how this much of collaborations was possible in this project.  (because several Canadian Universities, Sri Lankan Institutes and University and NGOs involvement) we described them how this was possible. Another question they had was on how the Sri Lankan partners collaborate and how they run the campaigns. We elaborated the process from end-to-end. 

1. Held a National Workshop - conducted in Peradeniya and invited all the agricultural institute and NGOs )
2. Community Rapid Prototyping - We identified several potential Sponsors from the workshop to follow up with Community Rapid Prototyping
3. Technology Stewardship Training - Tech-savvy individuals from communities were given hands-on experience on the technologies practiced in the campaign
4. A series of field experiment termed as " Campaign"- this was short duration (2-3 months) activity specifically-designed to characterize the geography and communities belong to agriculture

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.

Gordon's Talk at the University of Alberta

Stewarding Technology for Inclusive Innovation