Here are some pics from the Barcamp. I tried to get a nice representative sample of what I saw. Please click on the thumbnails below to get the full picture.
Ok, I’m a little late on my m4change post, but my ex-Catholic guilt and the fact that Katrin Verclas is on the other side of the wall is starting to get to me. I attended the mobiletech4socialchange barcamp last Saturday (2/21/2009) and it was an illuminating event for me. Two projects have accumulated mindshare among nonprofit mobile tech advocates: Mobile Commons and Ushahidi. If I were to make a tag cloud of what everyone said during this conference, both Ushahidi and Mobile Commons would have the biggest and fattest tags.
I’m absolutely interested in using Mobile Commons though. It’s clear that if you’re interested in using the same mobile phone techniques employed by the Obama campaign for your nonprofit, you should look up Mobile Commons first. I think their implementation of SMS and the analytics behind it will be crucial to people like me who are interested in using that technology for their nonprofit and for other nonprofits I volunteer for. At this stage of the game, people are still experimenting with SMS. Having analytical tools to understand the results of any SMS-based campaign will be crucial to justifying its further use later.
I also tweeted about this barcamp so you can glean some extra links and observations there. And of course, you should always check out what other folks said too. I think this barcamp should be on your list of things to visit. I’ve always enjoyed unconferences and barcamps so much more than regular conferences simply because you end up meeting developers more often than not and you get to see projects without the marketing fluff that tends to accumulate when a project becomes moderately successful. It’s that sense of possibilty that makes me keep coming back to barcamps like this one. In that sense, you should definitely take a look at The Extraordinaries. They take the Amazon Mechanical Turk model of crowdsourcing and apply it to mobile volunteering. Frankly, this would be something great to do while you’re in an airport or just hanging out. I think it’s got a real shot at embedding the act of volunteering into people’s daily lives.
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Thanks, Alan — and no guilt trip from me! I loved the Mobile Tech 4 Social Change barcamp — amazing people and amazing projects. This mobile community rocks hard. Thanks to Marty Lucas at Hunter and the brilliant MobileActive.org community for all of your work! Next Mobile Tech 4 Social Change barcamp in DC, April 29th, hosted by Google! See you there!
And Alan, thanks for coming and for saying such flattering words (on the other side of the wall!)
No problem Katrin, it was a great event. I'll certainly show up at the next one.