Today I had the privilege of being a part of a panel that was discussing media, technology and international development. The event was put on by The University of Colorado Denver’s School of Public Affairs and organized by Ms. Susan Abbott, a Sr. Program Development Advisor at Internews. The other panelist were Steve Gutterman, President of Mobile Accord, Chris Spence, Chief Technology Officer for the National Democratic Institute, and Dr. Revi Sterling, Director of the ICT for Development Program at the
University of Colorado Boulder. It was a great group of people and I was excited to be a part of it.
We talked about the importance of using off the shelf software and hardware whenever possible. Dr. Sterling and Mr. Spence talked about their experience using custom made software and how they now prefer to use software that’s already been proven successful in developing or non-developing context. This is a topic that I agree with and is close to my heart. Mr Gutterman spoke about the need for better market research in developing markets and how both for profit and non-profits want to see overall increases in GDP and benefit from the same market analysis. I talked about my thoughts on keeping m-health sustainable and that I believe the trend will move from large databases, to better searching and indexing of the data that’s already out there.
It was really exciting to see such an activity in Denver. I hope more such events happen.
