This past weekend we had the good fortune to be involved in the 2004 LinuxForum here in Copenhagen. Since we participated last year with the crazy CopenhagenConnectedCycle, they had kindly asked us if we had something to participate with again. Did we ever

We actually ended up doing a pretty informal World Record attempt for Mesh networking using the mobilemesh software from MANET and a lot of participants linux-laptops. Whether it’s an actual reord or not is hard to say, but we got 28 simultaneous users onto a single dynamically routed ad-hoc wireless network, all conneting to the net through a single gateway, the ever wonderful Mesh Cube.

It was mobile, it was ad-hoc and it was pretty intense as we spent most of the day helping people get an extremely wide variety of wireless cards to run on their linux-machines. I had my fingers in at least 6 different drivers, and 5 differnt distributions that day. The drivers included madwifi for atheros chipsets, wlan-ng for prism2/2.5/3 chips, prism54 for prism54 chips, orinoco_cs for orinoco chips and both the commercial driverloader from linuxant and the gpl’ed ndiswrapper project for loading windows drivers under linux. The distributions were the usual gaggle of SuSe, Fedora Core, Mandrake 9.2 and 10rc2, Debian, gentoo and both knoppix and morphix for those pesky windows-only laptops. It was fun.
To read more about Mesh networking, check out the article Sebastian and I wrote for the O’Reilly Network.

The second part of our Linux Forum participation was a presentation in the Center-hall, the biggest stage of the event. I think it was one of the biggest audiences I have ever presented to, probably more than 100 people, filling almost all the seats in the area. But it was also one of the best presentations I have ever given, essentially a re-take on the presentation I gave recently at O’Reilly’s Emerging Technologies conference, it was in danish, and to a room full of enthusiastic geeks and Open Source supporters. I spent 30 minutes talking about wireless in the developing world, and the Wireless Roadshow (essentially hte Emerging Tech speach in danish), and another 10 minutes drumming up enthusiasm for the world record mesh attempt and adding a little status on wireless drivers for Linux for the geeks in the audience (everyone?).

Feedback from this presentation was amazing, much better than for Emerging Tech, and I’ve spent some time thinking about why. I was woefully unprepared, especially for the parts talking about status of wirless on linux, down to adding points to the agenda while i was already plugged in to the big screen in front of the audience. OpenOffice acted up, making pictures disappear, and crashing my computer when i tried to change my virtual desktop to show some websites in the browser. I was actually in quite a bt of pain, and unable to stand still on stage. Nevertheless, people responded with enthusiasm, good questions and positive feedback.

I think a large part of it was down to the audience and the fact that the story i was telling was beyond their expectations. Another part of it is that it is an audience I am intimately familiar with. DAnish Open Source geeks are a large part of my professional life , and finally i think i was just in the mood, no feeling little pressure to perform, and just highly freeflowing.

The Wireless Roadshow is obviously my main focus this year, and I’ve spent a large part of whatever time I have been able to work, trying to get the ball rolling on the preparation for this project. Recently I went to Istanbul to address the Open Society Institute‘s Information Program on the projet. OSI is funding the project, and we will be working losely with their Assistance Foundations (local offices) around the world. The chance to address all these people at a single event, rather than try and explain our project via e-mail and/or have to tour Central Asia and Western Africa, was great.
The next big step for the project is to select patners and hence countries that we will work in, especially the initial country, which could have a huge effect on our project. Just to mention a few countries where there seems to be an interest in our project, and a certain potential for the Wireless Roadshow: Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Mongolia, Guinea-Bissau, Senegal. Although that could change as rapidly as it happened in the first place.

So I did my talk yesterday at ETech.

I think it went pretty well, although perhaps I should have focused a little more on the tech side of things. Turn-out was ok, considering that I was competing directly with Danny NTK O’Brien, talking about alpha-geeks and their habits. He’s more or less the stand-up comedian of the tech world, so it was a tough job.

My presentation is on-line at the O’Reilly site, and mirrored at wire.less.dk. I also have a page of related links up on my personal Kwiki site, here.

And here is the blog coverage I’ve ben able to dig up so far. (Again, all the a-list bloggers were covering the comedy show next door.

* Stefan blogged the talk in German, at his site, no-information
* German tech-news site heise.de has coverage, which is intriguing, seeing as I haven’t seen anyone from there at ETech.
* Jason Calacanis has brief coverage on his ETech specific blog,

In general there’s been a good bit of interest in my project, and a lot of people have told me how cool they think it is that we’re doing this shit. it belies my previous rants that noone cares what goes on outside the us. It’s probably more of a case of not knowing what’s going on, than not caring. One thing is sure. We won’t have a problem finding skilled volunteers.

I’m in a talk now by Priya Prakesh on Project Miljul, which was a 4 week research project to find out how workers in india use their mobile phones.

In fact it’s a talk on user centric design, with the unique perspective of indian culture as a backdrop. nothing revolutionary, but i like every sneaking in of a non-californian perspective

She’s showing some lovely photos from the bombay area, and making points about the cultural differences in respect to commerce. ties-for.rent, stores that sell everything from jewery over farm machines to computers in the same store.

it’s a bit to theoretical, trying to map the need for mobile services onto maslow’s pyramid, the gartner acceptance curve etc. i’d rather have more anecdotes and less theory, but the basic content is interesting enough.

check out priyascape.typepad.com for more info

I’ve been spending quite some time thinking about the power of the grassroots in bringing ICT to the developing world. I am generally extremely wary of the type of development projects that consist of giving a (let’s say danish) firm a few million dollars to buy (let’s postualte danish) technology, and fly a few score people to somewhere in africa to implement and train locals in using the technology.
I am sure there are numerous beneficial projects that come out of that type of project, but it just seems to me that any project that doesn’t put the needs and requirements of the local users above all else, is ultimately doomed to fail.

I like the grassroots answer to this dilemna. I mena technology built by local enthusiasts to solve a problem that they see in their (or others) day to day lives. The open source/hacker mentality transferred to development projects. I like it because grassroots projects are built with the sweat and tears of people struggling to make their dream come true. In many cases there are better careers, better financial rewards, and better wortking hours in other jobs, but some people just have to do this sort of stuff, or simply enjoy it so much that little else is relevant.

Rare is the grassroots project that is done for the perosnal financial award of the participants. Rare the one that isn’t driven by real belief in a project.

And even rarer, i think (with my admittedly limited experience of the matter) is the grassroots project that wastes large amounts of money, if for no other reason than the fact that these projects seldom have any money to waste in the first place.

Our Wireless Roadshow, is in effect an attempt at triggering grassroots approaches in connectivity.

Why? because even though grassroots projects should and ften are driven by a belief that something is not only possible, but also desirable, there are some barriers to these projects happening. I have seen some amazingly successful technology projects that are driven by grassroots, from Dr. Onno Purbo’s amazing work in Indonesia, over a number of hugely successful Open Source products developed entirely without a business in mind, to some community driven health projects. The projects are out there, but not everywhere.
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Muniwireless: Mesh networks help developing areas Archives

This story contains a lot of favourites for me.

It comes from MuniWireless.com, which is one of my favourite sites for news on public and community networking. It talks about Mesh Wireless which is definitely amongst my flavours of the month, hwen it comes to favourite technologies, and it deals with wireless in the developing world, which some of my readers may have noticed is something I believe strongly in.

Basically our friends at LocustWorld have gotten involved in a Mesh networking project in Borneo using their MeshBoxes to provide broadband to rural areas. There is little information in the article, and no link to further reading.

I want to know more….

I got back from Geneva on saturday, after having spent 4 days at the WSIS (Word Sunmmit on the Information Society) there.
Just to clear that up, I wasn’t actually at the main WSIS event (at least until the last day), but instead was next-door at the ICT4D platform, a sort of ICT for development tradeshow.

We had courteously been invited by the the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and were one of 18 organisations presenting our ideas and projects at the Danish booth.
As an aside, we were also in charge of the network infrastructure at the Danish booth, and the wireless network was a huge success, strengthened by the complete failure of Swisscoms ‘official’ network (read a Lawrence Lessig’s rant on that subject here)

I’ll excercise my right not to comment on the pro’s and con’s of the official event, and whether or not it was a huge step towards a more just future, or yet another step in the colonisation of the poorest countries on earth, and will only comment on my own experinces.

I LOVED IT. Mostly because I met all the right people. From some of the heroes working with wireless tech on the ground in Indonesia, Laos, Namibia and Cambodia, to some of the decision makers from Infodev and the Canadian Development agency . I had ample confirmation that what we are doing is considered relevant, that our approach captures the imagination of people with a lot more experience than us, and that this is in fact the field I want to build a career in.

There are so may things to write about, and I will, or at least I will try to write a small piece on the most interesting projects I encountered, and to talk a little bit more about what is slowly transmogrifying itself into “our unique approach” to low-cost connectivity projects in the developing world.

I will also be redesigning the homepage at http://www.ict4dev.org/ to better relect the projects we are all about, and perhaps to clear up the relationship between this blog, our danish ngo (http://www.ict4dev.org/) our danish wireless consultancy (http://wire.less.dk/) and our UK NGO (http://www.informal.org.uk/)

BBC NEWS | Technology | Rickshaws connect India’s poor

Earlier this year, we outfitted a bicycle cab with wireless internet via wifi, as part of the Copenhagen Interpolation conference.

It seems this idea is out there in the real world now, According to BBC news. Shyam Telecom which operates in the Indian state of Rajasthan, has outfitted a number of bicycle rickshaws with mobile phones, and plans to add connected laptops to a few as well. This gives the generally poor drivers another source of income as they get around 20% of the revenue generated by phone calls from their rickshaw.

Way to go!

The company has equipped a fleet of rickshaws with a mobile phone. Drivers pedal these mobile payphones throughout the state capital, Jaipur, and the surrounding countryside.

The rickshaw drivers, numbering around 200, are largely drawn from those at the margins of society – the disabled and women.

So, I finally got confirmation that I will, after all, be going to Geneva next week for the World Summit.

I’ll be part of a Danish presence there under the auspices of the danish ministry of foreign affairs, presenting our various businesses, non-profits, and projects. Including, but not limited to:
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Russel Southwood, the editor of the excellent Balancing Act – Africa, newsletter has written an article challenging some of the assumptions that drive the ICT for development process.

Balancing Act News Update – African internet developments

This is easily the best article I have read on this subject in a long time. It’s concise, critical without being abject, and very sober.

It is often said in Hollywood that there are only a few stories in the world: for example, boy meets girl, revenge and so on. So it is with digital divide initiatives: there are perhaps five basic assumptions and the time has come to look at whether they are working or not.

It should be required reading for all of us who have or are venturing into this difficult area, and believe we can do better at it.