During Innovations in Mobile Data Collection, we talked quite a bit about delayed data processing when infrastructure (mobile or internet) is not readily available.  Nadav Aharony from MIT says:

“Non-synchronous data communications is used when an active data connection or cell phone coverage are not available. Data could opportunistically make its way from the origin to the destination via different types of electronic messengers, or ‘data mules’.

For example, you could equip a bus that has a regular daily route to a village with a wifi/GPRS-enabled device. As the bus passes by the village, the devices connects and transfer data from a clinic, for example. In engineering terms, this type of network is called a “delay tolerant network”, or DTN.

There are different projects working along these lines in countries such as India or Cambodia, and there  are different methods for implementing the “data mule” – from a bus, to a motorcycles, to an ox-cart.”

For more information, see this paper.  Nadav is working on another delay-tolerant and infrastructure-less platform: Comm.unity, on top of which similar implementations could be built.

In a dense session of twenty IGNITE talks – five minutes on a subject accompanied by 20 self-advancing slides – a wide range of cutting edge applications of mobile data technologies were presented. Organizations including inter alia UNICEF, Ushahidi, Souktel, Al Jazeera, 7iber.com, Development Seed, Sharek961 as well as researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and New York University described how new technologies and social media revolutionize information collection around the world. Whether you’re sending geolocated newsreports from conflict zones, to improving the collection of health indicators in Malawi or using your cellphone to submit your CV to find a job in Ramallah, mobile data technologies make it possible. Video footage of the IGNITE talks will be posted Mobile Active’s YouTube channel. For more information on the workshop, check out http://bit.ly/oss-mobdata.

Participants are arriving from all over to spend the next three days talking about innovations in using mobiles for data collection for social action. Members of the UNICEF Iraq and Innovation teams (who’ve sponsored the gathering) are working with representatives of the agency’s five Iraqi ministerial government counterparts to explore how mobile data collection can help better protect children’s rights in Iraq. The UNICEF team also includes two graduate students from the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) at Columbia University in New York. The students will participate as part of a capstone (consulting) project with UNICEF to determine how these technologies, the data they generate, and resulting analyses can be used for advocacy and to inform policymaking.

Follow all the activities over the next three days on http://bit.ly/oss-mobdata. Tomorrow around noon Amman time (+2GMT) several of the participants will present IGNITE talks about their areas of expertise and investigation. If you can’t make it then, they’ll be archived later on Mobile Active’s YouTube channel.

How can you participate?

Follow along on the aggregator at http://www.netvibes.com/smextoday#MOBDATA with the event wiki, blogs, videos, etc to follow and remotely participate through social media. We will be posting there regularly and you can comment there as well as here and follow along in the proceedings.

You can also participate remotely on Tuesday, December 8th, at 12 noon Jordanian time (GMT +2) for the Ignite Talks of projects, ideas, and needs.  For instructions on how to log in to the remote channel, please go here!

Our most-excellent colleagues at the Social Media Exchange Beirut have set up a Netvibes aggregator for social media ad useful info for the workshop. You can find it here.

Follow along and participate - hashtag for all social media is #mobdata. See you in Amman!

The wiki for the workshop in Innovations in Mobile Data Collection for Social Action is here.  You can see the daily agenda there, follow along in the proceedings as we document sessions with photos, video, interviews, and reports; and find answers to any logistical questions.  The wiki is for all participants to use and make it their own as we convene in Amman on Tuesday.

We will have some amazing people, organizations, and technologies in the house in Amman. First, we welcome UNICEF Iraq with a high-level delegation of representatives.  We are thrilled to have you in Amman!

Here are some of the projects sending representative:

Souktel, an incredibly exciting SMS platform in MENA that links young people with jobs, aid-seekers with aid organizations, and provides information that people need - on their mobile phones.

Nijel, where “we create maps that tell powerful stories and have real community impact. Across the globe, NiJeL uses high performance mapping to identify and mitigate social, economic, and environmental problems in poor communities now so they don’t become humanitarian disasters later. We think our maps can be potent decision-making tools that can, among other things, help communities advocate for better living conditions.:”

Al Jazeera which uses mobile tech in its mobile media unit in innovative ways. Some of the projects and services include the Journalists mobile toolkit, field reporting applications and development and deployment of Al Jazeera News websites, as well as the growing role of mobiles in field reporting. Most recently, Al Jazeera implemented the incidence reporting and mapping platform Ushahidi for incidence reporting during the conflict in Gaza.

Ushahidi will, of course, be represented by one of the technical leads of their team. Ushahidi is a platform that any person or organization can use to set up their own way to collect and visualize information. The core platform allows for plug-in and extensions so that it can be customized for different locales and needs.

One of the fully localized Arabic implementations of Ushahidi in the region recently was Sharek961 in Lebanon. We welcome key leaders from the project.

Ushahidi is not the only platform for crowdsourced data from the ground, however, that will be in Amman.  We welcome Groundtruth, Virtual Gaza, Managing News/Development Seed, and Cartagen. Check them out now - or wait, since you will hear a lot more about all of the people behind the platforms!

We will have members of the Open Mobile Consortium - collaborating organizations with a suite of extraordinary mobile tools for humanitarian relief and health.

Last but not least, UNICEF Innovation, our erstwhile co-hosts, will demo and feature its many open-source platforms such as RapidSMS.

We will be posting interviews and reports both here and on the English-language workshop wiki.  We look forward to having you come along for these three days to uncover some of the key issues in collecting distributed data, mobile tech, analysis, and visualization.

This is the blog for Innovations in Mobile Data Collection for Social Action, a workshop in Amman, Jordan, December 8-10, 2009.

Co-hosted by UNICEF’s country office in Iraq, UNICEF Innovation, and MobileActive.org, this three-day gathering is bringing invited experts from around the world together to explore some of the key issues related to using mobiles for data collection and analysis of some of the toughest social issues.

Why are we hosting this event?

With the ubiquity of mobile technology, data collection and monitoring of key indicators from the ground up by affected populations is now possible. Mobile technology in the hands of people can now be more than a person-to-person communication medium but can be used for capturing, classifying and transmitting image, audio, location and other data, interactively or autonomously.

By involving people in defining and participating in their own data collection, this approach can address significant unmet challenges in large-scale data collection for public health and citizen participation.

In this three-day workshop, we will explore the critical issues, technologies, and architectures involved in collecting and utilizing data-from-below, bringing together the key technology and research leaders on distributed data collection and distribution in the Middle East.

What are our goals?

• An exploration of key issues in citizen-driven data collection in the Middle East.  These include technologies, systems, architecture, tools, standards, and people, among others.
• Kick-start a regional working group / community around open-source data collection, aggregation and visualization using mobile technology
• Map the landscape in the Middle East of applications/technologies, developers, and key thought leaders around real-time distributed data collection, monitoring, and visualization using mobile technology?
• Help UNICEF build a roster of potential partners, possible vendors, academic institutions of interest, and groups or individuals to advance UNICEF regional goals.
• Prototype new products or improvements of existing products about distributed data collection.
• Please note that the workshop will be held primarily in English (with some Arabic sessions).

The impetus for the workshop is UNICEF’s national-scale project in Iraq collecting data from various populations about key indicators and use that data to effect policy and programmatic changes that can improve the lives of children.

As part of this work, MobileActive.org, a global community of people using mobile technology for social impact, and UNICEF partnered to explore, with key leaders in the Middle East, critical issues on large-scale, citizen-driven and bottom-up data collection.