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Here I am in Doha, Qatar with my jacket on inside a spectacular building on the Carnegie Mellon campus. I'm seated amongst hundreds of others listening to elevator music whilst we wait for Bill Gates to give his keynote address to the ICTD 2009 participants.

This gathering has brought academics, inventors, practitioners, entrepreneurs, media, local business and royalty together to talk tech and development. Thanks to contributions from a variety of sponsors including IDRC, Qatar Telecom, Microsoft, ExxonMobil, IBM and the Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science a large number of us have had travel and accommodation costs paid to facilitate our attendance.

Freedom Fone has been allocated a demo space at the venue which has been a great opportunity to share our ideas, motivation and passion for do it yourself interactive voice response deployment with visitors and participants to the conference. Although still in its alpha version, our demo software provides a useful visual and audio experience to help people understand what we're doing and where we're headed.

Freedom Fone demo ICTD009, Doha

Postscript: Bill Gates was scheduled to visit the demo stands after his address but was sadly whisked away behind the scenes by the royal queen sitting in the front row!

The workshop has organised by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), particularly the Mobile Web Initiative, and its Mobile Web for Social Development Interest Group.

As the organisers put it. "There are today more than half of the population living with less than 3$ a day, and lacking all kind of services (health, education, government...). The incredible growth of the mobile penetration rate last few years is providing a new hope. The potential of simple ICT services on mobiles to improve people's income has indeed been largely demonstrated. The aim of this workshop is to explore how to leverage these success stories and create an enabling environment that would drive the appearance of numerous services all over the Developing World."

Yesterday, Brenda presented a paper on Freedom Fone. This paper gives some useful background information about the project, but more importantly discusses where the project is at to date, and some of the challenges we've faced so far.

Brenda is joined by a variety of practitioners and researchers in the field of mobile phones for social development. Have a look at the workshop agenda for links to other papers which may be of interest.

Using Social Networking to Marshal the Youth Vote: Online discussion with Rock the Vote director Heather Smith - Tuesday April 7
Very significant elections are coming up in South Africa on April 22, and for the first time in the country's history, there is relatively strong opposition to the governing party. So each party has to campaign hard, and they're reaching out to young voters using Facebook, YouTube and other online media. Join us for a global webchat on April 7, at 9 a.m. EDT (13:00 GMT), that will give young political leaders in South Africa and around the world an opportunity to discuss tools and tips for online campaigning with Heather Smith, a consultant and expert on youth voting. Find out more

The topic of this chat also reminded me of an article in this month's Wired magazine - Cairo Activists Use Facebook to Rattle Regime. In Egypt, activists used Facebook to organize over 70,000 online supporters in solidarity with industrial workers who planned a demonstration for April 6, 2008. Some of the supporters extended their solidarity to the streets, and staged small demonstrations in Cairo, which ran in parallel with the larger workers' strike in El-Mahalla el-Kobra. The movement has faced numerous challenges, but it thrived particularly in the beginning, when Egyptian authorities underestimated the group's popularity, the extent to which its message resonated with Egyptian youth, and the power these youth had for out reach using social networking tools.

This was an ironic obstacle for us to encounter, particularly at a time when we're beginning to think through what our business model is going to look like as we move toward self-sufficiency. We are committed to making information accessible to people at the margins of society. And Freedom Fone is intentionally being developed as open source software. These decisions reflect our core values as an organisation. But they don't make it easy to think of an income model that can support us in our work.

Freedom Fone provides callers with information at their own convenience - they don't have to hope that they catch the Public Service Announcement on TV, or tune into the radio broadcast at the right time, they can phone the service at their convenience, and get information on demand.

But, unlike radio or television, making a phone call costs money. The longer you stay on the phone, the more it costs. So the pricing of voice services plays a role in their uptake. If your target audience is poor and marginalised communities in developing countries, you know they don't have a lot of disposable income. But you also know they don't generally have no income. Here in Zimbabwe, they're earning money from informal trading, and relatives in the Diaspora are transferring money to help support them. You also know that phone tariffs are high - and they charge by the minute. So you have to make all your content count. And how do you make the service affordable, and still move towards a business model that can sustain your work? You can offer a call back service or toll free number, so that the call is free to the caller. But then you have to cover the cost. Another option is to hope that some friendly telco believes enough in your service to provide you a toll free number for free. But what if you're working in a country where price controls have driven companies into debt, and sponsoring community info lines is the last thing on their list.

One idea is to subsidise one service with revenue from another. According to John West in the recent Internews Europe survey, The Promise of Ubiquity, the Jasmine News Service has found a market with a micro-finance model. In Sri Lanka, around 100,000 subscribers each pay 30 US cents a month to receive SMS news alerts. This is a great idea - but you'd have to have a lot of SMS subscribers, and low bulk messaging rates, to be able to cross subsidise a call-in service. Another idea is to charge callers for what they will pay for (such as jobs, sports and dating information) and using those proceeds to subsidise free call-ins for development information. We've also toyed with getting paid advertising - particularly should the service prove popular and have high participation rates. But there's the risk of resentment from callers who then have to pay not only for the call, but to listen to the adverts as well.

Over on Steven Clift's News Online email list, there is a similar discussion going on, among journalists who face retrenchment as traditional journalism cuts back on staff, but who want to continue to do the work they love - and earn money in the process.

We're in the early phases of thinking through what a self-funded model of Freedom Fone might look like. We know that the information that can earn the best income might not be the kind of information we are most committed to sharing and making more accessible to people. But we also know that it would be less than ideal to create a whole separate entity that earns money - but which means double the work. So we're open to suggestions from others who have experience or advice to share on this score.

Since August last year, WHO reports there have been over 80,000 cases, and over 3,615 people have died. This is an entirely avoidable tragedy. The best way to prevent cholera is to provide good sanitation and clean water - standards in most democracies. But in Zimbabwe, the economic and political collapse have resulted in infrastructural decline and malnutrition, and this entirely preventable disease has become an epidemic.

In the long term, only the rebuilding of Zimbabwe's infrastructure, health care system, and food security can stop cholera. But local and international health agencies are doing what they can to combat cholera through providing Oral Rehydration Solution, clean water in bowsers, setting up cholera treatment facilities, and nation-wide information campaigns.

The information campaigns have included radio and television advertisements, print flyers, and SMS messages to mobile subscribers. But organisations coordinating this response recognise the limitations of these approaches. Thus, at our initial meeting with a social mobilization group including representatives of UNICEF, the Ministry of Health, the World Health Organisation and Oxfam GB, we were invited to present at a much bigger meeting.

The larger group included over 60 representatives from the Ministry of Health, WHO, UNICEF, DfID, USAID, MSF, IOM, Red Cross and dozens of other local and international organisations and donors.

In these meetings, we presented how a national cholera hot line using Freedom Fone's Interactive Voice Response (IVR) menu system could reach greater numbers of Zimbabweans efficiently and cost effectively, becoming an excellent complementary information outreach tool alongside the more traditional methods which are currently in use.

We also shared a demonstration of what a sample cholera information service might sound like. We ran various channels in English and Shona (the main indigenous language of Zimbabwe) to give the audience a taste of how Freedom Fone works.

For example:

Press 1 to learn about cholera symptoms and prevention
Press 2 to learn more about treatment options
Press 3 to find out where to go for help
Press 4 to hear an audio feature
Press 5 to leave a message

This larger meeting approved of the idea of incorporating Freedom Fone into their communications strategy, but its success will still depend on a few key factors:

Telephony - The service will be most readily scalable to a nation-wide service if it can be connected to VoIP numbers. At present, VoIP is in a grey area in Zimbabwe. Access isn't illegal, but it's also not readily available. We are hoping that companies that provide VoIP termination will recognise the severity of Zimbabwe's cholera crisis, and open up numbers to this service as part of their corporate social responsibility.

Connectivity - If the service runs on VoIP numbers, its availability as a 24/7 information source will depend on constant power and connectivity uptime. We will need to find an organisation - such as an ISP - which is willing to host the Freedom Fone server on its premises, where its power and connectivity can be guaranteed.

Content - Even more interesting than these technical challenges will be the issue of developing the content. Zimbabwe's cholera epidemic has brought diverse agencies together around a common crisis, but organisational politics and preferences are likely to still play out in developing the content callers would phone in to hear. This will be an important learning experience for us in how to work with multiple partners to agree on content collectively.

Marketing - Once the service is up and running, the call-in number(s) will have to be promoted. This will need to be done in an expansive and diverse way, to reach a wide range of Zimbabweans. Our suggestions for this include traditional media as well as more creative approaches, such as promoting the Freedom Fone cholera number on airtime cards and specially printed packets of safe water and Oral Rehydration Solution.

We prepared different content for each of the four days of the conference, and ran four "channels," or options which users could access when they phoned in: Highlighted Sessions, Interviews with Presenters, Culture and Inspiration, and the Feminist Tech Hunt, which was run in association with Take Back the Tech.

We took advantage of South Africa's deregulated VoIP and rented a VoIP number for the conference period. Whilst our prototype had not been originally created to run on VoIP, it took relatively few minor tweaks to make it accessible through VoIP. Doing this ourselves also provided a valuable opportunity to get to know the software, and the Asterisk core behind it, a bit better.

Much to our delight, the service itself ran fine. But the experience was not entirely smooth sailing. We knew that being able to receive people's feedback directly over the phone would be a big attraction but our prototype does not have any kind of "leave a message" facility built into it. Asterisk has voice-mail functionality, and a solid day's work on the backup server at our Harare office before the conference left us ebullient -- we had created a viable work-around to enable callers to leave a message. It wasn't the most elegant solution -- and processing voice messages received would be awkward -- but at least, we thought it would do the trick. Unfortunately, on arrival in Cape Town, the same few steps didn't work on the server we had brought -- and the problem ended up beyond our abilities.

We also experienced first hand the enormous challenge of getting conference participants, already suffering from information overload, to use our mobile information service.

Despite these challenges, the trip provided many important learning moments as we progress. We also made some important connections with women and organizations which we are hoping will be among the early users of Freedom Fone.

Here's a snap of one of the bead mobile phone key rings that we gave out to conference participants. Each key ring had a label publicizing the Freedom Fone number and a feminist quotation, like:

Why is it that only girls stand on the sides of their feet? As if they're afraid to plant themselves?
~Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams, 1990

Listen here to one of our favourite bits of content -- the vox pops we recorded from participants in response to the question "How do you ground your feminism?"

Much of what they recommended resonates with some of David Cohn's blogs and the importance of being iterative. See for example:

• Eliminating the Fear of Being Open
• Growing a Community and The Importance of Being Iterative
• Starting Small and the Importance of Being Iterative

Some of the top tips from our development launch meeting included:

Start with the low hanging fruit

You want to build an interest and a sense that something is happening around your project from as early on as possible. So do a few things early on which are quite contained and which build this sense of progress - the website, the blog, the targeted deployment of the prototype of the software, etc. That way, even if it takes six months before the full, stable version of your software is developed, people can still get a feel for what you're trying to do, and there is a vibrant, dynamic forum through which people can contribute their suggestions.

Scope viciously

It's tempting to try and cram all of the functionality you want your product to have into an early version. Resist That Temptation. Rather, be deliberate and focussed about what features you choose to be developed in the first phases, and how you prioritise them. If your scope is too broad, your developers will start to lose interest as the process drags out.

Avoid spec creep

Once you've settled on a feature set for a given version of your software with your development team, stick with it. Changing the goal posts during a version, or asking your developers to add "just this one more thing," will make it difficult for your developers to keep their momentum.

Choose your early deployment partners strategically

The best way to build interest around a funky new project is to demonstrate just how funky - and relevant - it is. We've known that we want to engage with a few capable, technical partners to put Freedom Fone through its paces, and to demonstrate it in action in a few different contexts, from very early on. Our launch meeting reminded us that, in addition to the technical capacity of potential partners, we also want to vet them for the type of deployment they'll be doing with it. The more interesting and engaging the content they incorporate into the system is, the more rich and exciting our case studies of their experience will be - and the easier it will be to spark other people's imaginations and interest in the project.

Actively build the community around your project

Freedom Fone will be an open source technology that will depend on a community of developers coming around the project to ensure its continued evolution and usefulness even after our Knight News Challenge funding is over. Some in the group believed we should open up our software immediately, starting with the prototype, in order to build this community from the ground up. Others in the meeting, including Brenda and myself, thought there was merit in waiting until we had at least the full, stable, version 2 of the project developed - in six months time or so. We thought we'd then be in a better position to support project deployments and share our experiences with others in the open source development community. Either way, the group was clear that at the very least, within the last 6-9 months of Knight funding, the software and its code should be fully available - and that we should actively be engaging to generate this sense of "development community" around the project, to ensure that it lasted beyond the Knight funding.

Just start

We have a prototype version of our software that can do about 80% of what we want the first full, stable version of the software to do. The more we can work with it now, before our development team has even started on version 2, the more feedback we'll have for them about what does and doesn't work. And the better we'll be able to inform the spec for version 2 and beyond. There's a temptation to wait until we have the "perfect" version up and stable - but the meeting urged us to just get started with what we have, to speed up what will probably be a steep learning curve.

We've come out of our development launch meeting with our client requirements which we'll be using to recruit our development team and iron down the technical specifications for the next round of development. Tips and suggestions for working with developers are welcome!

The tower didn't fit in the elegant, cabin sized roller bag we'd hoped it would, so we had to put it into my tatty duffle instead. It was quite amusing in the office trying to get everything to fit. Eventually, we settled on opening up the computer and taking off its feet - this meant it could lie down on its side in my bag and be slightly less conspicuous - standing up it definitely looked quite suspicious and I was sure I would be stopped.

I had strict instructions from my colleagues about the importance of clearing the equipment properly with customs in Harare - serial numbers, declaration forms, and such like. We decided it wasn't such a good idea to pack my knickers right next to the computer - since likely I was going to have to take the computer out and show it to the guys at customs. But, much to my surprise, when I arrived at the departure gate, all I had to do was fill in a form and be on my way. No one asked to verify my serial numbers, and I didn't even have to take things out at the X-Ray machine.

In Johannesburg for the connecting flight, we tried to find a different bag to carry the CPU in. We had three criteria: a) must be easier to carry than the unwieldy CPU in a duffel option, b) must by carry-on size, c) must be less likely to split across its seams than the bag it was in. We tried the backpacks at the camping store but they all had these lovely lean aerodynamic lines that made them too sleek for our clunky box. The soft duffels would have at least addressed issue c, but whilst they filled out at the bottom, their openings were far too constrained, so we moved on to another shop.

We completely charmed the woman at the luggage store and she took it upon herself to Help Us Out. We tried a big black pilot's case, a hard pink roller case, a soft paisley duffel, and a gold lame shoulder bag. But, after taking the stuffing out of bag after bag, and trying to cram the CPU into each of them, none quite did the trick. So we settled on some DIY wheels which we could strap onto the duffel. They were about six inches too short for my arm, so I spent the rest of the trip with some kind of odd praying mantis type walk to keep everything balanced. But at least it reduced the beating my legs were taking from the server banging against them every step. And best of all, I was able to glide right through Immigration in France and back out again in Harare without so much as a sideways glance.

I was carrying the full sized CPU because we want to be able to connect Freedom Fone to high capacity E1/T1 style lines using a Digium card, which needs to plug into the computer's PCI slot - the smaller Shuttle we've used as our Freedom Fone server doesn't have a PCI slot, only a full sized tower would. Of course, as someone at the meeting pointed out on the very first night, we could bypass the whole need for a Digium card (and hence the PCI slot and full sized tower) by instead getting an Analog Telephony Adapter - handy, palm-sized gadget that it is.

Wish I'd known that in the first place!

In an effort to train our ears and give our digital audio editing fingers a work out, we've been recording some audio at a few public events.

A few lessons we've learnt along the way:

1. If you're at a public event with a sound system, make friends with the sound engineer

At a discussion evening at Harare's Book Cafe on 21 August, we were able to get right up next to the sound table, allowing us a heads up when the sound levels changed - so we could adjust our own recording equipment. This also meant that our microphone was positioned right near the speakers and thus avoided much of the ambient sound that would otherwise have compromised our sound quality. The Book Cafe, as the name suggests, is a venue where participants sit at their tables and listen to a presentation over a few drinks with their friends. Whilst our recording still picked up audience sounds like laughter and applause, there's much less of the table bumping, chair scraping, glass clinking background noise that we might have had otherwise.

You can listen to Ezra Chitando, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Zimbabwe, discuss the importance of sensitivity and empathy in leadership or read our write-up from the evening.

2. If the band next door is louder than the poet in front of you, your audio recorder will pick up the band over the poet

At a different event, we went to listen to the "Real Heroes" - a mixed performance of music, spoken word, and poetry from a variety of Zimbabwean artists. You can listen to some of our sound clips from the event.

Whilst the poets had a microphone and a sound system so did the band playing at the venue next door. Unfortunately they play right through some of the meaningful pauses in the performance poetry. When you're there in person, your mind can block out the one sound and focus on the other. But when all you know of the event is what you're hearing on the recording, it's hard to separate the music from the performers, as you can hear in this clip.

3. Saturday afternoon pub gigs are great for a fun time - but you'll get poor quality audio

Part of the fun of the Magamba! Real Heroes event that we went to is that it was on a Saturday afternoon. There weren't very many people there when it first started, but as the event progressed, the crowd grew - and so did the background noise. A pub full of slightly inebriated friends of the performers gives a great vibe. But there is constant background noise - chatter, laughter, discussion, glasses, chairs, and so forth. One of Zimbabwe's greatest poets, Julius Chingono, performed a four poem set towards the end of the afternoon. You can listen to him read The First Woman - but it's a frustrating listen given the background noise levels. You might also want to read
some of Chingono's poems.

All in all we're pleased with our experimenting so far. The next challenge will be getting a better sense of how higher quality audio converts into the 8,000 Hz sample rate files we'll be uploading to our telephony system.

We'd love to hear more about others' experience with audio files - particularly in recording at public events, on the street, or other non-studio conditions. What are some other top tips you'd like to share?