The MobileActive08 conference was the third of its kind, organised by MobileActive.org and the Southern African NGO Network (SANGONeT). SANGONeT is a civil society organisation that uses a range of product and services in information communication technologies (ICTs) to serve civil society.
The New Media intensive class was invited to cover the event because of Rhodes’ reputation with all things journalist. Our job description slotted somewhere in between onsite journalist and documentation officer, which meant keeping track of what was going on by using the mediums available to us. Classmate, Rhoda Davids says in reference to our attempts at the documentation process, “…multitasking was a lot to handle,” she says in reference to the Twitters and Flickrs and note taking.
The conference was broken up into sessions where companies demonstrated ICTs they were using in an attempt to better civil society. At the beginning of each session, the six of us would disperse armed with Nokia N82, notepad and pen. We had to take notes throughout the sessions. Take pics with the mobile for the sake of documentation. Post the good pics on Flickr.com, which hosts videos as well. Here we submitted pictures complete with title and short description. This would have been beneficial for someone following the conference but unable to attend it. Send regular tweets to twitter.com, essentially a micro-blogging website where one can post live updates of what their up to or what’s going on around them. Pretty much like a status update on Facebook. Except we were doing it to keep track of the goings-on at the conference. Record an interview at the sessions end – bearing in mind some semblance of a storyboard while doing so, for the editing that would be happening later. These videos would be posted on Youtube.com and of course, the MobileActive08 website.
Classmate Tara Lang says, “The equipment was a huge problem, if something could go wrong... it did! Batteries dying, losing internet connections, applications freezing were issues all thrown at us. We arrived on Sunday and the basics of mobile phone usage101 was done... that seemed easy enough but we did not anticipate that our equipment would abandon us to fend for ourselves!” Lang does mention that all of this forced us to become more creative problem solvers though, so what’s a little hair loss in the bigger scheme of things?
MobileActive08 exposed us to the innovations happening with mobiles and how they are being used to improve lives. From regular SMS’s to remind patients on chronic medication to take their pills, to helping farmers in India suss out the lay of the local market so as to not waste time and money travelling to a market in an attempt to sell off crops it’s already flooded in.
-Nobhongo Gxolo