The discussion was really interesting, and I do hope it is the start of many such events. It was a great opportunity to share and learn around projects, processes and outcomes! I got to know more about many really interesting projects and the people associated with them - Edwin from Open Space who was the facilitator, Barun Mitra of Liberty Institute that runs EmpoweringIndia, Muthatha Ramanathan, the JaagoRe guys from Janaagraha, Ravi Rangan of Comat, Siddharth Sharma of Intellecap, Nitai Mehta of Praja, Gokul of Mapunity, Gautam John of Pratham books, Meera from the Bangalore-based Citizen Matters, Sanjay Jain of Google, Gaurav Mishra of Vote Report India, a bunch of folks from CIS - Pranesh, Anja, Kiran, and many more!  The Tactical Technology Collective folks were there too, and Allan and David distributed some of their guides and toolkits which were a real hit in terms of content and production values!

Zainab has a really detailed report on the roundtable, the picture above is from her post. The discussion was also live-tweeted under the #cisia tag!

A few things that struck me when reflecting upon the event:

• that there is a need to combine efforts and share resources across the various projects, for instance, back-end integration with the government
• that there’s need to engage audiences in the projects by different ways of dissemination
• that ‘data’ needs to be presented and disseminated in ways that are relevant to people’s lives and in line with their own usage patterns, habits and behaviour
• and that there are opportunities within this diverse groups to help and collaborate.

On one of the breaks, Gautam John, who I enjoyed meeting F2F after following his tweets for a while, introduced me to Sachin Malhan and his team who are working on a really interesting set of projects under the umbrella, Inclusive Planet. I was quite impressed with what they’re trying to do - creating innovative crowd-sourced online services for the differently-abled with the vision of leveraging these services to building a community on the web. The common theme across their projects is ‘access’. Check out Readable, their beta platform that enables the blind to share and access books and materials relevant to their study or leisure in formats totally accessible to them.

Peter and I were also invited to be on a Panel Discussion hosted by  CIS, on Social Media and Mobilisation. It was a good conversation, although not always easy when the audience is so diverse - we had open source geeks nd technologists, online & offline activists, ngo’s, marketers, social media users & newbies. Zainab has a nice synopsis at her blog.

Thanks Sunil, Nishant and Zainab of the Centre of Internet and Society for inviting me to these events, and to Zainab for being such a great host!

• How to Jailbreak your iPhone to OS 3.0 | via @rww
  Clip: "PwnageTool versus Redsn0w versus Ultrasn0w: What?!? If you're new to jailbreaking, you might be confused by the names being tossed around out there: PwnageTool? Redsn0w? ultrasn0w? What are these people talking about?! Simply put, they're all tools that either jailbreak (allow you to install 3rd-party applications) or unlock (make the phone work on other GSM-based cellular networks) your device. For expert hackers wanting to create their own custom firmware, the Mac OS X-only PwnageTool is the right one for the job. But if all you care about is jailbreaking, then you'll probably want the new tool called "redsn0w." Although you can certainly jailbreak using the PwnageTool (LifeHacker shows you how), Windows users have no choice but to use redsn0w - it's the only option. Finally, Ultrasn0w is the tool that unlocks the iPhone to allow it to work on other cellular networks. (In the U.S., that means T-Mobile.) Before you can unlock the phone, though, you have to jailbreak it…"
  (tags: iphone rww jaibreak OS3.0)
• Social Media and Mobilization | neat round-up of our panel discussion #socmob at CIS, Bangalore by @zainabbawa
  I enjoyed the panel discussion with a diverse set of folks from many fields - marketers, activists, technologists, social entrepreneurs. Clip from Zainab's post: "Many questions abound concerning the phenomenon called “social media”, particularly in the wake of the protests taking place in Iran and how information has reached out to the world about what is going on in the country. The panel discussion on social media organized by the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) on 19th June, 2009, aimed to understand how mobilizations take place through social media and how memes are engineered and spread across communities. We brought down Dina Mehta and Peter Griffin from Mumbai to share their experiences……"
  (tags: zainabbawa CIS #socmob zigzackly digitalactivism mobilization socialmedia)
• Paul Miller: Weary giants and new technology - The Independent | link via @leebryant and @rebootbritain
  We should do a rebootindia! Clip: "But we’re still just at the beginning of understanding the relationship between government and the ways that the internet can help deliver public goods – sometimes through government itself and sometimes through new lightweight public service start-ups. As we attempt to understand what might be possible, we need to replace Barlow’s black or white ‘cyberspace versus government’ with a new understanding of the way that online tools could help us to live the lives we want to lead. An opportunity exists to support public service start-ups and unleash a new wave of social innovation. If we treat the public as both consumers and producers of services, we tap into ‘I will if you will’ awareness and solutions. Government and individuals become partners. Online collaboration and networking tools can provide us with a vision for society that runs counter to a paternal or electoral model but still one where government is vital…."
  (tags: socialenterprise innovation civilsociety socialmedia paulmiller)
• The future of civil society and social technology | @suw looks at what the next 15 yrs holds for social media
  Clip: "… it aims to examine possible trends and drivers of change that could affect social media, and to use that information to create potential scenarios that provoke the question “What if…?”. This ‘futures thinking’ or ‘scenario thinking’ is intended to help organisations “understand and manage uncertainties and ambiguities”, by helping them to imagine how their organisation would cope if any of these scenarios came to pass.

  The technologists consulted for this report all agreed that it was difficult to imagine the web in 2025, but that there were trends which will almost certainly make themselves felt in the way that social technology evolves. The drivers of change and scenarios reported below have been developed through interviews and workshops with technologists, social media experts and third sector practitioners. They are not exhaustive, just meant to provide a scaffold around which individuals and organisations can build their own focused scenarios .."

  (tags: future socialmedia technology #suw strangeattractor)

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The initial connectivity issues have now long gone away. WWDC for those that might not know is Apple’s world wide developer conference. It has pulled a very global audience and like me, 60% have never attended before. I’ve met some fantastic people here. The Apple staff are outstanding.

Many have asked me why I’m here? I’m not a developer although may now write / create a small app or two. I’m there because I wanted to know first hand how far we can push the boundaries of the mobile social space and how quickly. I also wanted a deeper understanding of how to manage development efforts / expectations and the toolset available to developers.

I’m coming away with both and more.

I talked with an ex Nokia and Windows Mobile game developer tonight. It is currently game over in that regard. Game developers are a key group here.

I’d reflect and do a few things differently. I would have liked more show ‘n tell sessions with real app examples. Eg the stories I’d also like more are around marketing and business nous in the apps / iPhone streams. I also think many lab sessions were over-subscribed. The planning will have to start now for next year and cater to 10000 people or take the show on the road. It may well be both. The demand is clear.

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