The MW4D Interest Group explores how to use the potential of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) on Mobile phones as a solution to bridge the Digital Divide and provide minimal services (health, education, governance, business,...) to rural communities and under-privileged populations of Developing Countries. (more details).
Latest News
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Minutes of September 1st teleconference published — 15 September 2008
The MW4D IG held its fifth teleconference on September 1 2008.
The approved minutes are available at http://www.w3.org/2008/09/01-mw4d-minutes.html
Previous meeting minutes are available from the teleconference archives
Minutes of August 18 teleconference published — 1 September 2008
The MW4D IG held its fourth teleconference on August 18 2008.
The approved minutes are available at http://www.w3.org/2008/08/18-mw4d-minutes.html
Previous meeting minutes are available from the teleconference archives
Minutes of August 4 teleconference published — 18 August 2008
The MW4D IG held its third teleconference on August 4 2008.
The approved minutes are available at http://www.w3.org/2008/08/04-mw4d-minutes.html
Previous meeting minutes are available from the teleconference archives
Documents & Ressources
The MW4D plans to develop a set of W3C Notes which are described in the Deliverables section of the charter.
The draft version of these notes are developed collaboratively on the dedicated wiki section.The following documents are under development:
There is also a set of ressources relevant to the activity of the MW4D and which have been developped by W3C since 2006:
- Executive Summary of the Workshop on the Role of Mobile Technology in Fostering Social Development
- Executive Summary of the Workshop on the Mobile Web in Developing Countries
- a White Paper on Mobile Web for Social Development
- The previous home page of this work with ressources
Reasons for joining
The objective of MW4D IG is to gather all stakeholders in a global forum in order to identify the key challenges of using mobile phones as an ICT-platform in Developing regions, and to draft a roadmap to work on.
The targeted players are Web experts, Mobile specialists, Academics from Developed and Developing regions, NGOs with field expertise, and International organizations working on reducing the Digital Divide. W3C believes that only a joint coordinated action could lead to the identification of all challenges and also to the identification of the right actions to be launched to have a real impact. The MW4D IG, while not limited to these topics, will investigate the following areas:
- technical issues related to the mean of deployment (sms, voice, web,...)
- technical issues related to accessibility for illiterate people, people without technological background, people without prior dewsktop experience,...
- technical issues related to specific types of applications (m-health, mgov, ...)
- Social issues: how to capture the real needs from the targeted populations, how to have a bottom-up approach that will integrate NGOs into international organization agenda and work
- Social issues related to empowerment: how to enable local people to master the technology to develop and deploy the applications they need, how to leverage local contant and applications development
- Social issues related to sustainability, entrepreneurship, ...
The following types of actors should be able to contribute to the mission of MW4D, and learn from other participants:
- Charitable Foundations funding and/or managing Development projects using ICTs
- Companies or Organizations providing ICT-related products, services, content, applications or infrastructure in Developing Countries.
- People with grassroots experience on the use of ICT in Development
- People from the ICT for Development (ICT4D) domain
- People with a mobile background
- Web experts
- Accessibility experts
- Digital Divide experts
- People expert in mobile HCI in Developing Countries
- People expert in the use of mobile phones in Development
How to give feedback?
Feedback on MW4D documents is very welcome on the public-mw4d@w3.org list (archive). To subscribe to this list, Send an email to public-mw4d-request@w3.org with the word subscribe in the email subject header. To unsubscribe, send an email to the same address with the word unsubscribe in the email subject header. For additional help, consult the W3C's public email list pages.
Feel free To contact either Ken Banks, co-Chair of the group, or Stephane Boyera co-Chair and W3C Staff Contact.
Teleconferences
The Participants of MW4D are meeting regularly by phones. The teleconferences are taking place the first and the third monday of each month at 12:00pm UTC. To find what time this is in your region, you can check the world clock meeting planner.
The archives of the meeting minutes are available online
Teleconference and IRC Information:
- Teleconference bridge :
- +1.617.761.6200
- +33.4.89.06.34.99
- +44.117.370.6152
- Conference code: 6493 ("M4WD")
- IRC: Access Directly the MW4D IRC channel through Mibbit
- IRC Raw information:
- Channel: #mw4d
- Server: irc.w3.org
- Port: 6665
- It is mandatory to read the Teleconference How-to before joining your first teleconference
- Read the instruction about the irc bot zakim managing the teleconference
- Read the detailed instruction on how to use IRC and the W3C teleconference system
- The next teleconferences will be: Monday September 15, Monday October 6, Monday October 20
Face-to-face Meetings
It is expected that the Participants of MW4D will meet once a year face to face. For now, the date and location hasn't been discussed.
Workshops
One of the MW4D IG objectives is to create an inter-disciplinary forum involving Web and Mobile experts, NGOs with field expertise and experience, academics from Developed and Developing regions, and International organizations involved in reducing the Digital Divide and providing services to under-privileged populations. Some of these actors are not yet connected or working with W3C, and it is essential to outreach these communities. Organizing public workshops is one of the most easiest and effective ways of gathering people from different background at the same place, and agree of the issues.
W3C organized a first workshop in December 2006, in Bangalore, India as a preliminary action which led to the creation of MW4D IG.
A second workshop on the Role of Mobile Techonologies on Fostering Social Development was held in Sao Paulo, Brazil, June 2nd and 3rd 2008. Read the executive summary report.
Another workshop on this topic will take place in Africa at the beginning of 2009.
About Digital World Forum
Digital World Forum on Accessible and Inclusive ICT ('Digital World Forum') is a FP7 European project focusing on the use of ICT to leverage economic development in Africa and Latin America.
The project is exploring how to take advantage of the new paradigm of low-cost technologies in broadband infrastructure, low-cost laptops, and mobile phones to bridge the digital divide and connect the unconnected.
The objectives are to make a state-of-the-art in the mentionned domains, identify the challenges, and propose a roadmap to tackle them. A particular focus is on involving local actors from industry, research and academic communities and non-governmental organizations who have field expertise and who will provide feedback on the key factors of adoption.
The MW4D IG workprogram is part of the Digital World Forum agenda
