Some of you may have read my enthusiastic account of the IIID Vision Plus conference that took place in Ahmedabad, India, in December 2010. Well, none of the excitement has abated and I was privileged to intensify my connection with India by helping to get the Mobile Plus conference on the road. Mobile Plus was initiated by Prof. Kirti Trivedi of the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay who established the connection to the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation (where the conference took place) and our major Indian Sponsors, IL&FS Education and Technology Services, together with Peter Simlinger, who gained UNESO support and endorsement for the event.
After over a year of anticipation and planning, the programme and the event finally cametogether in September 2011. Martin Foessleitner, IIID Treasurer, and I travelled there with posters, presentations, pens, postcards and a structured plan on how to get it all ready in time. Thanks to the MSSRF Informatics Division, some cultural learning on our part, and a great mix of people theconference was a success. It received much national media attention in India due to the high standing of Dr. M. S. Swaminathan and the MSSRF Institute.
Over the three days of the conference we had 35 speakers and 162 delegates. Bringingtogether designers, technology and development experts from different cultural backgrounds proved a great recipe for debate about mobile applications with multi-lingual and low-literate communities.
It was important to us from the start that Mobile Plus would bring the impact of mobile applications to life and demonstrate the transformative effects of technology coupled with support systems that listen to and understand peoples’ needs. The desired effect was that practicalities, rather than academic research, dominated the conference.
TheMulti-Location Virtual conference with field stations of the MSSRF gave an impressive real-life demonstration of mobile development in action. It connected to eight locations in Union Territory, Karnataka, Tamilnadu, Maharashtra and Haryana and brought us face-to-face with some of the realities of rural life in India.
The“Technology Pavilion“ displayed projects and applications in action. Kirti Trivedi brought a particularly interesting prototype: a large bamboo umbrella incorporating a mobile phone, projector and flexible screen. The devices are solar powered via the surfaces provided by the umbrella, which conveniently also provides enough shading for sufficient contrast on the screen, providing a possible solution to some of the communication and education needs in ruralIndia.
Presentations were given on the subject areas of Strategies and Applications, Healthcare,Education, Technology, Design, Social Impact and Communities. All sessions that took place in the main auditorium were broadcast as a live stream and will be available online soon.
Speakers came from India, UK, Singapore, Japan, Denmark, Austria and the USA. Some of them highlighted surprising similarities between the educational and healthcare challenges in developed and developing nations. The information design solutions may not be so far apart – it’s just a matter of perspective. I would certainly be interested to invite our Indian colleagues to teach us how mobile phone applications may be seen as a development tool in our social context.
Having said that, nothing beats the power of just talking to someone, and mobile phoneshave opened up this opportunity for all of us in an unprecedented way. Dr. Swaminathan, the Founder and Chairman of the MSSRF said in his inaugural speech at Mobile Plus: “Mobile phones are a transformational technology that impacts modern society like the transistor radio did in the 20th century. “ It seems only fitting that Information Design treats mobile phones as a transformational medium.
