NetSquared enables social benefit organizations to leverage the tools of the social web.

Communication

SurePower - Utilising Mobile communications to optimise Utility distribution

Project URL: 
http://www.iwe.param.mobi/
Short Project Overview: 

A Mobile messaging system, which delivers a "call to action" advice by the power utility, to notify the partnering public to prepare for power disruptions or natural disasters in their particular suburb, so as to minimize the effect on their lifestyle.

Detailed Project Overview: 

Why SurePower(SP)? 

Mobile phones are commonly referred to as "Africa's Computer". The power of this service, is the sharing of real-time information to mobile users, of electricity power disruptions forecasts, that will enable the user to participate effectively in ratiolizing the use of alternative energy sources, avoid huge consequential losses,that will not be possible otherwise   More than 70% of economically active inhabitants in South Africa use mobile phones, and apply SMS communications as an alternative to voice.  SurePower provide an effective mobile communication service for the Electrical Power Distributors.  An advice relating to their neighborhood of an impending power load shedding is provided JUST IN TIME by quality messaging to participating consumers.  Power Distributors are now enabled by the SurePower(SP) service to ascertain in which geographical area the affected electricity user is.

SP conducts an effective survey by ringfencing all the participating mobile users who would be affected by a specific circuit break.  This conceptualized PowerCell would be the definition of the group of interested mobile users, that need to be advised during a specific timeslot in a day.  SurePower also makes possible the complementary benefit, where a Power Distributor can confer with partnering users on how to cooperate in using the limited power resources.

What are the SurePower features: 

• Send power interruptions predictions to mobile users relating only to their suburb via cost-effective SMS alerts.

• Access a mobile WAP internet website for members of the participating group.

• The Utility company benefits from the PowerCell survey for planning purposes

• The facility provides the capacity of conducting various PR interactions with Mobile user involvement.

Who is behind SurePower:

The team is lead by Pieter Henning; who is a Telecom Engineer with 30 years experience, based in Johannesburg, South Africa.

When are the Power Distributor and the mobile Users involved in the service?
The Power Distributor would advertise in the local media that interested users must SMS their Postal code when they experience the next triggered power outage.  The SMS information received in the 30 minute window period would be sufficient for SP to calculate the Powercell

What else have you done in this area?: 

• Workshops have been held with management of the main Power Distributing Utilities in South Africa, after the onset of major black-out events, that are expected to re-occur over the next 6 years.

Good Public Relations and communications are required in order to minimize the consequential damage by implementing alternative resources.

• Developing a specification for a Workflow management company to partner in producing a Load Shedding forecast tool for Power Distributors in order that a prediction of a probable power outage event may be shared with residents and commuters.

• Presented the need for a mobile messaging service by the Electricity Utility to mobile users at a Public Hearing held by NERSA, the National Electricity Regulator of South Africa.

Is there a video that helps describe your Project? If so, enter the embed code here: 
Project RSS Feed: 
http://www.rssletter.com/GetChannel/ChannelId=100742
Additional Project RSS Feed: 
http://surepowers.wordpress.com/
Organization supporting your Project, if any: 
Foundation for Building Sustainable Communities
Supporting Organization URL: 
http://www.fbsc.org
City: 
Oshawa
State/Region: 
Toronto
Country: 
Canada
Does your Project have financial support?: 
Yes
Is the impact area of your Project global?: 
Yes
Type of expertise needed: 
Marketing/Media Expertise
Description: 

The SurePower communications tool will be made available to Utility Distribution organizations that are willing to share expected utilily supply problems; however expertise on improving a Public Relations program to their new age users will be appreciated.  Ample communications capacity exists on the message advices to the members to coach them on better utilization of renewable energy sources.  Assistance on Web 2.0 style Social Networking features to be shared by the participating members in a club relationship would also be welcomed.

Type of expertise needed: 
Technical Expertise
Description: 

A survey will be done on behalf of the Power Distribution utility, on determining the location of participating mobile users; by requesting participants to SMS the name of the street and suburb in SMS text form, where the information relating to the Load Shedding will apply.  However, financial or technical expertise, to determine the mobile location by Celltower triangulation or GPS transponder determination will greatly improve the accuracy of the PowerCell.

Type of expertise needed: 
Management Expertise
Description: 

The service can easily be customized to be applied in any country with basic mobile coverage. However, in order to customize the service with the specific procedures relative to local Utility distribution regulations and specific local indigenous language requirements in non-English speaking countries, will require some additional management expertise and funding.  The service can be adapted to announce any other Utility distribution problems in a specific area for participating members.

Sustainability (financial) Model: 

The Working Capital to establish a system for a Utility with 800 000 clients, is estimated at US$ 1.8 million and the researched annual Operating cost per (Electricity) user member to participate in the Messaging system is US$ 3.00. Owing to the miniscule expense of avoiding consequential losses (less than 0.1 percent of the average household electricity account), sustainability in any well governed country is ensured.
SurePower plan to offer a specialist Public Relations consultation service to ensure that even the smallest depots of the Utility company will be competent to service the required energy savings plan to users.

Identified Obstacles: 

Not being able to raise sufficient funding to fast-track the development, would retard the development, testing and marketing of the optimum SurePower service.  The lack of dependable associated resources to take the service to market, will create an opportunity for a similar though inferior alternative services by communications companies.   Governmental monopolies with subjective regulators, may not endorse the belief that the public is not entitled to fair advices.

Project Milestones: 
  • Developed a Unified Messaging product plan for the biggest Mobile Operator in South Africa:  1999
  • Developed Mobile Banking Strategic Plan for a major Bank In SA: 2000
  • Blackout disaster hits South Africa, triggering SurePower:  January 25, 2008
  • Announcing the SurePower solution at the Public Hearing of the National Electricity Regulator of South Africa. - May 29, 2008
  • Developes the SurePower user WAP site: August 2008
  • Promotional Media and Blog finalized with Partner: November 21, 2008
  • Launch  http://surepowers.wordpress.com: 
  • Finalize Beta for service application:  March 2009
  • Pilot Test with Utility company:  June 2009
  • Market the SurePower product globally: October 2009
Additional Project Idea Representative: 
Glenn McKnight
Additional Project Idea Representative: 
Joan Kerr
Additional Project Idea Representative NetSquared User Name: 
Joankerr
Submitted by dwyka on March 2, 2009 - 3:54am

Mobilizing Medical Records in Resource Poor Settings

Short Project Overview: 

We will develop software that enables health workers to utilize electronic medical records [EMR] remotely via SMS. We will use SIM-based mobile phones, and implement the project at clinics that serve more than 65,000 people in Peru and Burundi.

Detailed Project Overview: 

Mobilizing the medical record is a high impact opportunity, EMR adoption has direct and well documented health impact. However, EMRs are rarely implemented successfully in poor areas because of hardware that is expensive, unfamiliar, or unavailable locally, lack of internet and hassles associated with data re-entry. These issues can be address by SIM based phones.

  • EMR will be used more broadly and effectively if more health workers (not just physicians) gather and make use of medical data. Health workers are often out in the field where they do not directly contribute data to EMR.
  • Data collected off-site is often recorded on paper; it must be entered into a database by a different (more trained with computers) person, in a different place, at a different time. Unnecessary steps increase confusion, reduce efficiency and accuracy.
  • Patients currently do not remotely report health issues (I'm out of insulin needles, where can I get condoms?). This impeeds data collection in poor areas where transportation to a clinic may be a serious investment and many patients walk. Remote reporting would facilitate preventative medicine.

Our goal is to produce software that can:

  • Use SIM-based mobile phones. They are cheap, durable, prevalent, require less training and are less likely to make workers a target for theft/mugging (relative to smart phones).
  • Use OpenMRS, an open source EMR. OpenMRS manages hundreds of thousands of patients records; existing installations will be able to plug and play with our software, increasing our project's potential to scale.
  • Health workers or patients send data via SMS, it will be added to patient's medical record. Physicians will be notified of urgent situations (a hemorrhaging home-based childbirth), and worker/patient may receive SMS advice from clinician or an automated SMS based on electronic records.
  • Builds on, smooths interoperability with existing OSS like OpenRosa and Mesh4x.
  • Data transfer optimized for low-signal environments.

What else have you done in this area?: 

The greatest barrier to implementing distributed medical records is adapting organizational practices, not building software. Our development efforts will be put into action because our project was initiated and is being carried out by organizations that provide health care for the poor.

Health Bridges International has helped to develop and operate a clinic and community health care delivery program in the impoverished peri-urban communities of Alto Cayma, Peru.  The clinic consists of full time medical, dental, nursing, pharmacy and health education staffing.  In addition, the clinic has outreach workers who act as advocates in the communities (35k people total) to help identify the most marginalized populations and connect them to services.

Village Health Works is dedicated to the principle that all people, including the most oppressed and impoverished, are entitled to the highest standards of health care in their pursuit of happy and productive lives. VHW’s first project is to design, build, and operate a model community health clinic in Kigutu, Burundi. VHW serves about 30k people, regardless of ability to pay.

The primary directors of the project are two students, Isaac Holeman, a co-founder of Squarepeg, a N2Y3 featured project to help people find service and action opportunities on the Internet, and Daniel Bachhuber, the founder of Oregon Direct Action, an organization at the University of Oregon that is developing an open source organizational model for student groups.

Is there a video that helps describe your Project? If so, enter the embed code here: 
Organization supporting your Project, if any: 
Village Health Works
Supporting Organization URL: 
http://villagehealthworks.org/
City: 
Kigutu
Country: 
Burundi
Does your Project have financial support?: 
No
Is the impact area of your Project global?: 
Yes
If no, what country(s) does it impact?: 
Burundi
Peru
Type of expertise needed: 
Technical Expertise
Description: 

Additional tech development help would be quite nice!

Sustainability (financial) Model: 

This project requires only minimal seed funding to get off the ground. Once it is functional, it will be supported by the organizations that use it. These include health care organizations like Village Health Works and Health Bridges International, and open source communities like OpenMRS and OpenROSA.

Additional Project Idea Representative NetSquared User Name: 
iholeman
Submitted by danielbachhuber on December 5, 2008 - 3:12am

Neo Harmonia

Project URL: 
www.neoharmonia.com
What will change in the world because this Project happens?: 

My goal is to have better music in communication. I want to end with the endless and impersonal hits of usual advertisements and propose high quality sounds and music for all the musical needs: software developpement, Tv and Radio ads, broadcasting, web sites, podcast...  I want to create customized music and sounds, in high quality, for the communication, marketing, media and multimedia world.

What information will people interact with to make this change?: 

People must choose with attention the music for them communication. It communicate deeply the feelings that words can not transmit. It is the final touch for every communication.

What else have you done in this Cause Area?: 

I play music for years.

Is there a video that helps describe your Project? If so, enter the embed code here: 
Does your Project have financial support?: 
No
What kind of help or resources do you need to turn your project idea into a completed mashup?: 

I need critics of my project in order to think about evolutions. I also need commercial strategies. I'm trying to complete my "advisory board"' and trying to have people around the world who help me to have evolutions of my project and to talk about it.

Submitted by kevin guerel on June 23, 2008 - 4:40am

1. DonorTrust

Project URL: 
http://donortrust.rubyforge.org/
What will change in the world because this Project happens?: 

We envision a twofold change. The developing world [DW] will be lifted onto the first step of the ladder out of poverty and towards development they control; and N.Americans will recapture meaning through connection to something beyond themselves and something that will change the world.

Because DonorTrust (DT) will set a new bar for Non-Profit Organizations (NPOs) doing project work, we won't leave these NPOs without a solution. DT is OpenSource-any NPOs can use it and be empowered to live up to the NPO promise-to take care of the funds donors entrust to us, and then to PROVE IT!

DT builds community by:
- DT is a technology that empowers community-to-community (C-2-C) philanthropy. Classrooms, families, departments in corporations can create an online community to change the world by giving to communities in the [DW]. We are creating a tighter link between these communities.
- DT facilitates more personal communication between the individuals within communities - empowering people to reach out, ask questions, share thoughts, and become one community.
- Community in N.America will be enhanced by sharing in a common goal: participating in lifting villages out of poverty
- We will connect classrooms in N.America with those in the [DW] through DT, empowering students around the globe to work together on projects, learning from one another and together.
- DT is about empowering everyday people to do something about a cause they are passionate about. The technology will decouple the typical components in an Int'l development NPO:
a) advocacy
b) project implementation
c) back-office / admin.
By decoupling these components we can empower a person passionate about a particular cause or region (e.g. water, or Kenya) to advocate for those specific projects and we take care of the rest-crowd-sourcing advocacy, and allowing people to build their own communities in N.America.
-Macro: we want to build the community of the generation that ends extreme poverty. We provide the tools for people to join to change the world. Much like generations that came before us that were part of the peace movement, ending apartheid, ending slavery, or ending communism - DT will provide the ability for THIS generation to stand up and make a difference.

Is there a video that helps describe your Project? If so, enter the embed code here: 
Organization Supporting your project, if any: 
ChristmasFuture Foundation
Supporting Organization URL: 
http://www.christmasfuture.org
Does your Project have financial support?: 
Yes
What kind of help or resources do you need to turn your project idea into a completed mashup?: 

- ***Developers***
- Business Analysts
- Funding
- Hardware
- Hosting
- Project Management
- Marketing / publicity

Additional Project Idea Representative: 
Leif Baradoy
Project Designer: 
James Lee
Project Engineer: 
Desiree McKee
Submitted by jaybaydala on March 7, 2008 - 2:07pm

Project G2 Lockjaw

Project URL: 
http://www.codeplex.com/sldnug
What will change in the world because this Project happens?: 

People will be able to communicate and learn in a virtual environment with their progress and notes being carried with them perpetually. Business will be able to organize and collaborate using less impactful technology than airlines and other forms of mass transportation. People of many cultures and languages will be able to communicate easily and become friends and business partners. Enabling communication to and from Second Life will empower educators and non profits to better leverage their reach in Second Life. G2 plans to open source this project and spur others to action creating their own mashups. http://www.codeplex.com/sldnug

What information will people interact with to make this change?: 

Interaction will be with Facebook applications, database enabled websites and the Second Life Grid at first. The idea is to allow the virtual world to communicate with the web at large creating a 2D/3D Mashup. LibSL, an open source implementation of the Second Life protocol is at the base of our efforts to enable communication to and from the virtual world. We are also looking at XMLRPC and HTTP methods to allow websites and web apps to drive the 3D in Second Life. Inworld training, 3D Plots, Weather, GPS Tracking, Simulations and more can all be achieved by connecting datastores with the Second Life Grid. www.secondlife.com www.facebook.com www.sldnug.net www.itprosinsl.net www.siliconreef.net http://blogs.msdn.com/zainnab/archive/2007/12/09/c-day-is-a-success.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/zainnab/archive/2008/02/19/c-day-v-2-another-great-event.aspx

What else have you done in this Cause Area?: 

http://blogs.msdn.com/zainnab/archive/2008/02/19/c-day-v-2-another-great-event.aspx http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=19878157960&oid=6452491450 http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=19797492960&oid=6452491450

Is there a video that helps describe your Project? If so, enter the embed code here: 
Organization Supporting your project, if any: 
GSquared
Supporting Organization URL: 
http://www.g2techs.com
Does your Project have financial support?: 
No
What kind of help or resources do you need to turn your project idea into a completed mashup?: 

Budget to buy programming time is all needed initially. Most of the projects foundation is in place and in use by Microsoft and other companies with more looking into the possibilities each day.

List URLs that link to, or describe, your mashup data sources: 

http://www.sldnug.net http://www.siliconreef.net

http://blogs.msdn.com/zainnab/archive/2007/12/09/c-day-is-a-success.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/zainnab/archive/2008/02/19/c-day-v-2-another-great-event.aspx

Additional Project Idea Representative: 
Robin Gomboy
Project Designer: 
Kyle Gomboy
Project Designer NetSquared Member Name: 
G2
Project Engineer: 
Kyle Gomboy
Project Engineer NetSquared Member Name: 
G2
Submitted by G2 on February 21, 2008 - 12:29pm

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