Maps have emerged as an important asset in publicly revealing data and information needed for development efforts at the community, national, regional and international level. They have become a useful way of providing and finding information on what exists and where.   Private companies like Google for instance have been collaborating with the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) to help unveil the power of statistics in the region. They have been working with UNECA to provide train the trainer events throughout the African continent, which can aid the development of collection and use of statistics using not only mobile applications but Google Map Maker, Google Earth Google Maps, Google fusion tables, and Public Data Explorer.  This is also proving useful for mapping of the vast African landscape is in the face of lack of street names and route numbers for instance. Local knowledge is key to this type of mapping for development effort.

Vodacom is hosting three challenges to support people who are using mobile technology to solve problems dealing with education, health, or community information that are deployable in South Africa. Their hope is to find projects that can demonstrate value for users, ease of use and deployment, scalablability, sustainability, and innovation. The winning teams will receive R20,000 ($2,646) and the winner with the most promise will receive an additional R20,000.

Posting the initial run of this project URL http://mobile-democracy.re-configure.org has me thinking that "Collective Intelligence" + SMS is something to figure out how to develop further.

Something I will be mentioning in the project overview is the essential need for translators and perhaps employing people from http://www.telelanguage.com

[My project link]
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I am looking forward to meeting so many of you next week at N2Y2! Britt Bravo has me wrangled to blog during the event and we'll be taking tons of photos and quotes from the innovation sessions. Thanks for keeping the comments flowing so that we're all on the same page sharing tools and information.

For those of you looking for last minute reservations, the Highland Inn in San Jose still has rooms in the $100 range. Let me know if you're interested in carpooling....I need a ride for two passengers from the conference to the B&B on Tuesday evening and a ride back to the event on Wednesday morning.

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