The past couple of weeks have been particularly exciting for Ushahidi and FrontlineSMS. Independently they've been featured on the BBC and CNN websites, where their use in the DRC and Malawi respectively continues to gain traction. Jointly they've appeared in Forbes Magazine in an interview given by Ory (which was predominantly about Ushahidi, but given the enormous openness and spirit of collaboration between the two projects, the FrontlineSMS integration also made it to print).
I've been a big fan of Ushahidi - particularly the people behind it - long before they started using FrontlineSMS as their local SMS gateway. I wrote about the project when it came to prominence during the Kenyan election crisis, and included it (along with FrontlineSMS and Kiva) in a discussion about rapid prototyping - something I'm a huge fan of - in one of my PC World articles:
The interesting thing about these three projects [Ushahidi, Kiva and FrontlineSMS] is that they all proved that they worked - in other words, proved there was a need and developed a track record - before receiving significant funding. Kiva went out and showed that their lending platform worked before major funders stepped in, just as FrontlineSMS did. And Ushahidi put the first version of their crowd sourcing site together in just a few days, and have reaped the benefits of having a working prototype ever since. If there is a lesson to learn here then it would have to be this - don't let a lack of funding stop you from getting your ICT4D solution off the ground, even if it does involve "failing fast"
Given Ushahidi's Kenyan roots (and those of the Founders) and its growing collaboration with FrontlineSMS, it was more than a little apt that last week saw three of us working together at a Plan International workshop near Nairobi (photo, above, of us at a separate Ushahidi developer meeting). Erik Hersman, Juliana Rotich and myself didn't only present Ushahidi and FrontlineSMS as standalone tools to the Plan staff, but also demonstrated how easily and how well the two could work together. It was the first time the three of us had collaborated like this, and the first time that I'd seen a FrontlineSMS/Ushahidi sync running in the field. As Erik himself commented:
One of the basic tenants of Ushahidi's Engine is to make it open to extend through other mobile phone and web applications. The first one we've done this with is FrontlineSMS, which has worked out incredibly smoothly for us. Within a week of releasing our alpha code, we deployed Ushahidi into the DR Congo, and used a FrontlineSMS installation locally to create the hub for any Congolese to report incidents that they see. It has worked flawlessly...
During our presentation, Plan International staff were able to text messages into the FrontlineSMS hub at the front of the room, messages which were then automatically posted via the internet to the Ushahidi server. Erik approved some of the comments (not all!) via the online Ushahidi dashboard from the back of the room, and the attendees saw them appearing on a Ushahidi map beamed via a projector onto the wall. Although live demonstrations are risky at the best of times, the sync took two minutes to set up, and everything worked perfectly. For everyone behind the Ushahidi and FrontlineSMS projects, months (and in the case of FrontlineSMS, years) of hard work was paying off right before our eyes.
For the workshop delegates, the potential of the two tools - independently and together - was clear, and ideas for their application in Plan projects across Africa continued to flow for the rest of the week. What's more, the benefit of working together to demonstrate the independent and collaborative power of the tools was clear to Erik, Juliana and myself. An innocent Tweet about "Ushahidi/FrontlineSMS Road Shows" brought back encouraging words, and even an offer to try and help make it happen.
There's much talk of collaboration and integration in the mobile space, and things are slowly beginning to happen. The recent establishment of the Open Mobile Consortium is further proof of a growing collaborative environment and mentality. What took place last week in Lukenya is just a small part, but one that I - and the team behind Ushahidi - are immensely proud to be a part of.
