Keynotes
Opening Keynote
Kentaro Toyama
Assistant Managing Director, Microsoft Research, India
Head of Research Group:
"Technology for Emerging Markets"
Dr. Kentaro Toyama is assistant managing director of Microsoft Research India, in Bangalore. He leads a group that looks for applications of computing technology in emerging markets and for international development. This team is composed of social scientists and technologists who work together to identify appropriate use of technologies for education, agriculture, healthcare, and microfinance, particularly for poor rural and urban communities. From 1997 to 2004, Toyama was at Microsoft Research in Redmond, where he did research in multimedia and computer vision and worked to transfer new technology to Microsoft product groups. Kentaro graduated from Harvard with a bachelors degree in physics and from Yale with a PhD in computer science.
"The Advantages of Being There"
Located in Bangalore, India, the Technology for Emerging Markets research group at Microsoft Research India conducts social science and technology research to identify applications of technology for socio-economic development of underserved communities. This talk will present a few examples of our work in rural education, agriculture, and user interfaces for non-literate users. I will then use the projects as a point of departure to discuss the advantages and the challenges of geographical proximity to ones potential customers, as well as the particular characteristics of working with underserved communities for a for-profit corporation.
Closing Keynote
Apala Lahiri Chavan
Vice President Asia, Managing Director India
Human Factors International
Apala Lahiri Chavan, M.Sc., is Vice-President Asia and Managing Director of Human Factors International (HFI) in India based in Mumbai and Bangalore. Her usability experience includes interface design, standards and style guide development, needs analysis, task flow analysis, forms design, documentation, training, and online support. As an award winning designer (International Audi Design Award 1996), she has led teams spanning design, development, testing, and deployment of software products. She has a special interest in the issue of internationalization of products and has presented several papers on the subject. Apala is now leading HFI's initiative for 'contextual innovation' services. Within HFI, she has been working for clients such as Microsoft, Nokia, Citibank, Siemens Information Systems, HP and others. Furthermore, Apala is Vice President for Chapters at ACM SIGCHI.
"To be (global )or not to be (global).is that the question?"
In this 'flat world' are we becoming a global homogenous population or are we calling out our differences even more? On the one hand, we have global brands like McDonalds and Coke and Hollywood spreading out across the world and being able to say that the sun does not set on their empire. On the other hand, we have ever increasing instances of assertion of local 'identities' in the form of different types of subcultures.
My contention is that we are at the cusp of this global versus local debate at this point in time. This is the time when we need to understand and decide how the world will be viewed in the future. I foresee a unique way forward to this debate.
Lets take a look at the products/services and systems that seem to have global reach and compare these with those that are at the top of the pyramid BUT only locally. What do we notice? Is there a pattern as far as what kinds of 'things' work well globally and what does not? Or are there components to every product and service that have global appeal and other components that do not?
I hope to take you on a journey that gives us clues as to what I think will be the future direction when faced with questions such as the one i started with.
Opening Speech Saturday
Tony Salvador
Director of Research for the Emerging Markets Platforms Group (EMPG)
Intel Corporation, USA
Dr. Tony Salvador is the Director of Research for the Emerging Markets Platforms Group (EMPG) within Intel Corporation. Previously, he was a Research Scientist and co-founder of Intel's People & Practices Group. Tony Salvador received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Experimental Psychology from Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He went on to earn a Ph.D. in Human Factors and Experimental Psychology at Tufts University in Boston. He has numerous patents and published papers in academic journals as well as more popular venues.
"From ICTs for Development to ICTs for Exchange: Opportunities & Sustainability in Global Markets"
Jose Miguel's family, members of the Cañari indigenous community in the Ecuadorian Andes, lives at 11,000 feet, in a small community, in a mudbrick house. They had some land for farming, for their own food, maybe to sell a little at the market. Jose Miguel's father sold his land to send Jose Miguel to Rio Bamba University in central Ecuador. The land meant everything. It was all he owned.
Jose Miguel wanted to study agronomy. He wanted to learn modern agricultural techniques and apply them to his community. While many of his cohort were leaving for North America, Jose Miguel wanted to stay and help. They made a business decision to invest in Jose Miguel. Imagine the risk: sell everything, with no other way to earn income, and invest in your child's education where anything can happen - he could fail, get hit by a bus, etc. Imagine.
But this is what is was: a business decision. We don't see it that way. We, in "the industry" see them as poor. We see Jose Miguel as "a miracle". In this paper, we want to address the notion of perspective, specifically the perspective with which our industries consider emerging markets. In this talk, I wish to focus on two interrelated perspectives.
First, I wish to address specifically the prevalence of a collective "outgroup homogeneity bias", wherein we (in the industry) see them (in emerging markets) as far more homogenous than they are (and ourselves as far more heterogenous). I will focus specifically on means for countering this bias and opening the space of opportunity.
Second, I will address the general perspective of philanthropy toward people in emerging markets and juxtapose this against Georg Simmel's notion of "exchange". In philanthropy, one gives to the other; unilaterally. In an exchange (a la Simmel), each gives up something to gain something of greater value. Shifting the focus of development from philanthropy to exchange would shift the types of activities more toward sustainable enterprises by default because it shifts the space of possibility and opportunity we all might consider.
Based on these perspectives, I then propose we consider a shift in perspective from: ICT for development, per se, to what opportunities exist to enable exchange in which ICTs will play a role. To make this case, I'll present ethnographic from several countries, including Ecuador, Morocco, India and Hungary.