JonCamfieldBlog: Notes from "Democratizing Development: How Technology is Disrupting Traditional Development Models"

Below the fold are my notes from the Democratizing Development: How Technology is Disrupting Traditional Development Models panel by SID/W at Chemonics on the 15th. Overall it was a very interesting panel with some path-breaking models (especially Kiva's peer-lending system; where anyone can provide microfinance loans through on the ground micro-finance loan institutions to people needing small loans with full feedback and transparency). The speaker from the World Bank was very pro open source, and was involved with linking the Bank to Development Seed to create their BuzzMonitor system to try and hammer into the rest of the Bank that they were not operating in a vacuum. He also seemed pro data-sharing; which would be very interesting, if unlikely, to see happen.

All of the speakers stumbled on the last-mile solution; their solutions never got beyond requiring someone with the time, training, and technology to access websites and do some semi-complex online tasks. With the buzz that MobileActive is getting, I think that there remains a goldmine of low-cost transactions and information sharing that just needs a little development and partnership work put into it to bridge the loan recipients directly back to sites like Kiva.org as a pipeline directly to potential funders.

Read on for my staccato notes.

Modertor: Mathew Clark; MS Global Strategic Accounts
- Prop: Dev model hasn't changed since bretton; loans and grants to govts
  - some changes, but transformtive effects not there
  - MS for example changes a lot in business model
  - :. ICT can strain and transform current model; esp. financial models
  - cell phones as information provision; more up to date than project leadership
DevEx (Raj Kumar) (devex.com new social networking site)
- devex membership org to provide network of dev professionals globally for hiring and industry info/bizdev; evolving towards social network system?
- PGC; 1:1 => many:many; peer connections to dev professionals
- inside out of previous data model; org by group
- replacing RPR?
- walled garden for dev professionals
- realizes market prob that real customers are the poor, but they have no voice in project planning
Kiva (Premal Shah) formerly at paypal/ebay kiva.org 501c3
- web 2.0 and microfinance from san fran
- online market for microloans; orgs post profiles of entrepreneurs, anyone can fund in $25 increments
- social investors like transparency, sustain, price, uniqueness
- field instituions: new source of funds w/o interest, loss risk bourne by users/donors, risk subsidized by warm fuzzies
  - => more risky investments??
- 300k users 27M in donations funding 45k entrepreneurs; 5yr goal 1B
  - growth; $1M and 10k new users every 12 days
- risk: 97% on time repayment, <1% defaults; <10% of repaid loans withdrawn => compound loan fund
- $8 raised for each $1 expense
- S:S lending mex to uganda, etc.
- supporter network missing "facebook"
- Key components
  - addictive (easy - story, photo, bizplan, low entry cost not "poverty pornography", fun: rich updated content on xactns, popular entrepreneurs, recipient journals with google translate + lender pages/badges, kivafriends.org)
  - radical transparency (trans=>authenticity=>trust; 100% of online donation goes to recipient, no processing, ask for 10% overage => 70%self sufficient from these donations; reveal problems with orgs resulting from random sampling and audits90% of resonse to failure thanks for truth )
  - crowdsource (flagging enabled to crowdsource dubious transactions, crodsource auditing interns; Fellows mtched with local MFIs, volunteer translators),
  - increasing return on increasing data (moving to be complete db of MFI institutions (guidestar/D&B of MFI) ... pseudo credit bureau of mfis = desoto hidden capital solution),
  - long tail (discover and scale up the next grameen bank?) tier 1 of mfis is GB; way down to tier 4 of local church congregations)
WB Online Outreach / Dev 2.0 (Pierre Wielezynski)
- use communications to get social networking in; trickle down to ops
- wb master of dev data, wants to open further, wb api coming, dropping walled gardens/exclusive membership
- attention of wb trick: show exsting conversations, etc.: buzzmonitor with devseed => not operating in vaccuum; bureaucratic env slow to adopt, but some champions e.g. a google earth user?
- shifting bank from "I know best" to partnership / coop strategies; 2 years 3k retirement from bank ; not a tech problem, a culture problem
- pro open source; need to share even just info could help
Q&A session
- rafael mechant blogger; how can locals take advantage of these social media tools? kiva as virtual bb of local financial responsibility
- bill black - obama and campaign and link to comm model
- mercy corps; micromentor/match.com for intl dev mentors?
- kiva data sharing of ontheground data, icts as enabler, => collaboration of partners like wb, devex and kiva
- bplan writing; all of these fail a last mile system?? best practices from true bottom up? (mobile vs cybercafe, training probs)
- cost/benefit, need to reveal demand to bring supply of internet access
- wbank loan transparency???