New developments

We have been quiet, but still busy planing ahead on the 9th September 2010 iBala consortium will be launching the community of practice at CSIR bldg 22 from 12h30 - 15h00 RSVP by emailing ibalamobile@gmail.com please see the invite for more information.

22nd of September 2010 we will be repeating the workshop, (Delivery of library services via mobile technology)  book your space by emailing ibalaconsortium@gmail.com

hope to see you there

CoP launch and repeat workshop in September

Unfortunately we did not launch the CoP at the workshop as planned, the new launch date is the 9th of September 2010 at the CSIR. Due to the success of the SAOUG workshop we will be 'repeating' the workshop for those who didn't attend, towards the end of September. The investigation is continuing, ebook readers seem to be making a lot of noise too, maybe the next post will look at that, what to consider before buying:). For now its business as usual...

SAOIM - Mobile technology workshop

On the 6th of  August 2010 we had our first South African workshop as iBala Consortium. Everything went well, Adele shared a bit on what a mobile service is and is not, what to consider before starting a mobile service. A group from CSIR's Modelling and Digital Sciences reviewed cellphone features and security - on viruses and security the tip of the day was "switch off your Bluetooth if you are not using it". Cornelle from the University of Free state demonstrated how their users use SMS to contact them. Herman switched on the lights on QR codes, what and how they can be used in a library environment, look out for them on business cards/library card in the not so distant future. Siphethile and Christelle talked about creating a .mobi site using a free service and the other using Dreamweaver. Kosie had everyone checking their bank balances and some looking for the nearest date they can have a 'birthday'; yes you'll do that too when you realise just how handy eBook readers are.

Getting ready for the SAOUG workshop

All is set for our second workshop on the 6th of August, but it was not an easy task. Getting cellphone companies to come and do a demonstration for us was a nightmare, I felt totally ignored because none of them bothered to respond, another one asked a series of questions transferred me from one person to another yet I dint get help. Martie managed to get Samsung to do a demonstration for us. Soon after that our luck changed, it turned out that we have another group within the CSIR that doing research on mobile technologies with a few demo phones in their lab - now we have them on board too.

We are more excited about the coming workshop because now we have more people presenting meaning less to do as it is a bigger group work. We will be presenting as iBala Consortium, more information about the CoP is available on the wiki

CoP and another workshop

After all the hard work, we are happy to announce that the group is bigger and doing bigger things. We busy preparing to facilitate another workshop on the 6th of August at the 10th Southern African Online Information Meeting on the same day we will be launching the community of practice.

students meet our 'secret weapon'

Siphethile arranged for the students to meet with Adele so they can ask her about the cool stuff she is working on. Knowing just how 'traumatic' that can be we tagged along for emotional support (and to learn more ourselves). The thing is each time we talk to Adele we learn something new, there was no ways we were going to miss out. Today's panel consisted of two more people who were also as interesting and knowledgeable as Adele. We got to meet the woman behind Dr Math.
Needless to say the students were really disappointed and excited at the same time. One thing that really impressed me more about them is, as heartbroken as they were not even a single one said "I quit or wh
at now" they knew what they had to do. With week smiles they were ready to go back to the drawing board and fix their project.

With that kind of determination I can safely say, they are going far.

The project so far

The winning team is hard at work developing a .mobi site for CSIRIS. The excitement is back on so is the pressure, I know it is too early to brag but we are giving this our all and we are not stopping until we have it up and running. If you know of any open source software we can use please le us know. One click to the names of our latest additions (Frank, Herman and Kriya) will take you to their personal journey as they invade the world of mobile services in libraries.

Yes we win

UP students

A warm welcome to Kriya Gangiah, Frank Mokgoloboto and Herman Redelinghuis from UP, who will be with us for the next two weeks to help us fast track our learning. These guys are making me feel so old school with what they have in mind already. We win

The way forward and CoP

Botswana conference came and went, now the greatest challenge is to take the project further and applying all that learning at work. We are starting a community of practice for those interested in exploring the mobile environment with us. Our first meeting is scheduled for 29 June 2010 at the CSIR.
So far we have Wits, UP and CSIR (Information services and Meraka) in our group. The next "big thing" is the workshop we will be facilitating at the 10th Southern African Online Information Meeting in August 2010.

The Workshop

The day we've been working hard for finally arrived, they day was warm and beautiful - a good sign. We explored University of Botswana (yes we love exploring) looking for the venue, until we settled for the one arranged by the organisers. We didn't get the simcards on time for the workshop the plan was to borrow a cellphone from the attendees and use it for live demonstration. Unfortunately we didn't get one with a registered simcard (you need to register your simcard if you want to use your phone to access the internet) we used screen dumps to demonstrate what a mobile phone can do.
Over all the workshop was a great learning experience for everyone, including ourselves.

Botswana

After all those preparations, we were ready for Botswana. Armed with our cellphones and Elmo we took off with no problems at all. We met some ladies from UP and UNISA at the airport, what a relief it was to see some familiar faces. When we arrived in Botswana we did the normal customs story and went to collect our luggage, bags were there but Elmo was not there, since we had him put with fragile luggage we went to the friendly man and enquired about our precious luggage. The friendly man told us not to worry Elmo was not lost just coming with the next flight. Needless to say we didn't believe him, does he have any idea that our necks were on the line should anything happen to Elmo, well we went to the hotel checked in and went back to the airport to fetch Elmo. The trip back to the airport was an interesting one (thanks to our navigator - excuse me I must blame someone) we turned early and ended up exploring Gaborone:-) (no we didn't get lost). Fortunately we found Elmo waiting for us, now all was well and ready for the workshop knowing that nothing can go wrong or so we thought.

Preparations

With all the information, we had to prepare for the workshop;

• Testing some technologies
• Preparing powerpoint presentation
• Putting together the workshop programm
• Creating a web presence (blog, twitter, slideshare, Google talk, etc etc!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
• Dry run sessions with colleagues
• Travel and accomodation logistics (what a nightmare)

All this was done in a period of two weeks (we are smart after all :-) we have Adele to back us up). Other projects and duties we had to put on hold just to concentrate on the workshop. At the last week, the count down began, it was now excitement and anxiety all the way.

Getting help

We came across an article by (Ellyssa, 2009) which was very informative. Martie arranged a meeting with Bettie de Kock from the University of Pretoria, who shared some of her experience with us and also helped with what we already had. Still in high spirits, we met with Adele Botha from Meraka. On our previous post we mentioned our smart idea to create a website. Well it turned out there was nothing smart about it *sob*. Yes it was necessary. The point is there is much more to mobile services than having a website that can be accessed using a mobile phone web browser, though not limited to these, out there are SMS services, MMS, USSD etc 

What Adele did was to correct our misconception of the idea behind going mobile, "it is not about exporting the entire website to a cell phone" she said. Feeling a bit discouraged, Adele threated us to some of her magic coffee. With our cups in our hands, Adele took us through some of the work she was doing and also showed us what Meraka HLT group was investigating in regard to mobile services.

The penny dropped

While we were still excited feeling good about ourselves, Martie dropped a bomb on us, "girls the workshop presenter  wont  make it, are you  up for doing the workshop". Excitement turned to panic *red lights everywhere* a classic sink or swim situation.

Before we could do or say anything we had to calm down unfortunately deep breaths were not helping at all, plan B was Gran's salt, sugar and water solution (it never disappoints). Now that we were calm (thanks Gran) the question was "now what?" One of the things we noticed was that our information centre did not have a website only an intraweb. We asked in-house ICT to design a website not from scratch but to take content from our intraweb of course being the "smart" people that we are we removed content that was not 'applicable'. With that sorted we asked friends, colleagues, family "General members of the public" to refer us to people with expertise and skills, fortunately the people we were refered to were eager to help...

How it all started

It all started with an email from our manager (Martie van Deventer) asking if we would be available to help out at the Botswana conference's mobile technology workshop. The requirements were simply (so we thought), lots of reading (what's new) and experimenting (bring it on). We were so excited, we started browsing the web for existing projects and literature.


The most important reason for us doing all that reading was to know enough to ask smart question :-) Needless to say our excitement grew as we got more information and just could not wait to come back from the conference and apply our knowledge - "think bonus"!

Project Lwazi promotional video

iPhone 2d barcode reader

Digital Doorway.flv

Interactive Mobile using USSD