Mobile for Development: The Role of Mobile Technologies in Fostering Social and Economic Development

Global Dialogue with W3C Workshop Participants in Sao Paulo, Brazil

June 3, 2008
12:30 - 2:30 p.m. ET
World Bank Washington, D.C.
1850 I Street, Room I1-200

The webcast will be available at: http://www.worldbank.org/edevelopment/live

You are invited to join a discussion with the international participants attending the W3C Workshop on the Role of Mobile Technologies in Fostering Social Development from June 2-3 2008, in São Paulo, Brazil. Participants in Sao Paulo and Washington DC (and other cities which will be able to join) will address specific challenges of using mobile phones and Web technologies to deliver services to underprivileged populations of developing countries. This Global Dialogue is facilitated by the World Bank's e-Development Thematic Group per request from W3C and its members in Washington DC and Sao Paulo.
The total number of people having access to a mobile phone is estimated at 3 billion, and over 80% of the world population is currently covered by a mobile network.  Practitioners of mobile applications will share their experiences on using such platforms for economic and social development.

The following issues are likely to be discussed:

• Social issues related to empowerment: how to enable local people to master the technology to develop and deploy the applications they need, how to leverage local contant and applications development;
• Social issues: how to capture the real needs from the targeted populations, how to have a bottom-up approach that will integrate NGOs into international organization agenda and work;
• Social issues related to sustainability, entrepreneurship;
• Challenges of developing and deploying content and applications from real-life use cases;
• Technical issues related to specific types of applications (m-health, m-gov, etc);
• Technical issues related to the mean of deployment (sms, voice, web);
• Technical issues related to accessibility for illiterate people

Panelists:

Events Photos:

 

For further information about the W3C Workshop, please visit: http://www.w3.org/2008/02/MS4D_WS
Participants from outside the Bank will NOT need a building pass for this seminar. please RSVP and feel free to invite others.

To join our mailing list, please write to edevelopment@worldbank.org.