Report on ICTD 2012 Atlanta, US

@ Demo area

ICTD 2012 is the most important conference in the field of technologies for development, held once in two years, this year it was held in Atlanta. The conference is a part of SIGCHI, SIGDOC and is colocated with ACM DEV.

What's most interesting about it is the 50/50 mix of academicains armed with theories and frameworks, and practioners fresh from the soils and plains. This year, the coference was foucssed on Africa, resultingly we had an African Researchers Network symposium held.

I want to talk about three things in this report -

About thinkertoys the demo, about the sessiosn and about my takeaway. Lets get rolling!

-Demo

So thinkerToys was selected to be demoed along with about 10 other projects at the conference. The pic above shows the setup - very inviting to play. Demos spanned two days and attracted easily around 150 visitors. Almost everone I met was impressed with the idea, and found it fascinating that someone from CUTE is here, sweet coincidences ended up in me giving a talk on 'How a science fiction researcher ends up at ICTD 2012.

Particularly interesting was the feedback from the people from the field. Most suggested that it shouldn't be given out for free but should be charged a small amount. Few designers and artists enrolled in openToys and the number is only growing!

-Sessions

ICTD had over 20 very insightful sessions from experts, most of them were very open ended. In particular I'd like to mention the Human Centered Design session by @theReboot. A lot went into how designers and engineers can relaly make a change, how processes that we otherwise use can be adapted for development.

-Takeaways

1. Technology is not the solution, in fact technology comes last in the order to find solutions to problems.

1. A human solution will anyday outweight a technology one.

1. Being said that, Technology at its core is still the invisible driving force behind ICTD, once the economies of scale work in its benefit that is. eg. Cellphone tech is changing Africa big time, but only now when it is affordable.

1. Our work at CUTE can take inspiration from the many failed projects that ICTD has to offer (there was a FailFaire at ICTD2012!), maybe we apply the same interaction principles and human centered design to our projects. Maybe before investing months into engineering, we pick up tools from design and go out and get the experience right. Afterall we are into experience communication right?

With my new job at unicef innovation lab and my study at the art center college of design, I will continue to engage with the ICTD community in a bigger way.'