Geekcorps Mali’s LMI Blog

This week brought more progress on the technical front. As always, Frederic and Renaud have been moving ahead nicely on building the interface for the eKiosks. This week they were focusing on building the email and relay components of the system. How to best incorporate news and similar feeds are being debated now. To say they are an impressive team would be an understatement.

Matt has been thinking of new value added services and site logistics and came up with a few new ideas. Among them was the sharp idea to offer 2 types of news steams: 1 or more free access feeds for the community at large, and a handful of premium feeds for those who are interested in subscribing to up-to-date news feeds on the topics they are most interested in (say, their favorite football team or the foreign press).

I’ve kept busy working on the project’s budget and earnings projections, as well as some scheduling and planning. We are now at the point where certain elements of the project are coming together and we have to be looking to when we can realistically start implementation. We’ve come to the consensus that the best approach would be to begin shortly with the photo printing opportunity, and gradually phase-in the other elements as they are completed. By adopting this approach we ease ourselves into the community, begin to build our brand, and work out the first technical details before beginning in full force.

Thursday a team consisting of Matt, Renaud, Ludovic, Maimouna, and I went to visit Ouelessebougou and Faraba to greet members of the CLIC and Faraba’s mayor’s office to formally express our interest. Although we had met with these agents in the past, we thought it best to meet again before proceeding any further. Their support will be critical to the project’s success and to review each party’s goals is prudent.

The CLIC will be used as the service hub, and while there we met with Mme. Yattara Oumou Sow, its manager, and reviewed how we could work in partnership. We also had the opportunity to demonstrate the Epson PictureMate Deluxe and discuss how it could be used to increase revenues for the CLIC. While in Ouelessebougou we also took note of the radio and GSM towers in the area. Ideally, we would like to partner with Ikatel, one of Mali’s 2 cellular providers, to use their large tower in the heart of Ouelessebougou to relay a Wi-Fi connection between Faraba and Ouelessebougou CLIC. We envision this allowing us to relay information directly from Faraba to Ouelessebougou to the CLIC, and during the next pahse, create a link between the CLICs in Ouelessebougou, Bougoula, and Kangaba to share one internet connection and divide the its cost between each.

Next, in Faraba we met with Mr. Diabaté, the Secretary General for the mayor’s office. Over the course of an hour and a half we worked on how to find the right person to use as a local entrepreneur, evaluated where the kiosk could be placed, and what services the eKiosks would offer and how we can work towards meeting other needs of the community.

Here are a few more shots from the day:

Upon returning from the site visit we met Frederic at the office who showed us the substantial advances he made during the day on the email component. Today he and Renaud are building on the work done yesterday.

- BC