This past weekend I participated in the Technovation Challenge Mentorship Training. The challenge is run by Iridescent Learning, and the mission is
To promote women in technology by giving girls the skills and confidence they need to be successful in computer science and entrepreneurship. In the course, students design a mobile phone app prototype, write a business plan, and “pitch” their plan to a panel of venture capitalists at a high-visibility, “Pitch Night” event. Winners of each regional Pitch Night will come to the San Francisco Bay Area for a “National Pitch Night.”
I was very inspired by the training, I feel that this nonprofit is coming at the issue of a lack of “women in tech” in a lot of the right ways. In a previous post, I mentioned the fact that confidence is a
major block to women entering technical fields, and that we need to focus more on getting women interested at the “beginning of the line” (high school and earlier) rather than only at the “end of the line” (careers and conferences).
Toward this end, I’m participating in this 9-week process as a mentor to a group of high school girls who were recruited across high schools primarily in Oakland, California.
The women who ran the session were also incredibly prepared and organized given that this is only the second year they’re running the program. They walked the mentors and TAs through various “design thinking” exercises (the kind of thing we do here at EchoUser daily), which seemed quite helpful to the majority of participants who had never heard of concepts like “the difference between observation and interpretation” and “ideation.”
Finally, we took a spin through Google’s AppInventor, and quickly put together several little Android applications, using little Android phones provided (in picture on the left). I’ve been interested in visual coding languages and MIT’s Scratch for quite some time now, as a means to create a more inclusive programming environment, so I’m looking forward to spending more time with this application.
Courtesy of Wikipedia
When I heard that iOS4 was going to enable some kind of multitasking, my first reaction was a resounding “meh”. You see for me, even though I use my iPhone to do business related tasks and the like, I simply didn’t see the need to be able to switch between apps and keep things running. I had no trouble booting in and out of email (since it’s native, it would save my state for later, really useful when writing an email), checking my calendar, or being on a call and looking up Google Maps. For me, and I’ll wager most iPhone users, this was multitasking enough.
But then something strange happened – namely, I started using my iPhone to listen to music, specifically Pandora and Stitcher (disclaimer below). I have a pretty nice sound system at home, and since I recently re-purposed my AirPort for an extra WIFI network, I took to plugging in my iPhone instead. Everything was working wonderfully until “Ding Ding!”. I received a text message.
Now, it’s not the text message alert that was annoying so much that every time I checked the message I’d have to boot out of whatever music app I was using – and interrupt the music. The first few times this happened I dismissed it with a “Tsk tsk. That’s kind of annoying”, and thought nothing of it. But a few weeks in and I was ready to throw my iPhone across the room. Not to mention that I work from home, and the incessant stop-and-start of the music was driving me batty. I eventually stopped using Pandora, Stitcher and a ream of other apps on my iPhone because I couldn’t take all the interruptions (I did switch to Pandora One on my computer, though, so Pandora should be happy).
Enter iOS4. With more open multitasking I could all of a sudden start Stitcher, then check a text message, write a quick email, or check Things without the jarring audio cut-off. What was once a thoroughly painful exercise became, in an instant, seamless. And, you guessed it, my use of Pandora and Stitcher has gone through the roof (same with my roomies).
I’d wager that iOS4 practically saved some music apps, and will rapidly increase user adoption from here on out – because let me tell you: there’s nothing worse than interrupted music, and iOS4 just saved the day.
Thoughts?
Disclaimer: EchoUser has done some work with the fabulous team over at Stitcher, so we’re definitely biased 
A last minute glitch and I could not get international roaming activated on my cell phone. This was the first time I was going to be without a convenient access to a phone while on an international trip. I wasn’t happy…
First stop Hong Kong airport, and I was pleasantly surprised to find the complete airport WiFi enabled. I was able to use Skype on my iPhone to talk back home, check my emails and send updates to my Facebook and Twitter accounts. So far, so good…
My entire stay in San Francisco, I must admit I never missed not having cellular connection…it seemed like the entire city was WiFi enabled even though it was only in parts. Any restaurant, shop, pub I found myself in had WiFi so staying connected was a breeze. In all my years in the US and my trips there over the last 3 years, I never saw WiFi so entrenched in the ecosystem until now.
It goes without saying that WiFi enabled Internet access on mobile phones is the way of the future (Virgin America has even started offering WiFi on their domestic flights).
Suddenly, with broadband data access, 3G seemed a bit too slow, cumbersome and a hindrance to the overall user experience.
In almost all aspects of consumer consumption behaviors in India, there has been a leapfrog like trend where the Indian consumer has bypassed some of the technical/behavioral aspects of adoption due to the late entry of some technology or product. Jumping from having no phones to the cell phone, getting introduced to the Internet directly on the mobile are some classic examples.
Apart from the government run service providers, 3G in India is still some distance away. Can India leapfrog in this aspect of adoption as well? Can we jump directly from Edge to WiFi? One can argue that carriers like TTSL, Reliance and Airtel are well positioned with their already existing home based broadband service to provide blanket (to some extent) WiFi coverage in metro cities. This could earn them enhanced revenue from their broadband service and also help bypass 3G. They could focus on mid/high tier WiFi enabled mobile phones, and generate greater ARPU through a much enhanced user experience of their VAS services.
It will be worth investigating a two-tier strategy – A limited 3G rollout to cover the rural geography in India for enhanced voice/data services and WiFi rollout in metro cities for data services.
