How often do you get a chance to shake hands with the IT, tourism, technology minister of a country? Luckily, I just did. The Margins Symposium was a gathering of intellectuals for tackling some of the complex questions that the world faces today. You build cool iphones. Nice mash-up APIs, Cool Desktop Gadgets... and so on. Can these solve the problems of a less privileged sector of the society? The answer is an obvious - "No".
The question is.... how much of the technology that we churn out every single day is really relevant at the grass-roots level. How much of this can be applied and be useful in the far ends of the world where sustainable technology and business models are the need of the hour?
The Conference was really a gathering of people with vested interests in solving the problems of the Margins...or to put in politically correct words.."solving the problems of the people who are marginalised (due to circumstances)"
Some beautiful insights were made during the Q & A sessions....and i will "(TRY)" to quote one .."While attending a lecture as a student in a University, we scribble things in our notebooks. Sometimes, we hear about something important and write something in the Margins of the notebook. Whatever we write in the Margins emphasises/clarifies/reinforces the main content written on that page."
I was wondering about how can someone even think of such an amazing analogy between the "margins of a notebook page" and "THE Margins"- referring to people or a strata of society.
What's implied is that... when you build solutions for solving the problems of the poor/developing nations, the technology that you use is put to test. If it succeeds there too, it's definitely sustainable. That reinforces its strength. However, if it fails, one needs to re-think its use even in more advanced set-ups.
Another interesting point was made regarding the "contextualisation". I think that contextualisation is a universal concept and must be applied in several scenarios. We cannot imagine any business to succeed without adapting to the local trends and demands. As an illustration, there's a running joke ...a funny e-mail actually... about how a soft-drink company failed miserably in some Arabian country. The reason was that they had put on advertisement which when read from left to right sounded perfect. But it had a completely opposite meaning when it was read the other way round (Like Urdu is printed and supposed to be read right-to-left). This is a perfect example of what contextualisation means. Indeed the failure to contextualise can have major impact on most businesses.
Some more (nice) points:
"If you don't have enough clarity or cannot understand the complete problem, make an effort. But be flexible."
"Just because a solution does not scale-up well, does not mean its a complete waste. Who says that systems must always be huge, centralised and uniform. Sometimes 10 small and different solutions solve a complex problem more effectively."
"People who have problems do not want someone else to design a complete solution. After-all, who can design a better solution than the ones who know the problem. The important thing to do is to empower people to solve their own problems. Technology plays a vital role in this empowerment."
