The Fail Faire DC 2011 Impact: A Renaissance of Failure in ICT4D

via ICTWorks by Wayan Vota on 10/24/11

Two weeks ago, ICTworks led the organization of Fail Faire DC, an amazing celebration of failure as a mark of leadership, innovation, and risk-taking in pushing the boundaries of what is possible in scaling ideas from pilots to global programs.

Our goal was to continue the Fail Faire movement started by Mobile Active, and make failure more acceptable in the international development community. So far, the impact of Fail Faire DC 2011 is greater than we anticipated. Yes, the event itself was amazing, and others agree, but more importantly, it spawned a greater conversation around failure and the need to fail if we are to expand our profession.

Here is a quick tour of the Fail Faire DC impact to date:

• Learn about the 10 levels of ICT4D failure, including the "epic fail", better know as the face palm 
• Check out the FailFaireDC photos on Flickr. Relive your favorite slides and remember your favorite presenters. 
• Read the Slate.com article. We had a great write up, complete with the academic underpinnings to our erstwhile activities. 
• Read a presenter's first-person account. Tessie San Martin, CEO of Plan International USA was a FailfaireDC presenter and is proud of her failures 
• Learn how NOT to plan a FailFaire. Ian Thorpe explains that going big is not a path to success 
• And how to fail successfully. Or that's the boast from NDI Tech, who somehow failed to attend FailfaireDC. 
• Join Admitting Aid Failure, the second Aid Blog Forum. The aid bloggers are taking our idea to the Internets. 
• While "just say no" to admitting failure is the American Public Health Association's contribution, as talking about failure might scare off donors 
• Yet EWB admits failure annually and still somehow gains funding and buzz 

Look for a FailFaireNYC. Mobile Active is teaming with Unicef to have a FailFaire in New York City this December. Most of all, remember to fail in everything you do. Only then are you showing leadership and innovation in pushing the boundaries of what is possible in scaling ICT and international development.

World Bank's Law, Justice and Development E-Newsletter, September 2011

The newest Law, Justice and Development E-Newsletter is out. Started last year, this is a quarterly e-newsletter providing news, perspectives and events relating to Law, Justice and Development topics. It is produced by the World Bank's Legal Vice Presidency with contributions from experts inside and outside the World Bank.

Microjustice Initiative's 'Access to Justice' Handbook

In light of my previous post on the UNDP Paper on Evaluation Methodologies for Legal Empowerment, my colleague from Tilburg University informed me that Microjustice Initiative (with TISCO, HIIL and Microjustice Workplace) has published a new methodology on measuring access to justice. You can download it here. 

Essentially, it is one of the budding set of literature on measuring access to justice from the subjective perspective (ie, not using the usual top-down, World Bank-like indicators), and provides a detailed description, with questionnaires, for measuring access by aggregating individual experiences of the justice process. Very interesting to me how the field of 'legal empowerment' and 'access to justice' has grown, thanks in large part to the UN Commission of Legal Empowerment of the Poor. 

Conference on ICT4D Failures, with World Bank attending!

After last year's Fail Faire that I posted about, where the World Bank, among others, shared lessons learned about what has worked and what not in ICT4D, there is another one this year: Fail Faire DC 2011 - a celebration of failure on 13th October.

From Wayan Dot Com:



Fail Faire DC 2011 is a celebration of failure. We will have great speakers with fun, fast, Ignite-style presentations of their professional failures. Audience participation is not only encouraged, it is mandatory! We are all peers and none of us is perfect. Expect much laughter as we navel-gaze at where we have all gone wrong in ICT and international development.

Yet we will LEARN from failure. Failure is no reason to be ashamed, and there is great value in examining our mistakes. So while we encourage irreverence and humor, we will be improving our profession too.

We will have light refreshments to lubricate the conversation and there will be an after-party to continue the celebration. However, an RSVP is mandatory for attendance and space is limited, so sign up today!



Fail Faire DC 2011 will happen onOctober 13th at the World Bank.Those that RSVP will be sent the specific room location just before the event.

Fail Faire DC 2011 is brought to you by theWorld Bank, Development Gateway, and Inveneo.

Agenda:

6:00pm: Welcome and drinks
6:30pm: #FAIL-Slam
7:30pm: Open Discussion
8:00pm: Mingling, learning, networking, more drinks


Featured Speakers (so far)
Dr. Tessie San Martin, CEO, Plan International USA
The World Bank on their 70% ICT4D failure rate
Ian Schuler, Internet Freedom Programs, U.S. Department of State
You? Apply today!

Remember, you must RSVP to attend.

Frontline SMS Legal

I have been familiar with FrontlineSMS since my days at The Asia Foundation, and in fact have thought about using that technology on many occasions for our projects. I love the idea, but it was still in the rather early stages of deployment then. I recently talked to Sean McDonald today about FrontlineSMS Legal, which builds on the original core Frontline to expand functionality for people in the legal world, in particular, as a SMS-based case management system of sorts. Legal is still in the early stages of development, but I can't wait till I can see a beta version to help test it, using the Microjustice field offices. 

New Paper on 'What is Law and Development'

A good recent summary on the intersection of law and development. A parallel discussion to my previous post:  'Theories of Law and Development'

What is Law and Development?  Mariana Prado (Toronto Faculty of Law)

ABSTRACT: Law & Development studies have been growing in the past few years, after having its death declared in the 1070s. There is, however, very little clarity as to what this field of study encompasses or whether it is a field at all. Under the label of Law & Development one can find a wide variety of studies, approaches, analyses and topics. Some studies focus on formal institutions, discussing how enforcement of contracts, protection of property rights, and an independent judiciary protect investors and improve economic growth in developing countries. Others have not focused on economic development, but instead on how laws to protect women from abuses in the family and to create quotas to guarantee their participation in the public sphere have been largely ineffective due to deeply embedded social norms and value that cannot be changed by legislation (at least not from one day to the next). Still others have criticized the Law & Development discourse as another source of imperialism and dominance that justify senseless legal transplants from the North to the South.



What brings all these studies together under one label? What is it that one should know, if one is looking for a concise summary of what this field of study encompasses? These are the questions that I will try to answer in this essay. The read should be forewarned that the title may be slightly misleading, as the paper will not provide comprehensive and conclusive answers to the question “What is Law & Development?” but hopefully it will offer a starting point for a deeper inquiry. Most importantly, I hope readers will take this as an invitation to explore this field in greater depth.

American Bar Association eLawyering Website

It's more than just a web presence- read the fundamentals of providing legal services over the internet, as well as innovative best practices (with a US-slant of course): 

From the American Bar Association eLawyering website:

"How can I practice law over the Internet?" This web site will help you find answers to that question.

eLawyering is doing legal work - not just marketing - over the Web. Pioneering practitioners have found dramatic new ways to communicate and collaborate with clients and other lawyers, produce documents, settle disputes, interact with courts, and manage legal knowledge. ELawyering encompasses all the ways in which lawyers can do their work using the Web and associated technologies. Think of lawyering as a "verb" - interview, investigate, counsel, draft, advocate, analyze, negotiate, manage, .. - and there are corresponding Internet-based tools and technologies.

There are exciting initiatives underway now that deserve attention by all lawyers - present and future. While admittedly just a subset of the vast legal technology world, eLawyering and its lawyer-less analogs present fundamental challenges for our profession. There are great dangers, but also great opportunities for attorneys in the coming decade. To be successful in the coming era, lawyers will need to know how to practice over the Web, manage client relationships in cyberspace, and ethically offer "unbundled" services.