Alec speaks to the first African to ever become a global technology leader at the WEF.

ALEC HOGG:  We're coming to you from the World Economic Forum in Davos and with me in the studio for this special podcast is Ory Okolloh, executive director of Ushahidi Incorporated.  Ory, you've made us proud as Africans - you're the first African to ever become a global technology leader.  Every year the World Economic Forum picks between 25 and 30 companies for this honour.  Most of them come from the United States and a smattering from Europe and you're the first African.  You are though from Kenya originally?

ORY OKOLLOH:  Yes I'm from Kenya and have been living in South Africa for the last five years but still quite involved in what is going on in Kenya and also have close ties to the United States still, where I went to school.

ALEC HOGG:  We've heard about Twitter which is another of the global technology leaders this year, Ushahidi has got a lower profile than that.  Perhaps you could give us an insight into what it is that it does.

ORY OKOLLOH:  Sure - Ushahidi is an open source crowd-sourcing platform.  The term crowd sourcing is used to refer to the ability to pull information from different sources whether it's citizens, whether it's Twitter, whether it's email, SMS, mobile - from different sources of information - pulling it together and using the wisdom of the crowd as it were, to make sense of events - primarily crisis events but it has been used a lot in competitions now.  Companies using it to pick ads where they say ‘vote for your best ad' or ‘send in your best videos' - so you're seeing it a lot in terms of interactive.  Interactive with individuals.  Now what Ushahidi does is it is used primarily for crisis situations, but also what sets us apart is we can collect information from citizens in all those different formats, but aggregate it from all those different sources and include other media forms like pictures from Flicker, from YouTube, mainstream RSS feeds like from newspapers and then visualise that on a map.  So provide contacts then you can see - this is what the citizens are saying, this is what the journalists are saying, this is what the pictures are saying, this is what I can see on the map and as you submit that report you can categorise it.  So for instance in the case of the earthquake in Haiti where we set up an instance to monitor that, you can see where they're looting, where people can get medical supplies, where people are trapped...

ALEC HOGG:  Who would use the information?

ORY OKOLLOH:  Primarily first of all, people would just try to find out what's going on because it's pretty much real time - in the case of a crisis maybe responders or people who are trying to find out where to get relief - people who do need it most because they do have their official sources.  We're not saying - obviously there are issues around accuracy and verification, but we're saying that if you want real time instant information, that you can then follow up on, here is one source that you can use because we're communicating directly with the people on the ground.

ALEC HOGG:  The applications must be enormous for this use - I'm thinking about businesses that spend fortunes on market research - if they could use your software in some way, there must be an opportunity there.  But you have focused more on doing good.

ORY OKOLLOH:  Yes, that's our origin and has always been our goal - using technology for good, but because we've adapted an open source approach, anyone can download the platform into whatever they want and we really try to be community driven.  So people have surprised us with how they've used it - it was never intended to be an election-monitoring tool but it has been used in several elections from Lebanon to Mozambique, perhaps in Sudan if the election is still on - all over the world for Swine Flu - to map crime in Atlanta and just endless...  There is a group that is using us to help track cases of trafficking - a group in Kenya used it to run a competition where people could nominate by SMS individual Kenyans who committed acts of peace during the post-elections - not just about people who did wrong things, but trying to recognise the unsung heroes and using the tool then for people to send in nominations and stories about what happened.  So the applications are endless, there are commercial applications, so for instance if you cook (hint) and you want to use it for people sending messages about what they feel about coke, or how they interact with drink - you can use it for all sorts of things.  I think the killer functionality there particularly is in terms of mobile - being able to reach as in the case of Haiti when the internet was down, but mobile phones are able to go up instantly and we were able to work with the cellphone providers there to set up an SMS short code.  That's pretty much been the way that people have been able to get their messages out or what they need, by SMS.

ALEC HOGG:  So where is the future going to be - is it going to be in commercial applications or will it be more of a humanitarian service?

ORY OKOLLOH:  I think both - right now we're not for profit organisation funded primarily by foundations but I hope not to be fundraising two years from now and have generated enough business to keep us going.  We'll always remain open source, we'll always have the software available for free, but looking to move towards a free mail model.  So as if you want customisation, if you want us to spec it to your particular organisation whether you're humanitarian or commercial, then we could charge for that or for hosted versions because most people don't have the kind of service space that's required to host the Ushahidi - their own particular - maybe it's for an individual user - you're a small group that can't afford service space - we're going to offer hosted versions, maybe free up to a particular storage level - beyond that we start charging for that.  There are various models that we're experimenting with.  We would like to partner a lot more with the humanitarian organisations and media, so that's our initial focus and then looking also particularly at commercial applications.

ALEC HOGG:  Take us back to how it all started.

ORY OKOLLOH:  Sure - Ushahidi's origin came out of the post-election violence in Kenya in December 2007.  At the time I had gone back to Kenya to vote and also to cover the election on my blog - I blog quite a bit on kenyan politics - on my personal blog - and when the violence broke out after the results were announced it was a bit surreal to turn on the TV and the radio and to find pop music and cartoons - it was like nothing was going on because of self-censorship and there were threats from the government.  And the media houses are also quite divided so there was this atmosphere where you could look outside - you can hear gunshots but you have no clue what's going on around you, so I started blogging.  I had friends who were quite connected on both sides.  Initially I was blogging what they were telling me and then I opened up my blog to people to send in by the comments which I had moderated - tell me what you're seeing in your particular area - or you're hearing or text it to me or email it to me, I would then put them up on my blog and I found myself becoming a reporter of sorts.  If I didn't blog within an hour everybody would ask ‘what's going on now - tell me' and it turned out to be a useful... maybe not so much because we couldn't verify a lot of the stuff, but at least there was somewhere they could go and find regular updates.  Then it became too much for me to sustain personally and I thought what if there were a website where they could send these reports directly and if there was a mobile component, since I'm lucky to have a laptop and WiFi wherever I was blogging from at the time but most people have a mobile phone that they could use.  So, if we could map it so we could have some context and see why if Nairobi is on fire, why is Kisumu so quiet, why is Mombassa quiet or northern Kenya - what are they doing differently there.  Can people go and see how they've managed to contain peace efforts.  That was the whole point - mixing text and reports - there's nothing really innovative about the citizen-reporting element - combining it with the map and the mobile and different sources and giving it more context - that was what was innovative.  So I'm not a coder myself - I put up the idea on my blog on 3 January - I said if there were any Kenyan techies who wanted to help me build this to get in touch and we were live and up and running in four days.

ALEC HOGG:  Incredible - and how did the World Economic Forum discover you?

ORY OKOLLOH:  We were nominated for the award.  Three hundred companies were nominated and then out of those there was an initial selection.  They sent a questionnaire where you had to do various things - talk about how you're going to become sustainable, what sets you apart, who's on your team and out of that, I think 24 companies were selected this year.

ALEC HOGG:  Have you had much engagement yet with corporates here in Davos - because I guess if you're going to crack a big Coca-Cola or someone like that, this is a good place to look.

ORY OKOLLOH:  I've had an engagement to potential partners so companies like YouTube were interested in partnering with us as far as the video content  for instance.  They were very interested in elections and monitoring, and how can we partner... we're facing a lot of the same challenges in terms of verification and filtering.  So with the number of technology partners - also the other partners who are just really interested in seeing what we're doing - maybe we haven't identified what we'll do right away, but for them and I've spoken to a number of companies who are on the selection team to see a company coming out of Africa with fantastic technology is a good news story and people are quite curious and have come up to commend me and so we'll see...

ALEC HOGG:  How are you keeping your feet on the ground - it's been an incredible roller coaster ride for you in the last few months...

ORY OKOLLOH:  There's still a lot to be done - we still have to prove models, so we're sort of in the honeymoon phase - you know how fast technology changes so we could be hot tomorrow - today and tomorrow you're like MySpace - no one wants to have anything to do with you - so that awareness - if we don't keep up we could be irrelevant in a year or so - keeps me on the ground...

ALEC HOGG:  Ory Okolloh is the chief executive of ushahidi.com and it's a well worth website to go and have a look at and as mentioned earlier, she is one of 27 global technology pioneers who have been recognised this year by the World Economic Forum.

The SAfm Market Update with Moneyweb is broadcast on SAfm 104-107fm, weekdays at 18:00 to 18:30.

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