Why ICT4D?

As a follow up to my Nigeria post, I had put this piece together to describe my interests in international development, thought it was relevant now as well:

Introduction for Information Technologies and International Development
Kipp Jones

I am interested in leveraging my technology experience and entrepreneurial background
to find creative ways to bring technology to people and places currently lacking it. My
experience in building technology businesses from the ground up provide a basis to help
understand and formulate methods for technology introduction, diffusion, applicability,
financing, and business modeling.

My technology focus has been centered on the Internet (including web specific
technologies), security, information management, wireless networks, and video
distribution. I am familiar with a number of technologies with extensive use of open
source software (including legal obligations and issues).

During the past 10 years, I have been directly involved in 11 early stage companies. As a
member of the executive team and/or a founding member I have helped raise over $100
million in funding. My experience gives me the inside view on what it takes to create a
successful business.

The list of early stage companies that I've been involved with (and role), include:

1. HomeCom Communications (Initial technology creator and adviser) ¬
2. Harbinger Net Services (Sr. Software Engineer and 5th member of the team) †o
3. DirectSight Networks (Founder & CTO) ‡
4. Pathfire Inc. (VP Internet Services) †
5. nuBridges, LLC. (Founder & CTO) †
6. Refactored Networks (Adviser) †
7. Skyhook Wireless (Adviser, R&D) †
8. Appraisers of Georgia (Adviser, Investor) †
9. Capital Builders Group (Investor, adviser) †
10. Motionspeak, LLC. (Adviser) †
11. Universal Advertising (Investor, adviser) †

¬ Company went public in 1997 subsequently went bankrupt in 2001
† Ongoing entities as of April 2005
o DBA Inovis today
‡ DirectSight was purchased by Pathfire (then named Video Networks, Inc.)


During the last several years, I have become increasingly interested in technology beyond
my circle of current influence. This has ranged from public policy and the impact it has
on companies and technology adoption; to technology diffusion related to offshoring
activities; to the role of education in science and technology. My intention is to expand
this interest and my passion for technology adoption to other areas and countries.

While I do not have extensive international experience, I have traveled and presented
academic papers in Paris, France and Darmstadt, Germany. I have also traveled for
pleasure to Mexico and Canada. I have an interest in learning additional languages, but
beyond English, currently have only a very basic comprehension of Spanish.

Key experience:
• ~20 years of experience in software and technology
• BS and MS degrees in computer science
• worked for large, medium and small companies
• extensive startup experience (business plan, technology introduction, business modeling)
• fund raising experience
• operational and management experience

Key areas for growth:
• International experience
• Public policy work
• Fluency in foreign languages

Nigeria

So, beyond the research on location based information and patterns, I'm involved in some information technology in development (ITD), looking at the impact of ICT on developing countries. In particular, I'll be working on a project that USAID is helping on called NetPost -- attempting to get Internet access to rural Nigeria by deploying cybercafes in postoffices.

I'd like to look at wireless and location based networking while I'm at it. In particular, some interesting things are happening in disruption tolerant networks that may be very applicable to getting some Internet capabilities to the extreme edges.

Some work at Tech is being done by Mustaffa Amar in this area and he mentioned a project in India called DakNet that may be worth exploring further. Basically, using the store-carry-forward paradigm to do message 'ferrying' to locations that don't have a permanent connection. Interesting thoughts...

Location-based patterns reading list

So far, this is my reading list for understanding the state of the art in location-based information pattern discovery.

- Projet Lachesis: Parsing and Modeling Location Histories, Hariharan, Toyama
- Extracting Places from Traces of Locations, Kang, Welbourne, Stewart, Borriello
- Monitoring Top-k Query in Wireless Sensor Networks, Xu, Wu, Tang, Lee
- Geographic Information Science: Defining the Field, Mark
- A Bibliography of Temporal, Spatial and Spatio-Temporal Data Mining Research, Roddick, Spiliopoulou
- Modeling Trasportation Routines using Hybrid Dyanmic Mixed Networks
- Toblers' First Law of Geography: A Big Idea for a Small World?, Sui
- Markovian Models for Sequential Data, Bengio
- Using Geospatial Information in Sensor Networks, Heidemann, Bulusu
- Bulding Personal Maps from GPS Data, Liao, Patterson, Fox, Kautz
- Processing Window Queries in Wireless Sensor Networks, Xu, Lee, Xu, Mitchell
- Location-Based Activity Recognition using Relational Markov Networks, Liao, Fox, Kautz
- Using GPS to Learn Significant Locations and Predict Movement Across Multiple Users, Ashbrook, Starner
- Temporal Data Management, Jensen, Snodgrass
- Learning and Inferring Transporation Routines, Liao, Fox, Kautz
- Inferring High-Level Behavior from Low-Level Sensors, Patterson, Liao, Fox, Kautz

I'm expecting these to lead me to others, but that should be a good start on a survey of the landscape.

PhD

Okay, it's been awhile since I've been here, sorry me.

I'm back at Georgia Tech working on my PhD at the College of Computing. I have 3 main thrusts of research right now that I'm weaving together as best I can, clustered around mobile, location-based information management:

1) Location-based pattern discovery
2) Location-based information and its impact on enterprises
3) Mobile/location-aware systems in developing countries

Why such a diverse set? Well, I've been working on wireless positioning services for a bit of time now with Skyhook Wireless. This led me into the world and I think I'm here to stay. I have a background in enterprise computing and I'm being funded by the Tennenbaum Institute to work on enterprise transformation. And lastly, I'm interested in the deployment of technology world wide and have been amazed by the uptake of mobile computing in the developing world. All of this may be a loose weave, but nonetheless, it is my current strategy.