About the Application Laboratory and the Grameen Technology Center
The Application Laboratory (AppLab) develops, tests, strengthens and scales products and services that can be delivered over mobile devices to aid in the fight against poverty. Grameen Foundation is already working in Indonesia to create Village Phone Operators to serve as a testing ground for driving mobile information and content with the objective of alleviating poverty through sustainable and scalable business models. Our efforts in Indonesia will serve as a platform for global replication and scaling.

The AppLab is an initiative of the Grameen Technology Center, an initiative of Grameen Foundation. The Center focuses on technology that makes microfinance operations more efficient, creates income-generating opportunities for the rural poor and provides poor communities access to information and resources. Our efforts support the Grameen Foundation’s mission to empower the world’s poorest people to lift themselves out of poverty with dignity through access to financial services and information.

Please visit www.grameenfoundation.org for additional information.

Job Description
The Program Manager is directly responsible for the on-the-ground implementation of the AppLab in Indonesia. You will provide strategic and operational leadership of our efforts by working closely with a range of AppLab partners, managing local resources, guiding several types of research, tracking and reporting results and recommending overall strategy. In this high profile position you will shape AppLab evolution and develop applications with the objective of global scaling.

Specific Responsibilities Include:

Develop strategy for building the AppLab in Indonesia
• Deepen relationships, leverage strengths and understand needs of local partners (major mobile operator, microfinance institutions, Village Phone Operators and others)
• Serve as local link with partners based outside of Indonesia
• Gain deep understanding of complementary initiatives, global trends in application usage and learning from related experiences and incorporate into implementation strategy
• Develop recommendations for short-, mid- and long-term AppLab strategy in Indonesia and update regularly based on learning

Implement with excellence
• Prepare ambitious but achievable detailed project plans covering small- and medium-scale pilots as well as nationwide scaling
• Actively manage implementation — problem solve and remove barriers as they arise
• Provide technical subject matter expertise and work closely with partners to ensure effective technical implementation
• Craft effective sensitization, education and demand reinforcement programs (marketing)
• Develop creative, efficient and effective training programs with the potential to reach Village Phone Operators in multiple geographies

Track and report results
• Clearly define success metrics for each pilot and phase of implementation
• Establish transparent and easily accessible reporting framework to measure and communicate progress on a real-time basis (including budget)
• Prepare timely and comprehensive analyses of pilots, suggest approaches to strengthen applications/business models and draw conclusions about scaling potential and approach
• Prepare summary updates and reports as needed

Manage local resources and vendors/suppliers
• Develop a detailed training program for the local project manager
• Actively manage local project managers in all aspects of work
• Develop mentoring relationship with Village Phone Field Officers and Microfinance Institution Field Officers as appropriate
• Prepare RFPs for vendors/suppliers and evaluate responses (including selection)

Guide research
• Work closely with local researcher(s) as required to coordinate needs assessment research
• Drive local efforts to build needs assessment findings into iterative process of developing and testing new applications
• Disseminate findings (as appropriate)

Promote AppLab efforts outside of Indonesia
• Generate awareness about our AppLab efforts in Indonesia as appropriate
• Represent the AppLab in Indonesia in discussions with a wide range of partners
• Explore opportunities for additional AppLab implementations in other countries
• Support global scaling of successful application(s) (as appropriate)

Ideal Candidate

Outstanding project management skills
• Experienced and savvy project manager with a proven track record of achievement under a range of challenging situations (ideally in multiple countries)
• Demonstrated experience in managing complex projects (operational and tactical) – with proven ability to work effectively with diverse partners

Strong business leadership abilities
• Strong, innovative and creative problem solver and strategic thinker
• Excellent analytical, communication and interpersonal skills
• An entrepreneurial spirit — with the ability to think strategically and act tactically
• Comfort with unstructured problems and ability to manage complexities under pressure
• Ability to promote knowledge transfer through strong mentoring and team building skills

Enthusiasm and passion for our work in Indonesia
• Enthusiasm for learning from different cultures – eager to build cultural realities into products and project plans
• Equally comfortable presenting to a room of business executives and discussing needs with villagers sitting on the dirt floor of a rural home
• Passionate about the work of the Grameen Foundation and the importance of technology in poverty alleviation
• Previous experience in Indonesia preferred

Deep understanding of information and communication technology – preferably with practical experience in developing countries

Qualifications

• Advanced degree in international development, economics, public policy, engineering, business (MBA) or related field
• At least 5 years of project management or similar experience – ideally with a top consulting firm or technology company
• Strong preference for people with information and communication technology experience
• Business experience in Indonesia preferred
• Knowledge of microfinance procedures and methodologies is a plus – as is experience in product development
• Fluency in oral and written English and Bahasa Indonesia is required

Compensation
• Competitive salary
• Unparalleled opportunity to build creative business models with the potential for global replication and poverty alleviation

Contact
• Send e-mail to sdewitt@grameenfoundation.org. Include in the Subject Line: Application Laboratory Manager Position
• Include CV and brief cover letter explaining why you’re interested and what you will bring to the position
• No phone calls please

Mark Hanusz opened up his presentation by reminding us that the “iPhone OS” actually powers two platforms: the iPhone/iPhone 3G and the iPod Touch. The iPod Touch, having a worldwide distribution, enables a worldwide availability of iPhone OS platform. It is estimated that 12 million iPhone OS devices are already sold.

On a quick poll basis: one lucky guy (Ed. two, including Mark) confessed/showed that he owns an iPhone 3G and few guys have downloaded Apple SDK and all of them got a nice souvenir from Mark.

Mark also highlighted the availability of iTunes App Store for Indonesian citizen (Ed. I just got my account recently, only a valid credit card and an email address are required to apply…). But also challenged the audience…. application with Indonesian content/context = ZERO.

iTunes App Store is widely popular, one newspaper recently published that in just 1 month after its launch: 60 million applications were downloaded, which equals to approximately $30 million of revenue generated.

Mark is encouraging all Indonesian developers to start the development of iPhone OS applications. He shared the story of his company, Equinox Apps – the first  iPhone OS registered developer in Indonesia, and their first educational application: KidsCards. He also welcomes all developers who are interested to work with Equinox Apps.

Ari Soetjitro then complementing Mark’s presentation by  showing a demo about iPhone OS SDK suite. The SDK includes all the necessary tools to start developing for iPhone OS: Xcode IDE, iPhone Simulator, Instruments, and Interface Builder. SDK can be freely downloaded on Apple’s developer website. Ari also hinted an Apple Developer Camp event coming to Indonesia in November…

All presentations are online, download links are listed here: August MobileMonday presentations

Special thanks for Equinox Apps and iBox for sponsoring this event.

Oh, one more thing, the slick slides were produced using KeyNote and the presentation were controlled remotely using an iPhone 3G… cool…

Selamat menunaikan ibadah puasa!
See you in October!

• New place, much larger
• 12 large screen & TVs for your viewing enjoyment
• Better food? Try and taste yourself
• Venue info and map @ www.aphroditebar.com (location map http://aphroditebar.com/about/a_location.php )

We will hear presentation and see demos about the hottest topic: iPhoneOS!

This will be the last MoMo before Hari Raya. We are taking one month off during Ramadhan, make sure you do not miss this one.

If you haven’t sign up for this event, please kindly register on our website: http://www.id-mobilemonday.com/content/view/44/92/

As a bonus for attending the event, you can enjoy special treats from Apple:

• Win the free merchandise!
• Special discount only for MoMo audience for new Mac computers (condition applies)

iPhone OS is the operating system developed by Apple for the iPhone and iPod touch. The iPhone OS’s user interface is based on the concept of direct manipulation, using multi-touch gestures. Interface control elements consist of sliders, switches, and buttons. The response to user input is supposed to be immediate to provide a fluid interface.  Interaction with the OS includes gestures such as swiping, tapping, pinching, and reverse pinching. Additionally, using internal accelerometers, rotating the device on its y-axis alters the screen orientation in some applications.

The iPhone OS Software Development Kit (SDK) was released on 6 March 2008, and has been downloaded over 250,000 times – making it the hottest mobile software platform on the market. Over 1500 applications have been made with the SDK and all are distributed through the iTunes App Store. Over 60 million applications have been downloaded since it opened on 10 July 2008, generating revenues in excess of USD30 million.

Last month, Apple opened up the App Store for residents of Indonesia to purchase apps for use on iPhone OS devices. All that is required to download apps locally and legally is an Indonesian credit card and a valid email address.

MobileMonday invites you to the first ever iPhone OS event for the Indonesian mobile community!

Do you want to develop applications for iPhone OS? More importantly, do you want to monetize it, not only in Indonesia but globally? Learn from the best how to tap into this exciting opportunity!

Join us to hear presentations by Mark Hanusz, the founder of Indonesia’s first and only registered iPhone OS developer, Equinox Apps. Mark will demonstrate the iTunes App Store and it’s implications for worldwide sale and distribution of Indonesia-developed apps. Also speaking is Ari Budiharto Soetjitro, Indonesia’s only Apple-Certified Trainer, on development resources and registration for the iPhone OS developer program.

Event details:

• Date: Monday, 25 August 2008
• Time: 18.00 – 20.30 WIB
• Place: t.b.a. (Kuningan/Sudirman area)

Please register on our website to attend the event: registration page. Remember, space is rather limited, so first come first served.
See you there!

First of all, thanks for BuzzCity who specially sponsored for this event, along with Nokia Siemens Networks and Nokia Mobile Phones.

Secondly, we gave out FREE books for all who’s attending, courtesy of Equinox Publishing. The book is titled Loose Wire: a personal guide to making technology work for you (website here) authored by a good friend of MoMo Jeremy Wagstaff. So, those who are not attending… didn’t you regret for not coming? :-p

Anyway, we still have a plenty of stock available, so watch this space if you’re interested in getting one…

Next, comes the recap.

Denny Yohanes from Nokia Siemens Networks opened the session with highlights from recent market survey that NSN commissioned about (mobile) broadband usage in Indonesia. He explained what is the perception, expectation, recent for adoption, and usage pattern of broadband end users. Clearly, mobile broadband is an interesting market opportunity, because a lot of potential users will readily jump the bandwagon if the broadband service is correctly packaged.

If I have to summarize, I would take two points: 1) adoption of broadband is fueled by the recommenders, delight them and you will get the mass market. Then 2) Denny offered excellent insights for service providers to do that: excite the users through creating a stable & reliable connection, differentiate your broadband offer through easy package and interesting content to feed snack-like consumption, and finally expand the market to the mass by simplify the experience and campaign for productivity.

Jeff from Friendster went on to explain the features of Friendster. The most popular social networking site in Indonesia. If we’re at 20 million Internet subs (APJII data/estimate 2007/2008), then half of them are in Friendster (11 million users, 8.2 unique users). He explained further certain features that are availble for the mobile version to cater the market needs and openness of the platform.

In my opinion, the stickiness of (mobile) social networking in interesting and its popularity in Indonesia . People generally spend up to twice the time in social networks website compared to other website (even YouTube).

BTW, do you know that Indonesian artists do have Fan Profiles in Friendster, and they are using it to maintain the fan-dom? Have you add Sandra Dewi to your account, join the other 100k fans!?

Hisham from BuzzCity then reiterated the importance of mobile community in Indonesia. BuzzCity is running an award-winning mygamma.com mobile social networking site and combined with advertising network (a winning combo!). According to their statistics, most of their users are male, young (70% are 20-30 y.o.) and college educated (an interesting profile for ad target, BuzzCity Indonesian ad growth is already at 85% for Q2/2008).

Further more, Indonesian mobile soc-netters enjoy sharing movies, videos/TV, music, and fashion. And an opportunity lies in their readiness to make e-commerce transaction, even through their mobile, especially purchase of digital goods (e.g. virtual gifts, music, e-books). Interesting… For further details, I encourage you to visit their website and look for their “Digital Lifestyle Report”

Ah, and finally Ryan from Indonesian Opera Community told his Internet usage story. Ryan is particularly pleased with the recent advancement of mobile browser (Opera Mini, to be exact), which allows users to enjoy the “full web” experience on their mobile phones. Besides web browsing, email and chatting (he mentioned a lot of apps to do this) are two important applications to be experienced on mobile phones…. talking about getting 24/7/365 connectivity.

I knew that Ryan often complained about his Internet connection quality – which is a challenge in Indonesia. And beyond that, web publishers, he mentioned, should provide users the option to switch freely from mobile web v.s. full web, thus maximizing the capability of recent breed of mobile web browsers.

We closed the session with an entertaining music from ESound (check out their website here), don’t forget to listen to their original tracks: Khayal. (I noticed that there is a person from a record label, will ESound land a record deal soon…?)

That’s all, folks.

Oh, one more thing, slides can be downloaded from our Download Section.

The results of this survey will be compiled during the month of July 2008. Findings report will be made available in August 2008 and will be blogged about on MOPocket. Your input and comments are invaluable to this study.

To help out and take the quick survey click here.

[via MOpocket]

According to them, Opera aims to deliver a “One Web” experience, blurring the Internet experience between multiple screens (PC, TV, and Mobile). And up to now, Opera Mini has been downloaded 44 million time, and they got 15 million unique customers in May 2008. Have you tried the Opera Mini or Opera Browser?

PS. Salute to the young Ryan as well, who’s one of the My Opera Community Indonesia caretaker.

For those who aren’t familiar, Plazes is a web service for geo-social navigation. Members of the community can publish and share  their current location with others creating a collection of their favourite and day-to-day locations in a geo-database. Members of the Plazes community can actively locate one another, connecting their digital and real-world identities. By providing location context the service makes it easy for its users to coordinate with friends, family and business contacts wherever they are.

This add on to Nokia’s arsenal on location based services, following up their acquisition of Navteq last year and earlier purchase of Gate5 in 2006, which resulted the Nokia Map 2.0 which we are using now. Imagine if later Nokia can integrate the location sensitive communities and mobile based advertisement togerther. It will be a sure killer service! Nokia should have all the formula as they also the owner of enpocket mobile advertisement platform. Let’s wait and see…

Plazes is a German based company, which is also the winner of MobileMonday Global Peer Awards in 2007! Hmm…

The why is still a mystery, but also this is an encouraging trend that mobile Internet is potentially a big market here in our country. Interestingly, the same trend is confirmed by other global and regional (mobile) Internet players, like Opera Mini, AdMob, Buzzcity, etc.

One more thing.

Could you help Google to validate their findings (search log) by doing this search on your mobile phone?

Please enter a search in the format of
“Momo1234 operator plan phonetype”

Example:
“Momo1234 Telkomsel Prepaid 3G Nokia N95″
“Momo1234 Indosat Matrix Huawei Modem”