Tag Archives: research

Skills Needed for Addresssing the Digital Disruption of Faith

Africican doctorial students using a mobile device
In the past we have talked about this idea that the skill set of a community’s faith leaders needs to change with the times. I also think that the bar for the person engaged within the faith community needs to rise as well.

The challenge is identifying what exactly is missing when we say that the bar is too low. And then, how to move forward with leveling-up the community (for example, how mobile health is being addressed in some African regions using entreprenural methods). This report from JISC about the skills researchers lack (pointed to by NetGen Skeptic) sheds some light on this worth gleaning.

In a survey enquiry asking about their last incident of information-seeking activity, the majority of all doctoral students (including Generation Y) across all subject disciplines were looking for text-based and secondary, pre-published research resources (journal articles, books etc) and not primary source materials.

This apparent and striking dependence on published research resources implies that, as the basis for their own analytical and original research, relatively few doctoral students in social sciences and arts and humanities are using ‘primary’ materials such as newspapers, archival material and social data. In sciences, few may be drawing on large datasets. The implications of this are so significant that there is a strong case for more in-depth research in this area to determine whether the data signals a real shift away from doctoral research based on primary sources compared to, say, a decade ago. If this proves to be the case there may be significant implications for doctoral research quality and other long-term concerns, such as what this might mean for the concept of the doctorate as a ‘research apprenticeship’ if it includes little experience of finding and using non-published and ‘primary’ research sources and materials in research work.

A bit weighty for some conversations, but again, if we are going to say that digital is suitable for ministry, then in order to continue ministry when the initiators of this craft are finished, we’ve got to identify what skills are lacking now, and what needs to be fortified in this foundation.

How to Find Out What’s Happening with Mobile Ministry

paperboy shouting imageHow do you keep up with the topic of mobile ministry? Some people have asked this and there’s no real science to it, we basically just keep our ear to the ground and spend sufficient time reading what’s there, reaching for what isn’t, and relating to what makes sense.

Of course, we’ll also get the statement, “who has time to do that?” And so, here’s one tip towards keeping track of the conversation: follow what’s being talked about in the following Twitter searches:

So now you have the searches, what can you do with them?

First, if you have a Twitter account, these are searches that you will want to save and just make a part of your daily/weekly timeline. Simply seeing the discussions and bringing those items to the forefront in your organizations (meetings, conversations, etc.) will help enable conversation and activity in mobile ministry.

Second, you might not have a Twitter account, so here you can take advantage of RSS to keep you informed on these conversations. RSS is a format used online for syndicated data. In reference to these searches, they have an RSS (news)feed available in which you can use your browser (like Firefox, Opera, etc.) or a web service (like Google Reader, Netvibes, etc.) to save each of these searches and you’d have them for reference.

Third, you can save the links into the favorites/bookmarks area of your browser. This way you can just peek in on the conversations as they happen to have interest for you.

Now, the aspect of interpreting that data and turning it into actionable items is something that you will have to discern against your organization’s goals, issues, and available resources. You can’t expect all of your questions to be answered at this juncture – mobile ministry is a wide, not deep, conversation. But, there are elements of understanding what’s possible, what has happened, and what you can do if you engage some of the conversations taking place.

If you have other ways in which you keep up with conversations about mobile ministry, feel free to drop those in the comments as others will want to glean from your methods and share some of their own.

Research and Call for Interest-Expressions for Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP) in Mobile/Tech

One of the commonly heard statements when I speak with various ministries and organizations is that there’s a lack of case studies and research towards the use of mobile in ministry practices (#mobmin) or just mobile technology as it relates to various community/culture initiatives (#mhealth, #ict4d, #m4d). Part of that is because many who are doing the projects haven’t published their data yet, and part of that is because there’s interest for more. Here are two items that jumped on the reading list this week which may help both of those parts become whole information.

Movirtu: Life at the Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP) Study

Life at the BoP study is a joint work of the team here at Movirtu and our strategic research partners TNS. We listened in detail to nearly a hundred end users in Senegal, Tanzania and India during the course of this work. We selected ‘leading edge’ users: those likely to be engaged with and influential in technology. We spoke with women entrepreneurs, smallholder farmers, and youth.

There are many stories and characters here: a Senegalese student who lives far from her family, prays every day and is as rapturously devout in her study as she is in her life. There are a group of teens in Coimbatore, a city akin to the UK’s Manchester, where boys can quote you an ad for the latest megapixel phone. Women entrepreneurs in Senegal shake their heads and commiserate about the increased cost of living.

Read the rest of this study

Call for Expressions of Interest for case studies of Mobile use at the Base of the Pyramid

infoDev is looking for organizations with experience in rigorous research directly related to the topic and who are able to design and execute the studies from start to finish. Please note that we will shortlist proposals for Kenya and South Africa first, as these studies will be completed in the first phase of the project, with the remaining proposals (for Armenia, Pakistan and Vietnam) shortlisted later. Organizations may submit proposals for any number of the selected countries.

This request for expressions of interest (EOI) concerns research and production of five case studies (one each in Kenya, South Africa, Armenia, Pakistan and Vietnam) to examine the economic and social potential of mobile devices in the “base of the pyramid” market segment, i.e. among the poor who live on less than $2.50 a day. infoDev is looking for organizations with experience in rigorous research directly related to the topic and who are able to design and execute the studies from start to finish. Please note that we will shortlist proposals for Kenya and South Africa first, as these studies will be completed in the first phase of the project, with the remaining proposals (for Armenia, Pakistan and Vietnam) shortlisted later. Organizations may submit proposals for any number of the selected countries.

Proposals need to be submitted by October 10; read more about this call for interest/proposals at infoDev.

Additional Cases Studies and Research Materials

We also have a listing here of several cases studies, statistics, and other types of research material. Yes, there’s not a lot, but again, that’s because there’s not been a lot written to date. View our resources and if you have something that should be noted here, submit it to us or point to it using the #mobmin, #ict4d, and #m4d Twitter hashtags so that it can be searchable and shared to all.

How Do You Learn About Your Mobile-Enabled Audience?

Pulling out another question from a recent conversation with a few potential clients for open conversation:

When you are looking to connect your ministry opportunity with a mobile solution, what do you do in order to learn about your mobile-enabled audience?

Real simple. Let’s hear from you.

A Challenge of Relevant Innovation

I was drawn to an article by a tweet which dang near summarized a number of projects that I’ve worked with in the past:

Innovation starts when someone has an idea, a sense that they can make something in the world work better. So far so good, but an idea plus 5 dollars is worth 5 dollars. Innovation is about taking an idea, working out whether it has value in the world, then getting it built and adopted by the people who would value it.

If the quote wasn’t a good kick, the rest of the article definitely was.

Since we are in the business of working with individuals and organizations which have aims of better utilizing mobile in a ministry context, we definitely have our share of “hey this idea will be the best thing ever to spread the Gospel.” Unfortunately, many of those ideas begin to fail when questions start to be asked about its relevance or realistic application.

That same UN Global Pulse article noted a few questions that any visionary/innovator should ask before they set their feet towards working out any new idea (summarized bullet points):

  • Understand what the problem space is
  • Know what already exists in that problem space
  • Clearly state the gaps in a way that allows people to help
  • Connect the resulting problem set with the people who are available to help
  • Try things out – internally and externally.
  • Understand when something is useful, usable and significantly improves on what has gone before.
  • Find champions.

Some years back, one of our contributors (Jay Noggle) penned the comment, technology is only relevant when its personal. It is vy true that cultural shifts and even pressures to be relevant might compell us to be innovative. Howeve, the test of anything innovative is how it communicates to its intended audiences. The Harvard Business Review adds three bullets to these:

  • What are the conventions for this type of product?
  • What are the key features/things to be communicated?
  • Is the timing for this product effective?

These bullets are just a further extension of applying this wisdom: be innovative, be relevant, be realistic. Let’s be encouraged to experiment and figure out solutions which may have mobile components, but do so in a way that’s not just cool, but relevant to an addressable group of persons in a clear manner.

The Layers of Mobile Life

One of the points that we tried to get across in our BibleTech presentation is that there are several layers to mobile life that need to be understood if mobile ministry initiatives are going to meet with any success. Part of understanding those layers is indeed the relationship between mobile and faith. Another perspective of the layers of mobile life comes from the marketing and analytic fields.

For example, the results of a mobile life survey by TNS Global Marketing displays some of what could be understood from following, or not following trends in mobile.
screenshot of USA and Brazil mobile life comparison via Discover Mobile Life/TNS
See this in more detail along with other visualizations of the Mobile Life survey data from TNS’s Mobile Life website.

Just as important as these observations are, understanding mobile living also has to be considered from the viewpoint of what’s happening on the ground. There’s not as much data from those areas, so we are good to rely on reports such as Mobile Active’s How Small World News Trains Citizen Journalists and Captures Footage from Libya and the book Where Are You Africa?

Trends analysis (such as this one recently posted at Wireless Week) helps to get an idea of where to focus towards, and also where to look for those spaces where data is or can be best interpreted. You don’t base products or initiatives on those trends though. Trends – like prophetic versus in Scripture – need to be interpreted in light of the context in which they are given. And especially with some mobile trends’ data, you will want to get below the high-gloss level of trends to what’s actually happening as we talked about in the items above. That said, you can do a lot worse than Chetan Sharma‘s data – his work in this space is really well founded.

For mobile to be better utilized, this kind of research and data is needed. And from these efforts can sprout the kinds of insights that enable people to engage mobile not just as a layer to their lives, but as a wand to create better lives for themselves and others.

Challenges in Measuring Mobile

Hybrd mobile measurement flowchart, via Monday NoteIn some recent conversations around mobile ministry, one of the more pressing concerns was how to measure the impact of mobile. Frankly speaking, metrics/analytics for mobile aren’t as mature and usually content providers need to be more creative in collecting and more descriptive in interpreting mobile data. Monday Note goes into some great detail towards the challenges here:

…One example of the measurement challenge: a news related application. The first measure of an app’s success is its downloads count. In theory, pretty simple. Each time an app is downloaded, the store (Apple’s or any other) records the transaction. Then, things gets fuzzier as the application lives on and gets regular updates. Sometimes, updates are upgrades, with new features. At which point should the app be considered new — especially when it’s free, like most of the news-related ones? Second difficulty: a growing number of apps will be preloaded into smartphones and tablets. Rightly or wrongly, Apple nixes such meddling with its devices. But, outside of the iOS world, cellphone carriers do strike deals with content providers and preload apps on Android devices. That’s another hard to get number…

Read the rest of Measuing the Nomads at Monday Note.

In those conversations about mobile data and analytics, it has been made very clear to me that this is a major hurdle for some of the larger groups which use these measurements in order to determine how to better support – or even adjust how they are supporting mobile ministry activities. What have been some of the methods that you are finding successful?

Or, if you’ve got a case study towards a mobile ministry initiative and have described some of these measures of success, would you consider submitting that to be posted on our Mobile Case Studies/Research page? There’s still much to be learned from one another and grounds to be plowed in this space. And until we can start seeing consistency in actions/successes/failures, the challenge to collecting and understanding mobile data in the ministry context will go unanswered.

A Few Pieces of Research and Reading

There’s a lot of data consumed between the pages/posts of MMM. Much of this data is read, questioned, and then makes its way here as posts or tweets. Some of it takes longer than others. Here are some links to some pieces of research and reading that has contributed to MMM content this year:

If you have any research or reading material that you’d think would be great content to contribute to the growing body of knowledge of those things mobile, web, culture, etc., feel free to drop a line – I only ask that it would be electronically available on more than one mobile platform ;)

Morgan Stanley’s Mobile Internet Report

In the past months, I’ve been asked so many questions about mobile that I’ve simply wished and prayed for the time and resources to craft something like what Morgan Stanleyhas published in their release of The Mobile Internet Report.

This is an extremely long document – one, at the time of writing, I’ve not read and is still downloading to my mobile. However, to all of those persons who’ve asked questions about what mobile is and why should they care – especially use in the good ole USA – this is the report to read – or at least browse through.

If you are a technology, thought, or opinion leader in your ministry/organization, you need to read this report and the supporting materials. From simply a data/analytics point of view, there’s not much else available for free like this.

As for me, I’m off to go read. I’ve got data to get updated and data models to better understand.