MoMo Kampala – Message to MoMoers

MoMo Kampala – Message to MoMoers

Dear MoMoers,

Thank you for attending our MoMo Kampala meeting last Monday, on the theme The Gist of M4D.  Did we actually have more than 160 delegates attend?  That’s a record for us; but the thing that matters most is the quality of the interactions, the number of hits on the truth button, if you will, during presentations, Q&A, private and informal networking, that elevates the mind and spirit and creates the palpable energy that we each look forward and expect to experience at each MoMo event.  I am sure you will agree that this last one really rocked!  I think I’d like to go into this matter of the interactivity a bit more.  From the standpoint of a presenter we look for validation as we sometimes grapple to elucidate an elusive point, not sure of how well me are doing, and a timely nod or smile can help to guide us.  And we are breaking ground all over the place, creating new juxtapositions of ideas, images and sounds, processes and modalities, and it’s a struggle, a challenge to recapitulate some new, possibly outrageous, idea that is lurking behind or between others that are less intangible, especially as the more interesting ones tend to dissolve like a dream of the night before we’ve had a chance to elucidate them.  But that’s where we, the delegates come in.  We can almost see one behind the speaker’s left ear, and we wish for her to get it out so we can hear and see it.  Now if we have 160 people gathered with similar such expectations, well then no surprise that interesting things can happen.

I would like to thank our Chair and Moderator, Sean Paavo Krepp and Jari Tammisto for setting the scene and keeping things moving, so alive and spontaneous, and our speakers, in order of presentation, Matt Berg, speaking by Skype video from the mHealth Summit in Washington, Ken Banks, Olga Morawczynski, Andy Dearden and Jenny de Boer for their extraordinarily interesting, provocative, hard hitting, and topical presentations, reinforcing the theme and reminding us of the importance of keeping it small, keeping it pure, keeping it strong, that allows our mhealth tools to be replicable, scalable and sustainable.

I also thank our sponsors, Grameen Foundation, and AppLab, together with MTN Uganda who provided the beautiful venue, sound system and projector, Orange Uganda who provided the 3G Internet Everywhere, SMS Media’s Christine Kabagesera and team whose professional management of reception helped to set the tone, Marcel Kovenback and the Film4Change team for filming the event, Esther Nakazzi, and tweeters who enabled those who couldn’t be there to enjoy reading the tweets, and our website team of Douglas Onyango, Allan Nsengiyumva and Joseph Owino, and Uconnect who provided the WiFi network and some of the behind-the-scenes organization.

And most of all, I would like to thank you, MoMoers, who, by your hunger and passion, continue to make each successive MoMo event more interesting and eventful than the last.

We have been in discussions about our next MoMo Kampala events.  If you have any ideas, or would like to sponsor or host an event please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

You may download presentation slides.

Thank you again and best wishes to you all, Daniel