Steve Vosloo is a Shuttleworth Foundation fellow who is excited about the potential of mobile phones for literacy in South Africa. His project, m4Lit (Mobiles for literacy) is about 'exploiting mobile phones to improve literacy amongst teens -- to get them reading and writing longer texts on their phones.'
With Phase I of the project complete, Steve believes that it clearly demonstrated that mobile phones are viable platforms to distribute stories and get teens engaging with them. Says Steve, 'http://kontax.mobi -- the m-novel for phase I (also on MXit) -- had over 10,000 teens reading the whole story. Counting all readers (not only teens), 25,000 copies were read!'
Steve now wants to come up with a strategy to grow m4Lit and Kontax in terms of growing readers and also the business models to sustain such projects. 'I firmly believe that mobile phones are the ebook readers of Africa, and we need a clear success story -- like a Kontax -- to generate movement in this space,' he says.
Steve will bring some fascinating information to the GeekRetreat about m-novels around the world. It's exciting to see how retreaters can have an impact at this important stage of the project as Steve asks some important questions:
-- How to grow Kontax -- locally and into Africa?
-- How to get more mobile content to teens in SA? Who writes it, who pays for it, who hosts public domain content?
-- How to allow teens a space for doing their own writing (actual platform to use)?
-- What are the business models around content and delivery platform?
Steve has experience managing ICT and youth media projects at Stanford University (the Digital Hero Book Project) and at the Shuttleworth Foundation.
