You might recall that a few weeks ago we were rallying support (and your votes) for our submission to the International Telecommunications Union conference, ITU Telecom World 2011. Well, thanks to your support I have some really exciting news to share because the voters and judges for this UN-sponsored contest seem to have liked our idea. The Sentinel Project has been invited to Geneva, Switzerland to develop the idea and pitch it to potential funders as part of the Digital Innovators category. Abhishek Bhatnagar from our Information and Communications Technology Team was the one who started this initiative so he’s attending as the digital innovator and I’ll be there to represent SP, which is the sponsoring non-profit organization.
Abhishek and I are headed to beautiful Geneva but there won’t be much time for sightseeing as we work hard at ITU Telecom World 2011.
The project that we’ll be developing and presenting is the next evolution of Threatwiki. This will be a two-way SMS system that integrates with our platform in order to gather information and monitor a situation in real time while also enabling us to send out warnings directly to communities threatened by violence. Our plan is to test this system during the presidential election in Kenya next year, and the potential for funding from this contest will get us to that goal. After that, we plan to deploy it in numerous other countries and share the technology with other organizations. No matter what, we’re going to come back from Geneva with a great experience, lots of new contacts and partners from around the world, and a higher profile for the Sentinel Project. Keep an eye out for future updates on our trip!