Mon Jun 15, 2009
Today we showed the telephone application to other people for the first time. In the morning we discussed all the video shooting locations and ideas for the coming days. The morning was quite a stress, because we only had a few hours to do some changes and fixes to the application and server side, but the Internet was at its worse moment since I’m here. I tried to log in into our server for hours without any luck. We were running late for our appointment, so Bob, Michael and Sal left with one of the drivers. Meanwhile Hakim ran to a shop and got an UMTS stick. He arrived home and in seconds, I plugged the thing, logged into the server, edited some files typing at super speed, closed the laptop and left. Sal and Michael came from the Bay area to create a video presentation of the project to raise funds. Bob is the director of our project. I heard he was a doctor in India for a very long time. The first video shooting was at Doctor Stella’s office. She’s the director of the Reach Out project near our place, and she’s so nice and friendly! I was touched by her words. She explained the history of her project that takes care of people affected by HIV and TB, their difficulties, how it has evolved over time. Bob and Miquel presented her the phone application and web site to find out what she thinks about it. Her reaction was very positive. The second video shooting was with two health workers, while some chicken ran under our feet. You can see some photos taken while the phone was presented. Their reaction was also very good. I expected they might be much more skeptic, but they said it could save lives! After filming kids were amazed with the camera, laughing with joy and making silly faces in front of it. Until yesterday I thought this phone application is a good idea, but it was just software in my test phone and the server. That changed today. Hearing the comments from Doctor Stella and the two health workers made it obvious that what I’ve been programming can have a real impact in people’s life’s. I don’t know how to describe it, but I’m surprised. Amazing how many interesting people I meet here :)
