With the proliferation of mobile phone in marginal and underrepresented communities it is important for citizen journalists and activists to learn the usability and tactics of this widely available technology. Since more and more mobile phone based services are coming up, learning about mobile technology can be immensely useful. And for the activists out there an useful set of guides are available online since 2008.
[1]Mobiles in-a-box [2] from the Tactical Technology Collective is a collection of tools and guides designed to help advocacy and activist organizations use mobile technology in their work. It was created in close consultation with more than 50 mobile technologists and rights advocates during 2007-08.
This toolkit is especially designed to showcase and inspire the use of mobile telephony for advocacy and campaigning. Using free and open source software the toolkit users can design and implement their own mobile advocacy strategies and projects.
Mobiles in-a-box contains:
- Suggested tactics for using mobile phones to support advocacy
- Case studies
- Tools [3] and services
- How-to guides to get you started with mobile advocacy
[2]
The project is one of the successful initiatives [4] of Tactical Tech. The Mobiles in-a-box was released in November 2008 (in French and English languages) and 4,000 hard copies of the toolkit were sent out around the world. Tactical Tech directly trained 1,500 advocates and received millions of hits in this website.
Mobiles in-a-box is no longer being updated but it has been published under a Creative Commons license that allows people to translate, adapt and extend the contents. These tools need to be translated in many language so that to benefit more communities. You can download an English version of the tools from here [5].