International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development
The conference is the latest in the series of highly successful international ICTD conferences held in Doha (2009), Bangalore (2007) and Berkeley (2006). It aims to provide a forum for researchers, practitioners and all those with interests in the use of information and communication technologies in development practice to meet to discuss the latest research advances in the field.
Building on the success of its predecessors, ICTD2010 will combine two days of plenary peer-reviewed paper sessions, with two days of workshops, panel sessions, discussion forums, demos and sessions in both French and Spanish. A particular feature will be the opportunity that it will provide for participatory involvement from people from a diversity of backgrounds.
ICTD2010 is being hosted by the UNESCO Chair in ICT4D and the multidisciplinary ICT4D Research Centre at Royal Holloway, University of London’s magnificent campus situated only 20 minutes from London’s Heathrow airport.
Have a look at the summary of events Here.
infoDev Panel:
THE VIRTUAL ECONOMY AND ITS DEVELOPMENT POTENTIAL: A KNOWLEDGE MAP
Monday, December 13th from 12:00 – 13:30
WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION
This infoDev/World Bank Workshop looks at the emerging "virtual economy" of digital games and platforms. It will explore how the virtual economy has started to create earning opportunities for semi-skilled and unskilled workers and how it could stimulate local growth and entrepreneurship in the developing world. The centrepiece of the workshop will be a presentation of infoDev’s new “Knowledge Map” of the Virtual Economy.
WORKSHOP ABSTRACT
The widespread adoption of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in everyday life in the Global North has given rise to a massive market for digital goods and services. Addressing the business opportunities in this market has traditionally required significant amounts of skill and infrastructure, putting them out of reach for most people in the developing world. However, an emerging "virtual economy" of games and platforms has started to create earning opportunities for semi-skilled and unskilled workers with even minimal access to digital infrastructure. An estimated 400’000 students and migrant workers earn wages in China and Vietnam by playing online games at the behest of wealthy foreign players. A growing number of crowd-sourcing and click-work platforms promise to employ even more workers in tasks ranging from pattern recognition to text transcription. Unlike the traditional outsourcing industry, these opportunities involve low barriers to entry and few intermediaries between suppliers and consumers. The virtual economy may therefore hold significant potential for developing countries, in terms of stimulating local growth and entrepreneurship and supporting organic investment in ICT infrastructure.
PROGRAMME
The workshop will be held on Monday 13th December from 12:00 to 13:30 at the ICT4D2010 conference at Royal Holloway, University of London (see: http://www.ict4d.org.uk/)
12:00 Welcome
Welcome Remarks by Chair (Tim Kelly, Lead ICT Policy Specialist, infoDev/World Bank)
PART ONE: The Knowledge Map
12:05 Presentation of the infoDev’s Virtual Economy Knowledge Map
Speaker:
Vili Lehdonvirta, Helsinki Institute for Information Technology
PART TWO: Expert Panel on the Virtual Economy
Panelists:
Tom Chatfield, Author and Journalist
Leila Chirayath Janah, Founder, Samasource
Jared Psigoda, Co-Founder and CEO, Reality Squared Games
Vili Lehdonvirta, Helsinki Institute for Information Technology
12:30 – 13:00: The range and scope of Virtual Economy Business Models
13:00 - 13:30 Applying Virtual Economy Business Models to developing economies
13:30: Chairman’s Closing Remarks
Vili Lehdonvirta is a Visiting Scholar at the Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies, University of Tokyo, and a Researcher at Helsinki Institute for Information Technology, Finland. Dr Lehdonvirta's research focuses on the social and economic impact of new information technologies, especially online communities and digital games. He is one of the leading experts on the trading of virtual goods and currencies for real money on the Internet. Dr Lehdonvirta obtained a M.Sc (Tech) from the Helsinki University of Technology in 2005 and a PhD in Economic Sociology from the Turku School of Economics, Finland, in 2009. He has consulted on digital business models for companies in the United States, Europe and Japan.
Tom Chatfield is an author, editor, essayist, game theorist and sometime thinker; his book on the culture of video games, "Fun Inc.", is published by Virgin Books in the UK and Pegasus in the US. Tom is currently the arts and books editor, and a lead writer, at Prospect magazine, as well as writing widely in the national press, including for the Observer, Independent, Sunday Times, Wired, New Statesman, Evening Standard and Times Literary Supplement. He took a doctorate and taught at St John's College, Oxford, before moving to London to work as a full-time writer and editor. Tom has done design, writing and creative consultancy work for a number of online games and media companies, including Mind Candy, Grex, Red Glasses and Intervox, and speaks regularly on technology, media and gaming. His latest project involves writing and design work on a new game for the award-winning British games company Preloaded. He also judges the Franco-British Council and VS Pritchett short story awards. As well as radio and television work, Tom's 2010 appearances include the RSA; authors@Google; TED Global; the Bath, LSE, Swindon and Edinburgh literature festivals; the House of Commons; the Games Based Learning conference; GameCamp; the World Congress on Information Technology; the London Book Fair; the Hay philosophy festival; the Channel 4 Education conference; Science Foo Camp; the OpenTech conference; the School of Life; and the Liberal Democrat, Labour and Conservative party conferences.
Leila Chirayath Janah is the founder of Samasource, a social business that connects women, youth, and refugees living in poverty to microwork ― small, computer-based tasks that build skills and generate life-changing income. Samasource was a winner in the International Business in Development Challenge in 2007 and the Stanford Social Enterprise Challenge in 2008, and is a current grantee of the Rockefeller, Mulago, and BodyShop Foundations. As an undergraduate, Leila authored background papers for the World Bank's Development Research Group and Ashoka on equity and social rights.She is a former Visiting Scholar at the Stanford Program on Global Justice and the Center for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at Australian National University. Leila holds a B.A. from Harvard University.
Jared Psigoda is the founder and CEO of Niubility Co., Ltd, a company located in Nanjing, China that specializes in the trade of virtual currencies and game characters and advises Western companies on the market. Since selling his first virtual item on eBay at the age of 13, Jared has worked with numerous gold farms, gaming studios and virtual currency brokers in China, Singapore, United States and Germany, including some of the industry's biggest. Jared has a Master's Degree from the Ohio State University in Chinese with a focus on internet media. He is very likely the only American working in the virtual currency industry in China with a thorough knowledge of the Chinese language and culture.
Tim Kelly is a Lead ICT Policy Specialist at infoDev, a multi-donor agency hosted by the World Bank in Washington. He is currently leading a program on Creating Sustainable Businesses for the Knowledge Economy and heads up infoDev’s Connect and Transform themes. He was formerly Head of the Strategy and Policy Unit of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), and was previously with the OECD and Logica Consultancy Ltd. Over the last twenty years, Dr Kelly has specialised in the economics of information and communication technologies. He has written or co-authored more than 30 books on the subject including the World Bank’s “Building Broadband”, ITU’s “Internet Reports” and “World Telecommunication Development Report” and OECD’s “Communications Outlook”. He has an MA (Hons) degree in geography and a PhD in industrial economics from Cambridge University.
Finding Development Potential in the Scarcity of the Virtual Economy
infoDev held a workshop on December 13 as part of the ICTD2010 conference at Royal Holloway, University of London.
It’s easy to visualize the digital economy as one of limitless abundance. However, according to Dr. Vili Lehdonvirta, a researcher at the Helsinki Institute of Information Technology and the lead author of the forthcoming infoDev publication The Development Potential of the Virtual Economy, the notion of an infinite digital economy is not only misleading but also incorrect. In fact, the digital economy has new forms of scarcity which, when combined with human needs and desires, constitute the virtual economy and present opportunities for developing countries.
While the official report will be released in February, Dr. Lehdonvirta’s findings were showcased at ICTD2010 at Royal Holloway University of London. In describing goods and services that exist only digitally, his research shows that income opportunities exist for semi-skilled and unskilled workers in developing economies. It also identifies the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and regulators as they seek to harness this potential.
Joining Dr. Lehdonvirta at the infoDev workshop were Leila Chirayath Janah, the founder of Samasource; Jared Psigoda, the founder and CEO of Niubility Co., Ltd.; and Tom Chatfield, the author of Fun, Inc. In the session, chaired by Lead ICT Policy Specialist Tim Kelly, the panelists shared their reflections on and experience with virtual commerce.
Ms. Janah, whose business connects impoverished women, youth and refugees to microwork (small, computer-based tasks that build skills and generate income), emphasized the huge opportunity for microworkers to capture parts of the rapidly growing outsourcing market which is estimated to be worth $1.3 trillion.
Mr. Psigoda explained “gold farming,” which is a sector of the virtual economy in which “people in rich countries with little time but plenty of money, pay people in poor countries with little money but extra time to improve their video game accounts.” He cast aside critiques of purely digital goods, such as improved character attributes, noting that, “things like diamonds are only valuable because people are willing to pay for them.”
According to research supported by DFID, the microwork and online gaming services sectors are the two most profitable and promising ones of the virtual economy. However, Mr. Chatfield emphasized some of the challenges that remain, such as the need to connect virtual businesses to larger discussions around workers’ rights and regulation. Additionally, as a member of the audience pointed out, governments need to approach virtual businesses holistically because generating opportunities in the virtual economy is only one part of the path to development.