LIRNEasia is organizing its fourth CPRsouth conference, in Negombo, Sri Lanka from 7-8 December 2009. Themed ‘Speaking Truth to Power’, the conference aims to provide a forum for senior, junior and mid-career scholars to meet face-to-face and exchange ideas, establish networking opportunities and improve the quality of their scholarly work, in order to facilitate the long-term objective of fostering the next generation of active scholars and in-situ experts capable of contributing to ICT policy and regulatory reform in the region. Please check the Call for Abstracts and Call for Young Scholar Applications to see how you may participate at this event. Visit the CPRsouth4 conference page for more information. Please mail info[at]cprsouth[dot]org for any queries.
Yesterday, LIRNEasia successfully concluded 1.5 day Knowledge sharing workshop on methods for ICT user research in emerging markets in Negombo, Sri Lanka. The workshop brought together researchers from the region to share methods (quantitative as well as qualitative) for accurately capturing the teleuse experience of those at the bottom of the pyramid (BOP) or in emerging markets. In conducting its previous research (Teleuse@BOP1 and Teleuse@BOP2), LIRNEasia has found that this kind of research requires a different approach to that in more mature markets. Experience with research in developed markets has involved (in addition to sample surveys, in-depth interviews and focus group discussions) the analysis of telephone bills as well as call logs on mobile phones, and even the deployment of real time technologies such as Interactive Voice Response (IVR).