Epic Fails, Epic-er Successes

I’m calling that  a title-fail. 

Thomas Edison once said “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”  That sentiment was alive and well when the U.S. Fund recently hosted FailFaire NYC, a convening that highlights Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D) projects gone awry.  The goal in airing our dirty laundry?  Sharing what doesn’t work in order to move the community more quickly toward what does work. 

The  conversation united technologists from the private sector, development experts, and media for candid presentations of “Fails” or “how not to approach ICT4D” by seven leading figures in the field–including UNICEF’s own Chris Fabian of the UNICEF’s Technology for Development unit. 

The event was presented by MobileActive.org, a network of practitioners in the “mobile technology for social good” field.  MobileActive founder Katrin Verclas–a TED Fellow and one of Fast Company’s 2011 Most Influential Women in Technology—moderated.

We were joined by a capacity audience, many of whom were practitioners themselves (those people engaged in the “dirty, difficult work of rethinking the world.”  )  Equal parts ruthless self-reflection and tongue-in-cheek  parables of misadventures in humanitarian innovation, the presentations  illustrated the challenging reality of trying new things: it’s hard. 

But in sharing the blind spots, breakdowns, and the seemingly thousands of potential missteps that make for an epic fail, the presenters accomplished something great: they cleared for their peers a path to success.  And for UNICEF, success means something amazing:  a better future for children. 

So many thanks to the fearless presenters, our guests, and the MobileActive team for a successful evening.  Looking forward to the next FailFaire—in the meanwhile:

Fail on!

(…let’s call that a sign-off fail.)

 For more on FailFaire, visit: http://failfaire.org;

For more on mobileactive, see: www.mobilactive.org.