Fabulous new photos just in
February 26, 2010 by Simon Berry · 1 Comment
Thanks to ColaLife supporter Tim Dench we have the first photos of the Mark III AidPod in situ in Tanzania. Tim runs TOAD in his spare time. Please take a look.
This first slideshow shows the AidPod in the hands of our client group. Children!
And these are the first photos of the Mark III AidPod in a Coca-Cola crate in aremote part of Tanzania. OK, it’s only a model AidPod but it’s a step in the right direction.
Season’s Greetings to all ColaLife Supporters
December 17, 2009 by Simon Berry · Leave a Comment
Thanks to Sam Berry (base image) and Luke Berry (robins and snowflakes), we have a ColaLife Christmas Card. This looks really good when printed on Moo Cards which is what I’ve done for family and friends (sad but true). Feel free to use the image yourself if you are looking for a different image for your eChristmas card. Click on the image to go to Flickr and grab the hi-res version.
If you do use the image please consider pointing people to the new Support Us page: http://colalife.org/support
A big thank you to the 10,000+ ColaLife supporters from around the world. We’ve made tremendous progress but there’s still a lot to do. I want to see AidPods in crates in Africa in 2010.
The giant AidPod is off to the RSA
December 6, 2009 by Simon Berry · Leave a Comment
Tomorrow (7/12/09) morning at 6:30 I will be trying to get the giant AidPod on to a Virgin Train to London as a ‘bicycle box’! Well it worked last time:
Let’s hope the staff at Rugby are as understanding as the staff were at Euston. On arrival at Euston I’m being met by friend and ColaLife supporter Paul Webster (aka @watfordgap) and we are going to carry it to the RSA where it will spend Christmas. We will be leaving Euston at about 7:30 and this is our route. If you see us give us a shout!
A conversation with Julian Dobson
November 17, 2009 by Simon Berry · 1 Comment
I first met Julian when New Start Magazine was a twinkle in the eye around 10 years ago. Julian co-founded New Start Magazine with Kath Acres and Jamie Veitch. Kath was one of the first people I turned to when setting up the board of ruralnet|uk and she served as a trustee.
So it was great to meet up with Julian at Chain Reaction last week (12/11/09) and have this ColaLife conversation:
Below is an explanation of the AidPod mentioned in the interview.
Put the AidPod Animation on your phone
November 14, 2009 by Simon Berry · Leave a Comment
By popular demand (thanks for asking Lilian!) here are the AidPod animation files to download and put on your mobile device:
AVI format (8.7MB) - right-click and select ‘Save As…’
Quicktime format (9.3MB) - right-click and select ‘Save As…’
You can view the animation on the *NEW* ColaLife Channel.
Does anyone know how to make this go viral?
AidPod Animation Released!
November 13, 2009 by Simon Berry · 1 Comment
I’ve had this animation for a couple of weeks but didn’t want to release it before its debut at Chain Reaction yesterday where I had the privilege of presenting the ColaLife story (so far) during the opening plenary. It was a great event, my presentation will follow shortly.
A big thank you is due to my son Sam who put this animation together (the audio lets it down a bit but that’s down to me!).
Does anyone want a copy for their iPhone/mobile?
Should AidPods carry advertising?
November 9, 2009 by Simon Berry · 5 Comments
When possible business models for ColaLife have been discussed in the past, people have floated the idea that perhaps AidPods could carry advertising but the discussion has gone no further than that. Then along comes Clare Cunningham who brings the whole idea to life with some great models and some analysis of what might be possible and the issue becomes very exciting. In Clare’s words:
I am a designer and have been following the ColaLife project with great interest. Recently you posted a section on your blog entitled ‘Is wealth creation the new philanthropy?‘. This got me thinking about how the aidpod itself could generate income. You may have considered this approach already but I thought I would suggest these two ideas just in case.
Could the AidPod be used as an advertising space?
The pod itself acts as space for advertising with adverts printed onto the pod. The money from the advertising goes to the Coca Cola franchisee to pay for each pod’s inclusion.The drawbacks for this are:
- Coca-Cola may feel very reluctant to allow any competition advertising alongside their brand.
- There is the moral debate of advertising to people in such desperate situations.
Then this lead me to wonder . . .
Could the advertising potential of the AidPod be used rather as a place to disseminate useful information?
Government health campaigns; educational information; local news/issues/community groups. This may not directly answer the question of revenue generation. However it may encourage government support if it could aid in their agendas. I don’t know a huge amount about how governments/ organisations work in these areas so your answer may be that it’s not viable as an idea. However one idea can lead to another…I think ColaLife is a fantastic project and hope to see it go from strength to strength.
What do you think? Could AidPods carry advertising?
Verifying delivery and paying for it
October 25, 2009 by Simon Berry · 3 Comments
Following on from my post of yesterday pointing out that if ColaLife is going to succeed it needs to recognise and respect the profit motive of its potential hosts (ie all those involvled, post bottling, in the Coca-Cola distribution system), I have contacted Ken Banks of FrontlineSMS fame and Benjamin Lyon of the significant off-shoot: FrontlineSMS:Credit.
FrontlineSMS is a neat system that allows people without a connection to the internet (like the majority of people in Africa) to do the things that those of us with a connection take for granted . . . with a basic mobile phone. Its developer, Ken Banks, has made it freely available and people are downloading it and using it to do amazing things. Benjamin Lyon is collaborating with Ken and using FrontlineSMS as the foundation for the development of a system to bring financial services to anyone with a basic mobile phone.
So why is this important? Well, if ColaLife is to embrace commercial principles it will need:
- A mechanism for registering the delivery of aidpods
- A mechanism for paying for this delivery
And ideally:
- You’d need a mechanism for inventory control: “Here is Mpika we need more aidpods containing diarrhoea kits”
I think that FrontlineSMS combined with FrontlineSMS:Credit could do all of this using very basic mobile phones.
Is wealth creation the new philanthropy?
October 24, 2009 by Simon Berry · 4 Comments
An AidPod’s view of a Coca-cola crate - so much unused space!
Preparing for the Rotterdam conference has served as a reminder that the private sector is there TO MAKE MONEY. People outside the sector say to me, over and over again:
“But why wouldn’t they [Coca-Cola] just do it [ColaLife]?”
The answer is that they will not do anything that interferes with the money making machine.
You can debate the rights and wrongs of this as long as you like but ColaLife is not a debating society! We are trying to work with what’s already there and put things together in new and creative ways to solve an age old disaster that unfolds in developing countries every single day.
So what if the Coca-Cola distributors who took aidpods in their crates made more money than those that didn’t? We’ve always said that this is a possible model but perhaps it should be THE model.
Coca-Cola always say that their bottlers and distributors are ‘independent’ businesses, which is technically true, but I have seen the look of panic on the face of an ‘independent’ distributor when you put an aidpod in one of ‘their’ crates of Coca-Cola.
The fact is that Coca-Cola is very powerful and the livelihoods of most of their small distributors depend on a strong relationship. Distributors would not want to do anything that would jeopardise that relationship. So Coca-Cola would have to agree, or even encourage, their distributors to increase their income by carrying aidpods in Coca-Cola crates.
So perhaps our strategy, in terms of our relationship with Coca-Cola, should be simply to get them to agree to, and ideally promote, the notion of their distributors carrying aidpods in their crates and getting paid for doing so.
AidPods are go!
October 16, 2009 by Simon Berry · Leave a Comment
Nick Langridge - “Day to day I am a 32 year old mild mannered computer programmer based in Royston, Herts. I’m not exactly Evil Kneivel, but I’ve taken road trips on two-wheels before in New Zealand and Norway, and always planned to do something more challenging and constructive.”
This campaign is full of surprises. It’s amazing the trouble people, I’ve never met, are prepared to go to to support a good cause. When I asked if anyone was going to Africa so that they could take some of the Mark III AidPods with them and send back photos, I didn’t expect an aidpod to be flying across South Africa on the back of a motorbike. But that’s exactly what’s going to happen. Nick is raising money for: UNICEF, Sentebale and the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund. He’s raised £5,000 so far and you can sponsor him here. This picture was taken this morning (16/10/09) just as Nick set off. We sent the T-shirt and AidPod by special delivery yesterday.
Thanks Nick. Have a good ride - no more broken collar bones please!
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