Visit to Rlabs

We took our main idea of a “voting system” based on painting someones house, to Rlabs to get some feedback from their side on the concept. We started off with an informal interview before we presented our idea.

We asked if they are using any kind of “voting system”, but the only thing similar was if their Facebook page got a certain amount of “likes”, they would be sponsored to train community members on basic technology.

With the Legacy program a group of kids wanted to “Fix Cape Town”. They were looking into problem areas like garbage clean up and tried to contact Helen Zille for assistance, but they haven't received any response. There are 8 to 10 people in the Legacy program and for the next session they would be able to take in up to 30 people. People get to know about Legacy through word of mouth and through the church. If we want to target high school children we need to keep in mind that mobile phone are not allowed to be used at school in school times.

Before we presented our idea we asked them to be open and to please criticize and feel free to contribute, not just to say “yes”. They had some valid input and this helped developed our concept . A remark was made that after one “voted” for a picture, the BlueTooth box would reply with a message saying who you voted for, this started a one way versus two way BlueTooth discussion. Another idea was instead of calling it and using it as a “voting” system it can be a polling system. For example the Bridgetown community centre had problems getting people to attend meetings to help make decisions. Further more, instead of painting a random persons’ house it would be more valuable to look at upgrading a shared environment. They suggested places such as churches, sports centers and parks. If we wanted to test the probe with school children, we need permission from the school and we decided that instead of taking up school time having the probe at a school entrance/exit and test when the school comes out. If we are allowed to test in the school we could change the probe for their benefit/information they can use, for example use it for prefect nominations.

Media regarding local newspapers within the Athlone area that can possibly be used to promote future development on the BlueTooth boxes within the environment is Athlone News and Peoples Post.