Simon Cross - Conversing with people living in poverty Vumi is a text messaging system designed to reach out to those in poverty on a massive scale via their mobile phones. It's written in Python using Twisted. This talk is about how and why we built it and how you can join us in making the world a better place. ----- 43% of the world's population live on less than €1.5 per day. The United Nations defines poverty as a "lack of basic capacity to participate effectively in society". While we often think of the poor as lacking primarily food and shelter, the UN definition highlights their isolation. They have the least access to society's knowledge and services and the most difficulty making themselves and their needs heard in our democracies. While smart phones and an exploding ability to collect and process information are transforming our access to knowledge and the way we organize and participate in our societies, those living in poverty have largely been left out. This has to change. Basic mobile phones present an opportunity to effect this change. Only three countries in the world have fewer than 65 mobile phones per 100 people. The majority of these phones are not Android or iPhones, but they do nevertheless provide a means of communication -- via voice calls, SMSes, USSD and instant messaging. By comparison, 25 countries have less than 5% internet penetration. Vumi is an open source text messaging system designed to reach out to those in poverty on a massive scale via their mobile phones. It's written in Python using Twisted. Vumi is already used to: This talk will cover: * a brief overview of mobile networking and cellphone use in Africa * why we built Vumi * the challenges of operating in unreliable environments * an overview of Vumi's features and architecture * how you can help! Vumi features some cutting edge design choices: * horizontally scalable Twisted processes communicating using RabbitMQ. * declarative data models backed by Riak. * sharing common data models between Django and Twisted. * sandboxing hosted Javascript code from Python.