We've all heard of the KISS Principle: keep it simple, stupid! The following presentation by Ken Banks, founder of kiwanja.net, is testimony to the notion that a simple, lower-tech approach to reaching people can sometimes be the most effective one. Ken has extensive experience with IT and telecommunications. He uses that knowledge to help nonprofits implement SMS communications technologies for reaching large numbers of people in the developing world effectively and inexpensively through the most ubiquitous communications device in the world: the mobile phone.

We've all heard of the KISS Principle: keep it simple, stupid! The following interview by David Collin of Ken Banks, founder of kiwanja.net, is testimony to the notion that a simple, lower-tech approach to reaching people can sometimes be the most effective one. Ken has extensive experience with IT and telecommunications. He uses that knowledge to help nonprofits implement SMS communications technologies for reaching large numbers of people in the developing world effectively and inexpensively through the most ubiquitous communications device in the world: the mobile phone.  

Can you work on tough, real world problems with a game? In this interview by David Collin with Darian Hickman, we hear about one effort to answer that question in the affirmative. Darian is founder of Village: Play the World of Social Enterprise, a real-time strategy game for the PC that puts the player in the position of an entrepreneur building companies that lift villages out of poverty. The real goal is to get players "hooked" on emerging world development. Eventually Darian hopes to make Village a web-based, multi-player game.

Can you work on tough, real world problems with a game? In this interview by David Collin with Darian Hickman, we hear about one effort to answer that question in the affirmative. Darian is founder of Village: Play the World of Social Enterprise, a real-time strategy game for the PC that puts the player in the position of an entrepreneur building companies that lift villages out of poverty. The real goal is to get players "hooked" on emerging world development. Eventually Darian hopes to make Village a web-based, multi-player game.

Ami Dar is the founder and executive director of Action Without Borders, the organization that maintains Idealist.org. Launched in 1996, Idealist is one of the most popular nonprofit resources on the Web, with information posted by 65,000 organizations around the world, and over 50,000 visitors every day. Ami was born in Jerusalem, grew up in Peru and Mexico, and worked as a waiter, translator, and marketing manager at a software company before starting Action Without Borders.

In the last four years the Nonprofit Times included Ami in its annual list of the 50 most influential people in the nonprofit sector, and in 2004 Ashoka invited him to join its global fellowship of social entrepreneurs.

You can read a transcript of this interview on the NetSquared Blog.