Presented at the Mobile Web East Africa conference, Nairobi, Kenya, 4 February 2010. The results of the m4Lit pilot project - the Kontax m-novel are described.

1. Presented at the Mobile Web East Africa conference, Nairobi 4 February 2010 m-Novels for Africa: A South African Case Study Steve Vosloo, Shuttleworth Foundation

2. Agenda Why mobiles for literacy? Kontax , an m-novel “ Aha” moments

3. 51% South African households that own no leisure books

4. 6% South African households that have more than 40 titles on their bookshelves

5. 7% Public schools in SA that have functional libraries of any kind

6. The default device

7. “ Teens don't read enough” “ Teens don't write enough” “ Teens love their phones”

8. Would our teens read novels on their phones like in Japan? Can mobile phones alleviate the chronic shortage of books?

11. Aimed at 14-17 year olds

12. Written in English and isiXhosa (world first)

13. 21 days, 21 chapters

14. Embedded in a lite social network

15. Prizes for comments and sequel ideas

16. Cross-media

20. Pre-story survey

21. Technology use observation

22. Post-story survey

24. Kontax.mobi: Location

25. Kontax.mobi: Home language

26. Kontax.mobi: Comment times

27. Kontax.mobi: Comments by user

28. *What i like* Kontax is the most exciting thing that i've ever experianced i mean im not holding heavy book anymore its me and my phone *Gr8 idea* I think this is the nxt best thng since sliced bread,cnt wait 4 the next chapter.its rly interestn,i cnt stand readn a novel bt this is diffrnt coz its jst lyk facebook

29. *Obrigado* Congrats guys dt ws a gr8 story thnx 4 d infortainment i lrnt a lot 4rm u till we mt again. L8r! (On Song's Wall) Hey grl...curently im sitn wita br0ken ankl so i fl ur pain...lets gt thr0ugh ths 2gtha;-)

32. Go to Tradepost > MXit Mix > Education

33. >7,200 reads by teens >17,200 reads by all >2,000 competition entries Kontax stats as of 15 December 2009

34. Page view trend (by chapter)

35. MXit: Ages

37. Most reading takes place on mobile phones or on paper

38. Teens want to write their own pieces (poems, lyrics, stories, etc.)

39. The isiXhosa version was popular

40. “ Aha” moment no. 1 Mobile phones are a viable platform for distributing longer form texts and enabling reader participation

41. “ Aha” moment no. 1 Mobile phones are a viable platform for distributing longer form texts and enabling reader participation “ Aha” moment no. 2 This removes the barrier of printing costs, putting information back into the hands of the people

42. “ Aha” moment no. 1 Mobile phones are a viable platform for distributing longer form texts and enabling reader participation “ Aha” moment no. 2 This removes the barrier of printing costs, putting information back into the hands of the people “ Aha” moment no. 3 Learning is social again (reversing the Gutenberg effect which mass introduced self-study)

43. Learning is social again (thanks to Barry and Patrick Kayton for this insight)

44. iPad of Africa Kindle of Africa

45. Coverage and awards

47. m-Novels and public domain books

48. Africa-wide

50. Engage your readers

51. Work those eyeballs

52. Business models: sponsorship, advertising, sell books/chapters

53. Publish our content: it's open and free

54. Create and share your content

55. Thank you m4Lit: m4lit.wordpress.com email: [email_address] blog: vosloo.net slides: slideshare.net/stevevosloo twitter: twitter.com/stevevosloo