Bridging the Digital Divide
•Download as PPTX, PDF•
1 like•470 views
WordCamp Phoenix 2013 presentation on low-tech needs/uses for WordPress.
Recommended
More Related Content
Viewers also liked
Viewers also liked (11)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
Bridging the Digital Divide
- 1. Bridging the Digital Divide High-Tech Solutions for Low-Tech Access @10up http://10up.com Eric A Mann @ericmann
- 2. Who’s This Guy? • Senior Web Engineer at 10up • WordPress Core Contributor • Early adopter @10up http://10up.com Eric A Mann @ericmann
- 3. Why Low-Tech? Photo by Solengy http://eam.me/p- @10up http://10up.com Eric A Mann @ericmann
- 4. Some Stats • CNN: Africa a “mobile-only” continent1 • 85% have mobiles2 • Only ~19% are smartphones 1 http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/04/tech/mobile/africa-mobile-opinion/index.html 2 http://www.mikekujawski.ca/2012/05/30/finally-some-2012-statistics-for-the-african-mobile-phone-market/ @10up http://10up.com Eric A Mann @ericmann
- 5. Internationally Infographic by Our Mobile Planet http://eam.me/q0 Infographic by VisionMobile http://www.visionmobile.com/ @10up http://10up.com Eric A Mann @ericmann
- 6. Tools of Today • Responsive Design • Mobile Themes • Native Apps WPTouch by Brave New Code @10up http://10up.com Eric A Mann @ericmann
- 7. Content Creation Suffers • WordPress’ admin is huge • Mobile apps require a smartphone • Other solutions are disappearing @10up http://10up.com Eric A Mann @ericmann
- 8. Room for Low-Tech • How big is your site’s footprint? • Is it readable as text only? • Can you navigate without a mouse? @10up http://10up.com Eric A Mann @ericmann
- 9. Potential New Tools • Content-centric markup • Text-only mode • SMS integration @10up http://10up.com Eric A Mann @ericmann
- 10. Mobile != Mobile @10up http://10up.com Eric A Mann @ericmann
Editor's Notes
- Personal IntroductionSenior Web Engineer @ 10upPreviously worked on .Net projects in the insurance and health industriesFormer freelance PHP/JS developerContributed to every major WP release since 2.3Early adopter – already have Windows 8
- October trip to HaitiShocked by the way people use technologyIwas also trying to use tech in a new, unique wayWas inspired to do some more research when I got home
- Based on a CNN article that published when I got home, I wanted to take a look at Africa.Smartphone penetration is nonexistentIf you’re targeting “mobile-first” with a responsive or smartphone-optimized site, you’re only reaching 16% of the market.
- Internationally, smartphones have only reached about a quarter of the market.Even in the US, smartphone penetration is still below 50%.
- Current “mobile” optimizations are only part of the solutionThey work best for touch-enabled smartphones/tablets … nothing else
- Current tools are hacky. Many (like IFTTT) are slowing being shut down by the APIs they leverage.WordPress.com has a post-by text feature. That only works in the US and is being deprecated anyway
- I tried downloading my own site just as a test. I’m using the eleven40 Genesis child themeHome page is (just markup) – 39 KBIncluding styles, images, and scripts – 465.8 KB. Loads in 1.3s over a high-speed connectionDownloading this over a 56Kbps connection takes 30 s to begin rendering - 2 minutes to load fullyDownloading it on a dumb phone times out
- Focus organization on content. Don’t make the user wait for other junk to load firstUse .htaccess to return a text-only version of the siteUse SMS for administration – I built a system to proxy SMS messages through Sweden to my .com site over XMLRPC.