Panoply Digital’s Lauren Dawes and Ronda Zelezny-Green are co-organisers of the London ICT4D group, which organizes regular events and ICT4D meet ups for London’s ICT4D and digital development community.

This month’s event, held at the GSMA office on Tuesday 13th December, the last one of 2016 – and we have 3 great reasons for you to attend:

1. It's a topic we all love, but also love to hate: Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E)

Mention ‘M&E’ to an ICT4D implementer, and you’ll often be met with a shudder. M&E gets a bad rap, particularly in ICT4D, where we are still figuring out what is the best way to approach evaluation. Traditional M&E methods used in the wider development space don’t quite fit – they are seen as having long lead-in times, or as expensive, or as the very opposite of the agile approach that digital development needs to take. But at the same time, good M&E is essential to understanding how and why ICTs can be used in development (and indeed, more evidence of if we should use them at all), so it needs to be robust and stand up to scrutiny.

2. It’s a topic Panoply Digital thinks about regularly

M&E is an area we work in – for example, with the TuneMe project we’re working with Praekelt Foundation in Zambia, or with the qualitative research we’re doing with GSMA Mobile for Development Utilities. We also write a lot about M&E – our experiences, our successes, our failures, the dos and the don’ts.

 3. We’ve got a great line-up (and audience)

A confirmed speaker includes George Flatters, who has been working in M&E in ICT4D with Oxfam and Itad, and will be sharing his learnings on using ICTs for M&E. I’ll be there too, speaking about how M&E for ICT4D can learn lessons from the private sector. You’ll also meet like-minded people: the ICT4D Meet Ups are always really well-attended, with some of London’s most prominent ICT4D people who are keen to share their own experiences.

The ICT4D Meetup: 13th December, 6.30pm. GSMA Building. See you there!

For more information, visit the ICT4D Group page.