Rapidsms

Brian Curtis, the director of the Python Software Foundation, recently interviewed and featured Caktus on the PyCon website. PyCon is the premiere event for those of us within the Python and Django open source communities. Brian writes about our work designing the PyCon 2015 website, our efforts in Libya, and what’s on the horizon in 2015. We’re excited about this recognition!

Technology Tank, a communications and tech think tank, recently ranked their top 10 stories of 2014 and Caktus made the cut. Earlier this year, we shared a story about Libya’s SMS voter registration system. We’re happy to learn that other people were just as excited about our work enfranchising Libyan voters as we are! The list is based on number of visits to the story.

This October, nearly everyone at Caktus took a break from their usual projects to take part in Caktus’s 8th ShipIt Day. Apart from a few diligent individuals who couldn’t afford to spare any time from urgent responsibilities, nearly everyone took a break to work and collaborate on creative and experimental projects, with the aim of trying something new and ideally seeing a project through from start to finish in the space of a day and a half.

I have had the good fortune of working internationally on mobile health applications due to Caktus’ focus on public health. Our public health work often uses RapidSMS, a free and open-source Django powered framework for dynamic data collection, logistics coordination and communication, leveraging basic short message service (SMS) mobile phone technology. I was able to work on two separate projects tracking data related to the 1000 days between a woman’s pregnancy and the child’s second birthday. Monitoring mothers and children during this time frame is critical as there are many factors that, when monitored properly, can decrease the mortality rates for both mother and child. Both of these projects presented interesting challenges and resulted in a number of takeaways worth further discussion.

Election day voting on June 25th. Image courtesy of HNEC.

Since this interview was done, Libya’s capitol began experiencing more violence. As of today, militias are fighting over control of the Tripoli international airport, the primary way in and out of this section of Libya. We’re keeping our friends and colleagues in Libya in our thoughts in these truly difficult times. This post speaks to the energy and talent of the Libyans we’ve worked with during this challenging democratic transition.

Chapelboro.com recently featured Caktus’ work in implementing the first ever voter registration system via text message.

Caktus team members from our Libya mobile voter registration team recently spoke with TechPresident about the context and challenges of implementation.

The Triangle Business Journal recently featured our work in Libya on the first ever SMS voter registration system.

Today’s election in Libya, the second general election for a governing body since Gaddafi’s ouster, is being supported in-country by our Caktus team. Caktus developers created Libya's SMS voter registration system, the first of its kind in the world.

FastCompany named Caktus client, UNICEF, as one of the Top 10 Most Innovative Companies in Local. UNICEF received this honor for their launch of RapidSMS, an open source platform for quickly building SMS applications.