Well, it only took us a full year of facilitating online courses, but we’re finally sharing some of our original content as part of launching our brand new Media Library. Right now it’s admittedly pretty sparse–mainly videos from our mHealth Course and interviews from the mHealth Summit–but that’s precisely because it was those events that convinced us to finally get our act together. Since the end of our mHealth course last week, we received dozens of requests from our 100+ students to share course content with their friends and colleagues, many of whom work in public health. A fitting request, since one of the main themes from the mHealth Summit is that content and partnerships are now trumping technology in scaling mobile phones for public health.

In our online courses we try to follow a rule of thirds for the 7-9 hours of participant time per week: ⅓ original content and animations, ⅓ live events and workshops, ⅓ existing publications/videos. While we’re very proud of the first ⅔ that we create, the last ⅓ has often been just as important in setting the stage for live conversations. It’s also an opportunity to showcase the best-in-class that we see from our partners, ranging from educational health videos like The Story of Cholera, to serious games on poverty like Ayiti: The Cost of Life, and of course the classic post: 11 Concerns about ICTs and ‘Social Media for Social Good.’

In addition to giving back to the global conversation around tech by making much of our past content available to the public, we’re hoping that this will keep us motivated to produce fresh, innovative content in each course. But it’s not just about what we’re giving, but what we’re planning to receive: namely, translating existing videos into other languages using wiki-style translation platforms such as Amara. Stay tuned for regular updates and please let us know what you think in the comments section below!

[UPDATE: Thank you so much to all the wonderful speakers who stopped by! We’ve posted many of the interviews in our media library!]

TechChange and mHealth Alliance are camped out at the mHealth Alliance booth in the Pavilion interviewing mHealth enthusiasts, professionals, and first-time conference goers about mobile phones for public health.

Come join – we want to hear your voice! If you’d like to set up a specific time, tweet @techchange and we’ll save you a slot. We will be closing shop at 4:00pm today, but we still want to hear from you!

We will also select key interviews for inclusion in our course: TC309 – Mobile Phones for Public Health.