From A-Z to Organization2.0: U - Usability = Higher Motiviation

August 8, 2008 | comment

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

No doubt in recent years web application has been improving significantly in terms of usability. Particularly, the beta mode approach often involves users to bring in their feedback. But still, unfortunately, I have not heard from any beta mode website in an corporate or organizational setting yet. In this blog post I want to argue that the engagement through social software often happens because of a lack of usability.

When do wikis become mature?
Let me start with the harshest examples: Wikis. To be provocative, I would say there is hardly any wiki solution in the web, which entails the basic rules of usability. Navigation is somewhere, extra features fly around and orientation within a wiki is often a catastrophe. Yes, sure, Wikipedia is successful and many people participate, but the software behind it, mediawiki, is rather confusing. But also hosting models such as pbwiki and wetpaint lack usability. I’ve myself trained people to use it and realised that many of them (of all ages) struggle.

Good Usability = Higher Motivation
If you want normal internet or intranet users to engage in social software, it has to be dead simple. If you do not give enough orientation it will be hard and you can only overcome that because your content is so thrilling. But in which cases is it a content so thrilling in an organizational setting? That is one reason why in private people engage much more in the social web - because it isabout topics that matter to them; to make it more interesting. So in an organizational context the barrier to engage is even higher.

The easiness of blogs
Contrary to that are blogs, where applications such as Moveabletype or Wordpress can be downsized to the limit. Login, click for post, write a post and publish. That is easy. The difference is then also the wayit is published. Frontpage first post. I have done a blog post! In my experience blogs versus wikis have a much more intuitive approach. Contrary to this is for example Ning - a nice social network application.

Pick up the users
We have to understand that the majority of internet users focus in email and google search. All the fancy web2.0 tools are just at the beginning. Stories and experiences about the difficulty to implement content management systems say a lot about that. Most websites in my opinion are still overloaded for the average user and give too many offers and too little orientation. Not without a reason critics saythat these tools are a waste of time. In terms of efficiency, social software has to go a long way.

Small is beautiful
Social software in an organization can also simply mean that I can rate content or leave a comment on every intranet page. Not common in most organizational systems. A classical structured website with options to edit here and there might be easier to understand and to engage than a whole new wiki. Small gradual steps might be often abetter choice then to come with something completely new. This way one can experiment with options to interact and to offer what thecommunity really wants.

Do not underestimate complexity of social software
One last example is delicious, a social bookmarking platform, which I really like. I presented this form of knowledge sharing many times and gave trainings. I thought it is so clear and easy. But although the design is quite simple, I had to realize how long it took me to understand this application yet alone tagging and all the features. So in essence we seem to expect too much from users and easily overwhelm them with new tools and features. Although the motivation to participate is anyway low. If we want to achieve and end through social software we have to focus on its users first of all.

This is a blog post series about my experiences on web2.0 in an organization, consisting of at least 26 different blog posts highlighting potentials and challenges and focusing on success factors. Please feel free to comment, contact me for further information and/or let me know which other topics within this context you would be interested on.

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Tags: knowledge management, motivation, organization, social media, social software, usability, wiki |

Mobile phones for development = grassroots innovations

July 20, 2008 | comment

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Recently, there seems to be a hype around mobile phones in developing countries. It is great to see the investments being made in mobile technology and communication. At the KM4DEV unconference Pete Cranston, Luca Servo and I organized a little session around the potential of mobile phones for knowledge sharing. Obviously, mobile communication happens on a daily basis and already has a huge impact particularly in developing countries. Therefore, I am still eager to see what else will come in the foreseeable future.

In a recent article the New York Times went further by asking, “Can the cellphone help end global poverty?” It also described what a big difference a mobile phone could make:

“It’s really quite striking,” Hammond says. “What people are voting for with their pocketbooks, as soon as they have more money and even before their basic needs are met, is telecommunications.” Over several years, his research team has spoken to rickshaw drivers, prostitutes, shopkeepers, day laborers and farmers, and all of them say more or less the same thing: their income gets a big boost when they have access to a cellphone.

During the session we also collected various examples, which I categorized as the following:

Data transfer (mobile banking, market information system)
Communication (community radios to connect with listeners)
Coordination (Twitter or Frontline SMS for election monitoring)
Collaboration (crowdsourcing such as ushahidi.com or check out this participatory sensing video)
Knowledge sharing and learning (StoryBank: digital storytelling example below)
Collective action (Activism)

I find mobile communications particularly promising because most ideas can and will be developed by the users themeselves, as well as being embedded in the local context. The NYT article also gives some nice examples:

One Liberian refugee wanted to outfit a phone with a land-mine detector so that he could more safely return to his home village. In the Dharavi slum of Mumbai, people sketched phones that could forecast the weather since they had no access to TV or radio. Muslims wanted G.P.S. devices to orient their prayers toward Mecca. Someone else drew a phone shaped like a water bottle, explaining that it could store precious drinking water and also float on the monsoon waters. In Jacarèzinho, a bustling favela in Rio, one designer drew a phone with an air-quality monitor. Several women sketched phones that would monitor cheating boyfriends and husbands. Another designed a “peace button” that would halt gunfire in the neighborhood with a single touch.

Projects, such as Android, promised to have an open operation system on mobile phones, so own applications for specific needs can be developed and in a free open source fashion developed worldwide jointly by programmers. Twitter is a good example to show the ubiquitous of future web applications connected to mobile phones. Benedikt Foit writes about a new report from the W3C’s (World Wide Web Consortium) Mobile Web Initiative and Mobile Web for Social Development (MW4D). Two findings are particular interesting:

Mobile phones should be considered as an access mechanism, where mobile browsing is one way to access the content, but using Voice applications (through e.g. voiceXML) is another way, and SMS could be a third option. All of these options should be considered as different delivery channels of Web content. Using the Web as a repository of information could leverage replication and cross-fertilization between different projects by offering visibility.
Key barrier for having useful and relevant content is lack of local expertise to develop these. Empower local actors to become mobile service providers (technical knowledge, entrepreneurship and business models).

We also discussed during the session the different challenges such as equality, prices, the interface, energy, language and illiteracy rate among others. In that concern, an interesting project in India shows “while village textual literacy rates are low, visual and oral expression thrive.” The StoryBank project uses mobiles to share stories in an Indian village and underlines the potential for knowledge sharing through digital storytelling.

A village committee decides what kind of programmes to make and volunteers from the village, mainly women, undertake to research and record news items on health, education, farming and other topics that are broadcast alongside devotional music and public service announcements.

Lastly, Dr. Gary Marsden describes the changes through mobile social networking from South Africa with a fascinating example from collaborating children:

Most school-children in South Africa use a system called “MXit” MXit is a basic Internet chat application for the mobile phone, and five million people use it; because in South Africa, the cost of sending a single character via MXit is one ten-thousandth of the cost of sending a single character via SMS. For two rand a day, less than 20p, these kids can stay all day on MXit, despite the fact that it has a terrible user interface that the likes of us wouldn’t put up with.

Many of the schools have banned use of MXit. But Gary and his colleagues discovered that the kids use MXit to do their homework collaboratively. Therefore, they added functionality to the MXit system, having reverse-engineered the protocol, and added these features and functions into some of the chatrooms. The kids loved it. Remember, they have no Internet access. They added an equation-solver, for solving quadratic and linear equations, and an interface to Wikipedia.

No surprise the MIT started an initiative called for the next billion mobile phone users:

Within the next three years, another billion people will begin to make regular use of cell phones, continuing the fastest adoption of a new technology in history. Soon, this next billion will make their voice heard—and connect to the global information network.

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Tags: ICT4D, collaboration, connectivity, grassroots, km4dev, mobile, open source, twitter |

From A-Z to Organization2.0: B - Blogging examples and success factors

July 2, 2008 | comment

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Blogging, next to Wikis, is the most popular instrument of new social software in an organization. A blog itself is quite a simple application. The value of blogging comes by the engagement of its authors and readers. Implementing blogs in an organization is not an easy task and needs time, resources and patience. I have worked with blogs within an organization for over three years and this pretty much summarizes my key experiences (I previously posted this on one blogging project).

Blogging examples
Blogs can be used in different contexts and for different purposes. Once again, they are just a tool, which has to be embedded in the organizational culture. So, for example, if a blog is just an add-on to existing tools, then will you quickly hear the information overload argument. These are some ways to use blogs:

Project management: A project history with milestones, document references and discussions.
Public relations: An external blog to engage to different audiences.
Stakeholder management: A blog to keep a network together and communicate on transparent on peer-to-peer basis.
Employee: Let the experts in your organization speak on their behalf and create their own audiences or spheres of interests.
Department: A channel to communicate relevant information. A supply for all those emails and a forum to get together. Who knows what is happening three doors away?
Thematic: An overlapping blog for specific theme. It involves all employees who are interested or working on that particular theme.
Process: Use it for quality control to involve all employees in certain processes, to highlight problems and elaborate solutions.
Customer-relationship-management: Let your internal customers, for example of the accountancy department, engage openly, to send feedback and discuss with them potential improvements.
Do you know of any others? I am sure there are more additional examples.

Blogging success factors
Each of the above listed examples need a slightly different approach, but I want to highlight general success factors, which I separated into four different phases: preparation, marketing, engagement, sustainability. I have put in some vague percentage to show the kind of effort (time and resources), which have to be taken into consideration. Do you agree with this figures?

Preparation (30%)

In essence, to set up a blog is technically easy.
Emphasis on design: It is important that your authors and readers like the look of the blog.
Do not use the standard blog templates. Blogs are flexible applications, so design or adapt them to your specific needs. Embed carefully additional widgets (different information boxes).
The front-page is key to set incentives for engagement: Focus on well elaborated categories for orientation or offer tagging, highlight the recent comments, offer a search field and different ways for subscription.
Do not plan too much and wait too long! I know it is a contradiction to the points above. Most things shall be changed through feedback from your audience. Blogging is an ongoing experiment.
Think about a policy or some points for motivation to set a framework. IBM and Sun have some good examples.
From the start up leave the blog open to as many authors as possible and of course for any reader to comment.
Calculate long term resources (at least two years) for bloggers and to facilitate the endeavour.
Do not be afraid of user administration. It is very easy to do.
Elaborate how you can reduce other communication channels such as email for blogging.
Discuss with the management, what could be the incentives and obligations to engage.

Marketing (20%)

Get together a critical mass of motivated bloggers. These are the ones that bring your blog alive, particularly in the starting phase — best are multipliers. You should have at least 5 dedicated bloggers.
Create a little vision or story about why you create this blog and focus on the benefit for its users. For example, highlight synergy effects and public personal knowledge sharing.
Do a little road show in your organization to bring employees on board. Although word by mouth propaganda is in my experience the strongest success factor for this community driven endeavour.
Include, when possible, short trainings. We often use already existing frequent meetings for a half hour presentation. That was in most cases enough to start.
Establish a little help section with frequently asked questions and if possible a screencast of how to use the blog.

Engagement (30%)

Particularly in the beginning, it is important to motivate people to join. Comment on blog posts. Propose to publish content only sent by email.
Practice an open style of writing and set incentives for different writing styles to lower the barrier for participation. For example, formal announcement next to personal stories.
Think about the best way to let readers be notified about a blog post. Best would be a RSS (feed) option, but consider also classical email notification.
Give answers in blog post through emails instead and send only links to the post.
Encourage for discussions and pick up interesting developments happening on other communication channels.
Leave the blog content development open to discussion and the audience as an incentive.
Technical difficulties were mostly around missing tags or categories, file upload and large size photos.

Sustainability (20%)

Do not underestimate the facilitation throughout the blog life span.
Think about regular evaluation to get detail feedback. Why are users participation and why not?
Fluctuation is often high, so scheduled regular presentations or trainings are necessary.
Answer user requests and registrations as quickly as possible.
Integrate your blog into other existing web tools (e.g. Intranet) for example, though feeds.
Include other wanted features such as document folder, event calendar, etc.

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Tags: knowledge management, blogging, culture, network, organization, participation, project management, public relation |

First Socialcamp in Germany

June 26, 2008 | comment

Social media for development in the local context

June 19, 2008 | comment

From A-Z to Organization2.0: C - Cafeteria — catching the informal

June 5, 2008 | comment

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A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Let’s face it, when you deal with knowledge sharing in an organization, it becomes quickly obvious that most knowledge is shared personally, face-to-face over the telephone or in the cafeteria. In a personal conversation people can describe issues in length, reply to questions and tell the “real” story. Formal meetings often do not give space for vibrant discussions and are often not the forum to describe the pros and cons. Although by listening to the experiences of others, best learning can be achieved.

An ordinary organization has usually a top-down controlled Intranet, where the different departments add their contributions. Sometimes there is even a forum, but in many cases hardly used at all — it is somewhere hidden or a hassle to access. The organizational life is happening somewhere else and employees on a business trip or in a different branch are cut off.

Social software offers at least three new ways for organization to benefit from:

To get a picture of what is really happening in an organization. What are the major topics? What is it what staff discusses and cares about? Not all is going to be public, but a lot more than a top-down Intranet or internal communication by the corporate communication department. Is your organization ready for that?
To bring people with same interests together without typing with your numb finger over the telephone. Personal employee’s pages, such as yellow pages, can be easily linked through common key words (tags) by interests, competencies, blog posts, projects on wiki pages etc. Check your del.icio.us (a social bookmarking site) or this video and browse through it and see yourself how quickly you find like-minded people. On delicious it is often anonymous, but in an organization it is all linked to employees and their expertise, their projects and questions. Check out 20 things to do on a social network in the office.
To increase productivity and emphasize innovation. To imagine employees to network on a peer-to-peer basis. A transparent open network will not only brings synergies and avoids to reinvention of the wheel, but also offers innovations. Like-minded people collaborate on their preferred topics. Staff with similar ideas find each other or new ideas arose out of discussions between people who have different departments.

Why should they do it? It certainly needs transparency and trust but the benefit and mutual gain can come quickly. But this is of course a nightmare scenario to all those employees, who treat knowledge as power. Because in this kind of open horizontal community you are what you share!

How to start?

Here are some rather bottom-up approaches:

Start a collaborative tagging experiment over del.icio.us with colleagues to see how easy the sharing of valuable information can be, or open up a room on friendfeed to discuss right away resources.
Use external tools for your team to make project management easier. One example could be a blog for your project’s history, milestones and other management tasks.
Connect with colleagues through existing social networks such as Xing, Linkedin or Facebook and use it for exchange.
Extend informal activities on the web and make other colleagues be aware of it: bulletin board, liftsharing etc.
As Joitske commented on my first blog post, you can address a specific problem and use social media for an open transparent discussion.

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Tags: communication, knowledge management, innovation, organization, productivity, social bookmarking, social network, tagging, work |

Digital divide: Connectivity and the different dimensions of literacy

June 2, 2008 | comment

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During last days I have been going trough different ICT4D papers, and then again I have been astonished to see that their focus was mainly limited to the issue of access although access to a computer or Internet is just a first step and does not mean you can fully engage in the web. Some time ago, while introducing a laptop to a relative, I observed how it is to move a mouse for the first time and how much more their is to learn and the complex steps that have to be taken before you master to browse the web and send your first email. There are many steps to be taken to use ICT as a mean for more.

The UNESCO has an interesting paper called Understanding information literacy: a primer, which highlights very accurate those different dimension for the higher goal of life long learning.

What is Information Literacy, where did it come from, how is it related to lifelong learning, and to other kinds of literacies, and why is it critically important to every nation, its institutions, and its citizens, in order for them to perform competitively and productively in a Digital World and a 21st Century Global Information Society, as well as to promote greater social inclusion, and freedom of expression and opinion

I summarized here the different steps of literacy necessary to fully leverage the potential of the Internet:

Basic or core literacies
This term still applies to the core or foundation literacies of learning how to read, how to write and how to perform simple numeracy tasks necessary in everyday life.
Computer literacy
Computer literacy means the efficient ability to know how to use and operate computers as information processing machine
- a. Hardware Literacy
  Hardware literacy refers to the set of basic operations you need to know in order to use a computer such as a Personal Computer (PC) or Laptop, or perhaps a combination hand-held device such as BlackBerry efficiently.
- b. Software Literacy.
  Software literacy refers to the “invisible” set of general-purpose procedures and instructions that the computer or telecommunications hardware requires in order to perform its functions properly.
Media Literacy
Media literacy embraces everything from having the knowledge needed to use old and new media technology to having a critical relationship to media content in a time when the media constitute one of the most powerful forces in society.
Distance Education and E-Learning
Cultural Literacy
Cultural literacy means a knowledge of, and understanding, of how a country’s, a religion’s, an ethnic group’s, or a tribe’s traditions, beliefs, symbols and icons, celebrations, and traditional means of communication (e.g. orally) impact the creation, storage, handling, communication, preservation and archiving of data, information and
knowledge, using technologies.
Information Literacy
… empower people in all walks of life to seek, evaluate, use and create information
effectively to achieve their personal, social, occupational and educational goals.

Going through these steps one can imagine how long it can take and how much more there is to come once you have access. It is quite obvious that those steps or dimension for knowledge sharing and learning are an essential benefit getting through information and communication technology. But ICT’s are only means and access itself does not necessarily get you anywhere. This shows that the real challenge is to help people acquire these literacy skills. For example think back how long it took you to understand the basis and logic of an operation system, its folders, files etc.

Luckily, software is nowadays developed more intuitively as the “beta mode” websites show. Also, hardware is getting more user centered as the “iphone” shows. One imagine then the time it can take to engage through the web, to interact and collaborate. Social media opens new venues to engage in many of the above listed literacy. But all those nice fancy tools out there on the web have still to prove that they really improve literacy for all.

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Tags: ICT4D, knowledge management, connectivity, learning, media, social media, technology |

A - Adaptation: From A-Z — the long trail of web2.0 in an organization

May 25, 2008 | comment

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Three years ago I started experimenting for the first time with web2.0 at my organization (GTZ). In Egypt, we implemented a blog to link different projects of GTZ. Since then, I have been taking part in several initiatives and joined many discussions with the IT, communication, knowledge management and other departments. I have learnt a lot about the complexity of organizations and the opportunities and obstacles to engage in social media.

Therefore, I decided to share the different experiences and challenges we have encountered and try to identify success factors, hoping this can help others who are also dealing with social media at an organization and encouraging them to implement it. I will write about this in a series of blog-posts over the coming months.

It is not the tools

To begin with, being a bit critical, I think there is a risk to believe just tools such as wikis or blogs can achieve something that was not there before. Because it touches quickly the core of an organization, namely its culture. If the organizational setting is based upon strict hierarchy, information silos and a very formalistic approach, then clearly open sharing and a horizontal communication is difficult to be implemented, with or without web2.0. Some would argue that new forums for this kind of transparency and openness can have an impact on the organizational culture, though.

What is the character of your organization?

Identify the right scenarios!

However, before implementing web2.0 tools in an organization, it is very important to analyze the already existing instruments, the organization communication behaviours, the degree of openness and trust of knowledge sharing, and the social setting. Most important web2.0 is best used where the quickest win is possible particular at the beginning.

So what are the usual scenarios where employees exchange knowledge?

Is it mainly in the cafeteria, on the telephone or mainly through email?
Does the organization rely on a dense meeting culture and direct contact?
How many different tools for communication already exist, other than telephone, meetings, emails, etc.?
So far, how have interactive web based applications worked? What went well and what wrong?

This list could be easily extended, please write me if you have some other points.

To find the right tools for the existing work scenarios

The challenge is that there are not only many different tools for online communication, but also they can be used so differently. The trick is to identify a deficit in a typical scenario of work context and find the right tool for it. Particularly, in the beginning, it is very helpful
to target a need and gain a quick win.

For instance, a wiki can be used for very different purposes and are best adapted to the organizational need.

Use it to write the protocol each week and to have a central place to follow up tasks. It can be written during the meeting and everybody can add it instantly or edit it later on.
Advantage: It is a small start, implemented in a existing process and you can learn on the fly.
Disadvantage: Only a small area of work or project management.
A glossary for a department to collect precise information for standard processes.
Advantage: The benefit of sharing can be shown quickly when a critical mass of employees contribute. Writing together what already exists.
Disadvantage: Needs support from the whole department. cannot easily be established if staff does not want to share and it needs trainingfor each one who is involved.
To organize the next company party or trip and use it for logistics.
Advantage: For a temporary time and involves a small team. Shows transparency of the planning process to other colleagues.
Disadvantage: Needs dedicated people and proper gardening of the wiki structure. Wikis can become easily confusing in larger projects (logistics).

These are, of course, only a few examples, but they shall show the variety of different implementation options. To analyze first what are normal work scenarios and then adapt a tool to it, it is therefore a key success factor.

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Tags: communication, knowledge management, culture, enterprise2.0, organization, social media, web2.0, wiki, work |

Wisdom of crowd: Bottom up measuring of development results

May 19, 2008 | comment

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Some days ago, I had a talk with a colleague from another development organization about web2fordev. We were asking whether web2.0 can really make a difference in development work? We both agreed it can, but we were unsure whether the organizational culture has to change first or the external pressure will push for openness?

When is the two way conversation coming then?

He made a great point — ‘blogs could provide a dialogue between headquarters of development organizations directly with projects and particular beneficiaries.’ A conversation could start about what has happened, what was accomplished and what do both sides think about it. I asked him how long does he think this could take to become reality, to which he replied, “ten years.”

I disagree and think it could take less time. Why? Because I think the potentials of the web will sooner or later unfold peer pressure. Don’t get me wrong. I do not mean by some small tools such as blogs alone, but the ease of engagement and the new potentials for collective action. The following example show possible implications for the development sector.

The power of mapping

Inspired from a post by Erik Hersman called Activist Mapping I came up with another thought or better explanation for this kind of pressure towards development organization, for example, looking at development results — the impact of foreign aid. Easterly describes it as a key challenge for development aid and monitoring results is high on the agenda of development organizations. Another example is the discussion around aid effectiveness and the Paris declaration.

The great potential of collective action for transparency

So, back to my thoughts. Check out first a project by Erik Hersman, Juliana Rotich and Daudi Were called Ushahidi and take a look at how they made it possible by all challenges that people in Kenya, during the post-election conflict, reported through their mobile phone about the critical situation. This way they collected information from all over Kenya and documented incidents such as riots, deaths, property loss, looting, rape etc. This degree of transparency was hardly achieved by the media and certainly not intended to be publicised by the government.

Bottom up measuring of development results

Now imagine the potential to measure development projects from a grassroot level. Or to collect information about how many governmental services have arrived in villages. This could be possible by harnessing the wisdom of crowd.

Using mobile phones to collect information.
Present all information on a website with maps and databases.
Use the website to connect the people who send information and aim to get more accurate information.

Beneficiaries of projects could collect information in teams, send feedbacks to the platform and create their own map of development projects or their timeline with accurate information on how government services are fulfilling their duties. This kind of transparency should be an all-win-situation.

Some might think this will never happen, but I think it will. It is already happening and to my understanding we are just at the beginning of this kind of collective action. What do you think?

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Tags: activism, ICT4D, development, kenya, mobile, openness, organization, web2fordev, wisdom of crowd |

Complexity trap: Local vs. global knowledge in development work

May 12, 2008 | comment

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The world wide web offers a growing variety of expertise on all kinds of topics. This global knowledge, such as the scientific domain, has generic character. The expertise is important, especially to tackle all sorts of challenges, but without including the local context could be quickly useless. Often, the applied knowledge lacks an interdisciplinary approach and disregards local and indigenous knowledge.

The German professor Dietrich Dörner describes it accurately in his book the “The Logic Of Failure: Recognizing And Avoiding Error In Complex Situations.” Problems are seen logic to tackle, but are, in contrary, far more complex than firstly thought.

Faced with problems that exceed our grasp, we pile small error upon small error to arrive at spectacularly wrong conclusions. We too often ignore the big picture and seek refuge in what we know how to do - fiddling while Rome burns. (Book review)

In a simulation for a development project, Dörner proves how this can lead to failure, and in many cases, efforts have no sustainable impact. One key challenge is to solely rely on global knowledge and state of the art expertise and disregard the local knowledge.

Local knowledge is a collection of facts and relates to the entire system of concepts, beliefs and perceptions that people hold about the world around them. This includes the way people observe and measure their surroundings, how they solve problems and validate new information. It includes the processes whereby knowledge is generated, stored, applied and transmitted to others. (Source: FAO)

Indigenous knowledge are traditions and practices of certain regional, indigenous, or local communities. The growing importance of indigenous knowledge and technologies can be seen, for example, for biodiversity conservation.

Therefore, efforts towards knowledge sharing are a key to make projects work. Kingo Mchombu, author of the Sharing Knowledge Handbook has an interesting point in that regard:

credit: angela7dreams

In most cases, the information needs of the urban and rural poor are seldom taken into account when they are supplied with information to solve their problem of poverty. The assumption being that they know very little and that is why they are poor, thus the knowledge system of the urban and rural poor is totally ignored when supplying them with external information.

It is puzzling to see how often a well intended transfer of knowledge is seen as the right way. As Joseph Stiglitz suggested, most learning initiatives in the development sector have tried to scan globally and apply locally. Also Ben Ramalingam argues: “This ‘pipeline’ approach to learning seriously underestimates the complexity of aid work.”

To my understanding, there is a growing need to link the local with the global in development work. Sharing and mixing knowledge is as important as relying on an interdisciplinary approach. To have people and organizations going this path and linking theses spaces are becoming even more important in the future. My hope is that the social web provides a framework for this broad knowledge sharing and collaboration, but this I will describe in my next post.

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Tags: ICT4D, knowledge management, biodiversity, development, local knowledge |

6 innovative grassroot mashups for transparency

May 5, 2008 | comment

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Some weeks ago I wrote a post about a new initiative by UNHCR, which promotes the use geodata mashups to provide information about refugee camps all around the world. Today, I saw another initiative by the World Bank called geo.worldbank.org: “Our work around the world.” Again, it is a nice service, but does it offer much more than the website?

Paul Currions points it out well in his post that the UNHCR map “is useful because it starts to give people an idea of one of the key issues for refugee management and the complexity of running a refugee camp. The first thing I notice is that every time I click on a link for more information, it tells me how much it costs to buy school or farm equipment, and gives me a link to UNHCR fundraising so I can cough up right there. I think we should be doing better. Much, much better.”

I agree with Paul Currion and wonder why these services do not offer the following:

Integrating other available sources of information to offer a broader perspectives on the given context. There are many other potentially valuable resources, which could enrich the visualization.
There should be ways to contribute information, for example, by refugees themselves or beneficiaries of World Bank projects. Couldn’t mashups used to get feedback and to monitor projects and their impact?
Gapminder.org illustrates nicely what further ways are possible to simplify complex data.

Interestingly, there are a lot of grassroot initiatives offered, which are often developed and maintained by a few people and sometimes even one person who accomplishes much more.

Tunesia Prison Map
Sami Ben Gharbia put up together, already a while ago, the frightening Tunesia prison map, in which he has been using google maps. It shows where political dissidents have been locked up by the Tunisian government.
Theyworkforyou
They work for you was developed by Rob McKinnon, whom I had the change to meet back in London. This inspiring project has a sister in the UK “that aims to make it easy for people to track the activity of Aotearoa New Zealand’s Parliament.” Basically, this site aggregates information already available in a form that makes it more transparent to follow the engagement of parliamentarians and topics. I am really impressed about his work and looking forward to see more of his ideas realized in the future.
UNdemocracy
This is again a website which aggregates available information and offers it in a transparent way. It focuses on an easy access to the transcripts of the General Assembly and Security Council of the United Nations. The same people also did the Public Whip, a page tracking the voting record and attendance of parliamentarians in the UK.
Ushahidi
This website was quickly realized through the recent Kenya crisis and maps the reports of the post-election crisis with all its different incidents such as riots, deaths, property loss, government forces etc. Kenyians can report such cases through their mobile phones by sms. This truly is a bottom up mashup.
Mapping the election conditions in Zimbabwe

This is a similar initiative, which documents all types of manipulation during the latest Zimbabweans election. The map is a valauble resource and Sokwanele has been doing an impressive work for human rights throughout the the last years. Ethan Zuckerman wrote an in depth post about this project.
Healthcarethatworks
Another Google map mashup, which shows the New York City wide status for hospitals and its disproportionate impact that recent hospital closures have on low-income communities.

Some more mashups in the enviroment field are summarised on Global Voices by Juliana Rotich. Lastly, Netsquared has on this year’s conference a mashup event, where promising new initiatives are presented.

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Tags: activism, ICT4D, e-democracy, grassroots, mashup, united nations |

Mobile everything: 3 new dimensions of citizen engagement

April 28, 2008 | comment

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Blogs have started a little revolution — nowadays everyone with Internet access can publish content on the web. Citizens can articulate their perspective and exchange it within a network of blogs. The mobile phone, with its improved access to the web, gives new means for citizen engagement because one can connect from everywhere and engage and broadcast from anywhere. These are the three most influential factors:

Always online

There is a slow shift when the web loses its physical limitation. Although the web is all around the world, in most of the cases you have to go somewhere to be connected. The mobile phone, because it is easier to connect to the web, changes that — you are always online. The web is a constant follower that might be frightening to some. But a “blackberry for activism” lets activists get involved instantly. On a peer to peer basis, people are connected = protected. A recent case underlines the potential: “Twitter Saves Man From Egyptian Justice.” Jan Chipchase wrote in a recent New York Times article, “the cellphone is becoming the one fixed piece of our identity.”

Interacting from everywhere

Some years ago I read Howard Rheingold’s “Smart Mobs” and I could not really see these mobile peer-to-peer networks happening on a massive scale, but, nowadays, a connection to the web allows people to be part of social networks. There are many worldwide experiences for sms campaigns for political change. The New York Times recently wrote, “50 million people, or about 2.3 percent of all mobile users, already use the cellphone for social networking.” This is particularly important in developing countries, where mobile phones are the communication tool. The real benefit is not in the northern hemisphere, where through the recent years most mobile business models have been failing. It is in Africa or Asia where the mobile phone is the main communication technology. If this is connected through the web, it then allows interaction, coordination and organization on a peer to peer basis. The cvberactivism in the aftermath of political violence in Kenya is one example and another is the mobile social blogging network vipera.com.

Broadcast from everywhere

In re-publica.de I watched a fascinating session on video citizen journalism. Brian Conley presented a project in which people from Iraq broadcast from Baghdad over the web (Alive in Baghdad), and there is no media team around. This presentation reminded me of a recent new development: live video broadcasting. Two new services are very interesting: Qik and Mogulus. Yes, more new tools, but these ones represent a shift — with Qik you can broadcast alive from your mobile phone wherever you are. I first got introduced to it when David Wilcox interviewed me through his mobile phone at the Social Innovation Camp. And the other tool, Mogulus.com, can be set up easily in your own television station to be online, letting you broadcast on daily basis from it. Eduardo Avila writes a fascinating story from Ecuador: My Mobile Voice and Citizen Journalism.

Citizen video broadcasting has two interesting facets: First, videos often have a stronger impact compared to texts. Second, citizen journalists, such as mobile reporters in Africa, go themselves to demonstrations and make interviews or film directly from areas where no media outlet goes.

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Tags: activism, ICT4D, citizen journalism, mobile, social network, twitter |

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This blog aims to explore and develop social changes through communication.
It focuses on tools such as internet — it's impact, potential and challenges it faces within different cultures around the world. It also approaches network learning and highlights knowledge management for development. more >
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Mobile everything: 3 new dimensions of citizen engagement

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