Blogs vs. Books for learning

October 30, 2007 | comment3 Comments

This post is rather abstract. It depicts me being puzzled about choosing between blogs or books. The question is if these two media could even be compared at all? Today I heard a presentation on which it was said that the internet is no medium, in the way that you absorb no knowledge from it, and so, only printed publications make you reflect the content.

Flickr giandoObviously, I have doubts about the previously said, but there are many differences between blogs and books. Just to describe a few, here, on blogs, links give further information and also feedbacks are commented directly. On books, the content stands for itself and in many cases only the bibliography shows a reference. Blogs are quick and informal, hold personal–short or long–reflections and often try to keep up with the rapid pace of the web. Books are well thought and take months or years to be published, and are based on a framework of hypothesis. Books were for centuries the ultimate way to share and acquire knowledge, but this has changed with the Internet fundamentally. In the early days, the Internet was great as a book searching tool, yet the overall knowledge offered was rather weak.

Nowadays, the Internet offers tremendous resources to learn and even allow us to share and create new knowledge. This is a way of how we process knowledge and learn completely different, as indeed Philosopher Konrad Paul Liessmann points out in this quote I translated into English:

We do not approach things causal linear. We do not try to tap a text from its inner structure, instead, we approach associative information; we sample much more, we work much more on the principle of collage/montage. Peaces of knowledge, texts, photos, all we find in Internet, we rearrange, sort it individually. We do not tap and understand things in the classical approach of the hermeneutic, simply because this new medium supports much more to tackle problems in an associative manner.

This is an interesting description which shows how networked learning can look like. Blogging, therefore, is a mean to start reflecting the sheer mass of information or bring it down to some puzzle pieces. The sheer incredible pace of information, however, cannot be reflected just by blogging and linking. Books give still space for reflection although on the next page there are not dozens of links to follow. To read a book from beginning to end is consequently a very different experience than to read blogs. I do not want to miss any of them, but I start wondering how to keep up with the pace of information.

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From small to big engagement - big players are entering the web2fordev field

October 27, 2007 | commentLeave a Comment

This week two interesting web2.0 projects for development were released. One is a new website from Ebay called MicroPlace, and the other is a new blog called ideas 4 development. Slowly, big players such as development organizations or companies use web2.0 technology to promote discussions around development or to bundle their capacity to leverage the power of micro-financing.

Ideas 4 development
Some days ago I got an email from Quentin Lebègue telling me about a new blog:

I read your post “an overview of blogging for development“. You’re right, there are not a lot of blogs about development. I wanted to present you a new collective and international blog on development: Ideas for development.

At first, I was surprised about the “viral marketing” for such a “top” blog, but then I was also impressed about how people behind it take the blogosphere and its networked conversations serious. I read some of its articles and followed with interest that the posts from people such as Pascal Lamy from the WTO have triggered some first discussions. I could not find any provocative comments or expressions of doubt or frustration as Pierre Jacquet (Chief Economist - Agence Francaise de Developpement) said on the launching press conference:

“The heads of development organizations are sometimes portrayed as inaccessible bureaucrats, who decide among themselves on the faith of the world’s poorest nations. Through this blog the members will openly share their ideas, their doubts and even their frustrations manifesting their interest for dialogue with other development professionals, students and the broader public. We hope that this initiative will be the provider of fresh ideas and a catalyst for improvements in the way multilateral and bilateral organizations, as well as their partners in the south, see development. This blog is in your hand let’s begin the debate.”

I find that the approach of the blog goes in the right direction and this blog will lead to an authentic conversation, if the above taken statement is meant serious. The need for an open dialogue is obvious or inescapable. The discussion will be held anyway and its audience is on the rise, even the old media is following it. Therefore, I wonder why is it limited to the directors of such organizations? I am curious what the outcome would be? Will it then be used as a feedback mechanism? Will the comments be back channelled to the development organizations and lead to change? For example, so far, not a single commenter seems to have an answer, and some blog posts are pretty close to a public relation message.

MicroPlace - Invest Wisely. End Poverty.
The second interesting news this week was about a platform for microfinance called MicroPlace, where according to Ebay “you can make investments that reach millions of hard-working poor people worldwide.” It is an interesting attempt to widen the scope of peer to peer lending, to connect lenders and grant seekers worldwide in a transparent process. NextBillion.net describes in their interesting post the difference between Microplace and Kiva.

Big players - a shift in the web2fordev field?
These two examples show that slowly conventional and rather big actors are harnessing the potential of web2.0 for development. Small agile players such as Kiva.org and many fascinating blogs out there proved the innovative and network potential of web2.0 tools. I wonder whether they will be capable of a two way conversation and whether their work mode is web2.0 compatible, as there is so little about tools and much more about culture. Granting Oxfam and Care, guests commentary fields, are just the beginning. Organizations gradually will have to interact with a multitude of actors ranging from individual activists, groups, NGOs, business and so forth.
So far the most innovative ideas came from individuals or teams, and the Internet helps millions of people to benefit from this ideas. However, in the case of MicroPlace, “a new peer-to-peer lending platform backed by eBay that has gone through all the necessary SEC regulatory hoops that make it possible for investors to invest in these individuals and make a return on their investment.” I wonder to which extend the capacity is needed to get these platforms established. So far, to me, the strength lies in social networks through blogs and all kinds of innovative platforms driven by enthusiasts.

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Web2.0, knowledge sharing and IT departments

October 17, 2007 | comment7 Comments

Here in Germany, Web2.0 is in everybody’s mouth. Newspapers have been reporting about it lately, and some things are around the buzz word–blogs, wikis, social networks, wikipedia, facebook or youtube, get more and more attention. Whereas in the first wave most people wondered where and when will the next cool start-up spring up. The debate went on whether blogs are a threat to media or not. The wikipedia phenomenon brought finally the knowledge and collaboration dimension of web2.0 to the spotlight.

Ironically, in my opinion, the IT departments–responsible still–have often not taken the participative web as a top priority. And I wonder whether this is different elsewhere. By the way, a similar phenomenon is seen in the knowledge management arena. In relevant magazines, web2.0 and its potential for knowledge sharing and learning has hit the headlines this Summer. However, not many blogs are even around (Please notify me if you know some). One exception is Martin Röll, who wrote very early, albeit he stopped his blog, about knowledge sharing through blogs. Three other nice blogs are zungu.net, frogpond.de and Wissensmanagement2.0.

Going back to the topic, I wonder why many IT-specialists do not show a wider interest in web2.0 and share some enthusiasm. Here are some assumptions:

  • IT-experts know by own experience that web2.0 is just another approach, and doubt the hype around it.
  • IT-experts are bored of the triviality of this kind of software such as blogs and wikis.
  • IT-departments completely underestimate the effects for web2.0 software.
  • Web2.0 is seen secondary as technological and it is much more about culture, communication and commitment (3C)

“Like it or not, Web 2.0 is coming,” says Lisa Hoover in the context of enterprise2.0, and this different tools will be used in organizations. Euan agrees by stating: The 100% guaranteed easiest way to do Enterprise 2.0? DO NOTHING. It strikes me to see how many people individually already use web2.0 tools such as blogs or wikis, or they arrange meetings with doodle, use their own desktop sharing and collaborate over google docs. And this all goes easily around the firewall because it is all browser-based. Nevertheless, some obstacles remain as Bev Trayner describes in her blog post Web2.0 is a long way from people at work.

I think it is important to grasp the potential of collaboration and to prove it can be a reduction of information overload and leverage new forms of collaboration. However, from a knowledge management perspective, it is also critical because of how can we share information, when it is distributed over the web. How can it be linked and searched from the intranet? Nevertheless, I am still puzzled about the reluctance towards web2.0 even though it can become a decisive and comparative advantage, being it internally for communication or externally to flourish cooperation.

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Blog action day: E-waste, the downside of the growing web

October 15, 2007 | comment9 Comments

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Greenpeace IndiaToday is blog action day and this year’s topic is environment. Thousands of bloggers will devote their writing skills to create more awareness to our threaten environment. I decided to write about e-waste (electronic waste). As Internet grows everyday, so does the demand for electronic equipment that preserves and extends the access to the Internet. Unfortunately, personal computers, laptops and mobile phones do not only have heavy toxic parts, their life span is mostly very short. The waste ends in places where people cannot protect themselves from the toxins, but have to recycle them as an income. Every year, hundreds of thousands of old computers and mobile phones are dumped in landfills or burned in smelters.

Some statistics

  • Electronic waste represents 2 percent of America’s trash in landfills, equal to 70 percent of overall toxic waste (wikipedia)
  • It is estimated that the US alone exports 80 percent of its e-waste to China, India and Pakistan. (treehugger)
  • Germany has a yearly dumb of over 1 million tons of e-waste, which is over 13 kilos per person.
  • Only 11% of PCs are recycled; the percentage for televisions and mainframes recycled is even lower. (ITfact)

The growing e-waste has consequences especially on the poor because all sorts of electronic waste is legally or illegally dumped in developing countries. It is not only computers but also vacuum cleaners, cables and all other sorts of appliances and electronic equipment. Greenpeace campaigns against the producers of laptops requesting them to use less toxic parts and obliged them to offer a recycle mechanism. Electronic waste is a valuable source for secondary raw materials if treated properly. But the recycling of e-waste is done very basically with tremendous health risks for workers (check out the photo from Greenpeace India).

Most e-waste goes to Asia, especially India and China, but growing amounts go to Africa. Here are some sources, which describe the difficult situation in different countries:

Check out the following video to see how drastic the situation is and find out that in the US it is unfortunately still legal to export e-waste to other countries. E-Waste: Dumping on the Poor (Asia Society)

And last but not least, here you can find some tips to avoid e-waste: Green E-Waste Tips

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3 different conversations: blogs to fight poverty

October 8, 2007 | comment4 Comments

Thanks to Tom L. and Peter Ballantayne for their very interesting remarks on my post “an overview of blogging for development.” Peter argued that there are a lot different blogs in development aid or international cooperation out there and “must be loads more, just not very visible.” And Tom had a great point:

What’s probably as important as noting the existence of the blogs themselves is tracking the development of the aid-development blogosphere, examining the connections (strength, regularity, theme) between blogs and seeing if there are purposive and deliberate communities building out there. Not many groups are actually taking aggregation a step further and building connections and seeking to create value to the profession from the new-found willingness to share online.

I agree with Peter that there is probably much more of it out there, but I criticize that in most cases it is not linked and therefore has no networks. And as Tom rightly points out, there is little knowledge sharing and discourse between different bloggers, different organizations. I give you three examples how different the approaches are and what is behind them. I analyzed all three blogs with technorati.com and aiderss.com to find out about their network and discussions.

Blog World Hunger
This blog is from the International Food Policy Research Institute. They also presented their web2.0 approach on the web2fordev conference. They have been experimenting with blogs internally for knowledge sharing for already some years. This internal blogging seemed to me quite vibrant since it involves a lot of staff. However, when you look at the external blog, you have a complete contrast. Six posts and seven comments in 2007. I wonder why they even use a blog and not a normal website. In Technorati, it has 9 blog reactions in 2007 (other blogs linking to it), and in del.icio.us it has been bookmarked only one time (from me!).
Certainly not a blog to network nor discuss the issue of world hunger with a broader community. For example it does not link to any other blog. It seems to be a place to just drop various documents and articles.

The following two blogs are very different in which one is grassroot driven and the other from the World Bank.

William Kamkwamba’s Malawi Windmill Blog
This is a blog about William Kamkwamba, the 19-year-old self-taught engineer who built a windmill power system for his family’s home in Malawi. His story was broadcasted at the TEDGlobal 2007 in Tanzania. (Check out all the other great presentations). His blog, which started back in June, got over 222 blog reactions according to Technorati. It has been commented 52 times and it has been bookmarked 48 times in del.icio.us. No doubt that that blog is a great storyteller and invites to read and interact. It also clearly is meant to support William in his eduction. Furthermore, it has been nicely embedded into the wider blogosphere and the result is remarkable. It has big attention.

End poverty in South Asia blogEnd poverty in South Asia
This is a blog run by the Shanta Devarajan, the Chief Economist of the South Asia Region at the World Bank. His statement “End poverty in one generation. It can be done in one generation” makes the goal clear. It is quite an offensive approach for an organization such as the world bank in my opinion. This has triggered already 49 comments two 12 posts since it started in September, and it has aroused over 20 blog reactions so far. Similar to William’s blog and in contrast to the world hunger blog, it gives a personal perspective, and evokes feedback. However, I am curious to see how an organization such as the world bank will keep such an open discourse and how it can contribute:

This is why I am starting this blog. To contribute to the debate (sometimes, to start one) with ideas, analysis and evidence so that South Asians—and people who care about South Asia—can have a dialogue on these critically important issues, so that together we can end poverty in South Asia. (Shanta Devarajan)

In conclusion, I think blogs are used in more and more different ways. However, blogs are often not part of networks nor refer to each other. The communication is a one way street or the discourse is not happening in a social network of blogs. And interestingly there is still a wide gap between the many piles of documents for development themes and the few pioneers tempting to have a two way conversation about development.

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The web comes closer - the magic of tag clouds

October 4, 2007 | comment1 Comment

As you might have already noticed, I am a pretty big fan of tagging. I think tagging is often underestimated because it is trivial, but at the same time intuitive and meaningful.

A tag cloud (or weighted list in visual design) is a visual depiction of content tags (keywords) used on a website. Often, more frequently used tags are depicted in a larger font or otherwise emphasized, while the displayed order is generally alphabetical. Thus both finding a tag by alphabet and by popularity is possible. Selecting a single tag within a tag cloud will generally lead to a collection of items that are associated with that tag. (Wikipedia)

Last week, during the web2fordev conference, I presented some web2.0 tools on the webtaster day, and interestingly, tagging triggered greater discussions. Tag clouds show the power of tagging because they summarize the popular topics of a network, show the interest of a person or represent the demand of a community. They bring transparency, simplicity and relevance.

  • Transparency of what a community drives and the community’s topics. It turns classical taxonomy (e.g. a website menu) upside down, so we do not have to rely on “smart” hierarchical structure.
  • Simplicity in what the sea of information is about. It offers us meta-information about all kinds of content available, and it is easy to tag.
  • Relevance of what is the meaning of one keyword to another (e.g. social bookmarking). It involves people, who link and connect information, which other no sophisticated search robot can do so far.

Lastly, it offers us the possibility to map the web ourselves and rely a bit less on search engine robots. It is more realistic than all the semantic web buzz. The following tag clouds represent different communities and their interests. In this regard, this tag clouds are magic because they are a respective representation of networks in their topics.

Afrigator blog aggregator offers an overview of how tags have evolved over time.

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This tag cloud represents the last.fm website, with different tastes of music.

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43 things is a social network website.

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This tag cloud represents the popular tags of photos from a flickr user.

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Tag clouds are also possible with texts such as this John F. Kennedy speech.

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This tag cloud represents qype city guide highlighting the user’s interest.

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A tag cloud representing the major topics of millions of blogs from Technorati.

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Tagging, represented in tag clouds, can easily lead to generalization, but as delicious shows, it can also be represent in an individual perspective. In delicious you can browse through tags in all directions because hierarchical order is absent. But tag clouds can also be quite frightening since they can say a lot about person. Unfortunately, tagging has not evolved very much throughout the last years as Thomas Vanderwal point out in his blog post.

While there are examples that tagging services have moved forward, there is so much more room to advance and improve. As people’s own collection of tagged pages and objects have grown the tools are needed to better refind them.

David Weinberger has a nice description for tagging in his book “Everything is Miscellaneous”:

We are building this connected miscellany link by link and tag by tag. Its value is in the implicit relationship that turns it into an infrastructure of meaning.

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Development aid 2.0

October 2, 2007 | comment2 Comments

I was interviewed by the Deutsche Welle (German version) last week during the web2fordev conference. As a result from the interview, an interesting article was deutsche-welle.pngpublished (Entwicklungshilfe 2.0) in which not only the potential of web2.o in the context of development is discussed, but it is also questioned whether web2.o will do a shift to development aid in general. Interesting point I thought, and a bit visionary. “With the access to information,” the author writes, “development aid can come closer to its goal to help for self help.”

The articles also describes a bit the work of Kabissa in Africa, and emphasizes the potentials for organisations to network more effectively and share knowledge. I know, from my working experience with civil society in Egypt, that cooperation between civil society is a key factor, therefore I am very curious to see how this will develop within the next years. Right now it seems to me that it is often driven by the diaspora or development agencies although there are many great grassroot initiatives.

The article in general does not grasp exactly the implications of we2.0 for development aid. It mixes up different notions of development. But, on the other hand, it highlights the two way conversation for development and what it could mean for development organizations to be much better connected with beneficiaries and obtain direct feedback. But as I questioned before on a panel of the web2fordev conference, “Web2.0 offers and relies on open communication and knowledge sharing. Therefore it has great potential for participation and innovation. But are development organizations ready for this kind of openness?”

Full article translated by google

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