Start of the web4dev conference: Major issue connectivity

November 28, 2007 | comment2 Comments

I am at the Web4Dev conference in Nairobi, Kenya. The conference brings together people from all over the world to discuss how the web can contribute to development. One overarching topic are the Millennium Development Goals and how information and communication technologies (ICT) can help to achieve them.

I will give a presentation tomorrow together with Nynke Kruiderink from IICD the lessons learnt from the web2fordev conference and some thesis about its implications for development aid. Here is a bit of background information from the official conference website:

Since its inception at a conference organized by the World Bank in 2003, the Web for Development meetings are now well established as a forum for the web community of UN agencies, and international development civil society organizations interested in using their expertise to show how the Internet can promote development.

The fourth conference, to be held in Nairobi, Kenya, under the theme Driving economic and social development with the Internet, will focus on helping developing countries bridge the digital divide. As the seat of the UN headquarters in the developing world, the Kenyan capital offers participants a first-hand experience of what is involved in coming up with new ideas and solutions customised for an environment with limited computer skills, inadequate telecommunications and other infrastructure that still lags behind that of wealthier nations.

The first day started with some welcome speeches and this was followed by a panel discussion with the following participants:

  • Dr. Bitange Ndemo, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Information and Communication, Kenya
  • Dr. Shem Ochuodho, Expert on Internet and Information and Communication Technologies in Kenya, Rwanda and Sub-Sahara Africa
  • Mr. Gajanan Kasbekar, Vice President, TATA Interactive, India
  • Ms. Ashima Bhardwaj, Vice President, One World Youth Project
  • Ms. Njeri Rionge, Founder of Kenya’s ISP Wananchi.com
  • Mr. Adrian Wooster, Community Broadband Network (CBN)

The discussion started with some general statements and then focused mainly on the issue of connectivity. The debate highlighted the different dimensions of the digital divide. This included economic, technological, social and political aspects. Especially rural areas face difficulties to gain Internet access compare to urban areas. The gap widens when it comes to broadband. One concern, according to Bitango Ndemo, is whether it is feasible to implement broadband and to prove the benefit for the investment.

Another challenge are high illiteracy rates in many developing countries. One participants demanded that the digital divide is only bridged when the most vulnerable communities are reached.

According to Adrian Wooster it is more challenging to give access in many urban areas from a technological point of view. With wireless technology it is fairly easy to give access to rural areas. Especially in informal settlements it technically challenging.

The debate continued with contributions from the audience. One remark was that policy makers are the “gatekeepers” to slow down or accelerate the use of ICT. The technology is there, mobile phone, personal computer and the Internet will merge soon, so it is up to policy makers to create a framework to flourish.

One other key challenge to connectivity is the lack of energy. The prices are still very high and with power cuts it is a challenge to run for example servers. In rural areas car batteries are often used to charge mobile phones.

Another issue raised was about language, for example in Rwanda over ninety per cent of the people do not speak English, but so far most content is offered in English (e.g. scientific research). A participant raised his concern about the missing competition in Sudan, so that costs of Internet access are often higher than in Europe. In many cases the quality of the connection is not sufficient.

A fundamental problem is the fast developing Internet offers a lot of great features, which often need a broadband connection. Whereas email and RSS feeds can be accessed with low bandwidth, many other features such as social networks and other web2.0 tools need broadband and instant or continuous access. One example mentioned are students at Kenyan universities, who quite easily read their emails, but they want to surf on Facebook, which takes a lot of bandwidth.

“It is not that we do not have ideas.” There are a lot of practical examples especially from the youth, said Gajanan Kasbekar, but a major obstacle remains. How to commercialize these ideas to make them work in the long run. Njeri Rionge added a similar remark. She recommended that ICT-solutions shall be orientated on the market to make them successful. In my opinion businesses play a key role in achieving better connectivity, but many solution such as social media and its implication has nothing to do with markets. Tomorrow is workshop day and I hope to find time to blog more.

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Pitfalls of micro blogging via Twitter

November 25, 2007 | commentLeave a Comment

In my last post I described the potential for social networks by tweets and statuses, but now I would like to add to it some links of interesting blog posts about Twitter and its potential. There is, for example, Nancy White, collecting collaboration stories over Twitter. Another interesting post from Marshall Kirkpatrick, “Why Twitter pays my rent,” describes how you can follow on Twitter in real time what is happening in the world wide web. Lastly, Caroline Middlebrook wrote a nice Twitter guide.

However, in this post I also intend to highlight some possible pitfalls for micro-blogging, how Facebook statuses and Twitter messages are also called. Developments are so fast that reflection of these tools is important, and even though  I risk some culture pessimism, I pointed some out:

  • Quality
    Some things can be expressed through statuses, but is the outcome really needed information? Is it worth the effort to read all these messages?
  • Micro-content
    In 140 characters a lot can be said, but surely nothing thoroughly elaborated and roughly in depth. Can this micro-content help in terms of knowledge sharing or learning? Micro-content is rather vague, or not always precise or self explanatory.
  • Attention
    Clearly, this kind of information needs another attention and might even pressure for more multitasking and loss of concentration. It is another step to blur the border between being online and offline.
  • Time consuming
    The question here is whether it is more efficient to email or add another piece to the information overload. Or is it really an own channel for communication?
  • Privacy
    There is without a doubt a privacy issue of how much you want to let others know about yourself. Being virtually connected does not mean you want to share so much of your privacy.  How can one compromise with the dilemma of being public and private at the same time?
  • Time span
    Mostly, there is only a certain window of reception for a message before it is gone. It is a bit like blog posts which get attention the first few days and then they are often forgotten.
  • Engagement
    It needs a certain size of network and engagement from it to really get feedbacks. Does micro-blogging really lead to exchange or are there just many voices and no responses?
  • The zero sum game of communication
    The time used on these tools is spent less on others. On Skype chats or Twitter, communication is divided into small bits, what makes it even more difficult to get the whole picture.

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10 reasons why statuses and tweets are a key for social networks

November 19, 2007 | commentLeave a Comment

For the past weeks I have been experimenting with Twitter and Facebook. I have checked out the value of statuses (Facebook) and tweets (Twitter) over these two social network tools. For those of you who do not know, Facebook is a social network platform which lets one not only to add friends and content, but also add an actual status. Equal to Twitter, it Twitter Poster allows only a limited number of characters and it is often used to express emotions, things you do, or raise questions. I wrote some while ago a post questioning whether Twitter makes sense or not? I have to say I have changed my opinion at a certain extent and now I believe Twitter and statuses can really enhance your social network experience.

Facebook and Twitter both have some great incentives but also some downfalls. Where does the network value lies? For Twitter, in the beginning I wondered why exchanging short 140 character messages is of any good. So I started using the two tools during the last weeks and concentrated on information exchange and sharing. I also subscribed via RSS to the statuses of my friends in Facebook, and was quite surprised about their activities. This leads to 10 reasons why statuses and tweets are a key for social networks:

  1. Satisfaction
    It fits perfect to most people’s desire to express their thoughts and to get a response. For example, it is interesting how many people sooner or later start updating their statuses in Facebook. To write short messages is inviting.
  2. Closeness
    Statuses let you follow what your network feels, thinks, works or simply wants to know. Different to blogs or entries in forums, it is rather informal and shows moods or curiosity and some times even anger. It is an important channel for people working intensively on the web, and more and more people will eventually do so.
  3. Collaboration
    It opens new venues for small collaboration and can still support existing collaboration because it is an asynchronous and synchronous form of communication.
  4. Openness
    In Twitterer people invite each other rather easy. Everybody can be addressed; a short conversations can develop and an answer might be there in minutes.
  5. Sharing
    You can quickly share links, information or quotes in a quick way. A request is send out by on one click to a whole network and opens a channel for other types of communication to conventional ones such as email etc.
  6. Change
    Alexandra Samuel has a nice post about how twitter and statuses can promote collective action for change.
  7. Connectedness
    Through statuses you find out a lot about your peers and find overlapping interests. Tweets can connect people and topics which otherwise would not be possible that easily. Distanced friends or colleagues in the next room read your thoughts or know what your work on.
  8. Network effect
    Its network effect comes from the overlapping of the connected people. In Twitter a message can be transmitted that way from one network of people to another and can reach their audience quickly and directly.
  9. Mobile
     This micro-blogging can be followed from everywhere on the go. It connects you with your social network or group wherever you are.
  10. Pull not push
    Other than email, it is up to you, the participant, to read it or leave it. As long as some peers are following and reading, there is always a potential answer or reaction.

To conclude, statuses and instant communication through twitter build a closer social network. It enables real synchronous peer to peer exchange and has decisive network value if it is used for real sharing. It clearly shows how slowly email is being replaced by instant communication (e.g. Skype, Twitter etc.). Together with the mobile phone I think it will be another step to make the web independent from the PC. In my opinion, it can be perfectly used to sustain and stimulate a social network because it is a pull-method. Every user decide when to engage and when not to, but when the network is big enough somebody will respond and the network effects will raise in real time. It is basically another evolution of communication, whether we like it or not. Next post I will highlight the downsides.

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The difficulty of saying good bye to top-down communication

November 15, 2007 | comment2 Comments

Last Tuesday I took part on a discussion round in Düsseldorf, Germany. It was about the changing of the communication of enterprises due to web2.0. Reflecting the evening, I find it quite interesting what it might have meant in terms of the new web and its potential users in Germany. To put ahead, I share the opinion that web2.0 has reached Germany quite late – especially if you take a look at the enterprise sector. This event was mainly directed towards external communication or public relation experts, and not so focused on knowledge sharing approaches. Next to me sat Thomas Knüwer, a journalist from the the German Handelsblatt and Marc Pohlmann, who eagerly talked about direct one to one marketing and Wieland Stützel from Frankfurt airport.

dialoq Less people, than originally registered, showed up — I even had my doubts the visitors were interested in knowledge sharing. My basic statement was that German companies underestimate the potential of web2.0 even though web2.0 offers new incentives for knowledge sharing, opens new ways of participation and questions hierarchies. The technology is secondary; the communication and exchange sets the dynamic.

Maybe it was the rain, maybe they had already heard enough of web2.0, or they simply did not find it interesting enough. As I am following closely a lot of reportages in the old media, I think not so much has been reported, and when so, it is often reduced to the usual sites (wikipedia, youtube). It was interesting to see and hear that for many communication experts, knowledge sharing is of minor interest.
Unfortunately, in my opinion, most people wanted to get a guideline or solution: How can I influence this community? How can I get my message to the client? And lastly, how to make money with it?

But on the podium were four people arguing in favour of the authentic conversation about the web and how deeply it will change communications. Sadly, that seemed to bored the public relation audience. So, is it the companies or the employees who are not ready for web2.0? Can top-down internal and external communication specialists really have any benefit from it? Right then I had my doubts. But again, It showed me how far the participatory web is from mainstream or normal life organizations. It also showed me that there is a big skepticism about “just another web tool”. It is definitely still too far away from everyday practice within organizations.

Not surprisingly, first remarks from the audience were how to apply it and what will it change? My points about open source collaboration and open networking of organizations did not seem to make them curious. However I found the following quotes nice:

  • Marc Pohlmann: “This web shift is not about coverage, it is about one’s niche audience and about having a conversation with it.”
  • Thomas Knüwer: “There is not more trash in the Internet it is just so much easier to find it.”
  • Wieland Stützel: “Nowadays structured organizations are so much in an internal competition between departments - how shall they possible work together and collaborate and go outside.”

I found it all quite interesting, but it did not seem to engage the audience. I guess we did not achieve the conversation. However, this was not my first time in this kind of events, and still, I am often struck about people’s desire for a road-map of how to deal with it and to influence it, rather than just say ‘that sounds interesting let’s check it out and experiment with it.’

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Open Source Life?

November 12, 2007 | comment2 Comments

As Japan is losing interest in the personal computer, Google announces recently the Android alliance to bring free and open source software to mobile phones. The revolutionary part of this is that proprietary software might be mostly for the personal computer; it will not longer be anymore for the mobile. lego.jpgThis opens complete different opportunities because free and open source software unleash creativity and the mobile phone is in many countries the number one tool. One of the main communication devices is now open to all kinds of ideas.
But open source is not only about software. It is a movement or philosophy where the software is just one part of it. Approaches such as Creative Commons propagate the use for open license of texts, music, films and many other things. All that shows a shift in thinking of copyright. However, it can also significantly change our work and life.

One approach is to facilitate international development through free and open source. Vinay Gupta argues for open source in technologies such as those for the household.

An open library of designs for refrigerators, lighting, heating, cooling, motors, and other systems will encourage manufacturers, particularly in the developing world, to leapfrog directly to the most sustainable technologies, which are much cheaper in the long run. Manufacturers will be encouraged to use the efficient designs because they are free, while inefficient designs still have to be paid for. This library should be free of all intellectual property restrictions and open for use by any manufacturer, in any nation, without charge.

It basically means that people can jointly create tools or machines and develop them collaboratively further on a peer-to-peer base. That leads to projects such as an open source car or an open source machine. Web2.0 with its many new opportunities for participation, can bring the open source approach to another level. Nowadays, it is social media, but hopefully soon it will be collaboration on a massive scale to find pragmatic low cost solutions for communities. That could happen by conceptualizing with a network of expertise from different actors, by exchanging experiences learning from each other worldwide. Check out the blog from the peer2peer foundation for more insights. The blogger Michel Bauwens collects also excellent links in delicious.

Frithjof Bergmann, (German Blog) a German philosopher, goes in his theory of New Work–New Culture in a similar direction. He propagates that open exchange should become part of our lives. His theory is provocative and has some open source elements in it. Broadly said, he argues that nowadays economy cannot offer enough work for everybody. Secondly, he argues that people often do not work what they really really want to do and questions where does their talent lies. His solution is that people shall divide their work in three thirds. One third to work to have an income, another third to do what they are good at where they can unleash their creativity, and lastly, one third to build and construct all the things and services one cannot earn with the less income. Whether it is realistic or not is another question, even though he has proved around the world in different places such as prisons or Flint in the USA. Here is a paper from Frithjof Bergmann. Here is also a blog post describing Bergmann’s approach in Africa.

What I find interesting about these arguments and developments is that it is possible to have a paradigm shift in the future. It is not only companies and organizations, how the Wikinomics authors argue in their book. It is a culture shift through a new dimension of communication and collaboration. Open source is the fuel for this movement. A peer-to-peer decentralized network to find solutions for everyday problems, develop new forms of low-tech production and own distribution channels by working together in networks in an open source spirit.

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What is the outcome of new social network tools?

November 5, 2007 | comment3 Comments

I am quite impressed about the success of Facebook. The intimacy aspect, the clear design and usability combined with all sorts of applications are probably some of the success factors. However, I wonder what is the aftermath of this social network, and how many different results come out of it? I ponder how many people really get something out of it, beyond adding friends and exchanging statuses. Actually, I started recently experimenting myself with statuses because I believe in network effect, and I am anxious to see the results. So, for example, if I posted a question in Twitter–which appears as a status in Facebook–I could potentially reach an audience, and that might help me - as Johannes Schunter and Jürgen Eichholz pointed in their idea for social network platform in an organization. By the way, Joitske Hulsebosch wrote a nice post about our experiment and you can follow my Twitter attempts here (I will write about this Twitter thing in another post).

In contrast to blogging or writing collaboratively in a Wiki, one can say that Facebook, per se, has little to offer. Take a look at Facebook groups. They are basically just forums with photos, which lack much needed social network features such a widgets, RSS, profiles, etc. to get more information from people, about a certain topic and many other incentives for interaction. I started the Web2fordev group myself and I am a member of some other groups as well. What are the benefits or the outcome of these groups? There are surely exceptions such as the Burmese campaign group, which was helpful for coordination and triggered a lot of attention. In a simple mailing list such as the Dgroup, one achieves so far a better exchange. I guess we still have to experiment more to find the right tools for networking. Obviously, the desire for exchange is there but when will we have the best tools to apply it?

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