First Socialcamp in Germany

June 26, 2008 | commentLeave a Comment

I finally write about my visit to the first Socialcamp in Germany.  There were activists, campaigners, NGOs and many others who shared their work, experiences and visions with an open spirit. Particularly, the mixture of participants from the traditional German nonprofit sector (social welfare), newer NGOs and activists were quite inspiring. This kind of mingle, which makes it very creative, happens all over again after the Socialcamp in England. The hub in Berlin offered their location and both days were filled with sesssions.

Examples

It was insightful to see how much is happening and inspiring to see the engagement of people. It showed me once again the value of face to face networking and that most things are happening around Berlin. There were a lot of interesting initiatives presented such as:

Also some promising platforms have been established, such as:

The academic view
There is also a newspaper article in the TAZ where Dieter Rucht, a German professor and expert of social movements, says: “My general opinion is that the means of the Internet to mobilize are greatly overrated. This is not a new form of egalitarian social movement. He sees no qualitative jump though the Internet and just hopes and expectations.” Surely one can easily be enthusiastic — so far a lot of initiatives and experiments have to prove their results, but it says a lot when a German professor still share his degree of  skepticism. One reason might be that especially in Germany the potential for transnational networking has not yet been acknowledge nor tested.

Funding challenge
One big challenge to most projects is of course funding. There are limited ways to get funding. Funders are the “Federal Ministry of Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth” (official name!!) or foundations. But there is not such a foundation culture as in the USA, where people are even less willing to invest in web based projects. Another option is company funding, but in here, it is, according to a discussion, not too easy to accept all kinds of corporate money because that might “damage” the reputation within the community.  So, some project offers consultancy and advise for corporate social responsibility on the side. The above mentioned TAZ article mentions that 2-3 billion privately donated money in Germany were spent by people older than 60 and those have not yet an interest in such initiatives.

The openness challenge
To me it was particularly interesting that NGOs face (almost) the same difficulties to open themselves up as regular companies. Although they are non-profited and should not have something to hide such as valuable patents. But they are moving in a political arena, which often makes them reluctant to go public, for example, with blogs and openness for feedback. “The willingness to engage more openly in networks with members and stakeholders is low”, said many representatives from organizations. Nevertheless, I think that the event showed that openness and cooperation are key to work on pressuring social issues.

Possibly related posts:

Tags: | Print this post

Social media for development in the local context

June 19, 2008 | commentLeave a Comment

Sorry for not having post anything recently, but I have had the opportunity to participate in the Socialcamp and KM4DEV conference, which I will shortly blog about.

Thanks for the interesting comments on my blog post on local knowledge. Meryn Stol wrote a nice comment: “Every person can be a problem solver.” The challenge, however, is to succeed in complex projects. Unfortunately, many development projects are still rather planned than developed within the context. Or as William Easterly puts it, “The development field is still dominated by planers.” Although the best way to solve this problem is to be a “Seeker” rather than a “Planner” and look for small, sustainable programs. To set up projects in a relevant context is a key and means to include as much expertise (actors?) as possible. But here comes quickly the dilemma of how to find consensus and include all the different aspects and get lost in complexity.

I wonder if the social web can offer ways to potentially bring more transparency, collect more, particularly local, wisdom and gain better ways to cope with complexity and lastly achieve better results. Maybe social media, especially in the local context, open new ways for problem solutions in a collaborative manner such as wikipedia. Peter Ballantyne wrote it nicely in a comment:

“I think the newer social media have a huge potential to strengthen the local basis and focus of much development work, by creating and sustaining demands, maybe even small ones, for information expertise and knowledge that is local, for local purposes, by local people.”

However, there is still a lack of knowledge — the importance of local knowledge for problem solving. Alberto Masetti-Zannini approaches this very appealing on his paper “Web 2.0 and International Development NGOs”, in which he argues that “most NGOs still suffer from a deep-seated inability to develop two-way communication systems with those whom they seek to represent, and are still favouring top-down, centralised knowledge-management practices.”

He argues that participation mechanisms are key: “NGOs have struggled for a long time to build effective participation mechanisms in the developing world. Relevant and correct information from the bottom of the development pyramid is necessary to make knowledgeable decisions about their work.”

And is optimistic: “Indeed, Web 2.0 tools are beginning to change this situation, by generating and disseminating local content and knowledge in an open, shared structure. But are NGOs adopting these new technologies in their knowledge management practices?”

I am also sharing this optimism, but I am also fearing for the wide gap to participate in the social web. Thenmozhi Soundararajan had an interesting example back on a re-publica conference presentation, which underlines my concern: In the USA 25 % out of twelve graders graduate without necessary skills in writing - so 75% have not the capabilities to profoundly write and therefore engage in social media.

Possibly related posts:

Tags: , , , , | Print this post

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

June 5, 2008 | comment3 Comments

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:

  1. 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?
  2. 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.
  3. 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.

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.

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

Possibly related posts:

Tags: , , , , , , , , | Print this post

Digital divide: Connectivity and the different dimensions of literacy

June 2, 2008 | comment4 Comments

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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. Distance Education and E-Learning
  5. 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.
  6. 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.

Possibly related posts:

Tags: , , , , , , | Print this post
Rounded corner top left
Rounded corner bottom left