Top posts 2007 and my lessons learnt
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It is pleasing to reflect about the most visited posts, from this blog, during 2007. I wonder why some triggered more attention than others; and I am looking forward to applying some lessons learnt in 2008.
- 4 examples for innovative mobile phone use in Africa
- 10 challenges for web2.0 in organizations
- What is enterprise2.0? Five pillars for efficient knowledge sharing
- A learning story: My way to web2.0
- Blog action day: E-waste, the downside of the growing web
- Web2.0, knowledge sharing and IT departments
- Innovative online activism mashup
- An overview of blogging for development
- 3 different conversations: blogs to fight poverty
- Social webs in Africa
This top ten present five interesting highlights from 2007:
- Web2.0 finally entered on a wide scale organizations and companies.
- The web finally goes beyond PC’s and has a breakthrough on mobile phones.
- Development aid organizations started to sense a potential in web2.0.
- It is the southern hemisphere were many innovative web applications came from.
- Web2.0 - the collaborative web is more seen in respect to knowledge sharing and learning.
My personal lessons learnt after half a year blogging are different:
- Orientation
Through this blog, I try to focus on giving an overview of different developments and link topics. To fish interesting pieces in the information ocean and link them, gives readers an own perspective to continue. I am glad this seems to trigger growing readers. I am still puzzled about how important the linking to other interesting content is valued although it does not take as much work as writing. - Consistency
As always, the clearer you write the better people will get you. I see blogging as a reflection for my learning. So, I still cannot resist to write rather abstract sometimes, but I will try harder to write more concise. The most consistent posts got most readers. - Personal
Writing from a personal perspective is authentic and triggers most of the comments. I often resist writing too personally because I think content is more important than opinion. However it is quite tricky to find out what my audience values higher.
- Variety
I am glad the variety of topics seems to be accepted as my subscribers grow. I am, honestly, simply to curious about many things to not write about them. Like the web, topics are simply so much interwoven, and I believe interdisciplinarity is the key. - Time
I invested quite a lot of time on blogging and I am happy about its outcome. To start doing so means to become part of a network with other bloggers, and that is inspiring.
Lastly thanks a lot to all of my readers for checking this blog out through the year 2007. All the best for 2008.
Possibly related posts:
Weekly links: Blogging for democracy and African ingenuity
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- Two articles on mobile for development
Mobiles for the ‘world’s poorest’ is a new article from BBC, which describes how Jeffery Sachs Millenium village project applies mobile phones. Another article describes how PDAs are saving lives in Africa. - Blogging for democracy around the world
Interesting interview with Antony Loewenstein, who talks about his trip to various countries to visits blogger writing for democracy. In his opinion “Blogs have certainly democratised the political process, and allowed “average” citizens the chance to engage.” In another guardian commentary he argues in the context of the Arab world, that Bloggers “are challenging the political status-quo like never before, despite the risks in doing so.” - Afrigadget
A great blog from Erik Hersman, kikuyumoja and others, which shows the fascinating art of improvisation in Africa. Check out for example the BodaPhone or a home made welding machine. The title of the blogs says it all: Solving everyday problems with African ingenuity.
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Weekly links: About Twitter and the future of the social web
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- Who owns web2.0?
Amy Webb made an interesting listing on the latest acquisition of media and web companies. A rather spooky video shows the outcome of too much media concentration: Prometeus - The Media Revolution - Thinking about Twitter
Nancy White wrote two excellent posts about the use of Twitter to share knowledge and its different effects on communication, networking and learning (First post / Second post).
I wrote a rather critical article about it, but I will give Twitter a try now. - Collaborative and collective intelligence
An interesting post that describes the differences between wisdom of crowds and collaborative work. Wisdom of crowds, where the collective is used to generate average data such as a tag cloud or to get the most interesting articles. Collaborative work is different in which people write together, for example, wikipedia entries or a book. - Did you know2.0?
A very nice video that points some of the changes of our knowledge society and the effects of the social web for the future. A quote from the video: “The amount of technical information is doubling every two years. By 2010 it is predicted to double every 72 hours.” Karl Fisch did the video and invites for further discussions.
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Weekly links: Advocacy2.0, development2.0, knowledge worker2.0 and office2.0
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- Advocacy2.0: Network-centric advocacy
A nice presentation about new potentials for activism over the web. - GlobalGiving Decision Markets
GlobalGiving is a platform to initiate projects and find partners for them. In August, they started a kind of stock-market experiment to speculate about which project has the greatest chance of succeeding on GlobalGiving.com (via Giulio) - How wiki software is changing communication
Although I think it is the people and not the software who change communication, this great articles describes how the United Nations use wikis, internally and worldwide, to discuss on development. “Imagine millions of people connecting with world leaders and thinkers to discuss, debate and collaborate on everything from global politics to climate change.” - Focuss: Search engine for the development field and international cooperation
Focuss is an effort to collect different information sources over social bookmarking and google custom search. I tested the search engine and the results were okay. However, I am, in general, not convinced about the advantage of google custom search. Does it really give better search results than a conventional google search? - Knowledge worker2.0
“Knowledge management (and therefore knowledge work) is largely stuck in the past, with a focus on process and tools.” A great presentation about the social and technological shift of knowledge management. - Office 2.0 Database
I have not seen yet anywhere else such a comprehensive list of web2.0 software for the office: From bookmarks, over group manager and presentations, to web conference.
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E-democracy: participation next? (2) Germany
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Overview
First of all, I would like to thank Jan Amos and and Rolf Lührs for their comments. Yes, I agree that in Germany some initiatives around e-democracy have been taken (e.g. e-petition in the German parliament), however, in comparison to German’s vibrant political life, its web is politically inactive. In that regard, politik-digital.de is a lighthouse for many years and a think tank that discusses and analyzes politics and the net. The European counterpart, Europa-digital.de, has done a lot for independent coverage. Their latest initiative, e-participation.net, is great but it also shows how only so little has arisen. Another website is abgeordnetenwatch.de, where citizens can address politicians directly, leading to direct pressure, as Jan nicely pointed out. It is this kind of approach which opens a two-way-conversation.
Politik2.0 and campaigns
However, taking a look at the German political activism in the web or initiatives for e-democracy you get the impression that web2.0 has not arrived in Germany. For example, if you look at the blogosphere, you will hardly see any political blog and rarely grassroot activism. This was also regretted on a discussion called “Politik2.0” last Spring on the ‘Re-Publica‘ conference. Only few blogs are different, such is the case of netzpolitik.org, which works as a watchdog dealing with all sorts of topics around the Internet and liberty rights. Right now they are part of a campaign against the Minister of Interior’s latest idea of 
“Vorratsdatenspeicherung“. The current government initiated a law that will allow the saving of all personal web traffic including email, etc. for half a year. The minister of interior also elaborates the wrong idea to allow private investigation through hacking software. Another interesting recent campaign was the one of flickr and censorship in Germany.
Some challenges
The challenges that keep e-democracy from moving much further in Germany are multifold. Markus Beckedahl said on the Politik2.0 discussion, that the political arena has still not yet embraced or even understood the web. Best prove is a an interview on German television given by kids, who asked Germans such as the Minister of Justice about different browsers. She replied: “Browsers? What are browsers again?” Another problem is surely the missing transparency of the German political system in some regards. For example, information about politician salaries have been made public just recently. But shouldn’t that missing transparency make the web more political?
Most surprising is the fact that civil society has not embraced the recent web developments and has not even started to use web2.0 potential.
Web2.0 and politics
But what strikes me the most is that web2.0 is purely seen as a business topic. It surely is a buzz word, but it does offer a new form of participation. For example, on bar camps blogger, politics and activism play no role. In the realm of web2.0, German blogger focus mainly on start-ups. The great potential for participation, being it political or for knowledge sharing and social change, is not been seen here in Germany in the wide blogosphere. The best example of this development is trupoli.com, a new political web2.0 platform which offers “true politics” that can be experienced free from media show. What really occurs to me is that trupoli.de is a corporation! Will participation and political discourse be now a part of demand and supply? I am looking forward to see a maplight.org application analyzing trupoli in the future.
Nevertheless, I am optimistic, especially right now, that an unconference about e-democracy takes place in Berlin. I am eager to hear about the outcome.
Possibly related posts:
Weekly links: ICT4D, TED in Africa and enterprise2.0
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- Online platform for South Asian community development
Still in beta, this group blog offers insights into ICT4D projects in all over South Asia. Stories are for example: wireless computer technology in Nepal or a rural ICT center along with Digital Photography Lab in Bangladesh. - Best way to understand information and communication technologies for development
Heloise Emdon from IDRC summarizies in his first blog post a presentation about the ABC of ICT4D (information and communication technologies for development). I like to think of his
approach as of five dimesions to understand ICT: human, natural, financial, social and physical capital. However, in my opinion, the presentation lack some consistency. - Ideas worth spreading: TED conference in Arusha, Tanzania
Finally, the videos from the presenters of the first TED conference in Africa are available. In Germany the conference is unfortunately not well known although Hans Rosling’s presentation about global health history is legendary. Especially interesing and contreversial is George Ayittey’s presentation, which “unleashes an almost breathtaking torrent of controlled anger toward corrupt leaders and the complacency.” I am very eager to see more presentations. - What is Enterprise 2.0?
Fred Cavazza gives a detailed introduction to enterprise2.0 and developes a nice graphic schema for it. Whereas I kept my post about enterprises2.0 short, he gives technical insights, possible deployments, and elaborates on micro-blogging for internal training.
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Weekly links July (4): Africa and ICT
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This week I selected some interesting articles on African countries and information and communication technologies.
- Mobile Phone Reporters in Africa
White African has an interesting blog post on Africa’s Voices experiment on mobile phone reporters. - For Ugandan Farmers, Agricultural Tips Just a Phone Call Away
An example for a project, which offers a text message service for farming methods. - Africa, Offline: Waiting for the Web
Rwanda as an example for the challenges of Internet access in Africa. - Can ICTs improve living standards in Zambia?
These article by Brenda Nglazi Zulu highlights the importance for government ICT policy and the implication of a monopoly in the telecommunication sector. - Incremental infrastructure, or how mobile phones might wire Africa
Ethan Zuckerman envisions how the success of mobile phones can be an example of other economical sectors.
For more of my bookmarks have a look at del.icio.us/ckreutz.
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Weekly links July (3)
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- How Will Web 2.0 Change Journalism?
A short video about the future media landscape with interviews of some “web gurus.” Not much new but nice to listen to. - Blogs As the New Frontier in Human Rights
“A blog with ten readers could potentially get human rights groups further in 2007 than a petition with one million signatures could in 1967.” I am not sure about that one, but the article is interesting. - Pan-African podcasting
Interesting article from Pambazuka News about the challenges on podcasting in Africa. - Digital divide goes beyond MySpace, Facebook
“We’re moving from a (digital divide that’s about) access to technology to one that’s about access to social skills and cultural knowledge that emerges from access to digital technologies.” - 15 Productive Uses for a Wiki
A little listing about the usage of wikis. Unfortunately quite random and not so focused on organizations. - Cases2.0
Case studies for enterprise2.0 or simply how web2.0 tools can be implenented in an organization.
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Weekly links July (2)
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- Howard Rheingold about our mobile world
An insightful interview with the author of the book “Smart Mobs.” - 11 deadly knowledge management sins
Interesting post by David Snowden. One quote I liked particular:” Knowledge is all about action, making decisions creating innovative ideas. It is always contextual and is by necessarily entangled and messy.” - Wiki it
An easy presentation of how to use a wiki in an organization. “Ten years ago I was living without email. Now nobody can imagine living without it. Wiki will be part of the next revolution…” - Enterprise Live Debate: Andrew McAfee and Tom Davenport at Enterprise 2.0 - It’s All about the People!
“Enterprise 2.0 is all about helping and empowering knowledge workers share their knowledge, collaborate with their peers and keep innovating as a result of those interactions!” - We-think: The power of mass creativity - Charles Leadbeater
Leadbeater explores how the emerging culture of mass creativity and participation could reshape companies and governments. “My argument is that these new forms of mass, creative collaboration announce the arrival of a society in which participation will be the key organising idea rather than consumption and work.” Have not read his book (free download) yet but his presentation on Ted is intriguing.
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Weekly links July (1): politics and the web
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This weeks links are all about politics and the web. It is fascinating to see how the latest developments of social media and community driven websites slowly hit arena or bypass the government as Jonathan Freedland from the Guardian says.
- The internet will revolutionise the very meaning of politics
Comment by Jonathan Freedland from the guardian: “Technology could make the bypassing of traditional government institutions look very appealing. Witness the rapid action of MoveOn.org, which put together 30,000 evacuees from Hurricane Katrina and 10,000 volunteers ready to give them a bed. Or check out Kiva.org, which matches people with cash in the rich world to entrepreneurs in developing countries who need a loan. What these groups illustrate is not only a frustration with traditional government, but a way the internet can bypass government altogether.” Concerning development and the example of Kiva, I recently wrote a post about that topic. - The Blogging Revolution: Government in the Age of Web 2.0
Government2.0 is on the rise and one part about it will be blogging. An interesting study by David C. Wyld on blogging in general and how it can be implemented by governments. - Politics 2.0: Fight Different
“Open-source politics is the idea that social networking and participatory technologies will revolutionize our ability to follow, support, and influence political campaigns.” - Nigerian politician launches Web 2.0 Campaign Site
After the USA, it is not Europe, but Nigeria in Africa, where a politician experiments for the first time with a community based website how to engage with volunteers and voters.
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Weekly links June (4)
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- Web 2.0 and Your Own Learning and Development
A great presentation by Stephen Downes about how everybody can use these new tools of interaction to enlighten their personal learning. - Mobile Phones and Social Activism
Interesting article by Ethan Zuckerman about “Why cell phones may be the most important technical innovation of the decade“ - The center for graphic facilitation
This blog has a nice variety of posts on different visualization topics. I particularly like the post about whiteboards. - Everything is Miscellaneous
The blog behind the book by David Weinberger. I started reading the book and can highly recommend it. I especially like that it describes the phenomenon of the web and its social and political implications. I will write a full review about it soon. Here is a quote from David Weinberger from the enterprise2.0 conference this week:
These are big changes, it’s not hype, it’s right at the heart of knowledge, authority, trust, and how it’s smudging the supply chain, the org chart. We are reshaping business, whether we like it or not. Business is changing from being ‘theirs’, to the remaking of knowledge and authority that is ours.
Originally from the social computing blog
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Weekly links June (3)
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- Full text of Blair’s speech on politics and media
An interesting speech by soon resigning Prime Minister Tony Blair on politics and media. “The news schedule is now 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It moves in real time. Papers don’t give you up to date news. That’s already out there. They [the media] have to break stories, try to lead the schedules. Or they give a commentary.” - Google to harness satellite power for an Amazon tribe
After the case of Darfur Google once again supports campaigns with its satellite photos. Unfortunately they provide so far not much map sources for Africa and Asia. - The Ultimate RSS Toolbox - 120+ RSS Resources
A great overview to find RSS tools for all kind of purposes. - Why people don’t use collaboration tools
Some interesting points about challenges and tricks around online collaboration tools.
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crisscrossed
Crisscrossed Feed- Twitter: ckreutz: @soloride I know some bloggers from Africa but not from Angola. I am sure @whiteafrican will know someone
- delicious: Global News Blog » Blog Archive » Zimbabwe: New Technologies in Fight for Democracy | Blogs | Reuters.com
- Twitter: ckreutz: smiles that reuters writes about Zimbabwe: New Technologies in Fight for Democracy http://tinyurl.com/6a7nh9
- delicious: Toll-Free Mobile Service Gives Rural Africa Access to Medics | NextBillion.net - Development Through Enterprise
- Twitter: ckreutz: to all fans of gapminder.org. Google spreadsheets has his gadgets now included. Easy and nice way to make fascinating simulations.
- delicious: Carrotmob: Welcome
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My bookmark tags
- web2fordev
- Shaun Conway: A Collaborative Aid Marketplace: A Social Network Enabled Solution for Development | Technology and Social Action
- I collaborate, e-collaborate, we collaborate: Milieukontakt International's wikis reduce work chaos
- March Presentations: Using Web 2.0 Technologies (and Social Networking Tools) for Social Action | Technology and Social Action
- MarketingSherpa: How UNICEF Doubled Video Exposure With Social Media
- MySpace.com - UNICEF NEW YORK, NEW YORK - www.myspace.com/unicef
- npk4dev bookmarks
- Writing for change
- A simple toolkit on report writing skills for people working in international development
- Communications Training materials
- WELL - Resource Centre Network for Water, Sanitation and Environmental Health
- Pages tagged with "report_writing" on del.icio.us
- A network of ideas - development 2.0 : crisscrossed blog
- YouTube - Del.icio.us
- Video: Podcasting in Plain English [video]
- ICT4D Feed
- Delicious: Teledensity and GDP Growth
- Blog search: Akokoraaba's Blog
- Delicious: ICT4D
- Blog post: iCities (XI). Round Table: Free Software in the Administration
- Blog post: iCities (X). Round Table: The Limits of 2.0
- Blog post: Election monitoring using ICT - Metrics, programmes and services
- Blog post: WordPress.com goes down - A chink in the “cloud” and how to plan for it
- Delicious: Are wired kids well served by schools?
- Blog post: iCities (IX). Debate: The Handbook of the blog in the enterprise.
- Blog post: iCities (VIII). Round Table: Eager Citizens. Entrepreneurs.
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Global Voices Online
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About this blog
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 > - ckreutz in 6 innovative grassroot mashups for transparency: Hi David thanks for your comment. I have not heard
- David wilcox in 6 innovative grassroot mashups for transparency: Thanks Chris for examples of what individuals can do -
- Let’s not be e-wasteful « Mobbed by Mobile Media in Blog action day: E-waste, the downside of the growing web: […] environmental standards so that the waste can be processed.
- A-Lex-I-Con » Blog Archive » Social Innovation Camp materials in Mobile everything: 3 new dimensions of citizen engagement : […] “Mobile everything: 3 new dimensions of citizen engagement” at
- A-Lex-I-Con » Blog Archive » Social Innovation Camp materials in Impressions from Re-publica and Social Innovation Camp: […] “Impressions from Re-publica and Social Innovation Camp” at crisscrossed
