This blog post is a personal note. As you might have noticed, I have redesigned the blog and I hope you like it. Moreover, since I started this blog, more than 2 years ago, quite a lot in my life has changed. Now, I would like to tell more about it and catch up with you on that.

It has been one year already since I left GTZ (German Technical Cooperation), after having worked there for five years. My desicion was based on my desire to follow different paths as a freelancer. I have to admit that wanting to give up the 9-5 rythm also played a big role. I believed that my working life will transform to a great extent in the next coming years and it is time to experiment. Another factor were the many fascinating topics in this wide world, on which one could immerse, and the sadly fact that organizations are in some cases to slow to listen and to adapt. “But that’s why we have ‘you’ consultants,” said once a colleague to me. Therefore, I have been more that pleased to provide that service for the past year, which has brought me to different organizations and interesting projects.

A lot of this professional transformation would not have happened without this blog. It has given me the chance to meet great and inspiring people, from whom I have learnt more than a lot and have helped me to build up my own business. I have been blogging for 2 and a half years now and I can look back at great times. Honestly, when I started this blog, I never imagined I was about to enter such a rich and open network of creative people. These days, Twitter makes the networking even easier and faster, but I believe it is incomparable to the exchanged thoughts and ideas through blogs.

So, I want to thank all of my readers and commenters for the past years, and ensure them that I will definetely continue blogging. Hope you enjoy the new blog and please let me know about your thoughts on it. If you are interested in my services, take a look at the new section “Consultancy” in the top menu, where I explain a bit more my services and references.

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In the recent edition of the “Participatory Learning and Action” magazine titled “Change at hand: Web 2.0 for development”, I wrote an article about blogging and whether writing blog posts could make a difference in the development work. In this times of breathtaking web changes, blogging seems already outdated, therefore, in my article I argue that blogging can enhance transparency, support the process for openness and be the key for sustainable network building and quality discourse.

• Download full article: Exploring the potentials of blogging for development

• Also, check out the other interesting articles from the issue.

Extract

Accountability and transparency
Compared to normal development websites, bloggers both analyse and link information – and in the process, create meaning. Bloggers are also notified (‘pinged’) every time there is a new link from another blog to their own posts. It generates interaction between bloggers and also measures the popularity of a blog – e.g. citations and affiliation (i.e. a list of links to other blogs). Bloggers weave a web of knowledge, expertise and perspectives. In a way, blogging means linking conversations and other existing blogs, increasing the ebb and flow of information. This forms hubs or nodes within networks, where bloggers aggregate information, and give orientation and relevance – and also become effective filters of information. They act like fishers, who pick the most relevant pieces of information out of the net. This aggregation is important to find different blog posts with different perspectives. The advantage of filtering is that these bloggers give an overview on interesting topics.

The disadvantage is that a blogger decides that on a personal basis and it might be biased information. Critics such as Andrew Keen wonder where the added value of this growing content lies – compared to professionally compiled information by journalists. Many say that most blogs ‘copy and paste’ from other blogs or repeat themselves, often ending in an echo chamber of mutual confirmation. Networks of sympathising blogs often do develop where not enough perspectives are heard or discussed.

However, blogging proponents underline the strength to link information from different connections, disciplines and interests and highlight the possibility for direct feedback. The paradigm shift is that each Internet user is able to link information and can add values and perspectives – Wikipedia and worldchanging.com are good examples. These networks of blogs and their readers become a large conversation, where everyone can participate. New ideas and interpretations of them find their way to different blogs every day. Much of this kind of exchange was already happening through email mailing lists. However, these connections made by blogging are accessible to anyone online: they are not limited to a certain thematic mailing list and so are more transparent.

Examples in development
For development, this linking and exchanging becomes essential. Multidisciplinary approaches are key to tackling complex environmental problems. Blogs have opened up new channels for development communication.

One example is the UK Guardian newspaper’s ongoing Katine project in Uganda.  Villagers, journalists, scientists and aid workers are invited to write openly their perspectives about the project on a blog on the newspaper’s website. It entails controversial discussions around development aid, but also shows the complexity of community-driven development projects. For example, on the Katine blog, Richard M. Kavuma writes bluntly, “The trouble is, the need is much greater than the project budget.” This is a direct comment about the limitations of development aid. Blogging can allow us to be transparent about projects. It gives more space for opinions, different perspectives and reflections than traditional communication channels. These can help influence the course of a project. But here, the limits of blogging also appear: one blogger made the comment that, “At its best, the Guardian’s reporting allows us to analyse and think about life in Katine in a careful way.” Just blogging does not necessarily have a demonstrable impact on development.

For many organisations, blogging offers the chance to enter into an ‘authentic two-way conversation’, enabling people to provide feedback in an open manner – and more easily than before. This bottom-up approach to speaking out about social, economical or political issues has the potential to engage a broader public sphere in the development sector. But it seems only a few organisations in the development field have discovered the potential of blogging – and not all appreciate this degree of openness.

Unfortunately, many of the existing initiatives are often only randomly linked – they are islands rather than networks. Yet Allison Fine (2006) argues that future organisations have to embrace this kind of openness and learn to improve their listening skills. For development organisations, which are non-profit and publicly-funded, there is a chance to improve transparency. Although there are examples of increasing political influence of blogs, particularly in the USA, the political blogosphere in most countries is still marginal. The communication power of blogs has not yet challenged development organisations – but they can act as watchdogs. As Daniel Kaufmann, Director of the World Bank Institute writes on his blog,

“Blogs are playing an increasingly important role for improved governance. Blogs do not face the restraints of commercial print media. The blogosphere is a planet apart from traditional PR departments of public institutions, enabling citizens to share unfiltered information, expose misdeeds, and freely express views. Blogs help make governments and public institutions more accountable.”

Some challenges to be aware of
Since the creation of the first blog, we have witnessed a huge boom. But not all blogs become vibrant spaces for discussion. Many blogs quickly lapse or are rarely updated. Finding an audience is usually a major challenge. Many also underestimate how much time and resources a blog needs. It takes skill and patience to achieve a vibrant blog with an active, commenting audience. Attention and visitors are not guaranteed. You need to persevere to find the audience or help the audience find you.

Issues of access and literacy
For the average, experienced Internet user, you can quickly learn the publishing process for a blog post. It should not take more than three mouse-clicks, including writing the text. But not everybody is as well connected or has the experience to use this tool and its opportunities. The participatory web has opened new ways of interacting on the Internet, but there are obstacles: access, cost, time, literacy and a certain degree of media literacy. Particularly in developing countries, few people have Internet access or the means (literacy and media competence) to engage in such a conversation. Also, just a few languages dominate and there are very few bridges between them. The majority of online development debates are in English and exclude many groups from participating. Some of these obstacles will remain or might even intensify.

The speed at which innovation is transforming how we use the Internet is breathtaking. Even so, bandwidth is a big constraint. One approach to bridging the online and offline world is social reporting, where knowledge-sharing is documented for the Internet and vice versa. Participants at events act as reporters to present the different opinions and perspectives articulated within a group. The results can be texts, videos or audio presented on a website.16 Reading blogs also means that the reader has to find content and then also filter it to create their own understanding. It takes a certain level of education and familiarity with different writing styles to do this. Also less ‘media literate’ people may take blogs as factual and ‘trusted sources’ in the same way they would a newspaper. Although there are numerous cases of blogging that have helped to empower people – it does not benefit all causes. With all technology, a best fit approach is key: focus on needs. Not all communication solutions need to technological.

In the development context, the key question must always be: how can this potential tool help?
Lastly, there is also a risk that the front-runners are far ahead of normal Internet users. I share the author of We-Think Charles Leadbeater’s (2008) concern: ‘Those already rich in knowledge, information and connections may just get richer.’

Conclusion
Blogging can have a positive impact on communication and empowerment, but nevertheless there are limitations. There is still very little evidence of blogging making a difference for development. In my opinion we are still at a very early stage in this whole movement. So long as the South cannot participate more easily and until northern organisations change their mindsets towards openness, blogs and all these other wonderful Web 2.0 tools will have limited effects.

Blogging is just one form of publishing and interacting. Many Internet users are publishing content on wikis or on social networks such as Facebook, which allow their “With all technology, a best fit approach is key: focus on needs. Not all communication solutions need to technological. In the development context, the key question must always be: how can this potential tool help?” members to interact and facilitate collaboration.

Mobile social networks go in the same direction, letting you interact from your mobile phone wherever you are. Nevertheless one key problem of all these initiatives is that they always struggle to get a spill-over effect to the offline world. It is not only about publishing, but interacting within your own networks. Enthusiasts see in this open collaboration promising times ahead, where development challenges are tackled collectively. So whether you choose to use blogs or any other Web 2.0 tools – remember, it is the people who form these networks and their exchange that create value, ideas and innovation.

Download full article: Exploring the potentials of blogging for development

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High bandwidth access expands worldwide, finally in Africa too, but in many places the connectivity does not allow for an easy Internet usability, let alone the use of many tools for publishing own content and interacting easily with other users. Aside from many other challenges, one important to remark is the lack of low bandwidth application. This might be one of the reasons of why particular localization of many languages is progressing slowly. More importantly, the need for high bandwidth access for most current websites creates new divides.

Some examples

• Checking up a profile on Facebook or at least access the log in page, which has alone almost 800kb! In a cybercafe, where you have to pay fees per minute, it may take up to 3 minutes with a dial up modem connection.

• Video or audio upload is almost impossible with a low bandwidth connection and can cost you a lot when your tariff is measured in volume instead of time.

• This blog is based on WordPress, which is a great open source tool, but unfortunately not made for a dial up connections. If you want to publish a new post on WordPress (2.7.1), you have to download over 750kb first.

Unfortunately even the free and open source community has little activity around low bandwidth solutions.

Where are the low bandwidth solutions?
One really great initiative is Maneno, which not only tries to provide a low bandwidth blogging solution in Africa, but also focuses on offering multilingual options emphasising on various African languages such as Bamanankan and Swahili, beside French, English, Arabic and Portuguese. I got in contact with Maneno recently and their team ensured me that their system is designed as low as 13 kb without images and 33 kb including images.

Another one is Dgroups, a community platform based on emails. I am currently working on a project for IICD, which has over 50.000 members worldwide. Dgroups has just been newly launched and it now offers the administration of groups solely by email.

Twitter can make a difference as it lets you send and receive messages via mobile phone. But, unfortunately, Twitter gave up its free SMS service a while ago. I asked one of the Twitter founders, Jack Dorsey, at the e-stats conference when the free service is coming back, to which he replied ‘on mid year.’ This leaves the question, ‘what can be said in 140 characters?’ Quite a lot when you look at the Mobile Voices project just featured by the Netsquared N2Y2 challenge.

But one thing is for sure, just because you only have low bandwidth connection, does not mean you want to see dull, text based websites. There are various ways to make websites look appealing and still reduce the data size considerable. Aptivate has excellent Web Design Guidelines for Low Bandwidth.

What is the difference with mobile phones?
Low-bandwidth is a big topic for mobile phones as 3G is not everywhere available; in Africa it is only available in big cities.  In many cases all information exchange is limited to SMS exchange solutions. There are  different solutions that need to deal with the heavy loaded web. One such is the Opera mini browser, which  tries to compress data as much as possible, compressing up to 90% according to a presentation at the W3C Maputo meeting.

UPDATE

There was an interesting discussion on the KM4DEV mailing list and here is a summary of key points.

UPDATE 2

Jonathan Goshier has a great and critical blog post around this topic and emphasis the importance of local services: Web 2.0 Services Shutting Out Developing Countries

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Writing blog posts, commenting on them and adding Wiki-pages does take time if you want to achieve good quality – meaning writing consistent, easy to understand articles about even complex topics, linking to other resources and sharing valuable experiences. But good quality takes time, where little time is available for the work overload and dedication rarely appreciated by management in many organizations.

Paradoxical resistance to social media
There is often a strong resistance against blogging or introducing a Wiki (e.g. for a glossary) because either people are afraid of facing even more work or management wonders the benefit of such efforts. But paradoxically, a lot of time is invested on exchanging information and experiences through email. But these emails are, in most cases, sunken in mailboxes and often just read by a few or even only one person. But these exchanges could be all openly available and part of an organizational archive of wisdom through social media tools.

The dilemma of time vs. quality
If, however, you want to make such content available to everybody, it needs sufficient information and a certain quality to be easily understood by colleagues. The better the quality, the wider the audience who can make sense of it. Particularly, if one thinks of a longer perspective, experiences must be provided in such way that colleagues can get the best out of it. But how much time is left in a daily hectic work to write a great wiki article? Often not much, and even worst, it has less priority than another urgent email.

But isn’t a certain quality needed because otherwise there is simply too much information? For instance, a post linking to other sources might be helpful and interesting, but such a post has a not very long time value. Imagine you want to find information later on. It is either over the search engine or through tags. It would be of little help if you find just posts with outdated links.

Nevertheless, the time spent on formulating emails outweighs often the simplicity of blogging. For an organization, it is time to get over their shared folder system and find other ways to preserve knowledge over time.

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Is it enough to present to an audience the many opportunities of the web and the “amazing” variety of web tools existing nowadays? From my previous presentation experiences throughout this year, I can say I doubt it. Surely you can catch the attention or curiosity of some of your audience, but they do not necessarily find it relevant to their work and context. Therefore, I have come to at least try to bring my presentations  to another level, in order to address the whole audience, from the sceptics to the absolute beginners. It is an often neglected fact that the majority of employees in organizations have not yet used the social web particularly for their work.

Tools to present take too long
A presentation leaves you definitely not enough time to explain a tool sufficiently enough. Alone del.icio.us, a social bookmarking tool,  can take up to an hour to train and discuss its different angles. I have had fascinating discussions just about tagging that could have continued for hours.

So is the case of the example of the invention of the desktop and folder system – the PC desktop was developed in the seventies portraying a normal desk with papers and folders on it. The problem about it is that in the digital space, as tagging proves,  relevance and links are in a three dimensional space and go potentially in every direction. So we still use our computer in a very primitive way one could say. I blogged about the connection to hierarchy here.

Constraints you encounter
In most cases there is little time to show the audience the potential for the social web for knowledge sharing – 20 minutes if you are lucky. Not only time is a challenge, but also the difference resistance you might face – listeners are overwhelmed by information, the amount of tools, or simply bored of listing to words such as “social media”, web 2.0, Blog, Podcast, Twitter and so on. Instead, it is important to address the audience demand or talk about their biggest problems and catch them by the strength of examples. Sometimes I like to ask if somebody wants to play the devil advocate, which often triggers interesting discussions and shows how little we focus on how we work and so much on what we work.

How to approach your audience?
From the knowledge management perspective not much has changed and the deficits are the same: Finding the right information and the person behind it when needed; how to tackle the information overload; create spaces of creative exchange.
During a presentation I try focusing on these basic questions and showing the audience examples and approaches to use different tools to tackle some challenges. My key lesson learnt throughout the year is to focus on scenarios and leave out tools and all the fancy new words. In addition, I like to leave it up to the audience how and what they actually like to pick up. In most cases, I assume, anyway, the wrong tool as the one to get the most attention. The context and the different ways of personal work styles vary just too much.

Examples of approaches

I gave a presentation at the European Commission last Monday and did not know exactly what kind of an audience to expect. So I started with the usual challenges of  a knowledge worker such as information overload, difficult to find first hand experiences, exhausting complex team collaborations and problems about how often we reinvent the wheel. In the next slide I presented different approaches of companies and organizations tackling these problems with social web applications.

I talked about how Hewlett Packard wants to untap the experiences “lost” in email boxes and encourage employees to post their answers in forums. By the way Luis Suarez has a great experience going on working with as little email as possible.  Explaining email as a challenge for knowledge management triggers quite interesting dicussions. Then I explained the example of Sun Microsystem and the one I did internally myself with GTZ. I ended with an older study around the use of Wikis in Dresdner Bank, where they have reduced emails considerably (unfortunately the study is not anymore available on the social-text website). Having alone documents at a central place open to everyone is quite convincing. For the rest of the presentation I went on quite different topics such as networks for development cooperations, which triggered different attention. When I was talking about wiki, I simply recited the example of Wikipedia, which in most cases works perfectly.

For another presentation I tried encountering it from the well known knowledge management circle.  It goes as follows (1) start and orientation, (2) research, (3) strengthen competencies, (4) apply learning, (5) store knowledge, (6) exchange knowledge and (7) evaluate knowledge. The circle can vary in many ways, but it helps to present the concept of knowledge management relatively easy and then attach to each point some potential scenarios, where you can use social software. (1) RSS/Feeds – subscribe the web, (2) social bookmarking, (3) blogging, (4) outside the web, (5) tagging, (6) social networks and (7) easy engagement through rating and commenting. This circle can be applied of course to all kinds of purposes but can be focused on the personal knowledge management of each person. I was inspired by a presentation by Dirk Röhrborn (German).

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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

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.

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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This is a joint post together with Joitske Hulsebosch.

1. What is a widget?

According to wikipedia a widget is a third party item that can be embedded in a web page. Widgets are, hence, little blocks of information which can be added to a blog, mostly in the sidebar. Widgets update information, they are not static. For instance, a widget with the latest comments updates its information with every new comment. Almost any kind of information can be widgetized and offered in a blog as an additional feature. Widgets display, for example, through feeds information from external sources.

2. Why widgets are important and how they can spice up your blog

Blogs alone are nice, but with widgets you can upgrade your blog to an information portal and stimulate interactivity. Posts, comments, trackbacks and links are the key of blogs. That is how a conversation develops. Widgets extend a blog to a platform and allows to include other -dynamic- sources of information besides the blogposts you write. The variety in widgets is huge and ranges from fundraising, links, photos, videos to books, social networks and of course friends. Widgets let you integrate all the other things you do on the web.

3. Different types of widgets

1. The first category of widgets allows you to include information elsewhere on the internet. Your tag cloud, for instance, shows your links that are of interest to you. A flickr badge displays your photos.
2. The second category of widgets gives readers of your blog further information from the world wide web.
3. The third type of widgets are interactive such as a poll or for fundraising. For example, Chipin is a fundraising widget.
4. The fourth category are for advertisement. For example, your online book library with links to a book store.

4. The downside of widgets

A disadvantage of widgets is the bandwidth behind them and the fact that they can not be fully customized. Often, they are based on javascript and are updated each time through another server, when someone access your blog. When blogs have hickups, it is often related to a slowly server of one of your widgets. Many widgets include also a brand names such as flickr or feedburner, which are not easily excludable. Widgets inside blogs (e.g. wordpress) work often quicker because their content is loaded directly on your server. These widgets can also be better adjusted to your blog design.

5. Finally: the list of cool widgets

• WordPress offers a whole variety of widgets for all kind of purposes.
• Offer a clear RSS subscription from feedburner or feeddigest. You can also display the number of people that have subscribed to your blog through your feedreader.
• Offer a subscription to your blog by email. With email subscription capability, subscribers can now receive each blogpost in their email inbox, similar to an e-newsletter. This is very important for users who are not used to RSS readers or have low bandwidth. This is offered by feedburner or feedblitz.com.
• Share your photos via your blog. If you have photos on flickr, you can display them on your blog by using a flickr badge. You can find the steps here.
• If you want to show your photos in combination with a world map, you can use tripper map. It allows you to display your flickr photoset in combination with a world map.
• Display recent comments in the sidebar of your blog. Often, readers may not click on the comment section. By displaying the comments in the sidebar, readers can see where and what people have commented. For blogger, you can find a widget here: http://blogger-templates.blogspot.com/2007/03/recent-comments.html. For wordpress, you can find the process described here: http://freepressblog.org/wordpress-plugins-2/wordpress-recent-comments-plugin-widget/
• Show your readers by using mybloglog. Readers can sign up and their photos will be displayed.
• Tell your readers what you are doing right now by inserting a twitter widget. If you are already twittering, you can display your twitters on your blog.
• Show the blogs that you are reading yourself. That may give people an impression of the kind of topics you like, and may point them to new blogs they may not know. If you are using bloglines, it is possible to display your public bloglist on your blog (called blogroll).
• Insert any interesting RSS feed. You may produce a feed yourself using a unique tag and you can display it on your blog by using services like feedostyle; feedzilla; or this. Superglu will allow you to gather content from various places and combine it.
• Display your top tags used on your blog with the Top Tags Widget. It will display your tags in a beautiful cloud formation (or the top tags of any blog.) By showing this, readers will know what you are writing about, and can click on one of the tags to access a category of readings. Blogger allows you to display your categories in the sidebar, which has a similar function, even though it is not displayed in a tagcloud.
• Or display your del.icio.us tags on your blog.
• Ask readers for feedback on your blog or any important issue by using a poll.
• Ask readers to TELL you what they think by using an Odeo widget (via Beth Kanter)
• In case you have a you tube channel, you can use a widget to display your videos.
• Raise funds with a widget using ChipIn.
• Or display your LinkedIn profile.

6. Further resources on (blog) widgets

• One big resource is widgipedia
• More blogosphere widgets
• Technorati list of blog widgets
• Typepad widgets
• For blogger widgets try

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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.

1. 4 examples for innovative mobile phone use in Africa
2. 10 challenges for web2.0 in organizations
3. What is enterprise2.0? Five pillars for efficient knowledge sharing
4. A learning story: My way to web2.0
5. Blog action day: E-waste, the downside of the growing web
6. Web2.0, knowledge sharing and IT departments
7. Innovative online activism mashup
8. An overview of blogging for development
9. 3 different conversations: blogs to fight poverty
10. Social webs in Africa

This top ten present five interesting highlights from 2007:

1. Web2.0 finally entered on a wide scale organizations and companies.
2. The web finally goes beyond PC’s and has a breakthrough on mobile phones.
3. Development aid organizations started to sense a potential in web2.0.
4. It is the southern hemisphere were many innovative web applications came from.
5. 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.

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Most countries are far away from reaching the level that Koreans have on citizen journalism, such is the case of the famous Ohmynews: “The Net and Netizens Watchdogging Government.” A pioneer of citizen journalism was certainly indymedia.org, which got famous during the WTO protest back in 1999 in Seattle. In German language there is an interesting concept called “Gegenöffentlichkeit” (counter public); it refers to a Bertolt Brecht’s text about a two way conversation through a radio from last century 1932.

It is purely an apparatus for distribution, for mere sharing out. So here is a positive suggestion: change this apparatus over from distribution to communication. The radio would be the finest possible communication apparatus in public life, a vast network of pipes. That is to say, it would be if it knew how to receive as well as to transmit, how to let the listener speak as well as hear, how to bring him into a relationship instead of isolating him.

Mark Glasser says about citizen journalism: “The idea behind citizen journalism is that people without professional journalism training can use the tools of modern technology and the global distribution of the Internet to create, augment or fact-check media on their own or in collaboration with others.”

The web enables citizens worldwide to engage in this citizen journalism. In Africa a lot is happening on that already. An interesting article on citizen journalism in Africa by IPS-News, “Citizen Journalism Opening Up Political Space in Africa,” describes how the spread of radio and mobile phones have changed the perception of politics and how this can lead to more transparency. Citizens can call in to radio shows and give their opinion in politics. Ghana alone got twenty new radio channels during the last 10 years. So, radio broadcasts more intensive according to the article, but also mobiles are used more and more to raise awareness about human rights violations.

Brenda Burrell said on an interview on mobileactive.org about how a group of human right activists use mobile phones to spread news of latest developments in Zimbabwe. Citzens can report over FrontlineSMS tools on human rights violations. “Our services are so popular because people are really hungry for balanced information, because they do perceive the government media to be propaganda.” FrontlineSMS was developed by Kiwanja and was also used to monitor the last election in Nigeria.

Another facet is the growing blogosphere in Africa and its contribution to critical reports about politics or social development. The ISP article sees a strength in these new blogging efforts. However, probably only minority of blogs are dealing with politics and activism. By the way, in Germany the blogosphere is hardly engaging in activism. Imagine beneficiaries from funds would give through their blogs a direct authentic feedback. However, there is also a risk that local content becomes too overwhelming. Professor Lewis Friedland says there is a trend in the US and recalled “hyper-localism“, which basically lowers the interest for national or global themes. However, in the case of Germany, I wish there would be a lot more engagement, and for Africa I am thrilled to see the growing blogoshpere on Afrigator.com.

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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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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.

Obviously, 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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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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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
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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A great first day on the web2fordev conference lies behind me. I arrived on Sunday and already had the pleasure to sit around with my fellow bloggers – journalists from Africa. Lately they already made some very interesting podcasts and during the conference we will have video interviews, but also direct video coverage from selected sessions. It is so far a great atmosphere with people from all around the world as far as the Fidschi, South Sea. Today we focused on training for web2.0 beginners. I did two presentation on blogging and tagging together with Tobias Eigen, Karel Novotny and Pier Andrea Pirani and many more were involved.

We are the FAO headquarter in Rome and we already had interesting discussions on web2fordev. I really liked a presentation by Janyanta Chatterjee about Sharing farmers knowledge through audioblog, which shows the impressive potential of these new technologies. And it will become even more effective ones it goes over mobile phones.

I really liked the openness and high interest of all participants, which was very motivating as a presenter. Once again I experienced how complex web2.0 is and how many facets it has. Blogging was fairly easy to present, whereas the different purposes of blogging are often not known. I presented the personal blog approach, a perspective on an internal group blog, the Nata village blog and the Voices of the field blog.

Very intriguing was a discussion during our tagging presentation. Even though tagging sounds in general easy, I experienced once again, how different tagging is used and therefore how tricky it is to explain it. Nevertheless the interest by audience showed to me that many sense the power in it. I will write the next days more posts from the conference either here or at the web2fordev blog.

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Background
As some of you might already know I work for GTZ (German Technical Cooperation), and I am of course very interested in the potential of the web towards development aid and international cooperation. Surprisingly–and correct me if I am wrong!–but to me, it seems there are not many blogs out their in this field yet. There are of course a lot of portals –and two of the big ones are the development gateway or eldis.org. However, in my opinion, the development sector has yet not grasped the potential of web2.0. I already argued in a post that the result is that this shift, so far, is challenging traditional development agencies.

What is there in the world wide web?
One interesting website is aid worker network, which contains personal blogs from all around the world. There are also individual blogs that describe in an authentic and provoking way how it is to work in this field. Check out these examples from Afghanistan and Sudan.
The science world is also blogging, and such is the case of Oversea Development Institute or professors such as Dan Rodrik for international political economy, or John Daly for knowledge for development. But once again, I am surprised that for such an international topic, blogs are not used in a wider scale. For example, why aren’t there any more professors having blogs? And why so few development organizations offer blogs? Some organisations in this field have started experimenting with it (Worldbank) or using it as a first step internally (GTZ, UN etc.).

Blogs for storytelling
As blogs can have different purposes and styles of expression, in the humanitarian relief field, they seem to be quite successfully used. The Guardian issued an interesting article (not online available) a few weeks ago, which highlights the potential for blogs and how organisations such as Oxfam or the International Rescue Comittee (IRC) use them as an strategic communication tool. Other examples are “Voices from the field“, representing the work from IRC and impressions from all around the world; and Ian Bray from Oxfam blogging for BBC about the recent flood in India.

In old times, it took weeks to get information form disasters into the global media and “now we can get blogs or photos up in just hours, which are able to get voices of ordinary people heard by a potential audiences of millions and can really press home the desperation and emergency situation happening on the ground.” So, in a way donors can read from the beneficiaries about what has happened to their money. The article continues, especially the Tsunami “revolutionised the aid world’s use of digital media”, being it the above described as different communication or the direct funding over the web. Blogging itself opens new fast ways of coverage, but even more importantly, an individual perspective from persons concerned.

The difference technology made
The economist argues in a recent article, “technology is transforming humanitarian relief—and shifting the balance of power between donors and recipients.” The article describes how Internet and mobile phones offer new instruments to coordinate more efficiently disaster relief. Relief Web is a portal to coordinate these efforts. It describes also that communication is not a one way street, through more cheaply available technology such as mobile phones, also small NGOs or even individuals can engage. So, “technology completely alters the way humanitarian work is done.” “In the humanitarian operation of the future,” says Save the Children’s Mr Porter, “beneficiaries of emergency aid will use technology to tell us what they need—cash, food, or education—find out from us what to expect, and track its arrival, just as we can track an order from Amazon.com now.”

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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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Ethan Zuckerman presents a great example of on-line activism; this time on the President of Tunisia. It is a video made by Astrubal about the Tunisian presidential airplane. Although the President has been only out of the country three times in the last years, the airplane has been sighted all over Europe. As people all over the world make photos of airplanes and upload them to websites, the presidential airplane has been identified in different locations many times throughout the last years.

But Ben Ali’s plane has been to Europe far more often, raising questions about whether the official plane, fueled at taxpayer expense, is being used to accomodate vacations in the south of Spain or shopping excursions in the fashion centers of Europe.

It seems to me that this great video shows the power of the web within different dimensions:

1. Using the rich data and information available in the web (airplane photos)
2. Collaboratively investigating background information (presidential flights)
3. Using available tools to produce a striking video (Google maps)
4. Offering this movie to a worldwide audience on video sharing sites
5. Advocating for the cause in different networks through blogging

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There are many different types of blogging. Rohit Bhargava shows us 25 different ones in his presentation, starting from insight over piggyback to bridge blogging. What fascinates me the most, it is the reasons why people blog. Throughout the last months bloggers tagged each other: Why Do You Blog? These are some examples showing how different but also how similar the reason’s for blogging are:

• How Blogs Have Increased Human Intelligence by a Factor of 5
• 5 Reasons Why I Blog
• Five Reasons Why I Blog
• Five Reasons Why I Blog
• Why I blog

Way more down-to-earth is a Pew Internet study which summarizes the following top reasons of why people blog:

1. to express yourself creatively
2. to document your personal experiences or share them with others
3. to stay in touch with friends and family
4. to share practical knowledge or skills with others
5. to motivate other people to action
6. to entertain people
7. to store resources or information important to you
8. to influence the way other people think
9. to network or to meet new people
10. to make money

Personally, I find much more inspiring what Esra from Bahrain writes about:

In this new age of information technology, not only are blogs used to inform, but to help us network with other like-minded individuals from across the globe. In the Arab world, political activism through blogging is becoming more common, and is actually influencing a lot of the mainstream media outlets, pressuring them to cover human rights violations.

Blogging can be used for cross-cultural understanding and dialogue, and there are more and more pan-Arab group blogs emerging. Personally, I share a group blog with other young writers from Mauritania, Tunisia, and Morocco; something which helps me understand their cultures better. Had it not been for blogging, I would be embarrassingly ignorant about them and their societies, even though these are fellow Arabs I am talking about.

The web and particularly personal stories from people in blogs make us aware of how it is to live in different places. Blogging bridges cultures, opens unlimited network potential, and helps us to overcome strangeness. But I see one problem, to bridge countries, cultures and communication, we need a common language such as English. However, when we are writing in one only common foreign language, we will eventually limit ourselves to not be able to express fully our thoughts. To be continued …

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I found two very interesting articles recently which describe how politics, activism and media are influenced by the web.

Joe Garofoli from the San Fransisco Chronicle wrote the article “Local blogs are key to future of politics,” reporting from the Yearly Kos convention. He describes how local politics are already influenced by a mixture of citizen journalism, activism and blogging:

Here’s how: A blogger writes about something going on in his community, say plans for a local development to be built on toxic ground – the kind of story many large newspapers rarely break nowadays. Residents start complaining about the issue at local meetings. Soon, the buzz generated causes the local press and perhaps other larger bloggers to pick up on the issue, and the government is forced to respond to their inquiries.

So websites, such as saveoceanbeach.org, are used for local activism because they offer a forum otherwise not available and provide tools to network and advocate for an issue. Blogs jump into the gap that US newspapers leave open: “as more newspapers cut staff and can’t cover many of the stories they used to, bloggers who cover local politics have become the de facto watchdog in some communities and over some areas of government.”

Scott Karp argues in his blog post “Should Newspapers Become Local Blog Networks?” that the traditional media transforms itself into blogs that consist of three types of contributors: full-time reporters and editors, paid freelancers, and witness reporters. “What’s becoming clear is that blogs are now the organizing principle for newspapers’ original online content.”

As I am living in Germany at the moment, I have to state, unfortunately, that not a single German city is mentioned in the worldwide top 30 blogging cities according to a Forrester study. Anyhow, we have cities such as Stuttgart which has a town blog, and cities like Karlsruhe have a wiki for all kinds of topics.

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For the “I collaborate, e-collaborate, we collaborate“  blog, I wrote a post about internal organizational blogging, as an example of how web2.0 can be used to change communications and enhance knowledge sharing. Behind “e-collaborate”, there is a great community of pratice to exchange experiences for online knowledge sharing and collaboration.

Blogging changes communication. This post is an attempt to summarize my group blogging experiences since the last two years. In the post, I describe the implementation, crititcal factors and results. What really strikes me is that internal blogging can change communication, lead to a better knowledge sharing, and from my experience, it can also become sustainable. The blog has become a community of its own which is driven by the users, who are equally readers and authors.

Check out the post: Roadblogs: GTZ Egypt’s experiences of introducing blogs for internal exchange

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