Something has changed. Information sharing isn’t what it used to be. We are in a middle of a network transformation as information sharing becomes faster, more intensive and more interconnected. In terms of collaboration and innovation, it is exciting, but in terms of speed, we might reach our limits. Twitter is the gravitation center of these changes, showing us how things will develop further:

• Speed: Sharing and interaction becomes amazingly fast through real-time web.
• Intensity: An explosion in “fast food content” shared across networks.
• Crisscrossed: Networks are not only growing exponentially in size, but also in their density.

Speed

Not so long ago, information sharing in open and loose networks used to take days. One could see how the news or an article was bookmarked in Delicious, bookmarked by other in the next days and sometimes developed to a larger wave until bloggers picked it up and a conversation emerged here and there. It was the start of the social web, which now seems to be outdated if one looks at the breathtaking speed of tweets. Whereas before some waves were drifting through the ocean – nowadays the sea is full of waves wandering across networks in minutes. Welcome to the real-time web. Want to know what is going on somewhere right now?
Have a look at Twitter search and you may find out because most probably, someone will be there. For certain requests this search is excellent. Even Google has acknowledged it recently and started to include tweets into its search. The Internet turns into a central nerve system.
I have asked how people share and search information nowadays through Twitter and these are some of the interesting feedbacks I have got, most related to speed: (Thanks for sharing!)

On a scale from 1-5 how much quicker/ better information you get through tools such as Twitter, Friendfeed vs. blogs or social bookmarking?

Intensity

Amit Agarwal has an interesting comparison on how people used to share information and how drastically it has changed. Whereas in 2008 email was still leading with over 30%, it is now bypassed by Facebook for sharing links with nearly 30%. In second place come emails with 13,8% and then Twitter with 11%. It shows how information sharing across networks becomes a truly mainstream activity. But it seems as if sharing was being dominated by short content or “fast food content,” as Michael Arrington calls it. He mainly talks of aggregated content but also discusses “the end of hand crafted content.” The ‘read/write’ web offers an explosion in content creation and micro-blogging; as Twitter seems to the right channel for sharing information.

Crisscrossed

From my observations, the explosion in network connectivity is the most fascinating one. The exponential growth of networks can be counted everywhere, but more fascinating is the growing density within networks. Particularly on Twitter with its low barriers for connections and openness, new connections are being built easily and interaction is a core piece behind it. This can really bring people, expertise and ideas together. One such example is the ICT4D field. Two years ago there were more or less loosely linked communities  around the Internet. Now you can tap into a community within a short time through searching social networks a la Facebook or Twitter. I wish there was a study on what this new density of interaction and many links between people bring, in terms of collaboration and innovation.

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Imagine if people were using social network sites such as Facebook not only for leisure, but to contribute to a good cause.  If engagement would go beyond Slacktivism to be part of a cause, and millions of people were contributing to a common for worldwide development work. Why doesn’t it happen like that with Wikipedia? Or am I wrong and perhaps we actually are coming close to mass collaboration?

If I look at the statistics and the incredible growth of social networks, I wonder how and when would these networks be used to join expertise, share ideas, do volunteer work, and mobilize people for social change?

Over at the web2fordev blog, I analyzed the potentials of social networks to address world challenges, which I extend in three posts. My assumption is that a lot has already happened, but most initiaves are still squattered around the web and the large group of “normal”, non social media enthusiasts, the majority of the web, is just tapping into online social networks.

The next Billion – the rise of social network sites in developing countries

Social network websites are becoming a global phenomenon. Millions now go online to engage in social networks. According to Wikipedia, there are some 1.5 billion members worldwide. Where is this growth taking place? What does this mean for web2fordev? And what role do mobile phones play. Almost a million people registered on Facebook in just three years for Egypt alone. According to Appfrica, South Africa has 1.1 million Facebook members, Morocco 369,000, Tunisia 279,000, Nigeria 220,000, Kenya 150,000,and Mauritius 60,000. The largest online social network is in China. QQ focuses on instant messaging and gaming with over 300 million active members. (Whole article)

The world becomes a village – implications of social networks

What happens when millions of people engage in social networks? Online communities are not a new phenomenon, but the creation of large online meeting spaces marks a new era and new dimensions.

What is happening in these social networks and what are the implications? A great analogy comes from Anand Giridharadas, who wrote an article by the title “Behind Facebook’s Success: It Takes a Village“. Anand argues that being in a social network is like living in a village, where you can share your thoughts, emotions, news, and more – something like entertaining neighbourhood relationships, with the difference that geographic location, physical distances and time do not matter anymore and interactions can occur on a global scale, 24 hours  a day and seven days a week. Once you establish your network with a multitude of members, “you are compelled, as in the village, to know their business. It’s strangely nice.”

From local to global – social networks address world challenges

Whether the environment, poverty or peace, almost all of today’s challenges are also dealt with in one or in another way  through the Internet. Online social networks play an increasingly important role in connecting people and offering spaces where groups of individuals can work on solutions and push for change. There are fascinating examples from local to global engagement.

What are the different forms of engagement and who takes part in them?

The ease of forming groups

There are two main pillars: Firstly, through the social web it has becomes increasingly easy to find and connect with people sharing common interests and worldviews. Secondly, it is getting easier by the day to set-up online groups online, attract followers and see them coalesce around a shared vision or common mission.

Clay Shirky highlights a social factor in his book “Here comes Everybody”:

“Ridiculously easy group-forming matters, because the desire to be part of a group that shares, cooperates, or acts in concert is a basic human instinct that has always been constrained by transaction costs.” “Everywhere you look, groups of people are coming together to share with one another, work together, or take some kind of public action. For the first time in history, we have tools that truly allow for this.”

Different forms of engagement

Participating in social networks can be very different, for example, from passive sharing to active problem solving. Gaurav Mishra has elaborated the “4Cs Social Media Framework“, which helps look at the different forms of engagement. I adopted it slightly and describe each level through different examples.

Content Sharing

It all starts with sharing information between people, by publishing content, to let each other know about certain issues and create conversations. It can be by simply sharing a common tag such as web2fordev to collect bookmarks or to use the same hashtags such as #iranelection when spreading news about the recent election in Iran.

Forming Networks

This way, far-off individuals can find each other in a spontaneous and informal manner and form networks. It has never been that easy to locate people with similar interests. Lisa Campbell did an interesting study about mobile social networks in Costa Rica and describes how Twitter and Hi5 are gradual forming networks of like minded people. She emphasises how these connections are increasingly fostered by interactions via mobile phones. For example Hi5 has a mobile version in 26 languages. Online networks engaged in development cooperation can be found with the spectrum of DGroups.org.

Co-Creation

At the higher level of engagement, people actually start jointly creating things by using text, audio or video. Such efforts are well represented by Wikis, such as the Water Wiki, with the contribution of many other organizations or on dot.sub where volunteers translate the subtitles of videos in their preferred languages.

Collective Action

Collective action can materialise in many ways. For example, people can act collectively in the name of a cause or for expressing their grievances. This happened last year when 50,000 Estonians where mobilized over the web to clean up garbage throughout their country in one day; or in Egypt, where a Facebook group grew to 70.000 members supporting the strike of textile workers in a matter of days. The group triggered a lot of discussion on democracy in Egypt but it did not lead to street protests due the unwillingness of the government to allow demonstrations. Another example is a campaign to rally against the FARC in Colombia. The Facebook group, “A Million Voices Against FARC,” initiated rallies that took place in 165 cities across the globe.

Communities

On a higher level, this collective action can generate communities, which differently from an ad-hoc network, have a sustained collaboration and a shared goal. Such is Nabuur.com, existing since 2001, where over 17.000 volunteers try to help villages in developing countries. This online help network is used by participants from around the world to discuss approaches to development, generate ideas, and obtain feedback. For example the “Zero Waste Management project” in Bweyogerere in Uganda can improve its immediate local context through such web enabled support. The Public Participation GIS community is another example with its close to 2000 members active across the globe and collaborating on a number of initiatives at different levels all dealing with participatory spatial information management and communication.

Examples of collective actions towards the implementation of a joint project or more specifically towards the development of a shared product are the communities populating the galaxy of free/open source software (FOSS). Notable examples are the communities which work on the development Content Management Systems like Joomla, Drupal, or other applications like Openstreetmaps.

Real Life Impact

So, higher forms of collective action can have spill-over effects to the real world, for example, improve a situation and create communities to work on more solutions for pressuring problems. One last interesting example exemplifying the whole above described engagement, is the project around Ushahidi, where human rights activists offer a platform that crowdsources crisis information. Although the tool itself has generated a lot of enthusiasm, equally interesting is how it has developed so far. It started with befriended bloggers, who as I understood, got to know each other through their blogs and formed a network of similar interests. That led to a collaboration in the post-election crisis of Kenya, where some of them took action and established a crisis monitoring tool. The people involved had not known each other before and got connected over the web. The tool was used then in the field and triggered a country wide collective action to document human rights violations. The success triggered the coalescing of a community around the issue of crisis mapping with developers and activists developing the tools further and replicating them elsewhere. This is an example on how web-enabled collaboration had real impact in the field. One other outcome is a crisiscamp, which took place recently in Washington. Another one is planned in the UK.

All these different phases  do not need to happen in a prescribed order and it should illustrate how much work and effort is needed to build up a community. These illustrate how much potential lies in these new group formations. The majority of interaction is mainly for leisure but with little means an individual engagement can grow for example to a larger campaign. But Beth Kanter has also indicated the difficulty to lead Facebook members to higher levels of engagement. A petition is quickly signed, but to contribute and interact on a regular basis is not happening on a massive scale yet. A critical mass of individuals engaging proactively, trust, animation and experience are needed particularly in often anonymous online interaction, which usually takes up time.

The potentials of social networks are not necessarily for the good. Extremist groups, even hoaxers,  are very sophisticated to exploit social networks for their purposes, so that “social networks and video-sharing sites don’t always bring people closer together“. Social network providers are not rarely overburdened to deal with all these different forms of activism.

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Google presents a new tool and a new hype is born. This time it is about online collaboration and promises nothing less than the end of email. Although the tool has clearly some great innovations, I cannot share the great enthusiasm and again the belief that a tool can change things for better. We are moving from one hype and tool to the next, but still, we do too little to drive the necessary core changes within organizations make it even possible to use tools such as Google Wave.

I have been reading so much euphoria about the new tool, which leads me to write this piece and mention a few enthusiasts, whom blogs I have continuously read and which I always enjoy.

“The Wave is not just another application, it’s a whole new way of using online information…  The Wave takes collaboration to a whole new level,” says Maish R Nichani. while Martin Koser writes, “Google Wave is poised to reshape (rewires I say) the nature of communication (yes, more face-to-face real-timelineness communication), improving the web experience.”

Real-time collaboration – what a nightmare!

Most excited was Lars Rasmussen, the developer of Google Wave, about the real-time collaboration. You can see changes made on a page within seconds. I have heard for the first time that the online collaboration’s biggest challenge was real-time changes, but on the contrary, that is the smallest problem. Bringing people to collaborate online is a huge challenge because of trust and the habit of a meeting culture, just to name a few. More importantly, I would argue that the growing speed of the Internet through life streams and tools such as Twitter and Friendfeed is made for a minority. Isn’t collaboration a process over hours, days and weeks?

We are witnessing more and more divides on the web

Who can and wants to master all this information every minute. How can you possible still work productively, on top of the ringing telephone and colleagues interrupting you. So, real-time collaboration can be great in a session, but if that is the future of collaboration, then it means that one has to collaborate 24/7. We have to ask us if instant communication really makes us more productive. Typing quickly a message in a smart phone in a go is perhaps not the greatest contribution. I argue that online collaboration, exchange and creativity needs time and breaks. I also doubt that this is a will change with the younger generation.

People, unlike tools, bring change

I wrote many posts about how different tools, such as blogs and RSS, can make a difference for information sharing and lead to more productivity and creativity. No doubt, Google Wave, combines here in an innovative way previous tools.

But all my experiences in online collaboration showed me that when a certain need has to exist. If that is the case even trivial mailing lists or a forum from the post web2.0 times can work dynamically. A fancy tool alone will not convince colleagues to share more information online. The tool can help and support interaction, but does not deliver interaction per se. Google Wave combines in an intelligent way many different streams knowledge worker have to deal with every day. But email is still seen as a core way to communicate and it will take many more years before this will change at large. Will new tools make it easier for that change to happen? I doubt it.

Lee Bryant makes a good point in this regard: “There is an echo chamber of voices confirming each other in the newest tool. “When they switch tools, the previous tools are “dead” and the new tool is “the future”. Meanwhile, millions of people continue using Outlook as a primary interface to their work, just as they did a decade ago.”

Luckily at least Google Wave is open source, which allows to be runned on an own server. Online collaboration takes a culture shift towards openness and trust to work online. In most organizations that takes a long road – even firms, who are the frontrunners such as IBM, face the same internal struggles, a colleague has recently told me.

A tool for one part of the world

Lars Rasmussen pointed out rightly that email is already forty years old and it is time for something new. But I am not sure that is the way forward because of one other reason: bandwidth!

Jonathan Goshier outlines this point nicely: “Of course, I have to point out that all this real-time communication stuff only matters to the fraction of people on the planet with good bandwidth. Here in Uganda, I’m so glad when an email actually makes it out of the queue that I don’t even bother to think about ‘rewinding’ conversations and dragging and dropping video! In all seriousness, it’s this reduction in basic utility for all users that worries me. Most Google’ products are by-in-large accessible no matter what kind of computer you’re on (except maybe Google Earth). With Wave they seem to be going down a path that might be a little more exclusive in nature. Not a deal-breaker but a concern none-the-less.”

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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

Will organizations and companies still be running in the future by 9-5 working schemes? Can the members’ or stakeholders’ relationship still be organized in formal or even hierarchical patterns? I doubt it. But what are the potentially different ways for organizations to work independently from time and space? The Internet will pay an increasing role on it, whether we like it or not.

In a PEW Internet study, where a survey about the future of the Internet was made, 56% of the partakers agreed with this statement:

2020, well-connected knowledge workers in more-developed nations have willingly eliminated the industrial-age boundaries between work hours and personal time. Outside of formally scheduled activities, work and play are  seamlessly integrated in most of these workers’ lives. This is a net-positive for npeople. They blend personal/professional duties wherever they happen to be when they are called upon to perform them—from their homes, the gym, the mall, a library, and possibly even their company’s communal meeting space, which may exist in a new virtual-reality format.

So far most organizations have not realized yet the pervasiveness of the Internet in the everyday work life. It is still seen as the thing (the PC) on the desk, from which one can access information. There information exchange is limited to emails and intranet. Most organizations reside still in an old model of one place at a  time, where soon a important large percentage of daily project management will be online. Some organizations do that already and work completely decentralized.

Some organizations went already further and work more decentralized. Such organizations are Euforic (presentation) or, completely remotely, the founder of the WordPress blog software Automatic or Socialtext.
These companies organize themselves almost completely over the web: 1) to collaborate in teams and 2) to engage with the outside world (clients or stakeholders).

What are the consequences of organization and staff?

• The location of the staff’s office plays a decreasing role.
• The separation between private and work life blurs even more.
• Working online needs more discipline and transparency because of the limited face-to-face exchange.
• Knowledge sharing and learning has to be organized very differently to compensate the little time of direct contact.
• Project management needs much more self-determined on clearer project results.
• Organizations need to rely much more on external knowledge – a key would be: How to include external knowledge into processes from members, stakeholder or consultants.

Why are small organizations much stronger?
Small organizations will have major advantages as they become more flexible, but at the same time they can compete much easier with bigger organizations because:

1. Big organizations used to have an information advantage. They could often gather the expertise that small organizations cannot offer. Nowadays, a lot of expertise is available on the web offered by more and more people.
2. Strong membership organizations used to have more political bargain power. Nowadays, small organizations shape ad-hoc alliances with other organizations and are potentially stronger.
3. Small organizations can keep the transaction cost much lower than bigger organizations, but still can network globally as only big organizations used to do in earlier times.

So how will organizations address these potentials and challenges?
This is a blog post series about my experiences on web2.0 in an organization, consisting of at least 26 different blog posts highlighting potentials and challenges and focusing on success factors. Please feel free to comment, contact me for further information and/or let me know which other topics within this context you would be interested on.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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Recently, there seems to be a hype around mobile phones in developing countries. It is great to see the investments being made in mobile technology and communication. At the KM4DEV unconference Pete Cranston, Luca Servo  and I organized a little session around the potential of mobile phones for knowledge sharing. Obviously, mobile communication happens on a daily basis and already has a huge impact particularly in developing countries. Therefore, I am still eager to see what else will come in the foreseeable future.

In a recent article the New York Times went further by asking, “Can the cellphone help end global poverty?” It also described what a big difference a mobile phone could make:

“It’s really quite striking,” Hammond says. “What people are voting for with their pocketbooks, as soon as they have more money and even before their basic needs are met, is telecommunications.” Over several years, his research team has spoken to rickshaw drivers, prostitutes, shopkeepers, day laborers and farmers, and all of them say more or less the same thing: their income gets a big boost when they have access to a cellphone.

During the session we also collected various examples, which I categorized as the following:

• Data transfer (mobile banking, market information system)
• Communication (community radios to connect with listeners)
• Coordination (Twitter or Frontline SMS for election monitoring)
• Collaboration (crowdsourcing such as ushahidi.com or check out this participatory sensing video)
• Knowledge sharing and learning (StoryBank: digital storytelling example below)
• Collective action (Activism)

I find mobile communications particularly promising because most ideas can and will be developed by the users themeselves, as well as being embedded in the local context. The NYT article also gives some nice examples:

 One Liberian refugee wanted to outfit a phone with a land-mine detector so that he could more safely return to his home village. In the Dharavi slum of Mumbai, people sketched phones that could forecast the weather since they had no access to TV or radio. Muslims wanted G.P.S. devices to orient their prayers toward Mecca. Someone else drew a phone shaped like a water bottle, explaining that it could store precious drinking water and also float on the monsoon waters. In Jacarèzinho, a bustling favela in Rio, one designer drew a phone with an air-quality monitor. Several women sketched phones that would monitor cheating boyfriends and husbands. Another designed a “peace button” that would halt gunfire in the neighborhood with a single touch.

Projects, such as Android, promised to have an open operation system on mobile phones, so own applications for specific needs can be developed and in a free open source fashion developed worldwide jointly by programmers. Twitter is a good example to show the ubiquitous of future web applications connected to mobile phones. Benedikt Foit writes about a new report from the W3C‘s (World Wide Web Consortium) Mobile Web Initiative and Mobile Web for Social Development (MW4D). Two findings are particular interesting:

• Mobile phones should be considered as an access mechanism, where mobile browsing is one way to access the content, but using Voice applications (through e.g. voiceXML) is another way, and SMS could be a third option. All of these options should be considered as different delivery channels of Web content. Using the Web as a repository of information could leverage replication and cross-fertilization between different projects by offering visibility.
• Key barrier for having useful and relevant content is lack of local expertise to develop these. Empower local actors to become mobile service providers (technical knowledge, entrepreneurship and business models).

We also discussed during the session the different challenges such as equality, prices, the interface, energy, language and illiteracy rate among others. In that concern, an interesting project in India shows “while village textual literacy rates are low, visual and oral expression thrive.” The StoryBank project uses mobiles to share stories in an Indian village and underlines the potential for knowledge sharing through digital storytelling.

A village committee decides what kind of programmes to make and volunteers from the village, mainly women, undertake to research and record news items on health, education, farming and other topics that are broadcast alongside devotional music and public service announcements.

Lastly, Dr. Gary Marsden describes the changes through mobile social networking from South Africa with a fascinating example from collaborating children:

Most school-children in South Africa use a system called “MXit” MXit is a basic Internet chat application for the mobile phone, and five million people use it; because in South Africa, the cost of sending a single character via MXit is one ten-thousandth of the cost of sending a single character via SMS.  For two rand a day, less than 20p, these kids can stay all day on MXit, despite the fact that it has a terrible user interface that the likes of us wouldn’t put up with.

Many of the schools have banned use of MXit.  But Gary and his colleagues discovered that the kids use MXit to do their homework collaboratively.  Therefore, they added functionality to the MXit system, having reverse-engineered the protocol, and added these features and functions into some of the chatrooms. The kids loved it.  Remember, they have no Internet access.  They added an equation-solver, for solving quadratic and linear equations, and an interface to Wikipedia.

No surprise the MIT started an initiative called for the next billion mobile phone users:

Within the next three years, another billion people will begin to make regular use of cell phones, continuing the fastest adoption of a new technology in history. Soon, this next billion will make their voice heard—and connect to the global information network.

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A bit late I write my feedback from the Social Innovation Camp (sicamp08), which luckily had the chance to join. I first heard about it from Dan McQuillan, who is one of the initiators and also has a great blog. It was a fascinating weekend with a real kind of Barcamp atmosphere, or as David Wilcox says, the sicamp08 “will make a big difference in the way we think about doing good stuff with new stuff.”

On Friday we went to a get-together and later to a pub. During this few hours, I got to know somebody from the open source movement in Brazil, a PHD student about social media, some great folks who try to change the British local government from inside out, and a lot of people with great ideas – many more than the six chosen for the Social Innovation Camp. But also, the Young foundation premises were a great location and the organization was excellent. Before I tell more about the different projects and the weekend, I would like to wrap up the highlights:

• It works! The concept of bringing people together to collaborate for social innovation through the web worked excellent. Almost a hundred people showed up, who were all eager to collaborate and offered their expertise.
• Inside out. It is amazing to see the spirit of the participative alive and be able to meet all these open people. In contrast to Barcamps, it goes a step further and people work on a project and by that, you share experiences and learn from each other. Both represent a great passion for exchange and a desire for creativity.
• Scale it up! I can so imagine how this approach could be scaled up. Bringing people with ideas together an d forming something together exhilarating and contagious. The web has become a playground to rethink or we-think (Charles Leadbeater) the potential of social change and overcome traditional barriers. Therefore I am eager to participate at the Social Camp in Berlin next June.
• Unlimited ideas. It was really amazing, in brainstorm sessions, to listen and discuss so many ideas that the attendees have. There are many impressive ways to empower citizens, to engage in social or injustice or help to change a community. To me, it is clear that we are just at the start of this development. Business start-ups were the beginning and social innovation start-ups are the future.
• Richness of data. During the last year, I was often overwhelmed, suspicious or frustrated about all this available information and data in the net. But now, there is a great potential to get much more out of all these data. Make it relevant, use it for transparency or advocacy. This kind of information power will change a lot: Being it “rate my prison” or the potential of aggregation.
• It is the mobile phone. Once again the mobile will make a big difference because of one simple reason. Whereas in the past I went to the computer to do something with the web, in the future my life and the web are closely connected. I can engage when I want or consult a friend or contribute to the wiki bar-code or I switch off.

There is a backnetwork page to see all people involved and all six chosen projects are described at the Social Innovation Camp website:

• Wibi.it
  Formerly bar-code Wikipedia. A site for storing user-generated information – such as carbon footprint, manufacturing conditions and reviews – against a product, identified by its barcode number. It enables buyers to check product information through their mobile phone right in the supermarket, for example, whether it really is fair trade.
• Enabled by Design
  A resource for anyone looking to make adjustments to their lives, be it as a result of disability, injury or impairment. Enabled by Design won £2,000 as our judges’ favourite idea at Show and Tell.
  
• On The Up
  Formerly Personal Development Reports. An online system that supports young people to identify their personal skills and qualities. That is the project I worked with. It is about personal development to help young people get a perspective, become peer learners and fulfil their dreams. In the first hour, I did not know whether it would work but suddenly a great visionary idea came together. I am curious to see how it will go on.
• Rate Your Prison
  Formerly Prison Visits. A tool to support the families of prisoners coping with the experience of being apart from a loved one. Rate Your Prison won £1,000 as the runner-up project at Show and Tell. There is little information about how prisoners feel in prison. A voice for the voiceless
• CVLifeLine
  Formerly Rate my CV. A site for helping jobseekers using Web 2.0 tools. Young people can help each other to improve their CVs.
• Stuffshare
  Freecycle meets Street Car: a stuff club.

Most projects even had prototype websites finished in those two days, which it was amazing to see they were done with the help of coders and designers. And the winners were “enabled by design” and “rate my prison!” For more information and all other blog posts check the list by Aleksi Aaltonen.

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Last week, I was at the re-publica.de conference. Often, the most interesting aspect of conferences are the side talks with other visitors. And this one was not the exception. I had a great chat with Martin Koser, an enterprise2.0 expert (with excellent bookmarks) and Andreas Gohr, the head developer of the interesting DokuWiki. We discussed in length the barriers and potentials to start implementing social software in organizations and once again agreed on the importance of the organizational culture. But the technical side is also quite complex and, for example, wikis can be implemented in various ways.

So far, I am amazed about the collaboration potential of wikis, but also disappointed about their usability. Until this discussion, I was kind of convinced that the user shall be in the focus. Participation should be as easy as possible, so no technical barrier hinders users to add or edit content. But Martin and Andreas surprised me at one point by saying that WYSIWYG are not necessarily an advantage. I shared my surprise on twitter, which brought up these reactions, and hence, I decided to write a blog post about it:

So far, I argued for WYSIWYG editors for these reasons:

• There are different little barriers one has to bear before one can start editing a wiki page. Most people are used to Word, and WYSIWYG editors are familiar in this regard. Cryptic code might be confusing and needs some experience.
• WYSIWYG give guidance and integrate nicely other media such as images or table.
• A wiki is not seldom confusing because of its missing hierarchy. WYSIWYG editors ease to set up new pages or link to existing ones.
• Many wikis still lack user orientation and are rather confusing (e.g. no hierarchical menu or insufficient linking). The less a user has to think or adapt, the better. Content should matter.

So here it is a list of arguments against WYSIWYG editors. Martin Koser also wrote another excellent post about it.

• Too much function distracts from content. It is the same problem with Word. Hours spent on elaborating sophisticated tables instead on concentrating on the content.
• Code editors limit users and let them focus on structured content — what is useful and which structure (e.g. header and bullet point lists) is best for the reader? If used properly, those texts have more clarity.
• WYSIWYG invite to paste all content completely from word, which is not necessarily conducive for collaboration.
• Basically, it is a short code list to learn, and then you can write faster and it is more simply to edit codes.
• No doubt the code created by WYSIWYG is often a mess and does not separate content and formatting.

Does that convince you?
The discussion, once again, showed me how complex the implementation of social software can be, or how easy if you just let the people use it. The question of WYSIWYG editor might be trivial, but in contrary, the lack of those editors are a key argument to decline social software, as Martin pointed out.

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Michael Gilbert wrote an article called “The End of the Organization?” in which he wonders how civil society organizations, such as NGOs, can continue working the way they do?

Whether the organization as we know it survives or not, it is by studying the changing patterns of communication that we will discover the new shape of civil society. Our methods of analysis – and possibly our methods of regulation, funding, and participation – will shift from those that reflect managerial thinking to those that reflect ecosystem thinking.

Here are five important innovations that we need to make this transition successfully: (1) We need ways of making network structures tangible to those who want to support civil society. (2) We need to develop and propagate the language of networks, with adjustments suitable to our many communities of practice. (3) We need models of collaboration and communication that help organizations make the most out of their new permeability. (4) We need financial structures that facilitate network centric funding and (5) legal structures that facilitate network centric employment.

This kicked off a debate among these bloggers: Joitske Hulsebosch, Andy Roberts, David Wilcox and Josien Kapma. Their interesting posts discuss whether the statement is valid and emphasize the role that communication plays within it, and to which extend a transformation of civil society and its organizations has already happened.

I think that organizations eventually have to change because of: (a) complexity, which can only be managed in open networks; and (b) pressure from members, stakeholders or competitors, who move on to other organizations, coalitions or simply form there own campaign. But, in my opinion, the organization will change slowly. Still, NGOs have been participating in networks or coalitions for decades although there internal structure has been often preserved conventional. Here lies the dilemma that most organizations are still pretty much self-contained and naturally driven by self-interest for funding, reputation, etc. — and this is a key obstacle for cooperation. However, civil society was one of the first ones to start working on the potential of the web and in networks if you look at campaigns against the Multilateral Agreement on Investments (MAI) or the Zapatistas in Mexico in the Nineties. A key challenge, for traditional NGOs in the next years, will be to compete with extra organizational activism or open networks for social change.

Allison Fine coined the phrase extra organizational activism in her book “Momentum igniting social change in the Connected Age.” She argues about how we should reconsider cooperation and external communication in an organizational context. I wrote about her book in this blog post: open source approach for organizations. One step in the same direction is The Membership project, where David Wilcox is also part of and which “explores changes that the social web and other factors may bring to groups and organisations … and to our ideas of belonging in an increasingly networked society.”

Replying to Michael Gilbert’s five value points, I think they tend to be very formalistic and I can see the web is changing faster and forming more loose networks with their own rules. So the question is whether traditional NGOs can match these loose and open networks with their sometimes quite conventional organization. And I wonder whether it is possible and even conducive to search and create”models of collaboration” or “legal structures” to harness the potential of these new networks.

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In Phnom Penh, as everywhere else, the mobile phone is a must have accessory for the youth, and when they get together, they enjoy bluetoothing; or so Thomas Wanhoff told me during my stay in Cambodia. This basically means that they share ringtones, images, videos and games through their mobile phones. The other day I read that last year a quarter of Internet traffic was over the mobile phone. I myself use my mobile to access the web more and more, but I am still not completely satisfied since I do not get to interact easily enough through the social web. However, the iphone has really changed something in that regard.

And so, I wonder how the mobile web and, particularly the collaborative web, will develop? And will it work? By this I mean that I can interact with all sorts of tools via my mobile phone — edit a wiki, build a mashup, writing a blog post, and finally network more effectively. It is clear that the mobile will sooner or later bypass the personal computer by Internet usage. In developing countries the mobile phone is even more important because it will be the decisive tool to access the web as Joel Selanikio points out:

If I had told you ten years ago that by the end of 2007 there would be an international network of wirelessly-connected computers throughout the developing world, you might well have said it wasn’t possible. I am talking, of course, about the mobile phone network.

But, where are the applications and easy ways to do that on the mobile phone? One example are RSS feeds, which can be quickly delivered to mobile phones as Ndesanjo Macha described in a podcast how he accesses via his mobile phone blogs. Lighweight rss feeds are perfect for the slow GPRS connection. 

Most famous is of course Howard Rheingold’s book smartmobs.com. Already some years ago Rheingold described how deep the impact of the mobile web is for youngsters, who play role games in real time, and the game board is the streets of the city. One phenomena were the flashmobs, where a critical mass of people suddenly showed up somewhere to protest or party. Mobile citizen reporter is another interesting outcome but often it is limited to an uploaded photo.

In the field of mobile learning a lot has been discussed. As Teemu Arina points out nicely in a video interview about the future of learning.

Some years ago, Finland was very strong in the mobile side and people where laughing at the idea of mobile learning. But I think it’s coming. I think it’s integrating with the informal learning space, because being mobile means that the context is around you.  

There are still many limitation to the phone: the screen, keyboard, connection. However this is just a matter of time, and recent devices already make a difference. I wonder why  so little has been developed in order to interact and collaborate via the mobile phone in the social web.

Mobile social networks such as MXit in South Africa show the potential. I imagine some people will find it frightening to be always online, but it can also have a lot of advantages to have available Internet access everywhere. However, for developing countries it will make a huge difference to fully be able to participate in the social web because mobile phones are the future. I am sure I missed a lot of things happening. Please drop me a line if you know of interesting examples.

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In my last post I argued that the collaborative web has its implications for development aid. And yesterday I read an interesting article by Mark Thompson from the University of Cambridge titled “ICT and development studies: towards development2.0.” The article is an attempt to highlight the potentials of the web for development, its push for openness and collaboration will effect development aid and at the end this can fit in an theoretical framework of development studies. Most interesting to me is his argument about how the “philosophy”, “approach” or “pressure” – or however you want to call it – behind web2.0 goes way beyond using ICT more efficiently in development work: It does influence and ultimately will push forward a different approach to development.

The key insight here is that in its emerging Web 2.0 form, ICT can no longer be conceived as assemblages of hardware, software, and user behaviour. Viewed instead as an ‘architecture of participation’, ICT becomes an opportunity for generating, mediating and moderating a particular paradigm of social life; and this paradigm poses a direct challenge to much of the way in which ‘development’, with its associated visions for social life and supporting infrastructure, has been conceptualised and delivered to date. As public goods and services, developmental initiatives are arguably subject to modern, ICT-driven critiques about the need for public service reform such as Leadbeater and Cottam’s The User Generated State: Public Services 2.0 (2007), which calls for a shift from the focus on ‘delivery’ during the last ten years (also seen in the developmental discourse) to a focus on ‘co-creation’.

My contention is therefore that the increasing ubiquity of ICT within development has implications that extend even beyond its role as mediator of economic, social, and political opportunity. Conceived as ‘Web 2.0’, a paradigm for technology-enabled social life comprising diversity, collaboration, and multiple truths, ICT now poses a direct challenge to development studies itself, demanding attention to ways in which, in the future, Web 2.0 models may drive increasing calls for a much more plural and collaborative Development 2.0. The next section

The whole article can be downloaded here.

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The social web is quite separated in different language domains. English is a key language to bridge different cultures, but it can also be a dead end. Worldwide collaboration can only work in a multilingual network.

English is one of the major languages on the net, whether it is on blogs, social networks or the chitchat on twitter. But languages are still breeding fast though the social web; the Japanese blogosphere is one of the biggest ones, for example, Google’s social network, Orkut, is the biggest in Brazil and India. Tanzania is also one example for a vibrant Swahili blogosphere. Chinese mandarin will be the most spoken language on the web. Global Voices is one of the few websites trying to connect cultures. Volunteer translators give insights to countries and cultures where usual media outlets do not report from.

But let’s have a look at the issue of language. Dave Gray has a nice visualization for different dimension of language here. He drew the four steps of language:

1. Communication
2. Conversation
3. Collaboration
4. Co-creation

On this United Nation website for cultural diversity it says, “Language not only communicates, it defines culture, nature, history, humanity and ancestry.” There are between 6.000 and 7.000 spoken languages on this world and unfortunately half of them are in threat of extinction. Language is fundamental for the collaborative web. It can enrich a discourse through blogs.

Translating machines have improved significantly. One example is the google translation for Arabic. But when it comes to collaboration, it is up to users to find a way to interact. How can we achieve this multilingual web? It needs a high language skill to collaborate effectively and creatively. A long tail of language has emerged. The future focus should be on networks with cross language interaction. Each language has a unique set of concepts, beliefs and expressions, which risk to be lost if all relies only on English.

So it is a dilemma. On one way English allows us to communicate worldwide, but at the same time it narrows down the potential for collaboration by simply contradicting cultural diversity. It greatly connects worldwide people, however, it is limited to small proportions of web users capable to read and write in English. I am personally in the same dilemma. I would love to blog in German — as being it my native language, my writing is much better — but I decided to blog in English to be able to network in this vast social network. Mixing languages can be possible as we have done it through the web2fordev conference blog, but even for that blog it was quite difficult to get French speaking authors involved.

Here it is an interesting statistic for the main languages in the Internet. There is a tendency towards a few strong languages. There are four languages not based on Latin characters. By the way, it took more than ten years after the Internet’s major breakthrough for ICANN to announced on the Internet Governance Forum to offer internationalized country code for top-level domains — and this just happened recently. This would mean that Chinese or Arabic letters become possible in domains. Ethan Zuckerman wrote more on that, and here, the UNESCO.

At last, languages are also important to protect our environment and can be decisive to preserve our biodiversity.

The links between language, culture and the environment suggest that biological, cultural and linguistic diversity should be studied together, as distinct but closely and necessarily related manifestations of the diversity of life on Earth. Researchers have referred to this new field of study as “biocultural diversity”.

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I have already written about 10 challenges for web2.0 in an organization, but this time I would like to highlight two decisive factors: Culture and a new paradigm of knowledge sharing. Furthermore, this post elaborates the differences between web2.0 in private life vs. in an organizational setting.

1. Culture is a key factor. Blogs and wikis change communication drastically to a horizontal level and make it transparent. Workflows are given up. Openness is a key to accept ideas and ongoing changes. If employees do not dare to share, the greatest tools will end up on failure. In a way, hierarchy and power driven communication are poison for such a participative approach.
2. Embrace the new paradigm for knowledge sharing. The collaborative web stands in contrast to many efforts trying to codify and categorize information. Making web2.0 work in an organization requires to accept knowledge in its different dimensions. Information cannot be own by only one party. Information can be sorted, interpreted and exchanged in multiple ways. Knowledge and learning evolves in a network.

To clarify the second point, I referred to David Snowden, who has mentioned this nice quote in a recent podcast. Elsua has some nice posts about the podcast.

Web2.0 is too unstructured to fit into an organizational setting, which heavily relies on codified and categorized knowledge. When you move to on a free flow of ideas what web2.0 about – then this kind of contradicts to processes and hierarchies of an organization.

All of this is much more difficult than expected in a conventionally run company or organization. In private life, this is so much easier to accept the collaborative web and to play around with. No surprise web2.0 is driven mainly by individuals, and organizations are slow followers.

A nice comparison between enterprise2.0 and web2.0, on the ‘Dif-fer-en-ti-ate blog,’ highlights the differences and the likely challenges:

web2.0 vs. enterprise2.0

• Organisational structure: Flat vs Hierarchical–flat organisational structures encourage collaboration while hierarchical ones hinder.
• Attitude: Sharing vs Hoarding–in your private life you share information freely without expectation of recompense, while at work, all people ask is, ‘what is in it for me?’.
• Visibility: Anonymity vs Recognition–in Web2.0 you are one of the herd; the majority of users can assume that there is anonymity in a crowd. At work people seek recognition for their contribution as career progression can depend on it.
• Society: Public vs Private–in Web2.0 you are able to control the information you share as well as free to create alternative persona’s, masks, behind which you can hide. In Enterprise2.0 there is no anonymity, everything you say and do online can be traced back to you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Complexity
Another key lesson was the big question of ‘how to best combine all these web2.0 tools to obtain better results.’ Everybody is still experimenting –this might be what web2.0 is all about. Nevertheless, I understood the importance of taking a holistic approach and use a combination of blogs according to the objective. So, experimenting still needs a strategic approach; in that way users do not fear an information overload. Blogs, for example, can be used for knowledge sharing, but then they may need to be very different when used for a campaign. And how are wikis and blogs linked to preserve transparency? I did not hear about strategies for best combining all the tools using available data and rss feeds. How do I offer all these channels for collaboration and still filter what is important to me? This has to be overcome to prove the benefit and not just use the technology for the sake of it.

I had the feeling everybody shared an enthusiasm for the potential that development can have, but I also only saw a few clear structured projects. A complete contrast to that was Damir Simunic, who talked about Collaboration on the Edge of Network. He basically argued that web2.0 is still too far away from broad usage by presenting a tool relying solely on emails, which has enough capabilities. Even though I find email is often an information overload application, Damir gave an interesting example: at the WHO, a 20.000 people network manages over easy mailing lists and easy features, proving traditional ways can be successful, especially in developing countries.

Networks
Dan McQuillan wrote a powerful wake up post and summarized very good the strategic questions about ‘dealing now with the available possibilities through web2.0.’ To me, it seems the power of web2.0 has been shared by most participants, but what could be done with it now and how to engage it was still unclear. In my panel, I asked therefore, whether organizations are open to sharing, willing to network and engage in such a participative manner. The conference showed how web2.0 brings an unusual mixture of individuals (e.g. activists), organizations, media and companies together. It needs a change in culture towards more openness and trust, which is not always easy –after all, who wants to or can accept that his or her wiki text has suddenly changed?
Collaboration through web2.0 is happening between a diversified landscape of these actors, and I wonder what will be the outcome of that. I liked the way Dan quotes Charles Leadbeater on ‘low-cost, self-organising networks will innovate all kinds of needed solutions.’ I hope that this innovation will be open source driven.

Content
Interestingly, there were few discussions about content. What is the type of content that will be delivered, shared and remixed through web2.0? What kind of content is there and how can it be virtually exchanged in a rather oral culture? Moses Kisembo and Jon Corbett summarized it nicely in a discussion we had. What helps all these new forms of information and technology when one does not know how to use them, and then it does not have any benefit, e.g. for a farmer? The question of relevance of all this user generated content was rarely discussed. Ethan Zuckermann emphasized in his presentation how important filters in this regard are. How to filter the information or voices to a meaningful size to find all that that is important to me. Aggregators can help, and so do social bookmarking sites, which show evaluated ranked webistes. More important are however, people, who sort, comment and translate content and make sense and relevance in the growing sea of information.

However, I imagine too that feeds and tagging can help. And as fast as the web developed, more things are coming up such as rss manipulation. That means, you drag data from different sources and with the sum of it, you make something better. And that is also what Michael Saunby’s presentation showed. With a mix of rss and data, manipulation fascinating new geographical information can be generated. These mashups can be mixed with all kind of freely available information sources, and as with Michael Saunby‘s case, allow individual climate change analysis.

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The authors of the book wikinomics left the last chapter open to be written by the interested community. This experiment worked very good and proved the authors main thesis: we are entering the era of mass collaboration. With great results, their experiment got extended. Now various authors write together on different themes. Recently, they wrote about open public relations, and the result was quite interesting.

Traditionally the role of the public relations department was to control the flow and angle of information that went to company stakeholders. Making that process open and transparent involves rethinking the relationships with all your stakeholders, including the companies own employees.

Traditional approaches are grounded in the assumptions of a broadcast world: that the media environment can be controlled and that corporate messages can be pushed out to consumers who will believe and internalize them. In a pervasive computing environment, these one-way conversations fail to build credibility.

The premise of open PR is that information will leak out eventually so it’s better to join the conversation early than to put out fires after the fact.

Other interesting points discussed in the article are about the important benefit of feedback through openness. But, it is also clear that such a change needs a certain culture within the organization, otherwise there is a risk of failing. It would be interesting to discuss about what are the conditions for such an open approach. Examples showed that second mover have an advantage. Personally, I find very interesting that with this open approach, public relation and knowledge management overlap more and more.

Next week they are going to write about collaboration for culture…

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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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I ampart of the organization team for the web2fordev conference in Rome, this coming September, and therefore I am excited to anounce our new blog here too.

Dear friends, colleagues, bloggers and readers,

Here are a few questions for you. How can Web2.0 contribute to development? What are your experiences in using Web2.0 tools for knowledge sharing and collaboration in the domain of rural and agricultural development? Do social networks, mashups, blogs, and wikis have an influence on your work? What challenges towards Web2.0 did you experience or do you expect?

Share your thoughts on the Web2fordev blog! Come and join our discussions or contribute with posts to prepare the agenda of the Web2ForDev conference in Rome, this coming September.

We are collecting interesting experiences on the use of Web2.0, and exploring its different dimensions within the context of development. The focus of the conference is on rural and agricultural development and natural resource management. The blog goes beyond this. We invite you, working in any sector of development (health, youth, education, ICTs, humanitarian, media, etc.) to share your take on technology & development in this blog.

Web2fordev is the first conference devoted to exploring ways in which international development actors can take advantage of the technical and organisational opportunities provided by Web 2.0.

Blog here!
http://blog.web2fordev.net

Visit the conference here!
http://www.web2fordev.net

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Recently I finished reading the book Wikinomics. I wondered whether it is just another buzzword or if it contributes to the discussion of how the Internet changes our world. In any case the authors left some answers open to be written by the readers themselves.

After reading the introduction I was fascinated to read how Dan Tapscott and Anthony Williams link different developments from the last year together and describe its implications. They argue that virtual networks, collaboration through the Internet, and the open source concept will have increasing influence on businesses, organizations and science. Those companies, which do not open up to these changes will have decisive competitive disadvantages in the future. The authors underpin their thesis with many interesting examples like Procter&Gamble’s approach to cooperate in research via innocentive.com, or a gold-mining firm, that got striking results by a innovative contest over the Internet to find new exploring methods.

“Just as collaborative tools and applications are reshaping enterprises, the new Web will forever change the way scientist publish, manage data and collaborate across institutional boundaries.”

The way the new web will change science is manifold. A key will be open access, so “the world is your research department.” An outcome will be rapid diffusion of best-practice techniques and standards, the availability of just-in-time expertise and increasingly horizontal and distributed models of research and innovation. An interesting example is how young scientists design open-source at NASA. But I wonder how developing countries have opportunities to participate in this process?

“Peer producers apply open source principles to create products made of bits – from operating systems to encyclopedias.”

Through crowd sourcing or commons based peer production new products will be developed collaboratively over the web. In my opinion this peer to peer approach is a serious alternative to traditional business models. Open source promotes this approach and is already extended to videos, music or design. The organization  for social entrepreneurs, Ashoka coined the phrase open sourcing of social change (but to have a copyright on that phrase is quite counterintuitive).

In my opinion the open source concept and the need of companies and organizations to open themselves are going hand in hand. Both are horizontal mostly bottom-up driven processes. Both indicate the need to share knowledge in an open manner. In particular the difficulty of dealing with complex problems, an overload of information and increasing competition pushes us to engage and collaborate in open networks.

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Unconferences are spreading around the world and it proves that Internet communication behaviour, knowledge sharing approaches, and the open source philosophy transcend into real world. But what is unconference? Basically it is a get together of people who would like to exchange certain themes. Interested persons can join the two day discussion and brainstorming. One important rule: everybody is a listener and a presenter at the same time. The event is organized over a wiki. It can be practically organized by anybody.

But what makes it so special and different? Some weeks ago, in April, I was lucky to join a barcamp, a form of unconference, here in Frankfurt. Robert Basic and Franz Patzig initiated it. In the following weeks the wiki gained life and people signed in as attendees, proposed topics in the realm of web2.0 and coordinated logistics and even a sponsor. Here are some interesting impressions that I got from barcamp Frankfurt:

• At the beginning, as there was not a fixed plan, everyone was curious waiting around for something to happen. After half an hour or so, two initiators explained the concept. This was followed by short but funny introductions of each one of the 150 attendees, who, most of them had very different backgrounds and worked in very different fields.
• After the little introduction, everybody crowded in front of the board (photo) to see the offered sessions and to add an extra one or join with another similar one. That was enough to start the various presentations. Some people did sophisticated power-point presentations for creative commons while others talked freely about knowledge management in enterprises. Discussions arose and new sessions developed out of them.
• The event offered an informal atmosphere with many open minded people. You could easily ask questions to each other and network. Small groups were formed spontaneously to discuss and to brainstorm. The common interest and open approach in how to address problems was very interesting.

To me, it seems that unconference is overlapping with open space, which is more of a method while behind unconference there is a philosophy. It is fascinating how unconference motivates people to network and collaborate. In that regard, it is quite different to conventional conferences because it is a bottom-up approach, highly creative and can be used for all sorts of topics. In Canada transit camp discusses local development, and in France a wine camp was organized. Some other examples are Kenya or India where Barcamps were also organized. Lastly, this fascinating initiative is explained in detail in a book, which is of course written as well in a wiki.

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