Connection Speed in Europe

On my last post, I talked about how slow websites can trigger higher search costs. In this post I want to further elaborate on the bandwidth divide that exists within and between countries, and which is largely ignored by website developers. There is also the notion that we have unlimited capacities for websites – the more the features, the better the website. On the contrary, especially now with the increasing usage of the web, low-bandwidth websites are more important than ever.

Connection speed comparison

Average connection speeds by Pingdom

Check, for example, the latest “real” connection speed overview from Pingdom based on Akamai data. South Korea has been leading in terms of bandwidth for years, while other Western countries have considerable less capacity available. I did a little heat map to show the geographical variation across the world. Would you have guessed that Romania has the fastest connection speed in Europe?

On the bottom of the list are countries such as Nigeria, Indonesia and Iran, which have 1/3 of users with less than 256kbs per second connection. If that speed is really available, it still needs 6 seconds to load the Wikipedia page example from my last post. Take a book and select a page and then wait 6 seconds before you open it. Do that for a few pages and you will see how frustrating can slow speed can be when doing research.

Website speed and search engine ranking

Although the mobile web is growing exponential, only a minority offers customized websites because most such changes take time, skill and resources. Even Google is taking website speed into consideration. Its primary goal probably is to save resources for their crawlers. In the tool Google webmaster you can see your website’s speed performance. This example is with 5 second slower loading time than the majority of other websites. 

Google Webmaster Tools

Some hints to dive into website speed

You can also use tools such as webpagtest.org and see that, for example, the new World Bank page still has 900 kb to load. This means that with a fast connection, it still takes 8 seconds to load. Check here for details. With a low-bandwidth connection, which is the situation in many developing countries, it takes over one minute to load the front page.

Content Delivery Network

One other great approach is content distribution network (CDN). They distribute your files around the world and put them closer to the user’s end. So, if a user visits your site from Asia, then he gets the files from a server in Asia instead of Europe. Basically, you distribute the same files across servers. Wonder why is Google so fast? Because they have servers around the world. If your audience is let’s say in Uganda, you better not only host the website in the US, but also in Kampala or Kenya. However, it all depends on your audience.

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DFID blogs.dfid.gov.uk

In addition to my recent Twitter analysis, I wrote another article on development organizations and social media on the web2fordev blog, which I crosspost also here.

Many organizations have approached the social web and new technologies from different angles during the last years. Large organisations have engaged in one or another way, in social media. But did they fully embrace the participatory web? Let’s take a look at how development organisations have approached the social web and where the status quo stands.

A general objective for development organisations is to increase their outreach. Social media are used to spread news and other information across the social web. Reaching an audience directly has many advantages, but are organisations ready to address the challenges inherent to a two-way communication interaction?

Video

Video channels are a popular form. All large development organizations have their own channels on Youtube: World Bank (2 236 subscribers), United Nations (6 608 subscribers), UNDP (1276 subscribers) USAID (43 subscribers) and CTA. While some organisations rely on the production of professional videos, USAID is still experimenting with a blend of professional and grassroots video productions. Like USAID, on its vimeo platform CTA offers both professional and in-house productions while on its official video site CTA offers a range of professionally produced multimedia related to agriculture and rural development.

Across the sites the number of subscribers confirms of the interest that people have in multimedia related to development cooperation. The download statistics of the World Bank, which exceed one million, support this assessment.

Twitter

Another area of involvement are social network websites such as Twitter. Many organizations have Twitter accounts such as UNDP , UNICEF, UNHCR , UN , USAid, CIDA , AfDB , CTA, etc. The World Bank has various Twitter accounts such as news of an Asian section.

While videos are used to broadcast news, I wonder whether these organizations use Twitter to nurture two-way communication. A quick analysis indicates that this is not the case. Out of ten organizations, only two reacted to their audience and replied with a message.

Blogging

The blogging efforts from the World Bank and DFID are certainly different. The world bank has blogs covering different thematic areas such as conflict , governance or private sector development and these are linked to debates and interactions with the wider blogosphere. DFID has taken a different approach and provides “real life perspectives from those working on the ground to fight poverty”. It offers surfers to join the debate. DFID’s bloggers trigger quite some discussions on some posts, but also leave some questions unanswered. Other blogging efforts are being conducted by the United Nations and the Overseas Development Institute.

Facebook

Another popular approach are the Fan pages on Facebook, which are mostly used as an alternative channel to broadcast organisational news (e.g. USAid) and create a space where fans can post questions and remarks. In the case of the World Bank, its page has 7758 members, with whom the organization is interacting quite actively. CTA has launched its Fan page on Facebook and accounts fora few hundred members so far.

Use of multiple social media

An more advanced approach is taken by some NGOs. A good example is Oxfam, which actively taps into the potential of the participatory web. Their blogging portal combines many different social media forms. Discussions are linked to different communities and Oxfam has built a far-reaching audience, with which it is engaged with.

Drawing the line

So, in conclusion, if one looks back at the time of the Web2forDev 2007 Conference , a lot has happened and some organisations have invested considerable resources to engage with social media. Nonetheless despite the promising signs for two-way conversations, it seems many organisations still have to define a well-though strategy and deploy the necessary resources to make the most out of the social web and its potentials.

In parallel some organisations are increasingly investing in integrating “social features” into existing internal web communication. This aspect will we be discussed in a forthcoming post.

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Everybody wants to be on Twitter and development organizations are no exception. But what do they really want to gain from Twitter? Do they really want to use Twitter to interact through a two-way conversation with their audience? I was curious, so I did a small analysis.

However, the results are anyway quite clear: There is practicaly no interaction. Twitter is used by development organizations as a purely broadcast channel.

Most make great use of retweets, which are often from affiliated organizations such as in the case of the United Nations. So, even when they retweet, these organizations are still not necessarily following what happens in the twitterverse. Others use inflationationary hashtags such as UNDP. My favorite is: “Burkina Faso: Support for HIV-positive patients http://ow.ly/1BJ0I #HIV #AIDS #UNDP #UN #BURKINAFASO #AFRICA #ARVs” by UNDP.

The only exception I could find was the OECD and CIDA, which actually responded to people.

So why do such organization use Twitter if they miss the opportunity to engage with their audience? Don’t they have sufficient resources or are not ready for an authentic conversation? Or, are only the people behind public relations responsible for the Twitter account?

In any case, the amount of followers says very little if an account is also influential and being heard. For example, check out accounts with huge followers and their retweet rate. Not rarely it is incredibly low. That’s why I checked some of the above Twitter accounts also on Twinfluence, which analysis Twitter accounts through different parameters from social network analysis. The results are complementary with the ones above. The United Nations account with 32.055 followers has an influence of 1%. Development Gateway has 4% and OECD 62%.

So, in conclusion, it looks as if development organizations are still on a journey to develop listening skills. But to be fair, there are more promising examples such as the World Bank’s involvement in their Facebook page.

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There are over one billion Internet users worldwide according to a list from Wikipedia. Every day thousand of people joining social networks such as Facebook. How can these social networks be used to boost business? Are there differences between countries or regions how such social networks work? Mark Davies from Esoko, explains intriguing thoughts from his work in Ghana on market information systems through mobile phones.

The next billion

It is not easy to get figures, but the ones existing might come as a surprise to some. The largest social network in China, QQ has over 300 million active members. 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.  Here are more details on social networks worldwide. The key role will be around mobile phones as the main way to access and interact in online social networks. According to research from Frost & Sullivan and Colibria, mobile social networks will grow ten fold to over 500 million users in Latin America and Africa in the next five years.

Culture and impact

But what happens in this social networks is what we know little about. What are the impact of such networks and their potentials beyond pure leisure exchange? This question has made me thought for a while and wonder what is the role of different cultures in such communities. For Anand Giridharadas, Facebook becomes an Indian village. Back at the ICT observatory I had an interesting discussion with Mark Davies around these questions, which I have recorded and transcribed below.

Christian: Hello Mark. We attended the last day of the ICT Observatory. We’ve had very interesting discussions the past days, and I would like to ask you, or discuss with you, the topic about social networks in Africa. Especially, you already mentioned that in your project, you really want to go in that direction using mobiles and the web for farmers, and to bring farmers and traders together. What do you think is the role of these networks and their potentials for the future?

Mark Davies: Well, I think it’s really interesting that we’ve been through a period of three or four years, where networks seem to be one of the most compelling and interesting uses of the web, or the web 2.0. We’ve experience FaceBook, Twitter, and these other, MySpace.

Sitting in Africa, where we’re working in Africa, and we’re working in commerce and trade, it’s all about social networks. You’re trading with individuals that you know, this is perhaps a friends, or an associate, or somebody within your village. There is some identity that you can associate with them, and there is an element of trust.

So it’s just intriguing to consider, if we took some of those principals of FaceBook, of Twitter, of MySpace, and we used it in a environment where, actually, social networks are even stringer. Does that mean that they are more or less appropriate? I think that’s what’s fascinating us.

Certainly in the case of European trade, or me as a businessman in America, I didn’t need to know the person that I was trading with. I working within legislative framework I was working where standards and grades existed, and we knew who and what we were trading.

In Africa, if you’re trading something, how do you insure that you get paid? How do you insure that the item that you’re trading is what you’ve agreed upon? How do you insure that these things are what they say they are? You use networks as a way to reinforce, in this informal sector, that kind of commence and trade.

I think that’s where we’re looking at using technology to reinforce those networks, and make it easier for you to extend your networks beyond, perhaps, the geography or immediate linkages that you currently experience.

Christian: So that would mean the physical presence, the face-to-face exchange, is very important. To which extent do you think it is possible to do something over the Internet, when it comes to something as serious as trader and business-to-business solutions through mobile phones?

Mark Davies: Well I don’t think you do trade over the web, I don’t think that’s what happens. But I think it’s about “how do you exploit some of your social capitol using the web?” I don’t think that means everything suddenly happens on the web, I don’t think that we’re going to see e-commerce anytime soon.

But how do I connect to somebody who might be in a different village, further away? If somebody has said that they have a product that I’m interested in, how can I use some networking tool to get closer to that person, to establish some identity or some reputation?

Perhaps I might find somebody that I already know in their community. And I can ask them “do you know so-and-so? Are they trustworthy? Can I send them the money before they send me the product?” I think that’s the way.

It’s a little more complex, it’s about minimizing risk. You’re using social networking, you’re using technology to minimize your risk. Not to replace complete transactional activities, which will still be, if not face-to-face, it will be mouth-to-mouth. You will be negotiating, you will be arguing, you will be qualifying the deal.

But you can certainly use technology to use society, and used linkages as ways of minimizing your risk. In the same way how Grameen, with finance and loans, has leveraged your community, your network to create social pressure on you to pay back during certain periods, or on certain dates. In the same way, we can use social networks to create peer pressure so that you’re not abusing a trade or commerce relationship, in a similar way, with a stranger.

Christian: Very interesting. You also told me that you, for implementation, that you think about reputation. The keyword is reputation. Can you imagine something like eBay for rating and reputation? To which extent could that work? Especially, also, what could be the role of mobile phones then?

Mark Davies: Well, I think that people trade in Africa based on reputation. They know that “I may not even get the best price from this person, but I know that I will get paid, and I know that I will paid quickly.” These are the sorts of reputations that are important when you are choosing “who might I trade with?”

So the fact is that I think people in Africa, more or less, are simply not digitized. They don’t exist in a database. They have have a SIM card. Do they have a phone number? Yes. Do they have a postal address, or in they in a electoral register? These thing are beginning, but in effect, they aren’t accessible. You can’t find a profile to find out whether this person has abused previous trading relationships or not.

So I think, that as we profile people and put them into these databases, and digitize communities, we can associate content, observations, and commentary about them that can help other people interact with them. And again, reduce their risk. Now whether, in the simplest form, that might mean “are you allowing that community to rank and rate an individual?” We don’t know.

It’s, I think, a very dangerous games to be in. Because people may have all kinds of reasons why they might want to rank you and rate you, that are not particularly objective. So I think we need to think very carefully about who can rank who, under what circumstances. How can we keep it objective? Do we have particular agents, or brokers, that have greater weighting, or ranking, to their own ranking of other individuals?

But very simply, you could see a system whereby I, on a mobile phone, could enter the could enter the mobile phone of the person I’m trading with, and just establish “does the person exist? Are they on a system somewhere? How long have they been on that system? If they’ve been on it for three weeks, can I trust them? And if they’ve been on for three years, maybe there’s some more credibility there. And can you tell me how many complaints have been approved by brokers within that platforms, so that I can see that there is quite some risk with doing a trade with this person?”

So very much like eBay. 73 percent score, because 300 people have ranked this person and had a positive experience. That introduction of reputation into markets in Africa, will have a profound impact on expanding circles of trade.

Christian: That means, of course, more sales for products, and more…

Mark Davies: Yes, I think it’s not only about trying to push product our of Africa, to the rest of the world. It’s within Africa, it’s within the sub-regions. It’s between Ghana and Burkina, that we find trade breaking down because there are barriers of language, barriers of trust, barriers of regulation.

A great deal of thinking is being emphasized on “how do we create inter-regional trade, so that the wealth can be rationed within these African communities? That we can increase production, that we can increase demand within national consumer populations?”

As such, I think these tools, and these technologies, can play a very important role in facilitating that, and allowing cross-border trade with people that you might not have traded with before. Even if it just means “how do I convert a price into my currency?” In northern regions of Ghana, where you’re trying to understand what the price is in Burkina, it’s in French and it’s in CFR, in their currency.

So it’s very difficult to kind of compare. “Should I go a few extra kilometer, and buy or sell that product.” Technology can be used, and it will be on the mobile, to breakdown those kinds of barriers or language and currency, so that you can judge for you self what is the opportunity that is presented.

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It is estimated as much as 80% of data contains geo-referenced information. So, a lot of information can be displayed through maps. Digital maps allow easy ways to present large amounts of data and reduce complexity. Activists have found creative ways to use maps, but also development organizations have to deal with a lot of spatial information. Using geo-referenced through maps can improve transparency, and yet not so many organizations use it.

Difference of digital maps
Digital maps have brought three major changes.

1. Digital maps, in contrast to paper maps, can be combined with all kinds of data even in real time.
2. Nowadays, everybody can access huge data from the public domain and combine these with maps.
3. Citizen maps are created through voluntarily worldwide effort and participation, are freely available and offer new ways for transparency.

The Tactical Tech Collective has a great guide for beginners and comes up with a good description of why maps are so helpful:

“Advocacy organisations worldwide face great challenges. One of these is how best to communicate and disseminate information to communities, staff, founders, governments and other organisations in a world saturated with information, media and advertising. They may also need to keep track of complex and diverse information in their own work.”

By the way, there was also an interesting online forum by New Tactics on ‘information activism’ with many examples and exciting discussions.

But why are make maps so different?
Anders Peders has come up with some simple points in his presentation “Geomapping Making Invisible Data Visible”:

• Recognition: Ooh that’s the place we are talking about!
• A feeling of connection: It’s around the corner!
• Connecting the dots (topics) on complex issues.
• Engagement: This has to change! I want to help out.

Maps for activism and campaigning
Maps have a long history and since the early days maps have been used for many purposes, such as to show changes through bygone times and to manipulate them for propaganda. But never before it has been so easy for individuals and groups to use maps for own purposes. The Economist goes a step further and writes “mapping technology has matured into a tool for social justice.”

There are various projects using maps worldwide and here are a few examples:

Green Map System has engaged communities worldwide to map green living (nature and cultural resources). In one case, a map was created for the environmental hazards and challenges in the greater Banjul area in Gambia. Other maps from Europe are already interactive.

“Eight Maps” has been mapping people in San Fransisco, who donate for a campaign against a law that supports sex marriage, trying this way to put them on the spot. This example also shows how far such campaign might go into privacy issues.

Another great example comes from Worldmapper:

Ecological footprint of each country in the world

© Copyright 2006 SASI Group (University of Sheffield) and Mark Newman (University of Michigan).

Another nice, albeit printed map series, is an Atlas of Radical Cartography, “a collection of 10 maps and 10 essays about social issues from globalization to garbage; surveillance to extraordinary rendition; statelessness to visibility; deportation to migration.” My favorite map is of the only walking track left in Manhatten, where you are not followed by surveillance cameras.

One key role will be played by the OpenstreetMap project. Other than Google Maps, it offers all geocoded information for free and is, equally to Wikipedia, an open project. I am working these days on a local politics project for transparency. The richness of geodata was astonishing and very helpful. It all started with the city of London and is now a worldwide movement. I went to the annual State of the Map conference in Amsterdam, learnt a lot about mapping and filmed some interviews. It was great to meet finally Mikel Maron, foundation member of OpenStreetMaps, who gives fascinating examples of how open maps benefit people living in informal areas in India.

Fredy Rivera from Colombia describes the dangerous work of mapping in Colombia and how they plan to provide better geodata to indigenous groups in the rising competition around water resources.

Arun Ganesh has done some incredible mapping efforts for the city of Chennai in cooperation with the local administration. He even went a step further and build a great website to find public bus connections and organized the printing of maps to post them on local bus stations.

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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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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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I started blogging at the Web2fordev gateway, from which I will crosspost some articles here from time to time to get some further discussions on web2fordev. I wrote the following piece together with Giacomo Rambaldi, the initiator of PPgis (Open Forum on Participatory Geographic Information Systems and Technologies).

Online Mapping for Development: Opportunities and Challenges

Maps are an effective medium which can be used for development projects. They help visualise the spatial distribution of complex problems their inter-relationships and promote awareness. In recent years the availability of free or low-cost digital maps and remote sensed images has unleashed unprecedented ways to make use of spatial information for a variety of purposes. Last week we analysed the potential of open data sources for development. Open maps are an excellent example illustrating the many ways to use and link information in creative ways. In almost any development project, maps can assist in the interpretation of spatial issues, foster awareness and support transparency. Le Monde Diplomatique, offers interesting examples on using maps to visualize complex conflict situations. Unfortunately in developing countries large scale maps are not always easy to obtain, data are often outdated or inaccurate or too expensive. Free digital maps offer an alternative.
Potentials and Opportunities

Here are a few examples:

• The Harvard university runs the AfricaMap project, where one can view the African continent through different data layers. It is a good place to experiment a bit. For example in turning layers on and off for display and adjusting their transparency allows users to superimpose data sets. Resulting thematic maps can be linked from other sites. .

• Back at the 2007 Web2forDev International Conference Paul Saunby presented some great simulations on maps using open data around the issue of climate change. That way he could simulate future forecasts for a specific coast. “Such maps could provide planners with valuable information on where to build new roads or houses. They could also give farmers a better idea of where to plant next season’s crops or how best to irrigate their fields.”

• UNEP offers the Atlas of the Changing Environment: “Through illustrations, satellite images, ground photographs and powered by Google Maps, this interactive media depicts and describes humanity’s past and present impact on the environment.”

• A renouned example for putting maps to work is Ushahidi which means “testimony” in Swahili, where human rights activists offers a platform that crowdsources crisis information. It allows anyone to submit information through text messaging using a mobile phone, email or web form. Resulting data are visualised on thematic maps. Recent initiatives covered the Swine Flu Epidemic and the elections in India. The same free and open source application has been used to spatially document the Gaza war and Eastern Congo conflict.

• The AGCommons project combines mapping with mobile phones and aims to equip “Africa’s farmers with location-specific information to reduce uncertainty and increase returns”. AGCommons was one of the organizers behind the WhereCamp in Nairobi, entirely devoted to mapping.

• Another ambitious project is done by scientists from the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), who want to create the first detailed digital soil map of sub-Saharan Africa. “African soils are among the poorest in the world, and many farmers suffer from chronically low-yielding crops. With accurate soil maps, we find farmers can increase their yields by around 60%, and sometimes double.” (BBC)

But whoever plans to make use of online maps in Africa should have a look at Google maps and Open Street Maps. Both services offer already some impressive maps for some parts of Africa. Google Maps introduced lately a massive update of maps for Western Africa and Open Street Maps (OSM) added more then hundred thousand miles of roads lately.

Google Maps acquires map material and offers to combine it with third party data and on your own website. Open Street Maps goes a step further offers its complete data with all geo reference for free under the creative commons license. The license is currently changed to a an Open Database License Agreement. OSM relies completely on volunteer work. Thousand of GPS equipped mapers go through streets or parks worldwide and contribute to maps. The result are impressive and in some place the same as good as Google maps or even better. Check out how Mikel Maron initiated some detail mapping for Palestine.

Aidworker shows how OSM maps are even much better in developing countries on the example of Kabul and Tiblis. So in the case of OSM you can download entire geodata, whereas in Google you somehow are bind to their digital maps, which allow impressive presentations.

Challenges

There are undoubtedly also some challenges. In the context only some parts and mainly urban areas have been mapped and there is a need for a critical mass of mappers to enter and cross-validate data in order to achieve a satisfactory degree of accuracy. The dilemma is that where maps are needed most, not enough volunteers are available and in other countries such as in Europe, maps have been developed the furthest. The transparency of maps can also be used for critical issues and lead to discrimination as the Times report from Japan.

Nevertheless digital maps have catapulted cartography into new dimensions in recent years. As a most information is location-specific, mapping offers great opportunities to support communication in development. In the past mapmaking was the realm of a few. Today mapmaking has become a widespread activity accessible to experts and non-experts, well minded and otherwise. Collaborative mapmaking offers great opportunities for development organizations to share and collect data.

Words of Caution

Said that a few words of caution are necessary: Users of online mapping facilities should have a close look at the terms of service they sign up before submitting their contributions. In the case of Google Map Maker upon submission of the data, the service provider acquires “perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display, distribute, and create derivative works.

Further, the frenzy of geo-tagging and online publishing of images, videos and other type of information without obtaining prior informed consent from the concerned parties may result in the infringement of privacy and intellectual property rights. With Open Street Maps in the old and new license, the contributed data is free for reuse and can be used for commercial purposes as well.

At WhereCampAfrica, a gathering which brought together geographers, cartographers and mobile mapping specialists to discuss the potential – and difficulties – of the ‘geographic web’ in Africa, participants expressed their concern that indiscriminate online mapping could feed tensions over land ownership and resource use and control (BBC).

The Inportance of Good Practice

In times where online mapmaking has reached exponential growth rates, there is the need to be increasingly aware of the implications and impact of making geo-located information publicly available and on the need to adhere to the ethical principles of privacy, confidentiality, of obtaining prior informed consent and avoiding exposing knowledge holders at risk.  Practical ethics in the context of participatory mapmaking are discussed on an article published on Participatory Learning and Action (PLA) in 2006. The article is available in 12 languages.

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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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I had the honour to be the editor of a new cover publication by the Deutsche Gesellschaft for Technische Zusammenarbeit (German Technical Cooperation). This is one of many pieces the sector project “Knowledge System in Rural Areas” has published in recent years, which I can highly recommend. One is a bulletin on knowledge management in developing institutions and projects. With the recent publication we tried to summarize latest developments and what has happened since the web2fordev conference. We tried to get very different perspectives on the topic and I am glad we could win great authors. Once again thank you for your contributions!

Web 2.0 solutions offer people in rural areas a platform for networking and knowledge exchange. This brochure provides a systematic overview of Web 2.0 experiences made to date in Africa, Asia and Latin America. It serves as a practice-oriented introduction to the theme and discusses both the potentials and the possible limits to the participatory web.

Download publication

Table of Content

• Participatory Web – New Potentials for ICT in Rural Areas (Annemarie Matthess, Christian Kreutz)
• NABUUR: Effective Online Peer-to-Peer Knowledge Transfer (Rolf Kleef, Raul Caceres)
• Innovation, Interaction, Information: Using the Social Web (Peter Ballantyne)
  in Agricultural Development
• Empowering Farmers in India Using the Kisan Blog (Runa Sarkar, Debahsis Pattanaik)
• Web 2.0 in Ecuador: Enhancing Citizenship (Paula Carrión)
• Farmer-led Documentation (Dorine Rüter, Anne Piepenstock)
• Potential of Mobile: Cambodian Farmers Turn to their Phones (Ken Banks, Christian Kreutz)
• The Knowledge Sharing Kit: CGIAR’s Wiki Approach (Gerry Toomey)

Rural areas in developing countries are confronted by many challenges when it comes to information access and participation in knowledge networks. Since its beginnings, the potential of knowledge sharing throughout the Internet has had high hopes, but it has not fulfilled its promises yet. Obvious challenges are low connectivity particularly in rural areas, low literacy rate, lack of media competence to use the web and well function models to provide and target information. Newer technologies such as interactive web tools and the mobile phone offer promising ways to achieve a more inclusive Internet and use the web to learn from each other. Throughout the last years organisations and projects have started experimenting with the “read and write web” and achieved new approaches to use information and communication technologies for development (ICT4D). Different to traditional ICT projects, this approach focuses on the users, it is their engagement and creativity that makes the networking and learning effort vibrant.

Two major questions persist: Where and under which conditions can these ICT’s be best used for highest impact? And, how can ICT’s really be used for a more effectively knowledge sharing and learning? One key lessons learnt of the sector project “knowledge systems in rural areas” was that ICT is one of many instruments to share knowledge particularly in the local context. There are various ways to exchange local or indigenous knowledge, so the instrument of selection has to be best fit in the respective local context. ICT might often not be the best choice and certainly can only be a mean and not the end itself, ideally embedded into an existent system of knowledge transfer according to identified needs and opportunities. In September 2007 GTZ held together with IICD, CTA, CGIAR and FAO the web2fordev conference to explore the potential of the participatory web and bring together some of these experiences. This publication attempts to describe these latest trends and experiences around newest technologies and the network effects for a new ingenuity to improve living conditions.

One such example is Nabuur, a global neighbourhood, which shows new grassroots networks for development presenting innovative models of cooperation worldwide. Rolf Kleef and Raul Caceres describe how solely webbased collaboration can work even with remotely villages in Africa and how they achieved an effective online peer-to-peer knowledge transfer impact. Peter Ballantyne takes in his article a greater look at new emerging forms of cooperation between development institutions worldwide. The social web helps to transcend organisations’ boundaries, makes information resources transparent and gives spaces for innovation for better agricultural development. The social web can be described as people interlinked and interacting with engaging content in a conversational and participatory manner via the Internet (Wikipedia). Ballantyne also compiles a list of all the different examples from a number of organisations’ developments using these interactive web tool impacts.

That is followed by pioneering examples from Asia, Africa and Latin America to use ICT’s for rural development. The Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur describes its many year experiences to empower farmers through blogging. Debashis Pattanaik and Runa Sarkar describe their efforts to bridge the agriculture research in India with daily needs of farmers. The Kisan Blog has contributed in restoring experiences of rural farmers in India. Another such example is Radio La Luna, which uses different media forms to strengthen the collective memory of Ecuadorian society on key moments in its social struggle through rescuing, digitising, systematising and disseminating documents of various types about main events in recent Ecuadorian history. This engaging approach makes them one of the most visited websites in the country.

But not in any case the implementation and usage of Web 2.0 tools work that easily and might not be the appropriate solution. Dorine Rüter and Anne Piepenstock present a project around farmer-led documentation (FLD), which highlights an alternative way of sharing cultivation practices through digital media. FLD extends existing knowledge sharing forms through digital media to highlight local knowledge and make it explicit for a larger audience.

The last practical examples present the increasing potential of mobile phones on the example of decentralized SMS based information exchange. It shows how Cambodian farmers can benefit from such a free and open source solution to make their mobile tools for better transparency and, lastly, improve their incomes. Ken Banks also shows how local software and hardware solutions are particularly for mobile phones’ key in the future, because theirs are developed around real needs and made to work in environments with little or no connectivity.

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Most of my readers know how enthusiastic I am about the potential that Internet has; being this either social web, social media, web2.0 or however you want to name it. But if I look back at what has happened in the development field during the last year, I have to say that frankly I am quite disappointed about how little has been happening. I expected the disruptive potential to be more exploited. Particularly in development organizations hardly anything has changed, and the wave of open networks, transparency or the two way conversation is rather a ripple.

Little innovation from development organizations
I remember the participants’ enthusiasm during last year’s web2fordev conference in Rome and I have also seen some interesting initiatives since, but the strong push towards taking advantage of the potential is not there. Critically, you can say that yes, the world bank has been playing a little bit around with blogs, UNHCR celebrates itself with Google map for fundraising, and Eldis has now a community, as well as Development Gateway has now ratings for articles, but here, in Germany, I cannot even find one convincing example from dozens of organizations working in the development field. But I know these are at least some first steps.

What are the reasons?
I think the challenges especially within the organizational context are multi fold. Just to name a few:

• Technical challenges: Almost all development organizations rely on software systems, which do not offer social media tools. Sharepoint is just one example of how it will never work to have an open knowledge sharing environment.
• Being it the communication department, the IT or any other departments – many share their refusal to a participative web. Staff should be offered to decision themselves what to published and which tools to use. No way! – for some people the social web scenario is still a nightmare.
• It is not on their screens! Most key players or management teams have not yet understood the potential of the web in total, although development organizations work internationally and engage in numerous networks. The Internet is still seen as a necessary evil. Generation gap?
• No real commitment for donor harmonization. One key pillar of aid effectiveness should be to exchange knowledge as open and transparent as possible. There are hardly any attempts to open data resources between organizations and for the public domain. Most content is still copyright, although it is for non-profit.
• Adaptation: It simply takes much more time. The learning curve of organization all together is simply really slow. The slower the bigger the organizations are.
• Open knowledge sharing is still not high on the agenda. Information silos are common and knowledge is kept closed north and south of the development field.
• The fear and distress to engage online, plus information overload and too little training for staff to show the potential to publish and exchange knowledge in networks.
• Too little interest to engage in dialogue and recognize the importance of local knowledge. User-generated content means that I also am able to listen as an organization.

What could be different?
A will to go public with the work, knowledge and problems of development organizations. Instead, they sat around in Ghana for aid effectiveness and have achieved so little. One step would be to acknowledge that problems are too complex, open channels of organization and use new ways to work together. Being it a Wikipedia for development or different sub themes such as Water wiki. But knowledge is preserved and kept in organizations. Information sources should be combined from different perspectives, instead, each organizations has its own websites. There is not even an attempt to combine data resources between bigger organizations. If you look for instance, the wisdom of crowd potential is not yet exploited. For project development or problem solution, hardly anything has been tested or experimented. In recent years amazing market and exchange places in all kinds of fields have been established, but the development sector still offers very little.  I will elaborate that further in another post.

An explanation
In my opinion the easiest explanation is that the social innovation within or through the web flourishes best in open autonomous environments. This can be rarely offered in an organizational context. If you look at the most fascinating projects and initiatives of the last year, since the web2fordev conference, you will see that they are all grass root driven – mobile phones in Africa, human rights issues, citizen journalism, mashups or networks for development. So I wonder what could then be the role of development organizations to participate in the social innovation? How do you think web2.0 in development organizations will progress? Do you agree with the above statement or was I too critical?

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Some days ago, I had a talk with a colleague from another development organization about web2fordev. We were asking whether web2.0 can really make a difference in development work? We both agreed it can, but we were unsure whether the organizational culture has to change first or the external pressure will push for openness?

When is the two way conversation coming then?

He made a great point — ‘blogs could provide a dialogue between headquarters of development organizations directly with projects and particular beneficiaries.’ A conversation could start about what has happened, what was accomplished and what do both sides think about it. I asked him how long does he think this could take to become reality, to which he replied, “ten years.”

I disagree and think it could take less time. Why? Because I think the potentials of the web will sooner or later unfold peer pressure. Don’t get me wrong. I do not mean by some small tools such as blogs alone, but the ease of engagement and the new potentials for collective action. The following example show possible implications for the development sector.

The power of mapping

Inspired from a post by Erik Hersman called Activist Mapping I came up with another thought or better explanation for this kind of pressure towards development organization, for example, looking at development results — the impact of foreign aid. Easterly describes it as a key challenge for development aid and monitoring results is high on the agenda of development organizations. Another example is the discussion around aid effectiveness and the Paris declaration.

The great potential of collective action for transparency

So, back to my thoughts. Check out first a project by Erik Hersman, Juliana Rotich and Daudi Were called Ushahidi and take a look at how they made it possible by all challenges that people in Kenya, during the post-election conflict, reported through their mobile phone about the critical situation. This way they collected information from all over Kenya and documented incidents such as riots, deaths, property loss, looting, rape etc. This degree of transparency was hardly achieved by the media and certainly not intended to be publicised by the government.

Bottom up measuring of development results

Now imagine the potential to measure development projects from a grassroot level. Or to collect information about how many governmental services have arrived in villages. This could be possible by harnessing the wisdom of crowd.

• Using mobile phones to collect information.
• Present all information on a website with maps and databases.
• Use the website to connect the people who send information and aim to get more accurate information.

Beneficiaries of projects could collect information in teams, send feedbacks to the platform and create their own map of development projects or their timeline with accurate information on how government services are fulfilling their duties. This kind of transparency should be an all-win-situation.

Some might think this will never happen, but I think it will. It is already happening and to my understanding we are just at the beginning of this kind of collective action. What do you think?

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It is quite exciting to see that the United Nations and their different branch-organizations are slowly harnessing the potential of the web in innovative ways. I have previously blogged about the idea of a huge interesting UN aggregator project and the UNDP water wiki during the last web4dv conference. To offer openly information sources and especially to visualize information is essential to understand our complex word from different perspectives.

Gapminder is a great example for that. And another one is the tactical technology collective with this booklet: Visualizing Information for Advocacy: An Introduction to Information Design.

It is promising to see that UN organizations such as UNEP follows the same steps and offers the Atlas of Our Changing Environment on Google Maps:

Through illustrations, satellite images, ground photographs and powered by Google Maps, this interactive media depicts and describes humanity’s past and present impact on the environment.

Today also UNHCR announced a mashup with Google Earth Outreach program, “which punveiled a powerful new online mapping programme that provides an up-close and multifaceted view of some of the world’s major displacement crises and the humanitarian efforts aimed at helping the victims.”

Here is the actual site, but you need Google Earth to load it.

Patrick Philippe Meier writes about it: “the next step for an iRevolution is to enable refugees to access this information on a regular basis. This need not require high-technology. The information could be broadcast by radio, for example.” I believe it will become even more effective when refugees themselves can add information and update those visualized contexts from their perspective.

One other excellent source was recently launched, UNdata, with over 55 million records and comprehensive statistics.

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If you want to find decent information about development aid, Focuss.info is a good source to start from. Basically, it works with a customized Google search, which allows you to search only certain websites — in this case, within many websites relevant to development aid. Focuss.info, an initiative by the Overseas Development Institute ISS institute and in particular Richard Lalleman, goes one step further indexing websites from a community of social bookmarkers. So, through my del.icio.us account, I can contribute to the search easily with my bookmarks. Through a RSS feed, all of these bookmarks are added to the search engine.

The other day I got an email from Richard, telling me I was the social bookmarker of the month. Many thanks! To me, social bookmarking is one of the key tools of the participative web, which gives me valuable information. So, if you also share bookmarks and are interested in topics related to development, you should join this community. Send an email to: info(dot)focuss(at)gmail(dot)com.

And to conclude, for more information about the web2fordev conference, Arne Wunder and Paul Matthews gave a presentation about the evolutionary history of focuss.info.

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The discussion about web2.0 and development is divided roughly into two groups. One argues for the potential of the social web and that finally the users shape the web and applications to their benefit. And the other side wonders what does web2.0 make for a difference in the field of ICT4D, and doubt whether the chit-chatting over blogs will change anything, and what is so new about it anyway. The skeptic people believe that connectivity shall be a primary concern. In my view, the latest developments are promising, whether they are called web2.0 is secondary. New innovations can make a difference in connectivity, however, the danger of repeating old mistakes exists.

I remember when Tariq Khokar Jackson from Aptivate said that the Web2fordev conference website can, with its 300 kB, take up to a minute to load from a dial up connection. In an interview, he underlines the importance of simplicity in webdesign and its obstacle for connectivity. To get an impression of what that means, you can use the Aptivate Low Bandwidth Simulator. I checked it through CNN.com and it took 4 minutes to load the website with a 20kb-normal-African-university-connection. I, myself, had an interesting experience when I was in South Africa last year. I was faced with volume packages for internet. Suddenly, a YouTube video was not a choice, and Skype calls were much shorter. I had to think it twice whether to go on overloaded fancy news sites or not.

So, what are some of the potentials and obstacles? I tried to list the points I could think of and hope you will have some other points to add.

Potentials

• Websites become more lightweight, the separation of layout and content gives more ways to access.
• Device independent publishing such as RSS feed.
• Beta mode of websites focuses on its users and offers multiple channels to distribute and exchange information from Email to SMS.
• Mashups allow to mix and filter content before it is delivered to its users. That means standard searches, feeds or information channels can be individually subscribed to get relevant content.
• The fusion of mobile phones and the web allow new ways of access and interaction. Market information systems are one way, but tools, such as Twitter, open a two-way conversation.
• There is a boost in languages, especially through open source software. Excellent publishing software is freely available in dozens of different languages such as Arabic, Swahili, etc. Web2.0 has a boost in forming own distinct language spaces.
• The personal computer plays less of a role with new innovations such as software on a USB flash sticks or web based software.

Kevin Painting makes a good point in his post (Update: not accessible anymore):

In a delicious irony, the Web2.0 paradigm to move the “desktop” from the PC to the Internet has created (for some) a host of seemingly old fashioned problems of connectivity which, of course, are the daily lot of many in developing countries. To wit, in a Web2.0 world, when all your programs and files are on the Internet, what do you do when you can’t connect to the Internet? There is much activity now to develop applications that work seamlessly in an on-line/off-line world that will be of enormous utility to developing countries where lack of access to the Internet is not an occasional nuisance but a daily reality. The big players have been very active here: Google with its Gears application, Adobe with Air, Microsoft with Silverlight. We can only look to developments here with heightened anticipation.

By the way, this paragraph is part of a blog post series about a “One Laptop Per Farmer” by Hans Jörg Neun, who is director of CTA.

Obstacles

• The major concern certainly is the bandwidth issue which, nowadays, websites need. Websites not only have many photos but also widgets and many third party applications.
• Podcasts and video streaming is in many places extremely pricy. For example, in South Africa only volume tariffs are offered.
• To interact fully in the particapative web, one needs to be frequently online. Most of it becomes even instant communication and leaves out those who have only sporadic access.
• Most resources are invested in new fancy and high bandwidth applications, and less into innovative lightweight applications for small connectivity.
• Often, important rules of usability are left aside and websites are confusing and overloaded.

I am sure there are more points and hope you can add some. But, I think there are further challenges, which I wrote in a post bak in January.

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In the mobile and development list of Dgroups, Prof. Richard Heeks wrote this message recently:

There’s a notion that “m-Development” will be more attuned to the needs and context of users than was the initial round of ICT4D projects (what we might call “ICT4D 1.0″). But I wonder if, in fact, some of the some mistakes aren’t being repeated. I’ve come across a couple of project descriptions in recent days – using mobiles in the health sector in South Africa; using them in the agricultural sector in West Africa – where the projects have been designed and driven by technical staff, and which turned out to be technically well beyond both the technological and human infrastructural readiness of their intended user settings. This techno-centric approach was a characteristic of the first ICT4D projects, and it would be disappointing if the m-development field equally started to get ahead of itself; forgetting that the main uses in poor communities are voice and, to some degree, SMS on basic handsets.

This triggered an interesting discussion among some of the people who were in the list. For example, Steve Song, who has an interesting new blog, wrote:

I think you will always get technocentrics chasing new ideas and applications of technology without a clue about development, just as you will get development people chasing new ideas without a clue about technology.

I think that the difference with m-development is that you stand a) a closer chance of developing something scalable, affordable in developing countries and b) you potentially open the doors to innovation simply by putting tools in play, witness beeping, SMSing, air-time transfers, m-Pesa. Jan Chipchase of Nokia Research points out that Nokia has no idea what the future of mobiles looks like. They are trying to design to enable innovation.

And Patricia Mechael added to the discussion:

Often times, people start with the technology and look for ways to apply it to address development objectives rather than looking at development objectives and then identifying tools (high and low tech) to help leverage their achievement. In relation to mobile phones one area that has not been well studied or documented is the role of basic two-way voice communication within a broad range of development activities.

Anthony Makumbi emphasized the importance of livelihood:

My view is the only way this can be avoided is to build technology on existing livelihood development programs. Technology comes in to enhance particular areas of the livelihood programs. Here you are introducing technology to the end user with a direct meaning unlike projects designed from the blue with different sentiments and imaginations, with no direct fit with the normal livelihoods of communities. With that said, with the mobile phone there is great potential in getting a direct community fit and with the current penetration rates of the Mobile phone in Africa, there is a mass opportunity in the adoption rate within rural communities.

In my opinion, ICT4D had many challenges in the past, but nowadays there are more opportunities to do differently. Two decisive developments are mobile phones and web2.0. One allows finally massive access, sharing information and communication technologies, and the other brings the potentials for collaboration and a multitude of creative applications to its users.

Ken Banks from kiwanja.net has an fascinating post about “Social mobile and the long tail“, where he argues the great potential of low cost solutions with mobile phones, and made this excellent graphic. He writes, “Solutions are tantalisingly close, but without the tools and a practical helping hand, most of these NGOs remain passive observers.”
Two interesting events around this event will be held this year. One is a conference organized by W3 called “Workshop on the Role of Mobile Technologies in Fostering Social Development” and another is the MobileActive08: Unlocking the Potential of Mobiles for Social Impact.

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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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Continuing with the web4dev conference in Nairobi, I wanted to add some more personal perspectives. During the conference, on the second day, twenty different workshops were offered. We, Nynke and I, gave a presentation that same day, and as with most other sessions, not many people showed up. We highlighted some lessons we had learnt at the web2fordev conference and showed different examples which will be described further in a future post. From my impressions, many tools of social media were presented, but the philosophy of openness and sharing and the implications for a new era of collaboration had not yet arrived to the web4dev conference. Still, there were promising signs such as the water wiki from UNDP.

There were a lot of interesting people, as well as some examples worth mentioning. One interesting workshop I attended was about the idea for a huge United Nations aggregator, “One Source,” collecting information from all UN organizations. All these agencies such as UNHCR, UNAIDS –just to mention a few– have different IT-systems, content management systems, etc. The idea is to develop common schemes (XML) so all information is available in RSS-Feeds. These feeds would be a independent platform for different devices and can be sorted through all the existing ontologies or taxonomies from the different UN-organisations. Quite an ambitious project, which shall be launched in January 2010. One aspect about it that I liked in particular, is that it will allow to localize feeds, which can be nicely done with mashups through yahoo pipes.

Another session, which was also very interesting, was held by Christopher Fabian from UNICEF, whom I unfortunately missed. But luckily he came to our presentation and told us a bit about his interesting projects. It is all about giving young people a voice in developing countries through the web.

These tools “include using mobile phones to collect data from young people, bootable USB sticks that turn any laptop into a radio station, and technologies to allow people with landlines or mobile phones to record stories onto the Internet.”

For that, one great example is “Our Stories,” which is a “collaborative project that leverages new digital technologies to help capture and preserve individual stories from around the world.” They had a nice video showing to many storytellers a flight around the world; unfortunately it is not on the web. Another tool, which was mainly developed with partner organizations in South Africa, is a poll feature that can be accessed and retrieved via mobile phones.

The first day of the discussion was very much about connectivity and the great challenges on which especially many countries in African focus in that regard. But from having different conversations with many different participants, I concluded once again that the situation varies from country to country. Whereas in some countries through competition the prices are very high, in others, such as Sudan, there are four providers competing for low prices and offering the mobile web everywhere in Sudan.

I also met Helene Karamagi and beside from exchanging some iphone hacking tips, I asked her about the ICT4D in Uganda. She gave me some interesting insights I would like to share here. From her point of view, Africa is going to face promising times when it comes to ICT4D. Her sister runs the famous Brosdi example presented on the web2fordev conference. The following three points she highlighted for Uganda:

1. In Uganda, by next year, all local districts will be connected to the Internet. This will enable a new way for information sharing between rural and urban areas.
2. This means that there will be a high demand for web solutions and all sorts of applications that will lead to a rise on new enterprises in that domain.
3. Whereas in the beginning it was to NGOs, slowly the private sector is getting involved asking how to contribute to ICT4D. It is entrepreneurs, who try to develop business models for connectivity and web solution, which make profit and are potentially more sustainable.

Once again, it shows that information and communication technologies develop very different on industrialized countries. Whereas in Germany companies watch out for the best ring-tone business model, many essential, valuable and innovative ICT-solution are on the rise in developing countries. David Galipeau, who I met first on the little barcamp kind of event before the conference, underlines this development and says that it is on the eighty per cent of the south where the future innovations will come from and not the 20 per cent of the north. By the way he just started a foundation called eighty20.org.

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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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