ICTlogy

On July 14th, 2011, I was at the University of Málaga (Spain) where I spoke at the summer course Acción ciudadana y voluntariado en la nueva sociedad global: voluntariado y universidad (Citizen action and volunteering in the new global society: volunteering and university).

My session was called Volunteering from home, the office or the train: online volunteering, social networking sites and smartphones and was preceded by an excellent conference by Luis Arancibia Tapia, where he described how society is changing and how this crisis we are suffering since 2008 is not your usual crisis, but most likely a point of no-return.

That very same point — change and dire transformation of the society — is the one I used to base my speech on. Instead of providing zillions of examples of online volunteering, I tried to explain why is now possible to volunteer online, how are people behaving on the Net and what is the (different) nature of online volunteering and online citizen action.

My conference had four parts:

1. The change of framework: what has been the impact from an industrial to a digital society.
2. The direct macro-impact of that change: how have some concepts and practices in development cooperation been radically transformed due to the digitization of information and communications.
3. The indirect micro-impact of that change: how have some personal practices in development cooperation, volunteering and citizen activism changed, especially in the nature of their contribution to charities and non-profit initiatives.
4. Some examples, a suggestion for a categorization and a comment on the Arab Spring.

Please see below my presentation. You can also visit my bibliographic file for Volunteering from home, the office or the train: online volunteering, social networking sites and smartphones (the original title) for downloads both in English and Spanish.

I was invited to present a keynote during the VII General Assembly of the Spanish Red Cross, on 26 March 2011. I was asked to talk about what should nonprofits do in view of the proliferation of social networking sites, online participation, cyber-activism and so.

In such cases, I generally try to avoid the usual showcase of “best practices” and go instead to what causes made possible those “best practices”. It’s a tougher option, as it often implies a trade-off from the “wow factor” towards the “what-is-this-guy-talking-about factor”. On the positive side, I pursue the trade-off from the “let’s-copy-these-actions” towards “I-know-why-they-worked-and-I-understand-how-to-design-them-myself”.

On the other hand, the representatives of the Spanish Red Cross were choosing their President and the members of the boards of directors of different regional levels. That was a very strong reason to shift towards more strategic issues instead of strictly practical and punctual applications of social media and nonprofit technology.

Thus, the structure of my presentation was explaining:

1. What caused the transition from an Industrial Society to an Information Society;
2. how people were leveraging their access to information and communication technologies for activism and self-organization;
3. what was being the impact like for institutions, especially those that represented people’s interests: governments, political parties and non-governmental organizations.

In a nutshell, the main message was that the Internet, cellphones, social networking sites, etc. are not a matter of how you inform your stakeholders, how you communicate with your volunteers or how you convince your donors, but a dire change of the game-board that requires serious strategic reflections and decisions in the very short term. Evidence shows that many institutions will either go through a deep process of transformation or will simply disappear, and NGOs are included in the set.

More information and downloads

• Browse the slides in Spanish.
• Download the slides in Spanish (, 20MB).
• Browse the slides in English.
• Download the slides in English (, 20MB).
• Bibliographic reference.

Andalucía Compromiso Digital is a volunteering project to foster the use of Information and Communication technologies amongst the Andalusian citizenship, hence, an ICT volunteering project.

On March 27 to 29, 2009, the first Encuentro Andaluz de Voluntariado Digital (Andalusian Conference on ICT Volunteering) will take place in Jaén (Spain) to reflect about the past and draw applied strategies for the future.

I have been asked to make a speech about the impact of the Network Society in our daily lives, especially in everything related to access to knowledge and how this fact determines participation and engagement. I am to frame two following speeches by Juan Sebastián Fernández Prados on volunteering in the Network Society, and Pilar Jericó on personal skills for volunteers to network with people in risk of e-exclusion, thus why I’m standing on a quite theoretical level.

My speech has two main parts:

1. A first part on development, network society and the different natures of the digital divide.
2. And a second part on the role of knowledge and digital literacy in determining e-inclusion and, most important, social exclusion.

More information

• Citation and downloads: Access to knowledge and digital divide.
• Citation and downloads: Acceso al conocimiento y la brecha digital.
• For a totally practical level, please see Telecenter 2.0 and Community Building

Acknowledgements:

I want to thank Isabel Díaz for her kind invitation and Antonio “Nono” Pérez for just making it possible.

Slides and references for my conference at the 6º Congreso Andaluz de Voluntariado (6th Andalousian Volunteering Congress) in Sevilla (Spain). I thank the invitation of Fran Santolaya, who is, with Isidro Maya, coordinator of e-Voluntas, a referent blog and discussion list about ICTs in nonprofits: online volunteering, ICT4D, etc.

Citation and downloads:

References:

Slides and references for my seminar at the PhD programme of the Social Psychology Department at the University of Sevilla (Spain). I thank the invitation of Isidro Maya Jariego, who is, by the way, doing a terrific work on personal and community networks.

Citation and downloads:

References:

iCities is a Conference about Blogs, e-Government and Digital Participation.
Here come my notes for session V.

Round Table: Connected Citizens. Cyberactivism.
Chairs: Rosa Jiménez Cano

Alana Moceri, president Democrats Abroad Spain

First time that primary elections can be done on-line. This means increasing the number of countries where voting is possible from 34 up to 161.

Online, everyone can contribute: absolutely everyone can upload videos to YouTube, photos to Flickr or text to any blog. Pro: democratization. Con: loss of control over your campaing.

Fundrising is key and is a good proxy to test the health of a political campaign.

Obama’s discourse is really 2.0: you can, empowerment, engagement. MyBarackObama.com is a good example of it, where you can even earn points as a reward for your implication and helping recruit other people. This really builds up a formidable base of activists.

Marshall Ganz: It’s values, not only interests, what drives people to take part in civic movements.

Sebastián Lorenzo

Fundación Generación Libre: how voters connect to social networks in Argentina. Not centralized, not decentralized, not distributed, but complex networks. They best way to boost complex networks is to build software that enhances the connection between peripheral nodes to the central ones (leaders).

Cyberactivism: activities to help bridge the digital world with the off-line world, with impact in the “real” world.

Cybermilitant: someone commited in the long-run with “someting beyond” cyberactivism. We’ve yet to find out what this really means.

Noticias LA: a distributed network of volunteers, living in all coutries of Latin America and Spain, selecting local news and feeding them to the site, acting as a news agency 2.0.

César Calderón

Social mediators are no more the protagonists in the Administration-Citizenry interaction: it’s the citizen the one that has to lead the approach towards their Government.

We are used to long run political campaigns, this is why, how and what for political parties were created for. But now people gather around more ephemeral and ad hoc actions. And, indeed, the top-down way of designing engagement has given place to a more bottom-up way of participating. Horizontal replaces vertical.

Antoni Gutierrez-Rubi

Goals of activism: have to be possible to reach and well planned. Assessment is a must and often overridden because of the speed of times and lack of time to reflect.

Proposals: agitation is good, but also reflection. A choral voice (i.e. making the same proposal from different places and points of view, but the same one) might be desirable now and then. Continuity and orientation of the discourse would help in the long-run engagement of our target.

Arguments: less opinion, more arguments. Ideas are good as long as they are “well packed” and backed with arguments.

Leadership: hyperleadership is good to avoid fragmentation, but has to leave room for shared leadership. Of course, leadership to achieve changes and goals. The ROI on leadership has to be positive and as big as possible. What matters is not getting there alone and early, but with everyone and on time (León Felipe).

Activists: they have to feel comfortable working without parties and organizations. But linked to the causes by following some basic rules. ARTivists: someone to be taken into account to help in the “packaging” of our ideas and arguments.

Plurality: are we in a networked world without boundaries… or sheltered in our trenches? Open minds.

Influences: credible, proximate, creating opinion. We have to impact “reality 1.0″, not think from and for the minority.