ICTlogy

I’m back from the I Jornadas sobre participación social y nuevas tecnologías: Cibervoluntariado y Ciberactivismo [I Seminar on social participation and new technologies: cyvervolunteering and cyberactivism] that was held in the University of Almería.

And the people I found there – organization and speakers – were just G.R.E.A.T.

Teresa González de la Fe (Universidad de la Laguna) talked about the Informational Society and citizenship. I guess I did not agree with her almost in anything. I mean, we share the same approach, but I guess I’m far more optimistic in the benefits of the Internet for development, cooperation, citizenship, etc. than she is.

Anyway, the main conclusion I got from her is that I have to reinforce my academic background to support some of my beliefs, opinions, etc. ;)

Cite of her speech (sorry for the translation): “those who focus on their personal affairs, set aside the public ones; and forgetting public affairs brings tyranny” Alexis de Tocqueville

Paloma Ortega (Fundación Chandra) spoke about their sites and I paid special attention to their best practices section about volunteering management and their project on corporate volunteering. All in all, not really related to online volunteering… but interesting enough.

Ignacio García Cáceres (Almería 2005) showed us their project of online training for their volunteers. A good practice… but I cannot understand why they did it using WebCT, as it did not seem to be a very big project the one of online training (it was good, but not that big given the costs of WebCT…)

Yolanda Rueda and Jorge Beltrán (Cibervoluntarios) presented their experience with ICT Volunteers (we debated whether the term “cybervolunteer” means “online volunteer” or “ICT volunteer” – I prefer the former)

Afterwards, during the dinner, we talked about communication skills, the Johari Window and Tom Peters and his theories on business management and marketing. Once again, I should reinforce my academic general knowledge of things everything ;)

Viola Krebs (ICVolunteers) closed the seminar talking about the role of ICT volunteers and volunteers in general in society and, in particular, how the subject is dealt with within the framework of the WSIS.

She presented the CyberVolunteers program that “recruits, trains and coordinates volunteers with information and communication technology skills for development” and the Conference Reports program that “is a cross-sector partnership that directly involves volunteers in carrying results around the world [and to] to create, review and post summaries of sessions, articles and interviews”.

She pointed something about e-Volunteering in the Library section in the World Wide Volunteer site, but it does not seem to be working :(

Instead, there’s a good bunch of links in the e-Volunteering links section.

Another link: CIVICUS, “an international alliance dedicated to strengthening citizen action and civil society throughout the world”.

Umpf, quite a chaotic explanation of the seminar. Forgive me: it’s monday morning…

Previous post: New look for ICTlogy

Next post: Reconceptualizing the Digital Divide