ICTlogy

Next December 3, 4 and 5 I’ll be in Trieste at the Rich-Media Webcasting Technologies for Science Dissemination Workshop, organized by the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics Science Dissemination Unit.

The whole set of names is quite eerie — for a social scientist like me — but once read you realize this is a very interesting workshop on scientific diffusion in developing countries, being ICT4D a deepest commitment of the organizers.

As you can see in the programme, I’ll be teaching three seminars, namely:

• Conferences 2.0: Scientists and Web 2.0, where I’ll speak about the change of paradigm in scholarly communication, mainly inspired by my Conferences 2.0 article in July
• Web 2.0 and the Digital Divide, where I will try to summarize everything I learned and thought about while in the Web2forDev Conference in Rome last September
• The Personal Research Portal, where we’ll try to put into practice — even if just slightly — my reflections published in my article The personal research portal: web 2.0 driven individual commitment with open access for development

I have to sincerely thank Marco Zennaro for insisting that the Conferences 2.0: Scientists and Web 2.0 speech became the keynote/opening session speech, which really, really, really honors me so much. As I’ve been asked to provide a summary to publicize the speech, I wonder whether this session will be open to anyone. Hence, here comes the outline:

Conferences 2.0: Scientists and Web 2.0

Information and Communication Technologies, the Internet, and most especially, the so called Web 2.0 have radically changed – at least potentially – the way scholarly diffusion is or can be made.

On one hand, the traditional constrains of space, time, publishing costs, etc. have almost completely disappeared or have entered huge economies of scale. Diffusion is – or, again, could be considered – easier and cheaper than ever.

On the other hand, and partly due to the former aspects, we are beginning to see an increasing demand for more accountability and transparency of research and researchers, resulting in both a claim for a deeper and wider popularization of science and a call for better and denser research networks.

The seminar “Conferences 2.0: Scientists and Web 2.0” will be split into three parts.

First part, Web 2.0, will point out the main characteristics of the Web 2.0 – a part that can be overridden depending on the knowledge on the issue by the attendees.

Second part, What’s a Conference 2.0, will to summarize how things have changed in the field of scholarly diffusion in the last years or, more specifically, since the advent of the Internet, the web browser and Web 2.0 applications.

Las part, the bulk of the seminar, will draw the “perfect” conference – and/or scientific diffusion strategy – by revisiting some good practices and some interesting applications existing around.

Anyhow, the focus and the stress will be put in both the change of paradigm in scholarly communication and the creation of a showcase of real practices and tools that are setting up this new path.

Christian Kreutz writes about the first day at the Web4Dev conference taking place in Nairobi. Some subjects he highlights — and I just list:

• Connectivity a main issue for development
• Broadband the second derivative of the connectivity issue
• RSS feeds and e-mail working great with low/poor connectivity
• Other Web 2.0 applications worsening the connectivity/broadband problem
• ironically, wireless technologies might provide better connectivity to rural areas than urban suburbs have, where wiring or even “wifiing” is way difficult because of lack of formal settlements
• The (positive or negative) role of leadership
• Need for local content
• No charity, but development: solutions must work in the market, so they are sustainable

Call it synchronicity: in the last 10 days three major events have taken place in the field of Open Access:

• Berlin 5 Open Access: From Practice to Impact: Consequences of Knowledge Dissemination
• Open Education 2007: Localizing and Learning
• Web2forDev – Participatory Web for Development

Not surprisingly, people such as Peter Suber or Scott Leslie have already noted that there were some connections between these three conferences, some crossover interests.

After having attended the Web2forDev Conference and being right now preparing my speech for the UOC UNESCO Chair in Elearning Fourth International Seminar: Web 2.0 and Education, I can’t help but think on equal terms: open access is — will be… should be — the main axis of Science, Education and Development.

I think that these three fields — or social spaces — have several things in common, and are converging as time goes by and the Knowledge Society settles and becomes more pervasive in our lives:

• It’s about knowledge creation and knowledge diffusion, be it positive or normative, be it basic or applied.
• It’s all about networks of knowledge creation and distribution: scientists, educators, students, nonprofits, development agencies, communities of beneficiaries, counterparts… (I don’t like some of this jargon, but is the best I could find).
• They’re unbalanced networks that are becoming more balanced in account of the contribution made by individual nodes to the whole network: senior vs. junior scientists, teachers vs. students, nonprofits vs. counterparts, donors vs. receivers…
• They are networks challenged by meritocracy: the challenge on scholar networks is evident; but also educational networks, where knowledge expires very quickly and younger generations are proner to learn some things better than older ones; or development networks, where “localization” of strategies, of content, brings relevance to the end user, a passive agent in former development strategies.
• It’s about adding up: standing on ye shoulders of Giants to see further in science; more (and better) educational resources; synergies and best/good practices with scarce resources to achieve efficiency and efficacy in development projects.
• And it’s about adding to remain, contributing to the network not to be send off the network: not just in terms of relevance (i.e. meritocracy) but of pure belonging (i.e. subsistence). What you give is what you get.

Content — data, information, knowledge — is input, capital and output in a knowledge society, and the essence of science, education and development as it is required to draw strategies, to feed knowledge production, to put findings into practice and transfer them. And because it happens in a networked society you’ll be transferring them on and through a network. And my opinion is that this will be more and more difficult to do with undisclosed procedures. Thus why open access.

Two questions launched to the audience. Gathered on the fly, some might be redundant:

The most inspiring thing that you will take home from the conference

• So much going on
• All about people
• Discovered progress achieved in Africa
• Interdisciplinarity, so many people engaged/interested in these issues
• RSS feeds to unlock the information on websites
• The Web 2.0 allows the dissemination of content
• Some people have already implemented some Web 2.0 applications
• But there’s still a lot of work to be done, and you have to work hard
• Even if there are strong barriers to Web 2.0 implementation, most people in developing countries believe that once you have infrastructures (computers, connectivity) the remaining barriers (literacy, change of mind…) will be easily overcome
• These technologies can bring welfare as they are addressed to people, and once the “wall” of the digital divide falls, there’ll be a revolution
• The real and huge possibilities of blending everything together

How will you take what you have learned and apply what you have learned

• The infrastructure needs to catch up with the applications
• Spread the word of Web 2.0
• Start tagging out of the established taxonomies — and adding web2fordev tag to the list of possible tags to be used on own content
• Rethink all strategies
• Think on how to apply those tools in your day-to-day work
• And more especially how to apply them on the field
• Make information circulate in pervasive ways, give it life, deattach it from the source and let if fly

Five things you need to know to get to the Web 2.0

• Write: Blogs
• Store: Wikis
• Categorize: Tagging, keywords
• Spread: Feeds
• Get it all together: mashups

Main challenges

• People centered
• Access
• Participation, motivation
• Content creation, dissemination
• Evaluate and assess: what’s the impact, the change, the progress

More info

• Some reflections at Zarah’s Minor Contributions, some for Day 1 and some for Day 2 including conclusions on the conference
• ICT Journalist, Brenda Zulu’s blog

Last words

On my own side, I cannot but sincerely thank the organization (and the attendants too!) for such a huge effort and for such a brilliant success. I really enjoyed the conference and learned from everyone to my limits. Thank you! :)

Michael Saunby
Climate Change Mashups

Climate change: not a change in the climate but (also) a change in the variability of the climate.

By looking at the map applications, it is easier to see where e.g. there’ll be water stress in the (nearest) future, or human health crisis due to high ozone levels.

Mashups are about e.g. enough people collecting, reusing and distributing public sector information on already existing (commercial) online applications — e.g. Google Earth — so anyone can contribute again and close the loop — and make the scope of diffusion way wider.

It’s possible to mashup news RSS feeds with Google Earth so you can geolocate where the news took place.

To my (provoking) “concern” that you might be putting all your eggs in one basket, and relying too much on third parties’ applications to publish your content, Michael Saunby answers that it is just about tracking those applications as they appear and evolve, and go along with them, not that you invest on them, but just use them — use them for your own purposes and with all the benefits they have.

More info:

• WeMapr
• Lat Long Blog
• Google Code, to find out about the mashup editor (and other Google open API related things)

Patrizia Monteduro
GeoNetwork OpenSource: Geographic data sharing for everyone

Provide a common platform and standards to (online) manage geographic data, improving accessibility while monitoring quality.

Features

• Metadata and data publication and distribution
• Metadata and data search
• Interactive access to maps
• Metadata editing and management
• Different metadata standards
• Different sharing levels

Metadata harvesting and synchronization allows the system to gather metadata from distributed information hosted in other services/servers, done by the user himself.

More info:

• GeoNetwork Community Website

Giacomo Rambaldi
The Story of Web2ForDev

Used DGroups, Website, Google Analytics, Blog, Wiki, Social Bookmarking, Google Coop, Facebook… and many more.

We were technologically not ready when the whole thing began, not even had proper microphones for skype conferences, but they’ve caught up at tremendous speed. Keeping up-to-date with fast changing technologies.

Different work style and attitudes required by innovative appraoch and “new” technologies.

Rules and regulations within institutions, such as security concerns.

Getting to the minimum level of equipment (low investment)

Main outputs of the online effort:

• Trust and respect
• A virtual community based on DGroups
• ITrainonline
• Blog, Wiki, Social bookmarks, RSS
• Participatory Learning Action and EJISDC articles
• A network

Enrico Bertacchini
The Creative Commons Project: Sharing Knowledge in the Digital Age

What happens with databases? Are they covered by CC licenses? Do they suppose creativity? In Europe, they are not covered by copyright (but the content they hold do)

Creative Commons International: launched in 2003, adapts CC licenses to national jurisdictions (License Porting), creates an international netework of copyright experts.

Science Commons (launched 2006) to help scholars publish and disseminate their knowledge, scientific findings, etc. See their projects for further and up-to-date details:

• Scholar’s copyrights, freedom to archive and reuse scholarly works on the Internet
• Biological materials transfer, building the clearinghouse for research tools
• The Neurocommons, open source knowledge management.

Stephan Dohrn, Peter Shelton
Using Web 2.0 to Reduce Data Input and Maximize Output: A Case Study of the CAPRi Web Site

The Collective Action and Property Rights is a website hosted by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) that went recently renewed to join new trends of the Web: RSS feeds, database integration by means of XML broadcasting, resource lists in del.icio.us, blogs.

The search box is powered by Google Custom Search, which features plenty of built-in features such as filtering by presentations, documents… besides the intelligent filtering of a custom search.

The blog was created to keep track of the listserve mails.

Lessons learned

• Think and learn about the user.
• How to use Web 2.0 services behind a Web 1.0 interface: use the institutional website as a portal that gathers or hubs other external services/applications were your content is also hosted. The important thing is to spread content, to make it accessible, wherever it is.
• Be willing to experiment and take risks.
• Links, links, links. Search engines love links.
• See what others are doing and get inspired
• Content and technology folks work best together

More info:

• Full presentation at Google Docs
• CAPRi Wiki