By Ismael Peña-López (@ictlogist), 21 March 2007
Main categories: ICT4D, Meetings, Nonprofits
Other tags: e-stas, e-stas2007
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At Sevilla, some people attending the e-Stas conference meet just before the conference to exchange ideas and reflections on how ICTs can not just help nonprofits but build “pure” ICT driven projects for development or social action.
The scope of the working session is to reflect on social projects based on new technologies, not just use them. Thus, the goals are as follows:
- what can new technologies bring to social projects
- how can we design social projects to standardize ICT use, methodology
- what is the role of each sector (universities, private sector, public sector, nonprofits, etc.)
The hand that gives is always on the hand that receives
. So, we should think about grassroots activities and proposals and stop thinking top-down.
People split into groups to treat, each one, the former three questions under five different perspectives. After a first brainstorming in groups, a good bunch of ideas are put in common:
Infrastructures
What:
- Technical issues, to design standards and the technologies themselves
- Social issues, such as accessibility
- Infrastructures to serve or support services
How:
- Boost wireless connectivity
- Local authorities to foster infrastructures and global access
- The market should be competitive, and there’s still a long road towards it
- Technical standardization to access the network
- Include into the design people with disabilities, we need a broader concept of design
The who’s question is a tricky one, as everyone should contribute, gather around projects and try and reach consensus.
Participation
What:
- Helps participation to anyone
- Allows disemination of information and awareness
- Spreads resources, mobilization
- New forms of participation, mobilization
How:
- Immediacy, things happen in real time
- Personalization, I participate as I like to
- Bidirectionality
- Design for all: everyone can participate
Who:
- University as a testing groud: research, experimenting
- Government: funding and projects information dissemination
- Third sector: foster and promote the Internet as a new engagement channel, and promote his own technification per management issues
- Private sector: implant the “design for all” issue, foster corporate volunteering and fund social participation
Summarizing: technologies can promote participative democracy besides representative democracy. It gives power to nonprofits and the social actors in general.
Internet is not a channel, but an environment, a place.
The problem is: when we talk about we, this we is just 10% of the population. What about the remaining 90%? Will this 90% benefit from a better access for the connected 10%?
Development and MDG
what can new technologies bring to social projects
- ICTs bring voice
- teach to fish, not give a fish
- ICTs is about skills, not about computers
- ICTs to enhance humanitarian aid by achieving more efficiency and efficacy
- ICTs to boost progress
- give access to the best that we (developed countiries) have
- ICTs as a bridge to negociate the “now” with the “future”
- market forces are going to shape the world, thus ICTs would change/reshape the way this market forces can act: equity, social justice, education, health, power
- introducing a network enhances development, by participating in the network
- technology changes the cost of a network by dramatically changing its cost. there’s a practical benefit of introducing a network, introducing communities that never took place before. do people benefit from taking part of a network? the answer is yes
- south-south collaboration, being part of a “cloud”
- pressure from the stakeholders and pressure from the clients
- share different points of view and catch all sensibilities to guarantee access
how can we design social projects to standardize ICT use, methodology
- assess the ways to introduce new processes
- introducing technology must be user driven, grassroots designed, not funders pushed
- bottom up, let the users drive the innovation
- technology can foster existing tensions, magnify changes, multiply problems: thus, changes based on technology should be somehow “controlled” not to get out of control
- make shure that not empowered groups can catalyze changes appropriately
what is the role of each sector (universities, private sector, public sector, nonprofits, etc.)
- the best stakeholder model is the “stone soup” model
- let’s gather every passionate group, stakeholder inside the group
- need to explain things in a way that every other sector understands, in his own “language”, what the whole thing is about. in this sense, there’s a need for the role of a bridge to make ends and parts meet. the academics could play this part
- what’s the role of the government? there’s a problem on keeping the monopoly on telcos
Digital Literacy
Technology can do nothing to bridge the digital divide: it’s just technology, it’s just means, it’s just tools to set up projects.
How:
- by doing projects, lots of them
- taking into account the environment
- population
- evolving
- engaging
Who:
- administration: foster and boost the participation of agents, including bringing resources to projects
- university: advocacy, research
- businesses: working together with NGOs by bringing resources such as know how, funding, capital
- nonprofits: engagement with the end users, dynamize the projects
- citizenship: diffuse knowledge
one PC does not constitute a digital literacy project
Social groups, social innovation, social intervention
What’s the definition of innovation? Too much a complex society…
What:
- promote relationship sharing
- promote integration by other means, specially through anonymous channels
How:
- Share
- Debate
- Special training for workers in social fields
- Social entrepreneurship
Who:
- add as much actors as possible
- relationship fostering
- somebody has to take risks: the Administration? businesses? There’s a need to fund social innovation projects
See also:
e-Stas 2007, Symposium on Technologies for Social Action (2007)
By Ismael Peña-López (@ictlogist), 19 March 2007
Main categories: ICT4D, Meetings
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On Saturday March 17th, 2007, some doctorate students at UOC‘s PhD on the Information and Knowledge Society met to present — expose, I’d dare say — our thesis projects, talk about them and, most of all, learn from each other on concepts, methodology, etc. The idea came to me at the First Annual ICT4D Postgraduate Symposium and tried to replicate it here, in a more closed environment and, evidently, at a minor scope and scale.
Though only three projects were presented, the session was richest and worth repeating it in forthcoming editions. As usual, here come my notes:
Las nuevas tecnologías como agente social de transformación de la masculinidad hegemónica
[New technologies as social agent of transformation of hegemonic masculinity
Paco Abril Morales
After introducing FreeMind software — which I didn’t know — Paco explained that he wanted to know whether ICTs could change or reflect another kind of masculinity besides the hegemonic one — white, occidental, heterosexual… and sports and beer driven, I would add ;)
His speech was full of references and concepts, too many to note them on time and be replicated here. Nevertheless, I catched the two groups — and five subcategories — he spoke about and that he took as main research/methodological framework:
- First thing to study was technology, from several points of view such as constructivism, Latour and his actor-network theory,
Winner and the concept of technological somnambulism, postestructuralism, Pinchand Bijker, social shaping of technology, technology and social classes, etc.
- He then spoke about new technologies: sociotechnological changes, alternative technologies and alternative collectives
- Last (for part one) about technology and gender: sexual division of work, reproductive technology, heterosexuality, technological artifacts, co production among gender and technology, the masculinity-gender equation, gender identities, power relationships and technology
- Part II began talking about the hegemonic masculinity and Connell(1995) concept of breadwinner
- He then gave some explanations (and enormous listing) about non hegemonic masculinities: caring masculinities (work changes gender), gays/queers/by/heteros/trans, race/etnia/social class
The debate was highly interesting and I have to specially note some references to Andrew Feenberg.
Crecimiento inicial de Wikipedia: una aproximación comparativa entre etapas, temas y versiones
[The initial growth of Wikipedia: a comparative approach among stages, subjects and versions]
Enric Senabre Hidalgo
Enric presents his research (hypotheses) according to the following equality:
Vandalism menace + meritocracy/recognition + hacker ethics = initial growth of wikipedia?
To assert this, he needs/wants to know the answer to some other questions:
- What was the role of the hybrid users (admin + contributors)? How many crated brand new entries?
- Have there been any points of inflection in exponential growth?
- Did original users created any sort of style? Examples/models?
- When and how were the five pillars set and when “good faith“?
- When the own jargon?
- What kind of user pages were there initially?
- How the first conflicts were solved?
- How did exposure to media contributed to wikipedia’s growth?
To answer these questions he proposes some different approaches/concepts:
- the concept of complex systems and emergency
- the fact that it is a self organized system
- negentropy (negative entropy)
- stigmergy as performing tasks without a central planification (i.e. ants and pheromone tracks)
And a couple of very interesting links the provided us with:
Pelando las capas de la brecha digital: umbrales y relaciones entre categorías en índices compuestos
[Unpeeling the layers of the digital divide: category thresholds and relationships within composite indices]
Ismael Peña-López
I imparted the same presentation I did for the Annual ICT4D Symposium, but somehow updated — the material support being the same one, though in Spanish, but the speech a little bit different one. The new version can be downloaded here.
By Ismael Peña-López (@ictlogist), 15 March 2007
Main categories: ICT4D, Meetings, Nonprofits
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Next March 21st, 22nd and 23rd I’m at Sevilla (Spain) to attend to e-STAS 2007: Symposium de las Tecnologías para la Acción Social [Symposium on Technologies for Social Action]
Besides just attending — the programme is worth the trip — I’ve been asked by the organization to take part in an expert group on ICTs for nonprofits:
The expert group is a multidisciplinary panel of professionals coming from the private sector, the public sector, the university, the media and the third sector, invited by Fundación Cibervoluntarios with the goal of generating discussion groups aimed to obtaining a multisectorial Decalogue for the building of social projects by means of the New Technologies, as well as generating social networking among the attendants.
Please, feel free to suggest any points that this Decalogue should include. Some days ago, Jaume Albaigès published in his excellent blog, tecnolONGgia, the report Las políticas públicas en materia de nuevas tecnologías, las ONG de acción social y los colectivos desfavorecidos (
, 171 Kb) [Public policies about new technologies, social action nonprofits and underserved communities] and, in my opinion, it makes a perfect starting point.
Here come other resources about ICTs and nonprofits that I also wrote in Jaume Albaigès’s post comments:
By Ismael Peña-López (@ictlogist), 07 March 2007
Main categories: Digital Divide, e-Readiness, ICT4D
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The International Telecommunication Union has issued their report on world telecommunications: Measuring the Information Society 2007: ICT Opportunity Index and World Telecommunication/ICT Indicators.
The most relevant news is the publication of a new ICT index called the ICT Opportunity Index, which is the result of the merger of the ITU’s Digital Access Index (DAI) and Orbicom’s Monitoring the Digital Divide/Infostate conceptual framework
.
It is important to note that this new index is the one that UNCTAD used in their Information Economy Report 2006, and it is not the same one as the Digital Opportunity Index. While this last one, the DOI (published in the World Information Society Report), is the result of agreeing some basic common indicators to measure the Information Society, the so called ICT core indicators, the first one, the ICT-OI goes far beyond the focus on infrastructures of the DOI and includes categories such as skills, uptake and use intensity.
By Ismael Peña-López (@ictlogist), 02 March 2007
Main categories: ICT4D, Nonprofits
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Authored by Michael Cortés and Kevin M. Rafter, this book identifies the ways that new information and communication technology both help and hinder nonprofit effectiveness. The book establishes a body of dependable research on the subject, compiling the resources needed to make better technology-adoption and management decisions in the nonprofit sector
.
The table of contents looks promising, but I guess, at this stage, that I’d rather read a publication about this subject in the shape of a handbook, the way Ellis and Cravens did in The Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. And I think practitioners are, too, in the need of something practical that tells them, step by step, specific solutions to specific problems, such as free software applications, database creation and managing, etc. Of course, just my opinion.
Posted at the Bytes for All Readers & Supporters Forum by Frederick Noronha.
By Ismael Peña-López (@ictlogist), 27 February 2007
Main categories: Hardware, ICT4D
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We have here talked about the subject of mobile phones for development several times. Positively, as a proven and effective tool to let poor people access the Information Society, when other more costly infrastructures are unexistent and/or cannot be provided — because of cost or because of technical difficulties (say, cost again, as almost every and each difficulty can be overridden with money). Negatively, as mobile phone in lesser developed countries usually relies on GSM networks, hence, low band networks that while providing access, it is a less quality access than broadband — fixed and mobile — networks provide in developed countries, thus widening the digital divide.
Nicholas P. Sullivan now provides us with another example on how can mobile telephones enhance both local development and Information Society fostering, by explaining the GrameenPhone experience in Bangladesh, something we already reviewed when we talke about the Village Phone Replication Manual.
Sullivan’s book, You Can Hear Me Now: How Microloans and Cell Phones are Connecting the World’s Poor to the Global Economy
offers a compelling account of what Sullivan calls the external combustion engine —a combination of forces that is sparking economic growth and lifting people out of poverty in countries long dominated by aid-dependent governments. The “engine” comprises three forces: information technology, imported by native entrepreneurs trained in the west, backed by foreign investors.
The book has two parts. The first one, The GrameenPhone Story, about why and how the project took place, and the second one, Transformation Through Technology, seemingly devoted to reflection and analysis.
See also:
