ICTlogy

“Today” I ended my research period in the Doctorate in the Information Society at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya.

And thus, I submited my dissertation to get my advanced studies diploma (and start the long road to the Ph.D. all along my thesis).

My dissertation deals with something I have talked before plenty of times: how can nonprofits use free software, open access content and online volunteers to set up e-learning training programmes in a free way (in the meaning of free as in free speech and in free beer.

You can see a complete abstract and download the 80 page paper here. It has also been added to my articles section.

I do welcome positive and negative feedback!

Jayne Cravens writes about the proliferation of volunteer-matching web sites in Please, No More Volunteer-Matching Web Sites.

I fully agree.

In a research I’m about to finish – and about to publish here in parts and as a whole –, I studied some volunteer matching sites.

One of the funny things I found was about two – in apparence – powerful sites that were evaluated: USA Freedom Corps and Network for Good. After some navigation I found that the first one linked directly to the second one, and that one used – though with its own template – the database and tools from Volunteermatch. Surprisingly, Volunteermatch has PageRank 7 and both others have 8.

Unbelievable! :D

Jayne Cravens posts 11 myths about online volunteering. I guess she really hits the point.

More info at Nancy White’s

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…

Next May 6th I’ll be speaking at the University of Almería within the framework of the I Jornadas sobre participación social y nuevas tecnologías: Cibervoluntariado y Ciberactivismo [I Seminar on social participation and new technologies: cyvervolunteering and cyberactivism]

My taking part in it is through a workshop so far entitled “Formación virtual, gestión y trabajo en red de las ONG: Campus for Peace” [Virtual learning, management and networking in NGO’s: The Campus for Peace] but I guess I might do a similar speach to the one I gave in Santiago de Compostela last Friday. Who knows. I’ll surely bring both presentations with me and decide according to the audience I meet there.

I’m really happy I met Bruno Ayres (Portal do Voluntário) at Volunet. Besides hearing his speech on Friday morning, I had the luck to speak with him for almost a couple of hours during Saturday morning about his new project V2V.

Humble as he was, he told me the Portal do Voluntário was a complete success… unless you were not happy with what it had become. The portal was a clearing house (a matching place) for volunteering opportunities, and it worked good, but it was too much institution-centered and volunteers (as individuals) had no flexibility at all to go on with their own projects. Quite bad if this is just what you were having in mind when setting up the platform.

What he (his organization) really wanted was something where the person, not the organization, was the center, and the project, again not the organization, was the fuel that would make things move.

This is something I talked about back in December when I wrote about Pekka Himanen’s book The Hacker Ethic and the Spirit of the Information Age and what I thought it could be called the sourceforgization of the online volunteering community (in fact, I guess I didn’t gave it this name “officially” since now ;) Thus, I was really excited when Bruno Ayres told me he thought he had found a pretty good solution.

And it is.

The solution is as “simple” as really interesting (think of a KISS!). It is a portal based on social software such as Orkut or Friendster. Its main added value is that the question is not knowing people and “interests” (as vague as this might sound), but knowing people that runs projects and knowing projects run by people. And subcribing to them. And take part in them. And recommend them. And discuse them. Etc. Quite difficult to explain here, you’d better pay them a visit.

For now, the site is only in Portuguese, but they’re planning to make a new community in Spanish and, later on, link both communities somehow (surely through the “person”). If they succeed in doing it, other language/country communities will appear and thus create a greatest community of online volunteers.

I’m thrilled at the very thought of it! :))