ICTlogy

Tobias Eigen
Wikis, Blogs and Online Profiles for African NGOs at Kabissa – Space for Change in Africa

Empower civil society so they can better act as change agents.

African organizations are using web 2.0 but not actively in support of their mission, mostly because of lack of understanding of the tools due to poor access, and, sometimes, because they get misled by technical (unnecessary? geeky? cool? trendy?) terminology (buzz? hype?).

So, keep it simple, keep it useful, keep it understandable.

Caleb Wall
Cairo Concept: Village to Village Knowledge Sharing

It’s going to be successful it the user finds it useful. Accessible, easy… is just not enough.

Set up a Virtual Development Neighborhood, to design together, with the future/potential user, how the network, the application will be. So, at this stage, we’re proud to state that we don’t know how the system will look like.

Working together with: universities, governments, civil society, local communities, donnors, all inside the Virtual Development Neighborhood.

Ednah Karamagi
Enhancing Knowledge Sharing in the Rural Community through Adoption of Web 2.0 Tools

BROSDI is an NGO that works for the envolvement of government and civil society in facilitating the grassroots rural person to improve their livelihood. They run CELAC for agricultural information in Uganda.

Some Web 2.0 tools used:

• Information websites
• Blogs, where people can talk, something very especial for kids, whose ideas are usually not taken into consideration
• Google Maps, to geolocalize resources
• Wiki [login/password protected wiki], as a training materials repository
• SMS, sent through a website
• Podcasts
• FlickR, discussion groups, Skype, e-Learning tools, etc.

Advantages of Web 2.0

• Knowledge gets documented
• Enhanced community sharing, which sometimes does not happen offline but does online, and then they cannot stop!
• Improved livelihoods

Challenges of Web 2.0

• Requires Internet: Internet’s expensive; electricity is bad scheduled in the whole country; differing peoples’ susceptibility to change
• Information hoarding

Some real results

• Diversified (agricultural) production
• Used center information to build a house and set up banana plantation
• Grew turkeys
• New plantations
• Learn to make natural fertilizers

Answering a question, Karamagi states that this system has also been successful in the Education and Health fields.

Alioune Thioune, Fatou Dieng Sarr
Dispositif de Collaboration et Partage de Données pour la Communauté Scientifique: Cas du Système d’Information Scientifique et Technique (SIST) du Sénégal [Collaboration and Data Sharing Device por the Scientific Community: Senegal’s Scientific and Technical Information System case]

Twofold goal: make available information about Senegal for everyone and make accessible information from developed countries for Senegal researchers.

Find information: syndicated search

Exchange: discussion fora, wikis

Know and let know: e-mail subscriptions, RSS feeds

More info:

• Thierry Helmer – L’accès à l’Information Scientifique et Technique: Dispositif SIST [Access to Scientific and Technical Information: SIST Device on a previous session on the Web2forDev Conference

Paul Matthews, Arne Wunder
Evaluation of Google Coop and Social Bookmarking at the Overseas Development Institute

Evaluation/assessment of www.focuss.eu that uses Google Custom Search, fed by users themselves, and also investigate how staff use bookmarking.

The analysis showed that Focuss search engine brought more relevant results than normal (non-custom) Google, being the strength of the custom search engine how it deals with relatively ambiguous terms. Thus, Focuss appears to be a bit more targeted starting point than Google, though it is no replacement for other sources (e.g. journals).

Concerning bookmarking, what are the incentives for and advantages of sharing?

There is a preference for structured over free tagging. Hence, the use of implicit taxonomy is useful and time-saving, though users like both order (taxonomy) and flexibility (free tagging). The value of sharing and reuse is still a thing to be proved — maybe harness in RSS.

More info:

• Brophy, J. and Bawden, D. (2005). “Is Google enough? Comparison of an internet search engine with academic library resources”, In Aslib Proceedings, 57(6), pp.498 – 512

Armelle Arrou
Open Training Platform

Open Training Platform to share training materials. Open solutions allowing localization of the resources.

Content provided by UN agencies, development agencies, NGOs, foundations, associations… and in contact with Knowledge Centers, City Learning Centers, Civic Media Centers, IT kiosks, etc.

Avoid duplications, maximize existing resources circulation.

Prince Deh
Promoting Information and Knowledge Sharing through Vlogging

Vlogging requires low expertise or digital literacy, and there are plenty of (free) (online) tools to create, edit and upload your videos.

Major challenges

• On the other hand, the major challenges are connectivity and/or access
• the difficulty to get people share information and knowledge
• Cost of equipment: camcorder, laptop/desktop, etc.

GINKS: how ICTs can help the development of rural areas in Africa.

More info:

• Interview with Prince Deh, Vlogger from Ghana at Web2forDev

Panel discussion: Moses Kisembo, Christian Kreutz, Kado Muir, Williams EzinwaNwagwu
Web 2.0 for Rural Development and Community Empowerment, Opportunities and Barriers

Major challenge of Web 2.0: people’s confidence. Maybe because most information does not come from rural communities but from “outside”.

Information collection, information availability is very low. Thus, the opportunity/challenge for Web 2.0 tools for rural development is knowledge management. Capacity development should be tied to information strategies.

Organizational challenges: open web, open content requires open institutions, open organizations. Knowledge transfer, knowledge sharing needs connected people, transparency.

The power of mashups: connecting two social software networks does not require any effort on the users’ part, but can add a lot of value.

Is it possible to empower, engage people through Web 2.0 applications… without saying ‘Web 2.0’? Is the term itself a barrier?

For Governments, Web 2.0 offers and interesting way to connect with people.

Same for cooperation for development agencies, making possible the subversion of top-down designs and enabling bottom-up initiatives.

Web 2.0 are helping people that are still in the Web 0.0 — no web, or just basic telecommunication infrastructures — to leapfrog Web 1.0 and land directly on Web 2.0: the reason being that both the needs for technological requisites and expert technicians are way lower in Web 2.0 than in Web 1.0.

Thierry Helmer
L’accès à l’Information Scientifique et Technique: Dispositif SIST [Access to Scientific and Technical Information: SIST Device

Strong bet for open archiving.

Meta search engines for syndicated search:

• A single question to ask several databases, open access archives, websites, RSS feeds, etc.
• A single RSS format for results representation.
• Systematic access to the original source of data.

SIST also serves not only as a search engine, but also as a way of monitoring news and everything that’s happening on the Internet.

More info

• Piece of news about CIRAD’s SIST

Mark Davies
Agric Market Information Systems 2.0: Making it Private, Profitable and Peer2Peer

Tradenet is open source software product to manage information: realtime SMS uploads from markets, database customized for agricultural data, multi-currency, etc. Specifically designed to get market data for farmers.

The system is not only passive — you get data updates — but active: you can query the system through the mobile phone by means of SMS messages with specific codes.

Focus on basic group communication needs, but information can also go “out” of the group and be forwarded to third parties.

Registered users can also have personal spaces and manage their friends, colleagues, the messages they get, etc. — besides being an information and trading platform, it also has powerful social software features.

Importance of collaboration between ICT developers, users, stakeholders, etc. An example of bad design: setting up a platform such as Tradenet and not thinking on who’s going to pay for the SMSs. More examples would be understanding markets, understanding users and their needs: it’s about anthropology, not technology; public/private partnerships.

Lots of people do not interact directly with the system, but with someone that has a mobile phone or directly with Tradenet kiosks. It’s all about intermediation. This enables illiterate — or low literate people — to use the system, as language might not be an issue (if you just interact indirectly with the system through a third partie) or not a big barrier, as SMSs are quite easy to read and manage.

Anup Kumar Das [+]
Sharing Knowledge, Exchanging Solutions and Community Information Updates through Blogs and Social Networks: Case Study from India

Information and knowledge diffusion through portals and Web 2.0 apps

e.g. www.indiawaterportal.org, with its own blog.

Part of the Bharat Nirman scheme to bridge the rural divide — which includes the digital divide in rural areas.

Information “wrapped” with discussion groups, e-consultation, queries and responses, communities of practice, participated by development practitioners, social workers, policy makers (besides the target users, of course).

Solution exchange communities addressing the Millennium Development Goals.

Community Radio in India: localized radio contents, covering issues related to socio-economic development, literacy, education, social inclusion / empowerment. They include blogs for information and content sharing. 4000 community radio stations estimated by year 2008.

Digital Storytelling: creation of audio-visual conents by the members or the community. E.g. findingavoice.org.

Some conclusions:

• Web 2.0 applications ensure participatory development communication.
• Availability of ICT infrastructures and tools ensures people’s empowerment and social inclusion.
• Government-led public information portals are also adopting Web 2.0 applications for more actions and interactions
• A number of Indian language applications are available in free software, addressing content localization issues
• Capacity building a need to be approached.

Luz Marina Alvaré, Nancy Walczak
Web 2.0 and IFPRI: Looking out and Looking in

Reach Internet users potentially interested in IFPRI‘s work and engage them in a dialog.

• Goal: extend web presence beyond institutional website
• Goal: establish dialogue on food policy issues: Blog World Hunger
• Goal: help dispersed teams work more effectively: CGVlibrary
• Goal: Quickly and collaboratively crate a list of best resources, e.g. by using del.icio.us

But also looking inside

• Goal: increase participation, open communication, and create community: Let’s blog IFPRI, a blog on IFPRI’s intranet
• Goal: to simplify the entry of content into IFPRI’s Intranet: using wikis as a content management system, avoiding bottlenecks, fostering initiative on the content creator/responsible
• Goal: IFPRI staff participate in external research-related dialogues, to increase participation

Legitimating tools: “wikis are anarchic”, “blogs are just buzz”

As a transition: enable e-mail compatibilities, so people can choose while getting used to the new tools

Content matters, not its look. The user normally evaluates the quality of the content and understands that nice looks can wait for later. No need to have a sensation of “finished work” or a “finished app”, as long as content is OK.

Damir Simunic
Collaboration on the Edge of Network

Keys to success on collaboration

• Ownership, in the sense of personalization/customization of look and feel, literals, etc.
• Bringing “outsiders” inside, so people “inside” can freely interact with people “outside” (the department, the organization, etc.)
• Simplicity, less is more: do not put features people don’t use or don’t understand at first sight.

Simunic states that e-mail is the only way to engage two-way communication and to have a digital identity. I couldn’t disagree more: latest social networking sites such a MySpace and FaceBook can perfectly work without any e-mail address at all. And, definitely, what positions yourself on the web — on search engines’ results — is not e-mail, that runs privately, but a website — yours, an account on any social networking site, or even a user on Wikipedia.

Juha Hautakangas
Global Partnerships for Sharing Forest Related Information through the GFIS-Gateway at www.gfis.net

GFIS: information service that stores metadata on forestry “under the same roof”, providing accurate search results and reliable information.

The system interacts with other databases all over the world using RSS format, and using the Open Search specification as a standard interface for search engines.

Multilingual search aggregator, where content comes from RSS feeds generated through searches.

Ismael Peña-López
The personal research portal: web 2.0 driven individual commitment with open access for development

There is unchallenged evidence that both researchers and research interests in developing countries are underrepresented in mainstream academic publishing systems. Reasons are many but publishing costs, research infrastructure financing and the vicious circle of researcher invisibility are among the most mentioned. Efforts have been made to mitigate this situation, being open access to scholarly literature – open access journals, self-archiving in institutional repositories – an increasingly common and successful approach.

It is our opinion that focus has been put on institutional initiatives, but the concept and tools around the web 2.0 seem to bring clear opportunities so that researchers, acting as individuals, can also contribute, to build a broader personal presence on the Internet and a better diffusion for their work, interests and publications.

By using a mesh of social software applications, we here propose the concept of the Personal Research Portal as a means to create a digital identity for the researcher – tied to his digital public notebook and personal repository – and a virtual network of colleagues working in the same field. Complementary to formal publishing or taking part in congresses, the Personal Research Portal would be a knowledge management system that would enhance reading, storing and creating at both the private and public levels, helping to bridge the academic digital divide.

• Dowload presentation (PDF)
• See presentation (Slideshare)
• Dowload research article published at Knowledge Management for Development Journal
• When researchers build up their personal knowledge management system, an interview at the Web2forDev portal by Sarah Bel — includes 4’35” audio file.

Some comments from the audience

• Stress on improving reputation systems for Web 2.0 apps/platforms
• How to engage the “old school” scholar? My answer: let’s distinguish from what’s a scholar supposed to do — which is independent from being online — and what the “e-scholar” is supposed to do — the change of platform. The only answer is awareness on what a Network Society means: the more you give, the more you get.
• Stress on the digital divide: no access, no Web 2.0. Which I fully agree, but Web 2.0 are ubiquitous — you can access them from any telecenter or public access point —, less power demanding — but more broadband demanding —, and feeding the Internet with content, which is part of the digital divide too.

Balaji Venkataraman

Use of Semantic Wiki Tool to Build a Repository of Re-usable Information objects in Agricultural Education and Extension: Results from a Preliminary Study

Being able to connect knowledge not only by keywords/tags, but also through content itself, linking fragments of information and knowledge through meanings, concepts and interlinking of concepts.

Mediawiki + semantic tool + FAO’s AGROVOC = Semantic VASAT Wiki (see also test2.icrisat.org)

New sources of content: Voiceblog. Question of mine: is this recorded sound from the voiceblog transcribed/analyzed so it can be related with written content. Answer: so far, this is being done, but done manually, in two ways: one, by transcribing recordings and two, by tagging sound or video recordings with keywords. But in the future it is expected that some kind of language recognition should be able to do this automatically.

More info on the DEAL – High Level view of Digital Ecology for Agriculture & Rural Livelihood portal and the way it works (White Papers, Presentations).