ICTlogy

Ethan Zuckerman
Web 2.0: Simple Tools & Smart People

It’s not about technology — which, by the way, is quite old —, it’s about people. People have always found ways to communicate through the Internet by using features of applications that were not designed to do so, e.g. chating by using an online chess game.

The mobile phone is the biggest revolution in telecommunications — not laptops, not handhelds… — because it changes all the rules of the game. e.g. in Kenya you can pay a taxi with your mobile phone… but you can’t in the United States.

Interactive Radio for Justice: radio + mobile phone project.

Mobilemonitors.org, to make elections more transparent thanks to mobile enhanced monitoring.

Manal and Alaa’s bit bucket, using blogs as a newsroom.

Blogs for advocacy: Free Alaa!

If you are an activist there’s a great benefit in using Web 2.0 tools. Ironically, the more crap there’s on the Internet, the better: noone will ban a site full of funny, boring, trivial things. Indeed, there’s no need to create a “development site”: you can be banned and you have to develop it and maintain it, so just use what’s out there, the tools that already exist. Forget the notion that you have to build everything from scratch.

Think on who do you want to reach. Second Life? Cool, shiny, but how many users?

Participation, engagement, add content.

The reason to blog: search engines love blogs, because they link and are linked, and search engines do rely a lot on linking.

When 100 million people speak, you need a filter. With 100 million people talking, it’s really hard to listen: Buzzmonitor.

Selection, translation, context: Global Voices

The best tools are those that amplify a message and do it very selective.

One of the problems of the web in general is that is written, so it needs some level of literacy: if we can develop applications for mobile phones, and apply voice recognition on them, you’d be able to talk to the phone — instead of having to type —, get the information you asked for (e.g. price of crops) and have it read for you on your phone by another application — instead of having to read it.

More info:

• Mobile Telephony in Developing Countries by Ethan Zuckerman
• The connection between cute cats and web censorship by Ethan Zuckerman

Thomas Metz
Open Collaboration in an Institutional Context

The Generation Challenge Programme was created to bridge the gap between health and hunger, by using advances in molecular biology and harnessing the rich global stocks of crop genetic resources to create and provide a new generation of plants that meet these farmers’ needs.

CropForge is a collaborative software development site, providing tools and a centralized workspace for developers to control and manage software development, the difference being with SourceForge is that it hosts all kind of information about projects and software related to development, food and food security, hunger, etc., including fora and communication spaces where collaboration, support takes place.

The site also uses mediawiki to run a the GCPWiki to gather information, notes, impressions on workshops, presentations, etc.

Some lessons learned:

• At the institutional level, it is important to be careful with the intellectual property policy, the code of conduct; the publication and quality control procedures; the reward and recognition system.
• It is important to preserve transparency and history (of edits, of changes). The sytem must be easy to join, meritocratic and based on a non anonymous use.
• Concerning content scope and quality, you have to keep in mind that there’ll be uneven quality, coverage and maintenance. But it’s good to make world-wide visible your work-in-progress under a clear disclaimer, where you explain very clearly what this content is about, what’s its quality, what the procedures or content creation and quality monitoring are, the release policy.
• The major barrier usually are institutional constraints, the (already existing) organizational design, which are not necessarily compatible with how the Web 2.0 works.

Kwami Ahiabenu
Empowering Journalists with Online Tools: Making a Case for Online Training

Journalists need constant training in online tools to ride the tide with the information revolution.

Online tools offer free to low cost options for training. So, set up an online course on Web 2.0 tools for journalists, based on real practice through weekly assignments.

Connectivity not really an issue as most journalists already have connexion to the Internet at their work places.

Learning by doing makes a difference in information and knowledge sharing experience, and skills transfer processes.

Tools used

• e-mail
• Yahoo Groups
• DGroups
• Google Groups, divided by subgroups (some students didn’t understand the difference between the main group and the subgroups)
• Blogs, on a weekly basis: classroom blog and students’ blogs
• Class wiki, as a newsroom where stories where created
• Flickr, to “put faces to names”
• Podcasts
• del.icio.us
• Skype, though it did not succeed

Challenges

• Lack of access to affordable and reliable Internet: hence, focus on e-mail, keep it simple, no Moodle, e-Learning for dummies
• Sometimes, high bandwidth demanding Web 2.0 applications
• Time commitment issues
• Challenge of change: develop an “online” mindset
• Online collaboration and communication difficulties
• Information overload issues

More info:

• Peña-López, Ismael (2005). e-Learning for Development: a model

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.

Amit Dasgupta
Leveraging Web 2.0 to Develop Better Applications for Rural Communities

Despite the progress in technology in India, the benefits have not reached the agricultural community — 60% of India’s population. Mostly because of lack of access to information and knowledge.

But:

• Without a large user base, difficult to justify cost
• Large user base only if regional variations and localization needs are addressed

Web 2.0 can help:

• Improve quality of information by linking information from multiple data sources
• Reducte cost of content creating and deployment
• Better access through multiple devices
• Richer content using collective intelligence
• Effective information exchange and knowledge management across geography through collaborative platforms

Besides the well known blogs and wikis, RSS feeds and tagging are really useful web 2.0 tools for knowledge sharing among stakeholders. Integration of data from multiple sources will be required to provide meaningful information and content.

Computers is just not enough: connectivity, content, services, B2C, B2B, G2B, etc.

Eric Gundersen
Portal 2.0: Using Social Software to Connect Geographically Dispersed Teams [+]

From tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge. From information overload to dynamic filtering.

Being able to track the changes e.g. on a wiki brings huge transparency to the whole system, not only at the technological level, but also at the social one.

What if you had a system that allows your entire community to track, manage, analyze and act on news? Tracking, is not about the tool, is about how the tool helps your community/team.

Ability to take all your Web 2.0 data onto a USB stick so you can use it off-line. Gudersen himself commented that they were working on Google Gears to do so. I also think on the experience of Moulin, the offline Wikipedia. I personally use XAMPP, but must admit the syncing is not straightforward…

Chris Addison, Pier Andrea Pirani
Euforic2 – Putting Web 2.0 Applications to Work in a Development Community

From Euforic to Euforic2, to enable the use and contribution to the portal: for the trainees to practice, for the experts to share…: content, web to share, knowledge to share, virtual office

Blogs to leverage user generated content, reaching specific target audiences, tools to exchange stories inside organizations.

Wikis to integrate content in just one single place.

Videos, presentations, feed aggregators…

Some lessons learned:

1. What Web 2.0 really means: web applications, not on your PC; data separate from display; online collaboration; low entry cost; promotion of content in different ways; support communities; user ‘chews’
2. Blog not just a diary: content management system, even e-mail; easy to produce newsletters; multiple authors
3. The four life stages of a wiki: wikis are very organic. Raise awareness and the quickstart, organizing simple menus to get content together; enthusiasm; sorting out the mess; keeping it going
4. How to make a del.icio.us dish: the appealing of tag clouds
5. Everywhere but our website: users find our content everywhere, in many places
6. Brewing content: mash, aggregate, filter content; abstract your own (e.g. the blog); indexing others (del.icio.us); monitoring others (iGoogle)
7. New costs to working
8. Need for training and awareness
9. Expanding the audience: alerts; registration in search engines
10. Face2web

Panel discussion: Michael Powell, Mike Pereira, Jennifer Heney, Dorothy Mukhebi
The Core Aims of Knowledge Exchange and the Challenges of Using New Technologies to Meet Them

Organizational challenges: how do we reshape ourselves, build information share spaces, networking is implicit.

The organization becomes “2.0” just like the web: enable collaborations from anywhere/everywhere. But how to control relevance? Will this kill the discussion?

How’s the audience? The practitioner? The researcher? How do you open this? Is it a public good?

Most people use the sites not going to the sites but through alert systems [which, I guess, includes RSS feed subscriptions]

Decentralized approach to content development. Really difficult, as an institution, to feel comfortable with it, really difficult to find the balance, maintain certain degree of quality control.

The issue of the digital divide and the difficulties of access.

Find the appropriate communications (system) for the appropriate content. And the contrary: if e.g. mobile phone is the platform, think of the appropriate content (and not only the format, but the content itself) to be delivered through it.

The importance of mobile content.

To contribute: policy at the local level, resources and founding, technical expertise, infrastructure, access to relevant data / data sources, etc. So, the organizations that have capacity, should commit themselves to make relevant changes in the private sector so this empowerment, engagement takes place, for instance by affecting the regulatory framework.

Relevancy, quality control, suitability are difficult or just impossible to design ex ante, so give the practitioner, the user the ability to comment on resources, so you can help in the evaluation of this resource.