Technology: I collaborate, e-collaborate, we collaborate

I'm very proud to link to a new group blog I collaborate, e-collaborate, we collaborate, of the e-collaboration group that I co-facilitate on behalf of IICD. Interested people meet quarterly, exchange by Dgroup, and now the group has a new public space by means of this blog. From the description: This blog belongs to the “e-collaboration among Dutch NGO’s,” group, which is facilitated by a joined initiative of PSO, IICD and ICCO in The Netherlands. The members of this group all work in the development sector and have a shared interest in e-collaboration. The purpose of this blog is to share personal stories about encounters and experiences with working over the internet. I'm very fond of the blog's name, which was selected through an online poll.

Maaike van Steenhoven, student from the University of Utrecht, faculty of new media and digital culture interviewed about 15 people from this group to talk about the introduction of a new tool for e-collaboration. The stories are very interesting and easy to read. I think it will be both inspiring to read the stories for the creative use of the tools, as well as interesting to use the stories to detect some common trends about the introduction of new technologies in development organisations. There are already 5 stories up, and the rest will follow soon.

The blog will continue to be the public space of the e-collaboration group, after Maaike has put up her stories, a group of 6 members will take up this challenge. We thought about linking up to the Netsquared case studies blog, but finally decided that it would be a different kind of case as the netsquared blog highlights the various initiatives, but does not talk about the introduction process itself.