Technology: gathering on 'online kennisdelen' organised by oneworld

Last week, I was invited by One world the Netherlands to do a presentation about online knowledge sharing jointly with Julie Ferguson from HIVOS. We were asked to look at tools, experiences within development cooperation and some do's and don'ts.

You can find our slides in Dutch here. I did not manage to embed them in my blog. As you can see in the second picture, only few people raised their hands when asked whether they could explain terms like 'web2.0' or 'blogs' or 'podcasting'. I was surprised about the low numbers, and almost suspect they did know about them, but were scared to be asked to explain it.

At the end I realized that most of the people were communications people with a task related to their organisation's website, looking for tools to integrate in their websites. Which is different from the way I mostly look at some of these tools, as supporting (small) groups in their communication and learning efforts.

One world will make a report available here where you can also find reports of previous gatherings. Of course in such a meeting, you only cratch the surface of a lot of topics and experiences.

In the end, I realized the value of the e-collaboration community of practice, which brings a wide range of people interested in this topic together for a longer period of time. Because of the longer attachment to one domain and with a (growing) group, we are able create more exchanges which build on each other.