Saturday, December 24, 2005

Technology: building relationships through online and f2f interactions

I met Manju Chatani in Accra, Manju lives in Accra, is an online facilitator and interested in ICT4D. I interviewed Manju in July for my work with GINKS. Then we were together in the online facilitation workshop of Nancy White which was a great experience and we learned and interacted a lot online for 5 weeks. My work in Accra permitted us to meet again, and deepen our discussions about our online work. I had actually forgotten how fast she talks through all the online -mostly text- interactions :). The great experience for me was that we actually just continued talking where we left off online. For instance, we discussed blogging a lot during the workshop and she asked me straight: 'So, tell me why I should start blogging'; which is really the point where we left off online. I noticed f2f it is easier to fill in some details which seem kind of trivial, yet the lack thereof online may lead to plenty assumptions. (I realize how quickly I pick up accents; plenty is very Ghanaian english and it's the word running in my brains now).

I vlogged Manju about this experience: she has a great explanation of how online interactions can contribute to deepening (learning) relationships, reflecting on our relationship as an example. I knew it would be hard to get her on video, but I succeeded (I think the topic did a lot there)!!

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