Online mothers: the movie

Angelica sent me a movie she made with slides and music using windows movie maker. That reminded me of this movie I made over a year ago. The movie gains in relevance as I start working more online. It has huge advantages in terms of giving flexibility in timing of work. But it's harder to stop at times. When I see this, I'm inspired to make another movie about sheep with slides and the same music.

The advisory role as puzzle solving

Yesterday I saw the film Babel from director Alejando Gonzalez Iñárritu. There are various storylines (in Marocco, Japan, Mexico) and at some point you discover the link between the various storylines. The link between Marocco and Mexico gets confirmed when you see a picture of the children in their father's wallet. From the review of the film: "this movie is constructed as a puzzle, with different pieces transpiring during different times and in different places over a five-day span".

The feeling you get when you see the picture of the children, and suddenly, in retrospective, you understand some of the conversations that took place or some of the things that happened, is the same I have as an advisor when I get a certain clue. Suddenly a lot of things click. It is at that point in time that I feel certain and start to act (give feedback or whatever). As a facilitator or convenor for communities of practice (or other internal advisor role) I don't have that experience, though the puzzles remain. I guess that as an external advisor you have more distance and as a result, are able to see things more clearly. (this links to a previous post talking about the difference role of an internal and external advisor to a community of practice)

More oneliners

There is some contradiction in the fact that the busier I get working with communities of practice the less time I find to blog about my experiences. And a blog does not seem the best place for digesting experiences, rather for pointing to new articles, phrases, things you overheard that ring a bell, etc.

So here are two oneliners I heard at the end of a meeting about e-tools and communication, worth sharing with you:
'Communiceren is zo dicht mogelijk langs elkaar heen praten'
(seems to be a quote from Seth Gaaikema :)
'Luisteren is wachten tot de ander is uitgepraat'
I discovered the first one is quite famous and even the titel of a book.

Those are hard to translate but let me try: 'communication is trying to talk as closely as possible past each other' (don't know if that's still english). The second one is easier: 'Listening is waiting till the other finished talking'

On carnaval and warts

Innovation often starts with timely feedback on your performance. Last Friday, I helped with the carnaval celebrations at school, where I took this great picture of my daughter and some classmates (some of my blog ideas actually start with a nice photo, but I only start writing when I have a click with a good topic). Like last year and the year before, it was well organised. Today I received an email asking whether we had liked the event and had any suggestions. In replying, I was able to congratulate them and give some small ideas for improvement, that I hadn't told them on Friday. I think this is a brilliant way of asking for feedback, just a day after an event. And not by a long question list, but just a simple and open mail.

Some weeks ago, my other daughter had a wart on her foot and I took her to the general practitioner, a young doctor. I will spare you the picture of the wart... She treated the wart, three times, and said the wart should drop off after some time, but nothing happened. The fourth time there was an older doctor. He did the same thing and after 3 days the wart dropped off. But I didn't have the opportunity to give this feedback to the young doctor, as it would seem like undermining her expertise. Still, I have the idea she has to learn how hard to really apply the ice for the wart to disappear.

It seems if we all would become smarter at using all the media at our disposal for getting feedback, and improving our feedback systems we could learn faster (maybe the doctor is reading my blog :)...

First aid

De Galan and Voigt have a nice summary of a meeting with Chris Argyris online. He explains that we live in a model I world: "Er is een Nederlander geweest... hoe heet die dierentuin ook al weer bij Den Haag? O, ja, natuurlijk, Wassenaar. Is die er niet meer? Nou, ja. In ieder geval die Nederlander, ik ben z'n naam vergeten, die deed onderzoek bij apen, gedragsonderzoek. En wat blijkt, rechttoe rechtaan Model I. Bij de mannetjes zat nog wel eens wat Model II, maar bij de dames, ho maar. Het is dus evolutionair bepaald." En dan serieuzer "Wij zijn veroordeeld tot Model I, dat is hoe ons verstand werkt. Wij zijn in staat om zeer snel tot een keuze te komen in een brij van gegevens. " And in response to the question why he continues to work on model II: "Ik zie mijn werk als een poging om bij te dragen aan het creëren van situaties waar mensen de vrijheid kunnen ervaren om een keuze te hebben. "

(short translation; research with apes shows that behaviour is predominantely model 1. I see my work as an attempt to contribute to creating situations where people can experience the freedom to have a choice).

I borrowed the book: "Eerste hulp bij ongewenste resultaten" written by Loes Wouterson and Pim Bouwman. I borrowed it after reading Chris Argyris (forgot the title something with action learning), a great and inspiring book, about model I and model II thinking, yet I found it hard to make it practical.

This book really helps to do so. The subtitle is introduction to reflection in action, models and concepts of Chris Argyris made 'workable' for everyone. Besides introducing a very lengthy practical case, which illustrates the theory, it explains how to use the ladder of inference. For instance the case method to gain insights in what you do in conversations that don't work for you and how this influences the results you get. It helps to have an external person helping you.

Step 1: Describe the context
Step 2: Write down what was said in the right column
Step 3: What did you think and feel, but you didn't say so?
Step 4: What were the results of the conversation?
Step 5: What were your actions (in terms of asking questions, reasoning, defending etc)?
Step 6: Note down the reasons (your frame of mind)
Step 7: What insights and ideas of new actions did you gain?

Within communities of practice, there is hopefully more model II thinking and less model I thinking. That seems to be somehow an automatic process amongst practitioners who recognise each other's questions.. Or am I being too optimistic?

Community of practice variety from a complexity perspective

There's an interesting article by Shawn Callahan (of anecdote) and Patricia Milne on variety from a complexity perspective. It dates a few years ago and was published here:

Callahan, S. D. and P. Milne (2004). ActKM: Variety in a Community of Practice from a Complexity Perspective. Human Perspectives in the Internet Society: Culture, Psychology and Gender. K. Morgan, J. Sanchez, C. A. Brebbia and A. Voiskounsky, WIT Press.

Finally an article talking about interventions for communities of practice from an advisory perspective! They call the advisor who tries to influence the functioning of a CoP a 'designer'.

"A set of mechanisms is explored to understand how a designer might influence variety in a community of practice. Four mechanisms are addressed:

1. The process of copying strategies and types
2. Copying with error
3. Recombination of ideas
4. Role of the physical environment"
   

When they talk about variety, they refer to what I would call diversity, the opposite of homogeneous CoPs (homogeneous in terms of topics, people, knowledge areas the members bring along, etc). Variety is important for the liveliveness of a CoP. Variety is important too, to drive creativity and innovation. Too much variety though may be hard to deal with, as it can lead to conflicts. Consequently, there are times when diversity should be encouraged and other times when it should not. (all this my interpretation). The article helps to explore when and how to encourage diversity. Like, when to encourage new people to join? When to stimulate people from a certain different background to become actively part of the core group. The articles gives some ideas on how to stimulate diversity; eg. in the physical environment by stimulating various ways of communication. Some members may be attracted to online discussions, whereas others prefer face-to-face. Ensuring variety in ways of communication in a CoP helps to stimulate variety in ideas.

From the article: "Community designers should remain mindful of variety, and, if appropriate, should use the mechanisms described above to influence it. (...) Interventions can be applied by an external force or by an internal force within the community. "

I think an external advisor/designer can see much clearer than an internal person when variety within a community of practice is flawed and hampering innovation within that community. That could be a very important role external advisors can play in a community of practice development process.

Peer assists in communities of practice

Bellanet and the university of Ottawa have created a flash animation on peer assists. It's a great, thorough explanation. I think you can use the animation easily with a beamer to explain peer assists to a group learning about them. The animation is more lively and visual than a powerpoint presentation. If peer assist is roughly the same as Dutch 'intervision' you could probably add a part on the wide range of different methods of doing a peer assist. (they explain only one way of doing it).

Lucie Lamoureux of km4dev pointed to the Bamboo project blogposter who elaborated on different uses of peer assists in networks:

• Having a "mini" Peer Assist as a regular part of network meetings. Potential Peer Assistees would submit their problems ahead of time and a portion of the meeting would be spent on brainstorming around one or two problems. This would have the added benefit of encouraging attendance at meetings because people both love to have their problems solved, as well as being able to offer help to others.

• A Rotating Peer Assist would be a great idea for a half-day or full-day network conference. Organizers could identify a theme for the Peer Assist problems and/or consider having Community of Practice Peer Assists that relate to various job functions, such as having a "Case Manager Peer Assist Day" where case managers could present on their problems and get feedback from fellow participants. This seems to me a far better use of time that would be infinitely more engaging than the conference activities we usually see.

• A technology-enhanced Peer Assist is another option. A wiki would be the perfect complement to the Peer Assist session. Rather than recording ideas on flip chart paper, they could be recorded directly into a specially created wiki. This would then be available for participants to add to later allowing them to provide links to other resources, sample documents, etc.

In the e-collaboration gatherings, we are reserving almost a third of the meetings for a kind of peer assist. It helps to stay very close to the actual practice of participants. Last two times, we asked people to submit their questions ahead of time. Next time, we will probably ask people to forward their questions during the meeting. This will allow for joint prioritisation, and will ensure questions are really 'fresh'. Last time, a few people had moved on in their problem definition in between the time they submitted the questions and the actual gathering.

While introducing peer assists in communities of practice, it may needs some time, to create the space for it, and get people to use the space proactively. So, my personally advice would be that it helps to prepare the sessions more in advance during the first few meetings, and gradually make it a more spontaneous process. Of course, that depends again on the group, whether people are already used to peer assists, etc. The size and frequency of changing members probably influences the level of trust and hence depth of inquiry.

Tony Chocolonely talking to cocoa farmers

I've been too busy to blog, but the blogideas do keep coming in my head. So it would be better to allow time to let them out..

I've watched one episode (no. 4) of the 'keuringsdienst van waarde'. Unfortunately, it is not yet online, but it will be available here.

The story line is that Tony Chocolonely buys fair trade chocolate in the Netherlands. With Fair Trade farmers get a higher price for their produce. At least that's the idea. Tony goes to Ghana to find out what's actually happening. There's a dialogue with farmers which made me laugh outloud (out of sheer recognition). The dialogue between Tony and 3 farmers is roughly as follows:

Tony: 'So are you aware that you are Fair Trade farmers?' (something in his voice showing that he will have found something if the answer is no)
Cocoa farmer 1 and 2: 'No, we are not aware'
Cocoa farmer 3 (cooperative): 'I think you are aware'.
Cocoa farmer 1 and 2: 'Yes, we are aware'.

The rest of the dialogues are full of recognition for me too. The thing is that people are trying very hard to please the interviewer, but also try to safeguard their interests. So there are a lot of assumptions going on in their heads, influencing the answers. This makes it very hard to get the actual picture clear. Just a very practical example of intercultural communication in the context of development!

Britt Bravo's tips to start a nonprofit blog

Britt Bravo has a great blogpost with 5 tips to start a nonprofit blog. Shortened from Britt's blogpost, so click on the link if you want to read the full explanation of the 5 tips:

1. Read blogs.

Before your organization starts to blog, set up a newsreader, whether it is Bloglines or Google Reader or something else, and see what is being written about your organization and the issues that it represents. Not only will this give you a feel for the different styles of blogs, but it will also provide content for some of your first blog posts.

2. The best person to write an organization's blog is the person who is the most excited to write it.

You need a staff person who is not only excited to write on a regular basis, but also wants to immerse themselves in the "blogosphere."

3. Post consistently.

There are all kinds of theories about how often to post on your blog. The most important thing is to be consistent. You don't have to write every day, but once a week is good. T

4. Have an RSS feed and comments.

In my opinion, a blog without an RSS feed or comments is not a blog, it is simply someone writing regularly on a web site. A blog allows interaction through comments, and an RSS feed allows readers to subscribe. For your less tech savvy readers, you should also allow your supporters to subscribe to your blog via email with a service like Feedblitz.

5. Just start.

All very good and recognisable tips!

Communities of practice, bronnen van inspiratie

I read a Dutch book about communities of practice 'bronnen van inspiratie' written by Marc Coenders and Robert Bood Unfortunately the book is sold out, but maybe you may find some soon on the black market...

It took long before I read the book because I thought it would be a sort of Dutch translation of Cultivating communities of practice but it is not. It has a lot of Dutch examples and shares the experiences of Habiforum, an inter-organisational CoP in the field of landuse. As a result it is more focused than 'cultivating communities of practice' on inter-organisational CoP cultivation- the other very focused on corporate CoPs.

For me, it was almost funny to read some of the Dutch jargon like 'hoeders' (sort of thematic leadership). I also enjoyed the many practical tips throughout the book. In a way the practical tips may you see easily how the authors translate some of the theoretical parts into practice. I can share (my own summary and translation) one practical tip:

Taking stock in a community of practice At certain intervals, it is useful to evaluate the balance between 'bringing' and 'taking away'. This balance is one of the prerequisites to obtain flow in a group. Taking stock of this balance offers a good moment for participants to reaffirm their participation in a CoP, or reconsider it (may even lead to a decision to end their participation). Some possible questions for stock-taking might be: - What have been the benefits of the CoP over the past period? - What has been my contribution to the CoP? - In the coming period: what direction do I like to take? - What benefits would make the coming period successful to me? The first question often provides a wide range of reactions. What is important for one person, maybe irrelevant for another persons. The collective benefits are always higher than the individual benefits.

Technology: nownow for all your questions

Via Bieslog I found nownow by Amazon. You can ask any question and it will be answered by 3 people who are good in searching the web. The last question was: What religion are the ethiopians who are currently fighting with the somalians?

And part of the answer:

Ethiopia is a predominately Coptic Christian nation whereas Somalia is Muslim

"Ethiopia is a predominately Coptic Christian nation whereas Somalia is Muslim. They have had hostilities before over their religion in past conflicts.

But it isn't the US waging a Crusade or anything... Think of it more like Serbs against Bosnian Muslims. It is kind of ethnic and religion tensions there."

Source: http://www.digg.com/politics/U_S_backs_Ethiopian_attacks_in_Somalia_2

As far as I remember quite a substantial part of Ethiopians are muslims too by the way! So in this example, the answer is not really impressive...

Five things meme in pictures

The bloggers meme 'five things' has been going around for a long time now. People who are tagged have to tell 5 things about themselves that people do not know yet and then tag 5 others. Nancy White tagged me in December. And today I discoverd the knowledge cafe people tagged me too. They call it 'tikkertje spelen' online. (playing catch) with the aim of getting more personal stories on blogs.

Since my blog is about communities of practice and not about myself, I'm not so fond of the question of this meme, but it would be exciting to start a meme with an interesting content question about CoPs for instance. Will think about that. Since I didn't know what to say about myself, I thought about posting 5 pictures people have not seen and that stimulated me to go through my pictures, which was fun. I chose some pictures that will give me hopefully a tougher image after all this soft talk about communities of practice :).

The first is me and a crocodile (alive!) in Burkina Faso. The second me and my motor-bike in Kenya.

The third is the 'woonwagen' I lived in when I studied. The woonwagen was in Heteren, we didn't have a gass connection and no central heating. In the winter, the area around the woonwagen used to be flooded about once or twice in the winter season and then we had to use a small boat to get to your bicycle on the dike. (a real Dutch story :).






The fourth is a picture of me and my bigger sister. Since it is on ice, you can imagine how OLD I really am...






The last is a picture of Hamidoun and his family, our neighbours in Mali. We lost touch with Hamidoun Traore (he's from Awaki) so who knows we can trace him via the internet. In 2002 we tried to find him, but he had just left his job with Africare.

I forgot to tag 5 other people which is getting harder as so many people have been tagged: Emmanuel K. Bensah (see if we can get it to Ghana), John Smith, Sarah Cummings, Dorine Ruter (see if we can revive her blog), and Beverly Trayner (she was tagged by Nancy too but either didn't see it or chose to ignore it...)

Technology: You is fat and xenophobic

Via an interesting blogpost by Ethan Zuckerman I found this cartoon by Rob Rogers It refers to the fact that 'You' were selected as the person of the year 2006 by Time.

Besides the fact that the cartoon is very funny, it points to an important fact which is that the new technologies enable communication in new ways and changes access to information, but it depends on what you do with that possibilities whether it has a positive or negative change effect on the world. So it would probably have been more interesting if they had pointed to some people (or groups of people) who have been able to contribute to important changes through the use of new internet technologies. (like ME :))...

Virtual and real stereotypes

Via the Internet Time Blog I found www.pikipimp.com where you can play with your pictures. I decided to turn myself into a man (wasn't very hard) because some people who meet me online without seeing my picture, think I'm a man (the name Joitske is a strange name anyhow even in the Netherlands, could go for a man and woman). Somehow it feels like a compliment :).

Since I meet people online without knowing them face-to-face (or even without seeing their pictures) I am intrigued by how the experience changes when you do meet them. I had online exchanges without picture, where the picture is almost shockingly weird. Unconsciously, you do seem to create some sort of image (never really consciously). In some cases, I had online exchanges and when meeting the person, the person was different from my expectations. Either taking up more space (more dominant?) or on the contrary less space (softer?) than in my online experiences. Discovering that a person was from Jamaica with rasta hair seemed less distracting than finding out that her appearance was very gentle and easy-going (unlike the picture I had formed in my mind based upon the online communication).

Working online with pictures helps in my opinion, to form a completer idea of a person, but even when you are used to the pictures the face-to-face experience may be different. It takes some time to adjust to this 'new picture'. In one case, it was as simple as assuming that the person was very young since she was studying, whereas she was much older.

So it seems I have stereotypes at work in both cases. Sometimes it is argued that online communication is more straightforward because we are not distracted by physical clues, I wonder actually whether this is true. I think even online we do bring our own prejudices and do judge people from their communication, based on our previous experiences. A face-to-face experience may actually help to understand a person and his/her way of communicating better. What I do really appreciate online is that there is almost unlimited space. Face-to-face meeting are so time-limited that a lot of things people could say remain unspoken.

Patience as a new cultural dimension?

I went to Ghana just before Christmas like last year (see picture). Unfortunately it didn't work out as smooth as last year... (so bad that I don't even have pictures of this trip)

During the flight from Amsterdam to Accra I noticed I had an infection in my left foot, which became more and more red and swollen. So when I landed, my friend Mary came to pick me from the airport and we decided to drop my suitcase in the hotel and go straight to see a doctor. While waiting for the doctor in the clinic, Mary received a phone call from the airport that I took the wrong suitcase. First I couldn't believe it (it was my own green suitcase!) but then I realized that he could only have her number because it is written on my suitcase. They asked us to come as soon as possible and bring the suitcase back because its owner still had to travel to Kumasi. Since we were at the doctor's, we couldn't make it till 22.00 in the evening (the plane had landed at 19.00). When we arrived at the airport, the owner (a Ghanaian) was very friendly, laughing that the suitcases were indeed very similar. When I apologized, he said it was understandable because of the problem with my foot... I couldn't believe his reaction, as I had expected an angry person, or at least someone who is very annoyed for having to wait 3 hours!

So even though I can hardly generalize that all Ghanaians score high on patience I'm wondering if Geert Hofstede has captured this as one of his cultural dimensions. I see it as a varying degree of let go of control of a situation and accepting things the way they are. Does it fall under one of the five cultural dimensions like long-term orientation (see below; copied from his site)?:

Power Distance Index (PDI) that is the extent to which the less powerful members of organizations and institutions (like the family) accept and expect that power is distributed unequally. This represents inequality (more versus less), but defined from below, not from above. It suggests that a society's level of inequality is endorsed by the followers as much as by the leaders. Power and inequality, of course, are extremely fundamental facts of any society and anybody with some international experience will be aware that 'all societies are unequal, but some are more unequal than others'.

Individualism (IDV) on the one side versus its opposite, collectivism, that is the degree to which individuals are inte-grated into groups. On the individualist side we find societies in which the ties between individuals are loose: everyone is expected to look after him/herself and his/her immediate family. On the collectivist side, we find societies in which people from birth onwards are integrated into strong, cohesive in-groups, often extended families (with uncles, aunts and grandparents) which continue protecting them in exchange for unquestioning loyalty. The word 'collectivism' in this sense has no political meaning: it refers to the group, not to the state. Again, the issue addressed by this dimension is an extremely fundamental one, regarding all societies in the world.

Masculinity (MAS) versus its opposite, femininity, refers to the distribution of roles between the genders which is another fundamental issue for any society to which a range of solutions are found. The IBM studies revealed that (a) women's values differ less among societies than men's values; (b) men's values from one country to another contain a dimension from very assertive and competitive and maximally different from women's values on the one side, to modest and caring and similar to women's values on the other. The assertive pole has been called 'masculine' and the modest, caring pole 'feminine'. The women in feminine countries have the same modest, caring values as the men; in the masculine countries they are somewhat assertive and competitive, but not as much as the men, so that these countries show a gap between men's values and women's values.

Uncertainty Avoidance Index (UAI) deals with a society's tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity; it ultimately refers to man's search for Truth. It indicates to what extent a culture programs its members to feel either uncomfortable or comfortable in unstructured situations. Unstructured situations are novel, unknown, surprising, different from usual. Uncertainty avoiding cultures try to minimize the possibility of such situations by strict laws and rules, safety and security measures, and on the philosophical and religious level by a belief in absolute Truth; 'there can only be one Truth and we have it'. People in uncertainty avoiding countries are also more emotional, and motivated by inner nervous energy. The opposite type, uncertainty accepting cultures, are more tolerant of opinions different from what they are used to; they try to have as few rules as possible, and on the philosophical and religious level they are relativist and allow many currents to flow side by side. People within these cultures are more phlegmatic and contemplative, and not expected by their environment to express emotions.

Long-Term Orientation (LTO) versus short-term orientation: this fifth dimension was found in a study among students in 23 countries around the world, using a questionnaire designed by Chinese scholars It can be said to deal with Virtue regardless of Truth. Values associated with Long Term Orientation are thrift and perseverance; values associated with Short Term Orientation are respect for tradition, fulfilling social obligations, and protecting one's 'face'. Both the positively and the negatively rated values of this dimension are found in the teachings of Confucius, the most influential Chinese philosopher who lived around 500 B.C.; however, the dimension also applies to countries without a Confucian heritage.

Communities of practice during the Global Development Learning Forum

Photo of discussion during the World Cafe, shared by Erik Johnson
Originally uploaded by joitske.

Erik Johnson facilitated a session on communities of practice during the Global Development Learning Forum in Washington. Even though I was invited, I couldn't make it.

So I decided to interview Erik:

1. What was the objective of your session on CoPs, facilitated with Paul Starkey, during the GDLN World Forum?
Paul and I were aiming to stimulate some thinking as to how GDLN-affiliated Distance Learning Centers (DLCs) could use CoPs as a part of their work. The idea was that they could either support them as a part of their learning activities, or perhaps even provide technical assistance in supporting CoP work. So, we presented the participants with some of the concepts behind CoPs and networks, lessons from previous experience and some examples.

2. How many people attended it, and what was their background?
We had two separate sessions, but with pretty modest participation. There were several parallel sessions with tough competition. But as a result of the small group size, we had very lively discussions. I believe we had maybe 12 people in all. They were mostly the staff of DLCs from places such as Afghanistan, Japan and Peru, as well as a couple of World Bank staff and representatives of the British Council.

3. What were the most compelling questions by the participants?
As expected, many of the questions focused on ways in which CoPs could help distance learning centers to be sustainable. The whole Forum was aimed at providing GDLN affiliates with ideas on how to run successful distance learning centers. So, it was interesting to discuss the "communities" of people that some of the centers were serving such as small business entrepreneurs (in Peru) and development partners in Afghanistan. Instead of thinking of clients as "target audiences", we discussed them as "communities". In this way, we focused on how to motivate learning in these groups. Since the term "audience" implies one-way communication, the multidimensional interaction which takes place in communities/networks is something very different to support. The participants seemed quite interested in exploring this.

4. Why do you think CoPs are important for development?
Human capacity is the one essential ingredient to development. I don't think that we would talk about something called development unless we were interested in developing ourselves, in living healthier, more prosperous lives. CoPs are a potent tool for us to develop our skills and competencies, to feel better about our jobs. They are entities that we have been making use of all of our professional lives, but now that we have begun to examine them and try to enhance their effectiveness, they will increasingly become important development tools. It's easy to get hung up on terminology like the difference between a CoP and a network, but in the end, these are structures which allow us to learn from each other. And with this learning comes better development programs, policies and... yes, practices.

Thank you, Erik!

Sinterklaas culture

Today is Sinterklaas! I went to see him at the school of my children and we'll celebrate it with presents and poems this afternoon. Last year I have been

sinterklaas
Originally uploaded by joitske.

boring you with several blogposts, this year only once!

In the newspaper, people wrote about Sinterklaas as the ultimate expression of fantasy and play: a whole country doing its best to make children believe Sinterklaas arrives by boat from Spain... There is also a nice turn-around of hierarchy, the mayor of the city where he arrives, has to receive Sinterklaas with regards. Maybe that's the part I like, that everyone for 2-3 weeks is busy with a person that doesn't even exist.. (Sttt!) There is a special daily news edition of sinterklaas on television and internet for instance.

Last year I talked to people who had not been born in the Netherlands and felt discriminated because Zwarte Piet is the helper of the White Sinterklaas. It seems to me that it is hard for an outsider to really feel and grasp what Sinterklaas is about, if you haven't experienced it as a child. From the outside it may definitely look discriminating or even slightly racist. I don't experience that at all, my children are convinced zwarte piet are white people, but black because of going through the chimneys.

I will upload a Sinterklaas song on my playlist (you can find it on the right side), if anyone want to hear a sinterklaas song in Dutch. Still can't upload pictures to my blogposts but I found a workaround by blogging the pictures straight from flickr.

Technology frustrations

My first frustration was with skype: suddenly my volume was very low. For 2-3 weeks, I tried hard to follow all kind of conversations, but it sounded like very far away, extremely frustrating. I realised how dependent and accustomed I have become on skype. We even cancelled one meeting, though I proposed to continue with text-only, others were not comfortable with that. For groups of people at least, setting up phone teleconferences is not as easy, and I missed the collaborative note-taking that's easy in skype. When I had the same problem with an Interwise supported teleconference, I decided that I had to solve this. After a long search (I thought it was a software problem, but my husband found out it had to be my headset) I was happy that this was solved.

Then I had a serious problem with microsoft Word, at times Word gave an error while saving the file, and at times the whole file was lost. I kind of tried to ignore this problem again, using a google document to avoid loosing my work, or even seeking refuge at other computers. After trying to reduce space, reloading the program, etc. through google we found out that it was probably caused by the anti-virus program Windows Live Onecare, which I had downloaded as trial version. And surprise, surprise, when I turned off the anti-virus, the problem was gone!!

I feel a little stupid about these frustrations, as I lived for 3 years in Ke-Macina in Mali and did not even have telephone, but wasn't frustrated. The thing seems to be that you grow used to a certain use of technology and get frustrated when it fails. Typing Ke-Macina, I remember someone who lived in a town with electricity tell me how frustrating it was to have a fridge and then experience the electricity failures. Whereas we did not have electricity and hence had an oil-fridge. So the more we get used to technologies and certain uses of technologies, the more we can also be frustrated when it doesn't work. So far so good I removed windows live onecare.

And now I can't add an image to this blogpost. Grre&$st.

Technology: the power of web2.0 for African Civil Society

Kabissa has written about the power of the social web or African Civil Society. "The social web, also called Web 2.0 by trendsetters, represents a new era of the Internet in which people no longer go on the web expecting to merely access information provided by others. Everyone can now comment on what they read, change it, rate it, and put up information of their own - all using new user-friendly web interfaces. As a result, many now approach the Internet as a place to make and develop relationships with friends, network professionally and socially, and to create an image for themselves."

They mention some of the revolutionary promises like sharing information freely under the creative commons license, the easiness of sharing text, photos, video and audio materials via the web, communicating in real time through Voice over IP and teleconference-like tools, and the combination of mobile phone and the web (like I could blog by SMS from Ghana).

But maybe I like the pitfalls even better: (copied and shortened from their site):

1. What to do when you’re away from the Internet? People that spend alot of time online begin to take it for granted - this was already the case before Web 2.0, but now new Web 2.0 services are encouraging you to do more online than ever. What do you do when you’re not near your Yahoo mailbox, your blog, your flickr account?
2. Choose online services carefully. There are now a great many online communities, news portals, support forums, instant messaging providers, and advocacy sites that are serving every conceivable interest and perceived business need.
3. A "stale" blog makes you look incompetent. Setting up a blog is quick and easy to do - but keeping it going takes perserverence, nurturing and planning. Many make the mistake of creating a blog, adding an optimistic launch post and then abandoning it forever.
4. The web is forever. This may be hard to imagine, but thanks to sites like Google and the Wayback Machine, anything you add to blog websites or post to an e-mail mailing list might be retrievable even years later.
5. Bad information is worse than no information. With a read-write web, any nutcase can set up a beautiful, legitimate-looking blog website and start posting falsehoods to the world.

I'd probably like to add that you still have to find people to whom it is useful to communicate and with whom you want to collaborate. You can easily waste your time writing a blog that nobody reads. And then I'd say the potential of the web is mostly in finding people who have dealt with likeminded problems as you, found innovative solutions, or finding people who are willing to think with you. So it needs a whole new skillset not to drown.

And with all this collaboration over the web- fighting over scarce resources will not diminuish. But maybe we can become smarter in using the resources? Yesterday I read about the Free studying through the internet (in Dutch) which is becoming a world wide trend. So people who are curious and want to learn (and are connected) can now really start self-learning. This is a huge shift.

knowledge management and the exploding whale

Exploding Whale


I told someone about the video with the exploding whale, that I got to know through a message on the knowledge management for development listserv. I was curious whether the whale had already made it to youtube. And there it was... ready to be blogged.

The advice by the knowledge managers was that the exploding whale video can be used to illustrate the usefulness of doing an After Action Review. It does make this point quite clear indeed.