Technology finds us a house

We are planning to move to the Hague in summer (no, that's not the capital of the Netherlands). I wonder how people searched for a house 10 years ago (probably using newspapers and brokers), but it's amazing how our search is a seamless experience using on-and offline strategies.

We use housing sites like Funda and Jaap and get e-mail alert about new houses meeting our search criteria. Especially the 360 degrees photos are helpful to get a sense of the area when you don't know these places. After finding a few online, we have gone to the areas physically to get an idea of how it looks and feels like. The physical experience is very important. When we had identified houses that could be interesting we rushed back home to look online for the details of the inside of the houses. Together this would give a fairly good picture of where to make an appointment to see the house inside. I'm sure we are making a really well informed choice, knowing what's available. For prices, you request the price of sales in the same areas or street.

For the mortgage advice we had one webcam advice and several face-to-face advices. Though the technology for the online webcam advice didn't work very well (we couldn't hear him, so had to use the phone), the advantage was that he could show the calculations immediately and share them with us. Another advisor who visited us at home created a lot less trust, so the myth that face-to-face creates trust more easily can be dismantled, at least for our case. For trust in this case, it is more important that the responses to your questions make sense, and the speed of giving solid information does a lot to add to trust too.

Practical examples of web2.0 in the development sector

I did a presentation during a Euforic training in Maastricht about web2.0 tools, especially blogs wikis and RSS feeds. During the presentation I showed some practical examples of the way people or organisations use these tools for learning, networking, advocacy, fundraising etc. with the aim of stimulating the imagination of the participants who had just learned about the technical part of the tools. I had not uploaded the powerpoint presentation on slideshare, as it is not one of those presentations that make a lot of sense without the actual presentation. But yesterday at work I discovered slideshare is also a very good helping you to access your own powerpoint presentations when you are away from your own computer! I must say there are some great presentations shared, but I'd still feel guilty about using someone else's presentation slides... So I decided to upload it and see whether the embedding works.... (I don't think it does, what mistake do I make?)

David Weinberger's messy cupboard

Here's a video with David Weinberger talking for roughly an hour about the topic of his book : everything is miscellaneous. I got alerted to the video by the knowledge management for development list.



He is expanding on the idea that digital possibilities are changing the ordering of things which has implications for knowledge creation and decision-making on categories. It kind of democratises categorisation and ordering (my words). I had heard this metaphore before about tagging: books can be stored in just one cupboard, but online you can store a book on as many shelfs as you like (he used the metaphore of branches on a tree).

First order: books on the shelf
Second order: meta data about books on cards (library science)
Third order: all digital data and meta data

Messiness on the internet is hence a virtue rather than a problem, with the miscellaneous drawer of the cupboard getting larger and larger online. He provides the example of a speech delivered by Bush, which attracts 2400 blogposts within a short period of time. This is a new public negotiation of knowledge on a scale that had never before been possible. No one appears to be authoritative, and hence this is a much better reflection of what we're interested in than any controlled source.

I liked the video and I agree with this idea that the negotiation of knowledge is changed by all the recent interaction possibilities on the web, but I find it a little superficial and surprising that everyone's raving about this. I regret that he doesn't go on to analyze how current power relations and cultural assumptions do get reproduced. For instance, it's no coincidence that google posted David Weinberger on the net, rather than for instance Nana Nketsia, a professor at Cape Coast university, who may be an equally important thought leader. But I haven't read his book, so maybe I should do this first.

Happy end of ramadan!

A friend told me the following story. It is funny but a nice example of intercultural communication (and how easy it is to create misunderstandings) too. Fortunately, she allowed me to blog it:

I work in a large, international development organisation with thousands of staff in various countries all over the world. We have a corporate e-mail system whereby it is possible to send a mail to all employees at once. One day, towards the end of ramadan, a person from a country in West Africa send a message to all to wish every one a happy end of ramadan celebration. Others started replying thank you, etc. The IT persons at the headquarters were panicking because a lot of mail traffic may bring the system down, so he sent a message warning people not to send these kind of messages around. But that aroused very bad sentiments within the West African employees, and they started reacting to his message by challenging their right to wish everyone a happy end of ramadan, as they would wish for Christian holidays. So the whole discussion became even more heated on the issue of muslims versus christians (everyone sending mails to thousands of staff) and the IT department panicking even more.

You see how easily the intentions of the IT department staff get misinterpreted. Probably the West African staff may not be aware of the implications of sending messages all over the globe, both for the system as well as for using the staff time. There is a dimension of people from different backgrounds giving different levels of importance to these kind of messages too (they may think this is not wasting time). I can also imagine there may be more general frustrations about unbalanced attention for Christian holidays over Muslim holidays leading to this interpretation by the West African staff...

Why organizations should not blog

I found this Dilbert cartoon via this blogpost by knowledgecafe. The title of the Dutch blogpost is "why most organisations should not blog"

They give 3 arguments why corporate organisations should not blog:
1. Every post need to be checked by legal departments etc. which inhibits authenticity.
2. Organisations are not well prepared for negative comments. Turning off the comments function takes away an important feature of blogs.
3. The purpose of the blog may be to control PR about your brand. But this is an illusion anyhow (the idea that you can control your image/branding).

I think corporate blogging is a very different category from personal blogging. An individual blog takes on the personality of the blogger. My experiences with a group blog is that a group blog is quite different too, as the blog doesn't take on any personality either. I think a group blog can work well with a clear common purpose/theme and long-term interaction within the team. Then the blog can take on the colour of the team. (and probably without colour a blog isn't very interesting to anyone). This process takes time (and probably more interaction than we have currently).

From a US report of last year (the Makovsky state of corporate blogging survey), the fortune 1000 senior executives are slow to react to the credibility of corporate blogs. Only a minority have someone writing a blog related to the company (15%). This figure is much lower than the figure of another study which predicts 70% of corporations will blog by 2007.

Talking about blogging, there is a good blogpost with a powerpoint presentation about 25 styles of blogging by the 360 digital influence blog. When I went through it, it made me think about my prefered blogstyles. Maybe I should try out some new styles.

RSS in Plain English

I'm at time hesitant in crossposting, as I have the impression most people who read my blog, read almost the same blogs I do. Only when I read an interesting Dutch blogpost, I'm confident of the value of crossposting in English, as I'm assuming your Dutch is terrible.

I found this video from Common craft via Nancy White's blog. It's explaining what RSS is and what RSS readers can do to make you faster in keeping up with your favourite websites and blogs. It's really simple and good, and can be used for training and introductory purposes. I'm happy to crosspost it because I also liked the refreshing way the video was made. Instead of using a computer screen, print outs and drawings were used. The vingers make it lively. It's a nice way of making an instruction video without having to show up with your own face (something I like to avoidO. It's a good habit to point to the code of the video in your blogpost for crossposting too (since I have an account on blip.tv, it was clicking a matter of clicking on share, my blogname was already known to blip.tv and within two seconds I could repost it).

Common craft explains: There are two types of Internet users, those that use RSS and those that don't. This video is for the people who could save time using RSS, but don't know where to start. They intend to make a commoncraft show so there's more coming and I'm going to subscribe to it.

Click to Play

How to vlog a meeting or presentation?

I developed a 12-step vlogging process to help a network in Ghana (GINKS) produce an ICT4D stories blog. They were amazed that it is so easy to do, easier than maintaining a website for instance. We did two videos in the office together for fun, then did two video interviews jointly. The last two videos were published on their own. You can see them all on the GINKS blog. We are still figuring out how to link the blog to the website as a page of the website. Thanks to Jay Dedman and Beth Kanter for their tips along the way! there is an IBM podcast too on how to get started with online video. In it, they also make the point that it is very easy to get started with video editing software which is already may be on your computer (like windows moviemaker) which is of reasonably good quality. In combination with the easiness of uploading it to various site, and the possibility of tagging and blogging these video productions, it is a powerful way of bringing people closer together.

Step 1: Attend the meeting or listen to the presentation you want to vlog
Don’t video the whole meeting or the whole presentation. It could become boring and it will be time-consuming for people who were not around to watch it. Hence you have to attend the meeting and listen carefully to what is said. After knowing the details of the meeting or presentation, you can formulate 1-3 interview questions. The questions should lead the interviewee to expland on the core of the meeting, or rather to zoom in on one interesting detail. The interview question can either capture the core of the presentation, or one aspect of the discussions that take place.

Step 2: Choose your person(s) to interview and formulate your interview questions
If you vlog a presentation, it is clear whom you are going to interview, but if the meeting is attended by various people you have to make a decision whom to interview. Choose a person with an interesting opinion or controversial view, who can explain his/her view passionately. Basically the way this person talks will determine the quality of your video. If you have a lively meeting, you might also try and interview several people with the same question. You can have one or several questions. When you try and cover a presentation, you might need 3-4 questions and your video might end up in 3-5 minutes. When you have a specific topic, one question might do, and you may have a video of less than 1 minute. Western people are often more to the point and can talk about a topic without introduction. With people in the south, you might need to plan slightly more time and it may work better to ask introductory questions. You will learn what works by making lots of videos.

Step 3: Ask the interviewee(s) for 5 minutes of their time for a video interview and brief them about the process
It is unlikely people will say no, when you ask them for an interview of 5 minutes. You may brief him/her about the procedure (we will go to a quiet place, I will ask you the following two questions, etc) so that it is clear what is expected of them.

Step 4: Decide on the place of the interview and go there
If you do the interview straight away on the spot immediately after the meeting, it will be more spontaneous than if you do it later and the person will have the topics of the meeting or presentation fresh in mind. But you may have to find a relatively quiet place and good background. It is important to have light on the spot or on your back- so you are not experiencing backlight. Some rumour on the background is OK, as long as the interviewee is clearly audible. It might even give a bit of ‘colour locale’. If this doesn’t work, you may have to make another appointment. When you make an appointment, you can influence the place of interview more and you can choose a light and quiet place. Think about the light too. You can open curtains and put on the light.

Step 5: Do the actual interview and video it
You can do ask another person to ask the questions, or you can do it yourself. If you ask the questions yourself, the interviewee is more likely to look into the camera, which gives the feeling of direct contact. Be clear to the interviewee when to start, and be clear to yourself about the procedure. Are you going to include your questions in the video or will you add them later as text? You might tell tell the interviewee to begin with their name/affiliation and rephrase the question too. If you are not using an external microphone you have to be really close to the interviewee. Andy Carvin has developed some interview tips.

Step 6: Upload the video to your computer
You have to transfer the video to your computer using a cable. A wizard will help you to select the videos from your camera. Make it a habit to delete ‘old videos from your camera, and to upload and process the video as soon as possible after shooting it, otherwise you risk to copy a lot of videos which you don’t need. Make sure you know where you copy the video file (eg. under my videos) and give a logical name.

Step 7: Edit the video
Even if you don’t need to edit the video itself (eg cut part of it), and you don’t want to add any titles to it, you still have to convert the video into the right format. (if you use windows moviemaker from .mswmm to .wmv extension)

You can use one the following free programs for editing:
Windows movie maker
Virtual Dub
Jumanne
Cinelerra
Wax
Avid Free DV

Step 8: Host your video on the web and post it to your blog
There are lots of video sites where you can open an account and host your videos. The advantage of hosting your video on the web is that you don’t use space on your computer, you can access it from anywhere. But also important, from these sites, it is easy to crosspost it to a blog (making it into a vlog when you upload videos regularly). When you use a popular site, you may have lots of viewers too. Some of the site where you can host your video are:

• Blip.tv
• Youtube
• Google video
  (apparently with larger hosting capacity)
• Our media
• Yahoo video

I don’t know about the last 2, but in blip.tv, youtube, and google you have the option to add your blogaddress to your account, so that you can post your video on your blog with one click. In blip.tv you can even upload the video to your blog at the same time that you upload it to blip.tv. It will show the video ‘embedded’ in your blog. Embedded means that you see the picture of the video and start button so that readers and start the video from your blog, without having to go to the site where the video is hosted. It will look like this:

Step 9: Write a summary of the interview on your blog (and indicate how long the video is)
When readers see the video on your blog, they may not know how long it is and whether it is interesting enough for them to watch the whole video. You can edit the blogpost and write a summary of the video content. This will help readers to decide whether it is worth to watch the video. It will also help people with lowbandwidth who might not be able to watch the video to access the information by simply reading the text.

Step 10: Advertise the video if possible
You might announce a specific video to people who might be interested. Untill you have the idea that most people are subscribed to your vlog, you may post it to relevant Dgroups or send it to individual people. Don’t announce every video in the same Dgroup though, but if you have a special one, you might announce it and explain why it is special.

Step 11: Send the link to the interviewee and ask for feedback
This is important, because the interviewee has given you his/her time, and might be curious to see the result (and proud!). He/she can also help you to send the link to other interested people. When there are comments on the blog you might alert the interviewee again.

Step 12: Wait for compliments
(or ask for feedback if you don’t get any)
You can use the references to your blog to see whether other site have referred to your video. You can see the number of times the video has been viewed on the site where you host your videos (blip.tv, youtube or any other host).

Read my blog in chinese and french language!

Since I couldn't read my own blog in China, I'm happy to discover that some people are reading my blog in Chinese language! I found the french and chinese translations of my blog when I looked through the referals to my blog. Both persons used google translations. I can't say anything about the quality of the chinese translation. The french translation of the heading is quite good, but the quote has become really hard to understand because I used a Dutch text...

Meeting Chris Lunch on participatory video

Last month, I was too busy to blog some of the meeting sI attended and it seems late to blog them now. So let me be a good blogger today and blog the meeting I attended today with Chris Lunch from Insight on participatory video organised by CTA in Wageningen. (and yes, in Wageningen you always meet some old faces from the good old days like Huub from World Report who still has the same sense of humour so that was fun!).

I have been busy with vlogging, but had not explored the link with participatory video, hence I was looking forward to this meeting. My assumption about participatory video was that you give the camera to farmers and other people at community level so that they produce their own video. Though that was Chris' definition too, others used a much wider definition of participatory video in which you let people participate in the choices filmers make like topics, subjects, storyboard editing, etc.

The process of Insight's participatory video process can be summarized as follows:

• Participants learn video skills
• Facilitators help groups identify and analyze important issues
• Short video messages are directed and filmed
• Footage is shared and watched
• Learning and exchange is facilitated
• Communities have full editorial control

More in the training book developed by them which can be downloaded from their site.

The advantages of participatory video mentioned (between the lines) were that it can help people to focus and articulate their opinions, you have a concrete product, which can be shared. It can foster consensus building, and it helps identity building, people can be seen more easily as an expert. I would have liked to articulate better how it can work to enhance learning and shift power relations. In some of the examples, farmers were listened too because they had a video. Otherwise they would have been ignored. In that sense, it can work to increase inclusiveness of development processes- but that has to be facilitated in a skilled manner. I suspect Chris is first and foremost a good facilitator who happens to use video as an instrument. I would like to become more skilled in knowing when to use participatory video, when an online discussion or any other means to stimulate creativity in a group process. I do believe participatory video can open up people's minds because it introduces variety in means of communication (as you could use other channels).

Various filmmakers shared stories of how they used to carry kilos of equipment, and that the new camcorders have made participatory video possible. I shortly presented my vlogging process (will blog this in my next post). I am convinced that this can be a next step in video technology, which can also work to empower the 'hard to reach' as they were called.

Jay Ded works on an interesting video project from India, which he announces here. He believes there is a great hunger to learn more about lives in other countries (especially in the south). Amazing how some of the world are disconnected; the vloggers, the participatory video people, the filmmakers. So thanks to CTA for connecting some of us today!

How do I write for my blog?

I was tagged again for a meme by Beth. Beth is a crazy blogger (in terms of number of posts, not content) and I think I would have missed the tag, had I not traced it through the references to my blog on my sitemeter. The meme is 'how do you write for your blog'? It's the first meme I participate in with full enthusiasm. I was once asked the question how I could write so casually in a public blog, and I replied that I'm actually writing for a small group of people (Beth being one of them) and kind of forget that it's public. With the immense multitude of blogs I have no illusion that too many people are going to read it anyway.

One in a web2.0 call we were asked to summarize blogging in 3 words and I said: very public learning. Later I thought it is more thinking outloud (though that's only two words). I think the blog has become my place for thinking in text and pictures (and sometimes video), which is open to be read by others. But first at foremost, it is for myself. When I blog about an idea, it creates room in my head because I have it in my blog. Writing it down also forces me to formulate my ideas more clearly and sometimes I force myself to write some kind of conclusion. In that sense, it helps my learning process by forcing me to think through the ideas I have. I do use my blog a lot as my personal archive using the search function!

So how do my blog ideas start? It may that I read an article which has some interesting point of view which rings a bell, it may be something I experience, or a conversation I have. Always it is somehow a new insight or connection I make. Somehow blogging an article is safe. I do feel at times that I am not blogging my most important thoughts because you don't want to expose someone, or you can't write directly about clients/colleagues. I do want to move this a little as I think it will improve the relevance for others and myself at the same time. For instance, I asked a friend whether I could blog a story she told me and she agreed (coming to you soon). I'm also thinking of changing the title of this blog. I started with the idea of a topical blog, because I didn't want a personal blog and I wanted to learn more about CoPs for development. In the meantime, this topic starts to limit me in my writing as some posts seem too irrelevant for the topic (like this one).

People I would like to tag include Denise Clarke (as we discussed exactly this topic in Accra), The knowledgecafe guys, Wouter Rijneveld (I'm curious about his blogging process) and Anecdote (I'm curious how they are dealing with a corporate groupblog). And let me tag Bicyclemark (my latest blog discovery).

Vlogging in Ghana

Click to Play

I'm introducing the network GINKS in Ghana into the art of vlogging (not that I'm a specialist but I'm one step ahead of them). It's amazing that a vlog will solve all the problems they had with the management of their website! (uhm, those problems will still not be solved, but the blog is bypassing all the complex constructions and negotiations with the website host and gives them direct control over content management). I've had several requests to share the process and I will later.

As part of the process, I made one video myself during a conference on e-governance organised by CTO. Vikas Nath explains his idea that empowerment of women in governance using ICTS should pass via supporting women to increase their incomes via ICTs.

My question at the beginning is not right question, but apart from that, I think it is a great video because of the background, the vivid colours (it is nice to look at) and the focussed topic (it is only 40 seconds long). At one point, Vikas explains his point quite passionately, that's what I like about it. There was a discussion on gender and ICTs during the conference, and I liked the point Vikas made. The next day, I asked him to explain it again. Since he knew what point I was refering to, it doesn't matter that my question was not the right question. More about the technical options we are working with lateron.

You may ask how many Ghanaians have broadband connection to watch vlogs. I think the use of vlogging in development should go with equipping intermediaries with video ipods too, but to get the process going, we might as well as on the content production side. On the other hand, we should not underestimate how fast this process has changed for professionals in Ghana (a lot of them do have access to broadband connections) so for exchange between professionals this may work (let alone for people in the north who are interested to follow what's happening in Ghana).

I'm in the field

Last week I met a researcher who asked me about my work. He asked whether I was 'going to the field'. I replied no, but when I dropped the word Accra, while talking about my work the conversation became very confusing. It appeared the researchers considered all work in a research country as 'field'. As an irrigation engineer, I'm raised in the conviction that anything to do with office and not sufficiently muddy, is not 'field'. Hence my firm No-reply. A good example of the fact that crosscultural communication is not only between nationalities, but also between professions.

So in his language I'm now in the field (Accra). See in the picture that being in the field for me now means driving in cars (sometimes while colleagues are all talking to their own mobile phone)... Though I can understand this definition, deep down, I really disagree with this definition and miss the real fieldwork of walking in the rice fields and talking to farmers.

Social bookmarking NPtech and NPK4dev

In Ghana (all flags around to celebrate the 50 years independence see picture) I finally have the time to catch up with my bloglines, missed CPsquare teleconferences and blogposts in my head. Though I couldn’t download the audio file (it would take 5 hours...), I read the chatnotes of a teleconference call on the community formed around the NPtech social bookmarking experience with Beth Kanter. I was interested in it because of our work with the NPk4dev tag (see feed in the sidebar of this blog). Something that has puzzled me is whether a tag can really form a community. Tagging seems so superficial in terms of knowledge creation, it is more a flow of information. Can we say there is learning going on or is it just sharing information more rapidly? If people start tagging can we all that a community of practice? So: off to the chatnotes.

In the chatnotes of the teleconference the metaphor of the firehose was mentioned. At first I didn’t understand it, but at the second referal I understood it this way: when you are thirsty, a firehose can not help you to drink. Internet is now considered as a firehose of information by many. There was also mention of fear of putting your keyboard into your mouth - I didn't get around to understanding that unfortunately….

A question discussed was whether the community formed around the tag or whether the community formed around three individuals. There is a transition between the "people are the hub" versus "the tag is the hub”. The difference between the librarian approach and tagging was described as: every book on the right shelf vs every book is on every shelf. Actually a great way of explaining the different rationale between tagging and categorizing. (which reminded me of a discussion I had about resistance by librarians to some of new ICT developments). Then there was a remark that there are hunters & taggers, not everyone has the same role.

All this inspires me to reflect on the npk4dev tag process, a feed with materials tagged about knowledge management in a development context (aggregated on superglu). First of all, this is the initiative of one person (Peter Ballantine) who invited three others to start an experiment. I knew about the nptech case through a session in CPsquare (with Beth). And through her, I joined the NP (non-profit) tagvocates and we decided to rename our tag into npk4dev. The case was described on the e-collaboration group blog. We announced the tag once through the km4dev discussion list. We set up a blog which is still empty, because no one really had the energy to pull that process. The next step will be taken during a face-to-ace meeting of the latter group.

Now what's the role of tagging in community formation in this case? I think it strengthening the collaboration between the initial 4 persons and in this case, they take the tagging experiment hopping along various groups (in which they are already active), learning here and there. In a way, the tagging experiment has brought a new member into the e-collaboration CoP, a person who might be an fanatic tagger (?). I don't think we can talk about a ‘tagging community’ because it is rather the other way around that the experiment could leverage various existing communities of practice. People who would not know could from the outside think that this is a tagging community though.

This case shows that use of a certain new tool (like tagging) can apparently bring about new connections and new members into a community of practice, or might encourage others to become active, because a different skill/interest may be aroused. Some tools seem to encourage the formalization of a certain level of membership (like signing up for the Dgroup). The constellation of CoPs as represented by the formal Nten, Netsquared, CPsquare, km4dev and e-collaboration communities is probably also worth a study in itself!

Software success in Ghana

The BBC posted an article on software success in Ghana. (I copied the picture from there). What you see in the picture is the way it works. Guido Sohne, a Ghanaian software developer (through his blog I learned he has some German blood somehow) developed the software for this system. If you make a picture of this black and white design with your internet-enabled mobile phone, it will give you all the needed information about the building in the background, linking you to wikipedia.

Guido played a role in developing the semacode necessary for this technology. From the article: However, any example of African-created technology being used in Western cyberspace still proves the exception rather than the rule.
"If the size of Africa's IT industry corresponded to the edge of a wheel," Sohne says, "each turn would show just how far and how fast we are being left behind."

It is a nice example that it is possible to design technical software solutions in Ghana. So I'd love to see more appropriate design for the Ghanaian context, probably by linking development workers and software developpers. But who is going to pay for that?

Movable Distance, technology and remoteness

Via Cindy I read a long blogpost on Ideant; Movable distance, technology, nearness and farness. The first heading is: detours on the road to abolishing distance. While technology may facilitate being near things once considered far, more than technology is required to bridge the existential gap between the knower and the known. The essay has distance as its topic and argues that we need to think of more than the old temporal/spatial distance, as information technologies make it irrelevant whether we communicate with our colleagues next room, or someone at the other end of the world.

I really appreciated how ideant describes how a lot of talk about online communication carries an implicit judgment about online communication, with a bias towards face-to-face communication. "What do we lose?" Instead of: "what do we gain?"
The implicit assumption is that mediated conversations introduce impurities, because we use lesser senses. Yet, as the essay points out the mediated communication can provide kinds of knowledge not available through face-to-face communication. An online conversation can be 'near' when ideas are congruent with mine, while a face-to-face conversation can be very 'far'.

Now that I write this down, it sounds all too logical to me, and it seems everyone in the world would agree. On the other hand, I do experience that for a lot of people online is less and a substitute for 'real' communication because it is too expensive to travel and meet. I think that's a different mindset from knowing what various types of communication can be fostered and how it impacts the results. Somehow we need to become smarter as using various means without letting ourselves be driven by mere personal preferences. What's the advantage of talking on a blog rather than face-to-face? How does it shift the conversation? Without being aware of this, we will probably not invest in new types of conversations and continue on the same old roads.

CoP as space rather than a group

Marc Coenders, Maarten de Laat and myself are doing an online course 'facilitating communities of practice' and we are asking the participants to reflect upon what they learned. I'm not sure we are asking them the right questions and I'm thinking that I learned a lot, but that it's not always easy to formulate what you learned.

One of the new things I have learned through the various conversations is that you could see communities of practice as a space, rather than as a (variable) group of people. It's an important one to me, and one of the things that make me think deeper about the relationship between the CoP theory and group dynamics. I have the impression there is not much convergence between the two areas of expertise so far. I think the usefulness may be in knowing about group dynamics in relation to the start up phases (after all, you start with a group of people), during events, and for the core group. In the end, it might be a huge difference to see the CoP as a space where people can find each other, it becomes independent of the people who make up the space. Food for thought!

Another one is how learning moulds relationships, where I assumed relationships preceed learning, in fact, there might be a on-going mutually reinforcing process when people are communicating between learning and the relationship (feeling close, trust, friendship) between people.

Ning: just what I was looking for?!

Via my husband and Checklist, a Dutch blog, I found Ning. Though I don't even try to keep up with all the new tools that are thrown on the internet, but I must say this looks just like the kind of tool I was waiting for. It gives you the opportunity to build an online platform in a super-user-friendly and easy way! You can choose to add or leave out features like video, blogs, etc. and you can choose whether you want a public or private platform. Erwin Blom created a Dutch one if you want to have a look. If you want a 12 minutes instruction you can watch this video:



Considering my recent experience with customizing a microsoft sharepoint environment for an online workshop (which needs technical expertise etc.) Ning sounds like an amazing innovation. With sharepoint, after all efforts, you get very un-userfriendly features; there is no email alert with content, there is no way to see a whole thread at once without clicking about 10 times, etc... A disadvantage of Ning could be the advertisements, but if you pay some money, it will be removed.

The funny thing is that they call it a social network (build your own social network). Whereas I would call it build an online interface FOR your social network. I may be old fashioned because I see the first useful application of Ning for existing groups. With the public version, you can choose to build a ning around a certain topic that may attract new people, so in that sense it might be a tool to build a social network too. (still can't believe that works well with starting with an existing social group or network)

Pipi Langkous and story-telling

Some time ago, my daughter had to dress like Pipi Langkous for her teacher's birthday. Since she didn't like it (she has red hair and is sometimes already called Pipi) she refused to do so. She was the only child not dressed like Pipi but didn't care at all.

On Friday, I was flabbergasted when there was a discussion at the schoolforum about the information sheets that my daughter's school sends home to the parents. One person illustrated his argument against the sheet saying that one girl was not dressed like Pipi because her parents had lost the information sheet.

Though I'm not 100% sure, I think he was talking about my daughter. I'm always surprised how easily information gets twisted or used for somebody's own benefit and purpose. Another story: I had a problem with my foot in Kenya in 1989, I left Gem Rae for the Netherlands with the problem on my foot persisting. When I came back in 1990, the farmers were surprised to see me walking. The story had gone round that I lost my foot!

This brings me to my surprise about the strong advocates of story-telling. Stories are promoted as a way of capturing tacit knowledge. I agree with the fact that stories are powerful ways to convey ideas. On the other hand, stories in themselves are not good, holy or what ever. They can work to replicate or consolidate certain power relations. The content of the stories matters a lot.

So when can you use stories as an advisor for communities of practice? I get the impression people think that you are a good trainer or advisor when you use storytelling, its sounds cool and participatory. I think it is not as easy as that. It may be useful to be able to detect when stories get distorted and misused by the core group of a community of practice for instance. And you have to know when storytelling is not the right intervention. Who (mis-)uses stories and why is a good question though!

If you still want to use storytelling, here's a good storytelling guide developed by SDC.

We're too much in a 'to do' mode

I know Maaike Smit and I'm proud that she has written a very revealing paper with a very explicit title about learning in the development sector: We're too much in a 'to do' mode (the title reads almost like a conclusion and recommendations at the same time :).

She did action research amongst development NGOs in the Netherlands, and investigates how they 'think and talk about learning, which influences the way they shape their organisational learning. Organisational learning remains a vague goal without 'hands and feet'. Most organisations categorise themselves as having an activist learning style. Joint reflection on experiences in not common practice. Reflection is mostly informal and project-related.'

She takes the stand that self-knowledge — understanding how you learn — is an essential first step in improving your own learning processes. Supporting people and organisations to reflect on their own learning processes and capacity is central to assisting them to learn. I think that's a brave and clear stand.

On page 18 there is two things that struck me, as I have been thinking about them for long. The first one is that new staff entering the organisation was mentioned most often as a factor promoting learning as it brings in new expertise and a fresh, critical view. I fully agree with this, but also see that potential is rarely leveraged. So probably finding out about how an organisation deals with the input of newcomers, will tell something about their learning abilities.

The second is that monitoring and evaluation were hardly mentioned as enabling factors for learning. Nancy Dixon was the person who talked about separating learning from accountability during her master class in the Netherlands, which seemed very refreshing after all the struggle to 'force' people to learn from monitoring efforts. As monitoring and evaluation is part of the accountability system, it is hard to get fully honest data on the table. When data do not match people's gut feeling, they do not really learn from it.

Having this information about learning styles of the development sectors (though the 3 cases already show how hard it is to generalise!); what consequences does this have for communities of practice? Does it mean that in the start up phase, you have to make sure you respond to the activist preference? And how and when do you introduce more reflective elements? Or will a community of practice automatically mould itself according to the preferential styles of the sector and are they not the best vehicle to deal with learning disabilities? (some of these questions I have tried to inject into a mini-project group of the english foundations workshop, so I'm waiting for them to give the answers...).

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.