Practical example: Ayuda Urbana

Etienne Wenger wrote a case study in 2002 about Ayuda Urbana, a constellation of communities of practice focused on urban issues and challenges in Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean region, or as they call themselves: 'Red Inter-municipal'. The case describes the efforts to assist 10 huge cities in the Central American Region to improve their technical expertise and municipal effectiveness by connecting mayors and their staff into forming communities of practice. The initiative followed the move of the World Bank to become the 'knowledge bank'. The first focus on informational infrastructure was followed by a recognition of the need to supplement the focus on collecting information with connecting people. The Ayuda Urbana initiative followed from a conversation between the World Bank's urban specialists and several mayors and their municipalities: Guatemala City, Havana, Managua, Mexico City, Panama City, San Jose, San Juan, San Salvador, Santo Domingo and Tegucigalpa. The members of the network include the mayors and their staff, specialists in various areas of urban development and management. Even though membership is open to other cities, I still see the same members on the website now.

A central part of the initiative has been partnership: several organizations joined forces to bring the resources necessary for the 'project' together (World Bank, UCCI, cities, local organizations). Eight topics were selected by participants (from e-government to disaster prevention) and seven CoPs were started, bringing together 128 members from 10 cities. Different cities volunteered to coordinate one or two communities of practice. They were each launched through a two-day workshop, facilitated by a team of the World Bank. A web-based tool was made available to continue online conversations and stay in touch. Furthermore there was a website serving as a repository. A formal evaluation by an external agency gave extremely positive feedback. The 'project' was adopted by the UCCI/CAMC in 2002 and the municipal councils have agreed to integrate it into their annual plans and alternate in taking the coordinating role for the communities and the website.

Very interesting are the lessons learned:
- The experience in cultivating CoPs from the inside in the World Bank was critical to the success of the Ayuda Urbana project
- The communities of practice were an effective vehicle for learning; enabling sharing of knowledge with direct applicability to practice
- Adapting 'best practices' requires adaptability to local conditions; CoPs allows people to explore the principles underlying a successful practice
- Learning is best enabled by a variety of activities that enhance each other's effectiveness
- Always stay close to the needs of the members
- Engage the practitioners: provide assistance to enable them to develop materials and organize events
- Bring a variety of resources- the most important resource being process and domain knowledge (in this case the process knowledge came from the World Bank people)
- Prepare for hand-over; start with lots of support but prepare to hand over the initiatives, eg. convincing local authorities to take over the sponsorship of the project.

In the conclusion it is stressed that this is a new model for knowledge transfer in development, giving voice to local expertise, and whereby target countries are not recipients of ready-made knowledge handed down by experts from outside.

Even though this may have been the shift for the World Bank; compared to all participatory processes and methods common to most grassroots development projects, I'd almost say, the main shift in a community of practice 'approach' to learning is away from the idea that everybody has to participate and has to be heard. CoPs theory acknowledge the role experts can play in a community of practice.

Culture: carnaval

See here the picture of Knillis (unfortunately behind the lantern) who will go down tonight at 24.00... On monday I travelled from the Hague back to the south and it was like traversing a border, north of the 'rivers' nothing changed and in the south.. see picture. This reminded me of someone who said there is a 'north' and 'south' at every level (the world, europe, country, towns?) whereby the south is more easy going, relaxed, less inclined towards long-term thinking, etc... (more fun?)

Practical example: Aquasan the story of a remarkable community of practice addressing water supply and sanitation in developing countries

An example! Marc Steinlin from Helvetas mentioned in the km4dev list that Urs Egger has written down the story of Aquasan. Though I often visit the km4dev website, I had never traced it, so there are probably many more examples out there. It is so easy to overlook something on the web! When I started reading I was first disappointed that the story is about a community of practice amongst northern (Swiss) development workers, but it is a good story because it highlights a lot of critical success factors. (and I printed another one by Etienne Wenger, which I will blog later.)

The Aquasan CoP was started in 1983 by a small group of Swiss experts working on water supply and sanitation issues. They continued to meet four times per year for one day for knowledge sharing- up to the present date (23 years!) and organise a yearly annual workshop of five days in one of the developing countries. The founding members still form the core group, strongly commited to Aquasan. The passion of the professionals- for their work and the theme water and sanitation in developing countries- keeps the group together, members are always looking forward to meeting their colleagues and some consider each other as friends. The circle seems quite closed and has even been refered to as "water maffia", but there is an outer circle of participants that attend meetings only irregularly, and guests are invited for presentations and topical discussions. The organisations making up Aquasan more or less took their hands off and gave their representatives free rein to exercise their creativity. Private consultants were not invited because the group was afraid of competition. The group's constituents are financially supported so that the community does not have to show a direct impact resulting from their participation, whereas SDC has always funded the workshops.

At the regular meetings, there are recurrent issues like the mission reports, presentation by researchers, the annual workshop, SDC policy and some long-running topics like the development of a household water disinfection system.

So what is the impact? If there had not been a benefit to its members, they wouldn't have continued to participate. But more specifically, the community of practice has provided a place to solicit informal feedback, has acted as a multiplier, and has helped with coordination in the sector. There are hardly any identifiable outputs (like publications, website, etc) as the output constitutes of learning for the individual members.

Questions I still have at the end are about the growth of the community (numbers), how new members are recruited, introduced etc. and whether the employers of the members never asked for any outputs (what a luxuoury, or what a vision to allow for this space for the practitioners!). It would also have been nice to hear more about the actual domain innovations stimulated by the community of practice, and the homogenous/heterogenousness of the professionals.

Culture: carnaval in the south of the Netherlands

I live in the south of the Netherlands, so in the carnaval (catholic) area. Since I was born and raised in Amersfoort (middle of the country) I have not been brought up with carnaval at all. On the picture you will see Prins Harry I with adjudant Wim who will rule our village renamed zandhazendurp for the carnaval period. Den Bosch is now called Oeteldonk and on their site you can see how many more minutes till the official start of carnaval. Today we celebrated carnaval at school, tomorrow in Zandhazendurp and sunday we will go to welcome the prince in Oeteldonk. It really goes on till Wednesday, but I'll go to work (remember: I'm not from here!!). One year (more than 10 years ago) I fully celebrated carnaval, and it was a great eye-opener. From the outside (for Northerners like me) it looks somewhat childish and a drinking party. When you celebrate and fully emerge yourself in the whole process, it is also about talking and joking to anybody you meet, people interacting in a very different way then they do in 'normal' life. And there is a whole flowing ceremony till wednesday. (needless to say that the fasting part of the ceremony which should start after carnaval got lost somewhere in the process). Still I feel I will never get the real carnaval feeling as people do who were born and bred with it. And people here immediately recognise northerners in the crowd by their behaviour, which doesn't match local habits.

I love the carnaval stories; I asked someone whether he was going to celebrate this year and he answered: "well, I don't think so. But I'll probably end up going to the local pub, will start to drink and like it, and then in the evening someone will propose to eat soup together somewhere, but before the soup arrives I will have fallen asleep..."

Technology: blogging projects

I came across the African mentoring project set up by Ore Somolu from Nigeria. She is inspired by the Young Caucasus Women project in which I was the first mentor, and which seems to move quite well at a good pace. Each week another mentor is invited to blog about a specific topic, and the Caucasus students participating are invited to blog about the same topic, and comment to and fro on each other's blogs. Ore has asked Katy Pearce, the project initiator how she got the project started. Interestingly, the project cost is nothing.

I remembered Beth Kanter had pointed to a wiki from global voices on what makes a successful local blogosphere?, reflecting on the fact that countries like Cambodja, Iran and Jordan have a dynamic blogosphere, while others don't.

Ory from Kenya suggests for instance:
- support new bloggers by linking to them, commenting on new blogs. this is important to helping to build a blogosphere
- create a home like a weblog ring, create a space for the community to be gathered
- set up guides and instructions on how to blog
- virtual communication amongst the bloggers (IM, chat, email, etc) helps to create community and forge relationships)

The wiki seemed totally ruined, but I could refer to an older version to get the information still. Mmm. That could be the downside for doing such things in (public) wikis.

Technology: Dutch most computer literate and Ghana's rapidly changing telecommunications market

The picture shows the webroom of the Ghana dot gov project, a portal into Ghana. I was reading about Ghana's telecommunications market, when I came across the fact that the Dutch are the most computer literate in the world. A nice combination for a blog post on technology?

'Residents of the Netherlands, armed with a tax break for computer purchases and some of Europe's lowest broadband fees, lead the world in the use of personal computers and the Internet, according to a study by the Pew Charitable Trusts released Tuesday.
In a survey of habits in 17 nations, 82 percent of Dutch residents said they used a computer at least occasionally at home or at work, and 72 percent used the Internet.'

In Ghana, the number of prepaid and postpaid subscribers has increased from 28,900 in 1997 to 1,2 million in 2005 and predicted to increase to 2,1 million in 2008. The number of new fixed lines per year has decreased from 42,523 in 2000 to 19,471 in 2003. Internet subscription has grown from 505 in 1996 to 33,000 in 2005 (still only 0.152 subscribers per 100 people) But internet users rose from 600 in 1996 to 700,000 in 2005. (source: Telecommunications Market in Ghana, status and outlook, 2005 edition). So lots of areas skip the stage of fixed landlines straight to mobile telephony. And when I phoned from Accra to Tamale with a fixed line, it was extremely expensive, but with a mobile phone it doesn't matter where you are. Unfortunately, broadband is still very expensive, monthly rates dropped from 150 dollars per month to 95 dollars per month in 2003. Which is even high in absolute terms compared to the Netherlands (roughly 17 euros per month), let alone in relative terms. (and hence there were just 1,500 broadband subscribers for the whole of Ghana in 2005).

A study in the UK in 2001 looked into the different uses of the net by broadband and other users. "The analysis suggests that, while there are few socio-economic and demographic differences, broadband users tend to use a wider range of applications, access them more frequently and for longer. However, because most broadband users have been, on average, users of the Internet for longer than PSTN users, these effects may be to do with their Internet competencies rather than the nature of broadband Internet itself. The paper also suggests that the interaction of speed, flat rate and always-on'' is a key feature of broadband and a key value model to the user. "

A community of practice use's of technology is influenced not only by the access of members, but also their internet competencies. Looks like broadband may bring along a different use (at least it did for me, you even forget, but in Ghana with our dial-up of 19 kbps people who would send a large attachment would turn into your instant enemy because it could take ages to download and I used to put off the automatic repetition of the mail in the reply to shorten the mails)...

Technology: Snow White and the seven competences of online interaction

Last year I did Nancy White's online course on facilitating online interaction, which also touched upon the competences of online facilitators. She did a presentation of which an audio file is available here. I listened to the file and came away with the conclusion that she distributed chocolates and there was a loud applause at the end (don't know if the two events were related :)). Then I found a remix (audio with slides and photos) by Nick Noakes but downloading was going to take one hour, so I didn't. Then finally I found the slides

The seven competences are:
1. Self-awareness
2. Online communcations
3. Learning with others (skills like reciprocate)
4. Facilitation for relationship, identity, presence and flow
5. Intercultural antennae
6. Tolerance for ambiguity
7. Ability to switch context

In terms of self-awareness, I know audio alone apparently doesn't work for me, but I persevere in getting what I want to know (and working through the slides to find out the seven works better than having the full list reading at hand). I have a dislike for telephone conversations too. Knowing my dislike, sometimes I force myself into chosing a phone conversation over a mail or whatever, but I know I don't do this often enough. But by practicing online communication, I slowly get a better feel for what might work and what not. And the tolerance for ambiguity is much stronger needed skill online than face-to-face, because often reactions and feedback are delayed of even invisible/absent.

It's so great that all this is available on the web; if you are focussed you can get a lot of infomation matching your interests online!!

Technology: social bookmarking with del.icio.us

Kathleen Gilroy has posted a good and easy to follow webcast how to use the social bookmarking service, Del.icio.us, for learning. It's a very clear explanation of the basics and stresses the function of social bookmarking as an intermediairy to find your way in the millions of blogs (and other sites) on the web. At the end she talks about the function of technorati to find out how many blogs link to your own blog- and doing this for my blog I found out some interesting links to my own blog (I guess the lack of trackback makes me unaware of some of the links- but I when I tried this haloscan a post disappeared so I'm scared of trying again).

With a small group of people we'll be experimenting with the concept of using a unique tag to produce an RSS feed (when it's up, I'll post the RSS feed on my blog). My own question is around quality versus quantity, it seems so easy to come up with lots of links- so maybe a condition should be that you have read it and find it is of a certain quality. If not- it becomes pumping around of information.

The Slackermanager blog posted the several habits of wildly successful del.icio.us users a great help, with 8 habits:

1. Make many marks
2. Sir Tag-a-lot
3. Use the inbox
4. Mix 'n match
5. Stalk other users
6. Get it to go
7. Move it around
8. Explore more

Here's the recommendation to tag a lot. I haven't tried the inbox and stalking but that sounds like useful tips. I started tagging but still feel like I'm dumping the links into a borehole so I don't consider myself wildly successful (yet).

Technology: the online Johari window -part 3

The Online Johari window is becoming a kind of Die Hard series (don't know why Die Hard comes to my mind as I'm preparing to go and see Bambi 2), but this morning it suddenly struck me that through the small test of the online tool adaptable and sensible are shown in bold. Three people whom I never met face-to-face have come up with adaptable (responsive) for me. The stricking thing is that we did a similar exercise with the team of people with whom I had worked on a daily basis for over a year (all face-to-face) and they came up with accomodating- very similar to adaptable. So that's 1-0 for these people's capacity to 'read' people through disembodied (computer mediated) interactions. - the face-to-face team never called me sensible though :)-

Forgot this: how does the Johari window as a tool link to communities of practice? I've never read much about interventions for communities of practice, wonder about experiences in using these kind of exercises to improve collaboration in CoPs?

Technology: use of the Johari window

Nancy White thought about the Johari window online tool (and so did I). She said:" Wouldn't it be interesting if someone built a utility that allowed us to "tag" ourselves, then allow others to tag us as well. more open, but use the same intent behind this Johari window we both played with."

I don't know how that would work: tagging with what kind of labels, similar labels as used in this tabel? How open and honest would that be? And is that not literally 'labelling' people rather than giving critical feedback that will help people? And how does it sit with invited feedback versus uninvited?

Looking at our tests with this online Johari window, I don't think it is very subtle in giving feedback, as we all seem to end up with a long list of positive attributes. The only surprise for me was the label 'extrovert' as I'm more usually more halfway between intro- and extrovert. I recognise that I may be more extrovert online.

A nice way of using the online Johari window though, maybe to prepare for a face-to-face event. People can be invited to prepare a window, send it to their teammates, and compile the results. This would be more of a light introduction to some conversations on how you are and how people perceive you (and find out how this stimulates/inhibits collaboration in the team). Just great that there are so many nice training aids (like learning styles test, etc.) online, just thinking if I can blend it into my next face-to-face event!

Culture: feedback on online identity

I got some enormous flowery compliments about my blog today, very stimulating to keep on blogging, but makes me feel shy. It's actually very interesting that people may appear differently online than in person, because you don't see the non-verbal expressions. Nancy White posted an online Johari window, which I filled in for her (I saw only women responded). I prepared my own, but noticed most of the characteristics you can choose from are rather positive (and so might hence be the outcome?). To give me more feedback about the impressions I create online you are kindly requested to fill in Joitske's Johari window by selecting 5 to 6 words you associate with me, or at least the impression created by my blog (1 minute). Warning: it is not anonymous (but you can chose a nickname :)).

The idea of working with the Johari window is to increase the part which is known to self and others by getting feedback. What I always found interesting in working with the window as a framework is that things which people feel are hidden are often 'leaking' through non-verbal expressions. I wonder if there is less 'leakages' online, or are people who are very conversant online also able to see through, even without non-verbal clues?

Culture: Valentine's day in Ghana

Another story about blending cultures: "Me Do Wu," My Val: The Creation of Valentine's Day in Accra, Ghana by Jo Ellen Fair who explains that:

"Far from a story of cultural imperialism, the rise of Valentine's Day in present-day Accra shows that local adoption of global consumerist preferences is best understood as a local process imbued with local meanings and values, deliberately and rationally pursued."

She did open-ended interviews with customers and shop-owners in Accra in 2000, 2001 and 2002 and concludes:

"Borrowed from abroad, altered to fit local circumstances, Valentine's Day is part of a complex set of imported and indigenous lifestyle markers that are used increasingly in urban Africa by individuals and social groups to construct identities as older and more traditional cultural norms and forms loosen their hold. "

She explains the important role of the media in the introduction of Valentine's Day: "Of course, Val Day in Accra would be a far lesser holiday if it were not for radio and television promotion. Picked up from media promotion handbooks produced in the United States, Valentine's Day came to Accra prepackaged in a rarefied state of hype. Its packaging did not exactly fit the Ghanaian cultural environment. Broadcasters say they knew they had to figure out how to promote Valentine's Day in a way that would draw in audiences and potential advertisers. Though romance had long been a part of Valentine's celebrations worldwide, Ghanaian broadcasters took the theme of romance and created promotions that played upon Ghanaian idealizations of courtship and marriage."

She furthermore explains and acknowledges that Valentine's day is foremost for the middle-income urban Ghanaians: "Valentine's Day offers upwardly mobile, urban Ghanaians a sense of connection to global modernity. It helps Ghana's newly privatized media, as well as its merchants, create the commercial culture necessary for their advancement."

And explains why this is likely to be so: "Modernity and Val Day intersect in another important way. Upwardly mobile Ghanaians increasingly are enticed by conceptions of love, courtship, and nuclear family life that are at odds with older kin-based marital systems, obligations, and sexual mores. When a young Ghanaian says that Val Day gives her boyfriend the chance to express his devotion to her, and that this courting behavior makes them both feel "modern," she is invoking love, monogamy, and individual rather than kin-based selection of marital partners. Thus Valentine's Day is a good fit with the challenge to customary patterns of marriage and social organization increasingly mounted by upwardly mobile urbanites. Personal selection of a marriage partner, monogamy, and the nuclear family as a social and economic unit are seen by many educated urbanites as a wave of the future. Val Day, for them, has a progressive gloss (which in the West it certainly lacks). When a preacher says that Val Day is for couples, he too is arguing for monogamy. He is using Val Day to support the insurgent position that even in Ghana the relationship between husband and wife is the central fact of marriage. Thus the interests of educated urbanites and advocates of a conventional Christian morality converge on Val Day. Both use the holiday to advance their seemingly parallel causes."

"Although much has been said about the Western media's impact worldwide, not enough work has been done to explore empirically why certain new images and ideas promoted by media strike a chord in this or that society, with this or that population. We need to know how imported cultural products meet local trends and are repelled or absorbed by them. This work points to the importance in this process of local contingencies and choices, and to the value of close work on the relationship between local media campaigns and highly visible or highly volatile elements of popular culture. One Ghanaian marketer said of Valentine's Day what might be said of most imported cultural products: "Saint Valentine's Day is like palm nut soup. You cannot just look at the soup and say whether it's good or bad. You have to taste the soup, savor it, and then decide" (Pauline Badu, interview, Feb. 6, 2002)."

Culture: Ethiopian Idols

Ethiopian Idols is causing a sensation on television. And I can imagine if I remember the usual TV-programs!! One world is reporting that jury member Feleke Hailu is as harsh as the Dutch jury. His sentence: 'Alta Fakedem' (translation: you did not make it) has apparently become a popular phrase in Ethiopia. People were reportedly shocked in the beginning as it is unusual in Ethiopia to criticize in public, but the program has the highest ratings. Critics say it is a cultural invasion, but the organisers think it gives room for local cultures, as candidates are allowed to sing in any of the 80 languages of Ethiopia.

If only the editions were webcasted... so that we could see the iskista...(moving shoulders dance).

Technology: blogging is contagious?

Last sunday, I sent the link to my blog to Gerritjan van Luin. The same day, he started his own blog (in Dutch) on communities of practice or 'leernetwerken'. And with great pictures for those who do not understand Dutch!

Technology: wikis, organisations and efficiency

John Barben posted this excerpt from Business Week on wikis. I thought it's a nice follow-up on our web2.0 discussion in IICD. People questioned the use of some of the web2.0 tools because it is seen at time consuming. Probably in the short run it is (and changing habits is energy-consuming as well). But in the long run it may be about more efficient workprocesses. I'm sure mails and meeting time will go down if people write and read about what's core to share with others, and I think the content of meetings may be more relevant to cater for faster organisational learning. At a small scale we are experimenting with wikis and social bookmarking. Now if I mention that we use pbwiki I get my space doubled (now I'm not sure if I need that but here we go..)

Let's see who reads my blog in IICD...

Communities of practice: a facilitation task taxonomy for communities of practice

I had unsubscribed from the yahoo group on communities of practice as I was ploughing through my mails rather than happy to read them (not the best mode for learning). But now I have worked out an aggregating system that works for me with google personalised pages as my RSS reader. An interesting alternative for personalised pages (thanks to Chris Addison) is netvibes where you can add more options like flickr photo streams. I have added the yahoo group to my personalised pages, so it pops up and I found Rosanna Tarsiero posting a link to an article on A facilitation task taxonomy for communities of practice by Halbana Tarmizi and Gert-Jan de Vreede (sounds Dutch).

It talks about the role of the facilitator of a CoP which is key to the effective establishment and sustainment of communities of practice. The facilitator role is crucial in making a case for the CoP, finding common topics for members, securing trust of shared information and lowering barriers among members to involve in knowledge sharing activities. Inspired by the facilitator role description work by Group Support Systems (GSS) (is this the same as Group Decision-making Support Systems?) they come up with 33 CoP facilitation tasks. They can be subdivided into two main categories: internal and external.

Internal:
* Information source, providing information to CoP's members
* Inspirator, encouraging members to be active
* Guide, including all tasks that focus on assisting and advising the CoP and its members

External:
* Information source, providing information about the CoP to the outside world
* Public Relations manager, representing the interests of the CoP to the outside world
* Investigator, all tasks concerning searching for and collecting useful information for the CoP and its members.

I think it's good to focus on the facilitator tasks, as it may be underestimated. As a facilitator you may use it as a quick guide to see where you could shift some of the emphasis. Unfortunately the paper does not talk about distributed leadership.

For the first time, I'm now gaining experiences as a facilitator for a CoP on e-collaboration, co-facilitating. I have been a member of a corporate CoP, and external consultant, so it's great to gain practical experiences with this role.

Our recent experience is that we are making a 'phone round' to all participants to find out what occupies them in e-collaboration, what interests them and how they want to continue with the group. It is extremely energizing for us and people we talk to. It's revealing to see some people are gaining valuable experiences and are eager to share/learn together. Some people don't want to participate actively but want to watch to see what's developing so that at some point they may link back to the process. I think it helps to be a practitioner yourself, so that you recognise the issues and are able to relate it to some of your own experiences. I'm convinced that without this facilitator role and the vision to facilitate a more continuous learning process, the process would have stopped at some point in time. So you can't talk about a completely 'organic process', yet you can be conscious about not 'pushing' things too hard. For instance, it was an important indication for us that conversations continued online after the November event, without facilitation. So the art of the facilitator is somehow finding the balance between proposing actions in a inspiring way and providing space to see what emerges (and have an ear/eye for what's happening between members invisible to the online space as there are lots of other links!)

Communities of practice: domain definition in corporate and inter-organizational communities

Anecdote blogged about Will the community of practice get started? A test and the effect of titles talking about the definition of the knowledge domain of a community of practice.

One pragraphe: I now have a simple test to gauge whether a community of practice might form. When someone says, “I would like to start a community of practice.” I ask, “Can you describe the potential members by completing the following sentence? I am a …..” If they can fill in the blank in a way that people can passionately identify with the descriptor then there is a chance a community might emerge.

I commented that it seems there is a difference between a corporate CoP and large, public, inter-organisational CoP in the sense that their domain definition seems wider.

I would like to share Shawn's answer on my own blog: I think you are right Joitske. The ActKM (a public CoP) was named with a scope covering all of knowledge management. There have been a number of times when we think that the scope should be narrower but such a move would significantly fracture the group. In ActKM's case the scope has emerged from the conversations. For example, you are unlikely to see a deeply technical discussion on ActKM but you will find many theoretical discussions on ways to view the discipline. The discussion act as an attractor for certain people and a repellent for others. It's for this reason why I think you can't be too rigid with defining the scope. It will adapt with the needs and interests of the members.
Another way to look at the scope is to think about the level of abstraction occuring in the discussion. If the discussion is too detailed for the audience the audience will get bored and leave. If the discussion is too high-level and assumes everyone knows the jargon and acroymns the audience is unable to understand and will leave. Like the three bears the level of abstraction in the discussion has to be just right.

Though the knowledge domain of a community may change over time, it seems that the initial name is important for including/excluding people. For instance, the name e-collaboration for the development sector is vast enough to cover a wide range of experiment with collaboration at a distance, but specific enough for certain practitioners to identify with the domain.

Practical examples: Km4dev

Talking to people from MDF, a training and consultancy firm, we had to conclude that there are few practical examples of communities of practice in a development context, so I'll try and search harder (haven't even started the whole km4dev journal for instance). I'm not sure if there are no examples, but there may not be many well-described cases of how communities of practice were intentionally nurtured and leveraged for enhanced knowledge sharing and innovation for development.

One example of a community of practice is the KM4dev community and I had the honour to to talk to Lucy Lamoureux, the coordinator, somewhere last year, about the same time of the publishment of an official interview with her in the km4dev journal She describes the Km4dev community as a group of development practitioners working in knowledge management and knowledge sharing who ask for advice and receive quick responses from peers. The community grew quite organically after two workshops organised in the year 2000. Now, after 5 years, it has about 385 members, with about 35% of members based in the south. There is a core group of about 60 people who know each other well and have met face-to-face. The process confirms the literature which states that networks need at least 5-7 years before they mature. From the beginning, some gurus in the knowledge domain were involved, as well as the World Bank, an important player in the field of Km4dev. In the beginning there was more sharing of information and resources, lateron people engaged more in asking questions and theories.

The main communication tools are the discussion list, km4dev site (where you can also subscribe to the list), which acts as a repository where members can post profiles, document, etc, and last but not least annual face-to-face workshops. From 2000-2004 Lucy was the sole coordinator for the community, but then a group of 7-8 volunteers was formed who are helping to facilitate, write, interview, etc. A big challenge is to engage the people who can only participate online, versus the group who meets face-to-face. When I asked Lucy about her role, she called it a kind of 'watering', facilitation behind the scene. The watering consisted of asking people to contribute; when hearing a story convincing people to share it and phoning people to find out what's happening.

Communities of practice: the organizational frontier

I think the article by Etienne Wenger and William Snyder called Communities of Practice: the organizational frontier is still a very good basic article, talking about corporate communities of practice. Since it's a Harvard Business Review article I didn't think it would be available on the web, but it is!

It is this article which inspired me and other members of a community of practice of advisor from SNV in West Africa some 5 years ago because it explains the differences between a community of practice and a work group/ project team and informal network so clearly. And it helped us see we wanted a community of practice whereas the management had more a sort work group or task force in mind, so it supported us in clarifying our ideas and understanding the differences. It supported a shift in the membership to include more of the advisory practitioners with similar practices in different countries.

A community of practice is held together by passion, commitment and identification with the group's expertise, and hence membership should be voluntary (at least not appointed). Whereas a work group may be appointed and the task and deadline clearly identified and monitored by a management. This leads to the management paradox: management has less control over a community of practice. A community of practice has to develop measures to show the (often intangible) benefits as compared to the preconceived tangible outputs of a project team ('set up a training and prepare a module' type of instruction). And although communities of practice are informal and self-organizing, they benefit from cultivation by management which can identify them, provide the infrastructure and use nontraditional methods to measure value. This doesn't mean that management can not give any instructions, ideas, or tasks but managers have to be skilled in energizing the community rather de-energizing it.

More and more I'm seeing the parallel of this management paradox for inter-organisational communities of practice: the agency or organisation(s) funding/advising the community of practice will also have to struggle with a similar management paradox.

Technology: gender and politeness in Computer Mediated Communication

Prof Asha Kaul and Vaibhavi Kulkarni wrote a paper with the name of Coffee, Tea or...? Gender and politeness in Computer Mediated Communication. They studied computer mediated communication (CMC), specifically work related emails in the Indian context (494 mails written by men and women were analysed). By the way: google images on politeness show up as scenes from previous centuries ...

They notice that "CMC provides a link between oral and written communication, producing a categorical change which affects not only the notion of what the conversation is but the speaking-writing dichotomy as well. CMC is not restricted to formal, organizational emails but is also widely used for informal communication. Gramatical markers are used and exclamation point and question marks added as well as emoticons." " CMC can facilitate emotional content and inequalities of status and expertise are reduced in task oriented CMCs."

Though not all researches share a similar view, one research cited in the paper states that rule of politeness governing face-to-face conversations seems to be less binding when there is no physical presence. And in mails there seems to be a sense of anonymity which could encourage people to be impolite and express their hostility or resentment explicitly. One cited research observes that employees communicating with their supervisors through email might lose their supervisor's sense of status and could end up in miscommunication.

Looking at gender, the study cites a lot of researches which found differences in language, with for instance, women using more 'graphical accents' than men. On the other hand more recent research suggests that men and women use interaction patterns which are organizationally fit rather than gender specific. In this study, the examples of adherence of politeness maxim was higher in women than in men. Mails written by women showed hesitancy to openly contradict or disagree. Mails were more appeasing and tentative rather than firm and clear. But looking at 'clusters' of answers, they use of language was more contingent on the needs of the situation or the organization.

They conclude amongst others with the statement that disparity between the intent of the sender and the message transmitted would need further research. I think that this is somehow the point. (and now completely non-supported by any research): The way people write (on similar tasks) is probably influenced by their gender, cultural background but also ease and experience in writing. For instance as an example of the cultural background: in the paper men for instance used flattery more than women in their emails, with contradicts other literature. A possible explaination can be found in the cultural background of India.

So realizing that messages may be misunderstood, you become more conscious about the way you write. That's actually why I try to write my mails always just slightly more positive than I would in talking. And it is of course an important point for online communication in international communities of practice which demands from the facilitators and participants alike not only the skill to write clearly, in a way which will be easily understood by people reading it with different mental models, but also the ability to read between the lines.

The other interesting thing here is the reduction of inequalities of status, because that would mean that people who feel inhibited to express themselves in a certain group due to this factor might find it easier to do so online (in computer mediated communication), which opens up the opportunity to hear voices which may not be heard in a similar face-to-face group.

Technology: my pathway into blogging

Tomorrow we have a seminar in IICD with Chris Addison on blogs and RSS and I'm asked to present my 'pathway into blogging' . So I thought of preparing it in my blog (to get away from powerpoint). A lot of 'how tos' already deal with the technical part- but that's the easiest.

I think there are 4 elements which contributed to the start of my blog
1. When working as an advisor in Ghana I got into the habit of documenting my experiences and I started liking the process of documenting systematically and formulating explicit lessons.
2. I saw a few topical and professional blogs that I liked and inspired me as an example.
3. I read a lot about communities of practice for development and thought there were not many good cases and materials available, so I had a clear topic I was eager to dig into.
4. I discussed with various bloggers who encouraged me to start.

After starting, it is kind of scary and you have to find your own voice, topics and blogging rhythm for instance you have to consider:
- Do I write about myself (lifeblogger) or I refer to materials (linkblogger)?
- Do I blog daily, weekly, monthly or whenever I feel like it?
- Do I only write for myself or do I focus on some kind of audience?
- How do you write about people you met, the job you have (after all it's very public).
- Do I focus on the lay-out and features, add audio, pictures or videos or not?
- Do I stick to my topic or wander off?

In my case, I felt very encouraged (and sometimes embarrassed) when I started to connect to other people by eg.:
1. receiving a comment from people I know on MY blog.
2. getting positive feedback by e-mail.
3. receiving comments from a stranger.
4. sending a link to a book author I blogged and receiving a positive reply.
5. meeting someone who knows your blog but doesn't know you.
6. installing a sitemeter and seeing people from Japan, India, Russian Federation are visiting my blog.
7. being announced/pointed to/quoted in a virtual place.
8. meeting a friend f2f and having a conversation on something you wrote on your blog.

Blogging works for me because:
* I installed a blogreader (bloglines) and starting to read other blogs systematically. Having my own blog made it more sensible to read other's blogs. It is a different way of building a network and learning from others, especially about good resources on the web but also about their lives and thoughts.
* It encourages and supports my own learning process, eg. blogging an article forces me to think through the main points, and I have a good and solid archive of what I read.
* It is a personal, dynamic and easily accessible way of writing/reading. Faster, easier to read and less polished than articles in journals and more personal/deeper than discussion boards or e-mails.

Practical examples: identifying communities of practice throught storytelling

Seth Kahan and Madelyn Blair wrote a short paper on the identification of communities of practice in the World Bank. I blogged it already, but it mysteriously disappeared (I tried haloscan maybe that's the problem). So again:
Kahan worked in information systems in the Bank for 11 years, so he was a real practitioner, when he tried to breath life into a community of practice on Information Solutions. His first step was to identify the existing informal networks and focus efforts on nurturing them. He brought in a consultant, Madelyn Blair, who could speak their 'language' too. They handpicked 20-30 movers and shakers, all inspired veterans.

The veterans were each asked to share a story about a work assignment that was especially exciting. The stories changed to energy in the room noticeable. People were leaning in and listening closely to each other. Over the next days, they worked to identify common themes and began to identify 9 groups.

The paper gives a sample story as well as 7 guidelines on how to use storytelling to identify communities of practice.

Technology: the potential role of blogs in changing development

ODI has started a blog with commentary from leading development experts.
Enrique Mendizabal blogged about blog development, blogs. He sees the value of blogs and other social technologies to bridge the IT gap between resource rich civil society organisations (CSOs) in developed countries and those in developing countries. It awards small CSOs in developing countries access to information and participatory spaces otherwise closed to them. He mentioned www.civiblogs.org as a platform specifically designed for CSOs, but when I clicked on it, it was not available.

Blogs may well he on track to overthrow the traditional 'thinking spaces' of the development sector, he continues. Blog links can foster debates and aggregate scattered knowledge. Blogs can be monitoring and evaluation tools that when used systematically can replace tedious, long and expensive traditional methods. (mmm, a lot of expectations for blogs!)

Technology: mashups

I summarized the discussion on mashups in CPsquare (see picture, if you want to read it you may have to save it and enlarge it). I feel like I summarised something I don't fully understand, but maybe that's also a function of a CoP to learn about completely unknown waters. When I feel I just start to grasp blogging, talks move to mashups.

It's hard to decide if this is important when talking about communities of practice for development. But I guess the concept in itself is useful: making a hybrid of two applications, and that it's within the reach of non-developers. So ample scope for more appropriate and tailor-made applications I would say. Since a lot of mashups do a combination with maps, this leads to more visual representations and that may be very useful in development (eg. in PRA drawing and negotiating maps with farmers is such a powerful communication tool). Just don't know if you can do what is done in the US for countries in Africa. I have found the place in Mali where we lived in google earth, but it is quite at a distance .

Technology: blogging game 4x4

I was tagged by Beverly Trayner for a 4x4 game. (My association with 4x4 is a four-wheel drive but this is about answering 4x6 questions). Usually I'm not really a fan of chain-letters (kettingbrieven), but when I clicked on the tagged by.. tagged by.. tagged by.. tagged by..I got to the source and I liked the way you can trace the chain. It wasn't really explained that being tagged means that you have to answer all the questions, but that's what everyone did, so I will answer the same questions (I noticed some questions changed along the line):

4 jobs I had:
- Secretary at the gender department in Wageningen (fired after 1 day)
- Researcher on 'vasijas de ardecilla' for El canelo de Nos in Chile
- Organisational advisor for CRDA, an NGO umbrella in Ethiopia, based in the containers before they moved to the new building
- Knowledge sharing program officer at IICD (started in November recently, but so far a great job)
(I this way I skipped the Johnson and Johnson factory where I had to count the number of hygienic pads in each package and which did not really contribute to my career :))

4 places I lived:
I my case that's almost the same question as the first, during a job interview someone said my CV looks like a countries CV:
- Heteren (lived in the 'woonwagen', a house on wheels, road flooded by the river in winter, so that we had to go to the main road by boat, no gas connection, was where my ear got frozen)
- San Bernardo, Chile
- Addis Abeba, Ethiopia
- Takoradi, Ghana
(you see, my toughest environment by far was in the Netherlands)

4 places I've liked (amongst many more):
- Djenne in Mali (gets more beautiful when you arrive by bicycle from Macina with the Harmatan winds blowing in the opposite direction)
- Gem Rae in Kenya
- Lalibela in Ethiopia
- Bolgatanga in Ghana
(Beverly mentioned the Seychelles- the Seychelles couldn't make it to this list because I still get nausea when I see the pictures- was there when I was pregnant)

4 sites I visit daily (well, not really daily, but more often than other sites):
- my bloglines (I have gone beyond my 25 deadline to 36 feeds)
- CPsquare (like Beverly, when there are online discussions)
- IICD's Intranet (my blogs was announced there, so I can't gossip about colleagues anymore)
- Dgroups (my Dgroups have grown to the number of 7)

4 favorite movies:
- Lars von Trier's movies
- Festen
- The mysterie of the sardines
- Pluk van de Petteflet

4 people I tag (which means I invite them to answer the same questions, trying to reach some other continents):
Beth Kanter (my blog inspiration, hope she has not done the 4x4 already 5 times)
Guido Sohne (as punishment)
Sarah Cummings (because we just discovered eachother's blogs)
Nick Noakes (to try and invade Asia with 4x4 from Hongkong)

Communities of practice: Want to manage tacit knowledge?

Shawn Callahan from Anecdote wrote a very good white paper on communities of practice called:
Want to manage tacit knowledge? As the title indicates he focuses on the strength of communities of practice to manage tacit knowledge in a rapidly changing business environment. He writes: A common (but misinformed) strategy is to extract and record what people know-and then store it in a database. The problem is that much of this know-how is not amenable to this treatment. It cannot be captured or converted easily. Much of it is unspoken and unrecorded.

There are 3 types of knowledge to consider:
* Things that are not said because everyone understands them and takes them for granted
* Things that are not said because nobody fully understands them
* Things that are not said because, although some people understand them, they cannot costlessly articulate them

Communities of practice help manage tacit knowledge because they enhance the artefacts like documents and tools, which may take on new meaning for the group. Interaction among members of the group enables members to respond quickly to requests because the community of practice has been in the habit of posing and exploring novel questions. And there is the pool of expertise in the community of practice and through the interaction, tacit knowledge is shared.

Yesterday I met Reni, who has studied online interactions and is fascinated by it. She said that tacit knowledge may surface through interactions with other people, because each person touches different 'buttons'. I fully agree with her. That's why I like and am in favour of working together in teams on complex issues, so that knowledge gets surfaced and blended.

Technology: the difference between generations

Please see this wonderful drawing by my youngest daughter (4-years old). In case you can't see her talent like I do: she drew herself in from of the computer and the black/brown thing on the right is the mouse. She can manage the tweenies on the computer by herself, including closing down etc. I started in University still typing my first report with a typewriter (the advantage was that you did not have to REDO anything because that meant typing the whole report again). And with the first computerised datasets lots of data got lost because the lecturers till had to figure it out. My mother has just started her first computer course and is proud that she can do a game of 'patience'. I think my children will come out with a whole different set of skills, but till then people with hugely different skills and perceptions will have to work and live together.

Communities of practice for development: Culture: Cross-Cultural Communication (C3)

Communities of practice for development: Culture: Cross-Cultural Communication (C3)

Culture: Cross-Cultural Communication (C3)

The paper on cross-cultural communication I talked about a few posts ago is downloadable from the CPsquare newsblog. We wrote the paper as part of the seven-weeks online Foundations of communities of practice workshop, highly recommended if you want to learn more about communities of practice or want to have a crazy online experience (or both). So if you are interested to read the full paper you can download it there.

On communication: I remember we had a chatsession with a guest speaker in that workshop, who talked about for the first time about C3. Nobody really asked about the term, and I assumed it was the C of community (after all that was the C word most often dropped in the workshop) till someone checked and he explained that C3= cross-cultural communication. So you checking for correct understanding is very important (but hard in blogs). Let's try if I can trackback to their trackback.

Technology: I'm a blog mentor for the young Caucasus women project

This week I'm a blogmentor for the Young Caucasus women project and posted a blog entry on the topic: who in the world would you like to send an email/letter and why?. The women will have to post a blog entry on the same topic and I will try to comment; and they will also be encouraged to comment on the other blogs. If I'm correct, all women are from Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia. I hope the other mentors will also jump in.

Details about the project copied from their site:
'Recruited from current FLEX students, the young women will be trained in personal citizen journalism to be published on a weblog (a WWW publishing tool, available for public consumption.) The students will post a minimum of once a week on an assigned topic. They may post on other topics throughout the week as well. After the students return home, they will receive a monthly assignment, but may post as often as they like. Each week a blog “mentor” with post early in the week to help inspire the young women. The mentor will be an adult blogger from around the world, with a particular focus on bloggers from developing countries who are having an impact on the dissemination of news from their countries.'

The purpose of the blog project:

• To highlight the similarities and learn about the differences between young women in these neighboring countries.
• To promote citizen journalism in developing countries as an alternative to mainstream media.
• To promote weblogs as a method of democratic expression.
• To expose young women to journalism and technology.

I decided to participate because I'm curious whether and how you can stimulate people to blog. I'd like to see whether other people can become as enthusiastic about blogging as I am. (and if not, why not?)

Culture: persistent practices in the Netherlands

On the way to the museum we passed a circus, so we decided to take the kids there instead. Uhm, quite a solid institution the circus! (to say there all acts were extremely cliche). Despite all changes, coming back to the Netherlnads after 10 years out of the country, I observed that there are some practices that, surprisingly, do not seem to have changed in the Netherlands:
* The practice of sending eachother snailmail christmas cards
* The practice of mothers taking their children home from school to have lunch (though now there are some occasional fathers)
* The practice of school pictures: a photographer taking a yearly picture of your child in school. Of course he/she looks so cute that all parents buy them despite all 1860 digital pictures they already possess...

(Any Dutch people reading this who want to add?)

Why does this persist and other practices change?

Practical examples: FAO mentions CoPs on ICD

On the FAO site on ICD (Information and Communication for Development) there is a list of online communities on ICD. Unfortunately I haven't found any methodological background on how they function, are supported, etc. (and why they are perceived as communities of practice rather than interest groups for instance).

Technology: haloscan with blogger

Britt Bravo tipped me on haloscan to use for trackback on blogger. I'm going to try it when I feel like I have more time for this, thanks!

Communities of practice and core qualities

I read the book by Daniel Ofman called Bezieling en kwaliteit in organisaties
(don't know how to translate 'bezieling', the rest means quality in organisations). I worked a couple of times with the core quality quadrants or kernkwadranten in teams. It is very powerful, because it goes one step beyond competences and styles, looking at core qualities a person posesses as really someone's capacity which is so natural to the person that he/she thinks everybody can do it. But it also helps you to look at the shadow side of your core quality by looking at the pitfall (if you are overdoing your core quality); your challenge and allergy. In that sense it is very respectful of the fact that everyone has something to bring and that too much of a good thing becomes a negative quality and that you have to find your personal balance. Sometimes a very revealing exercise! What has been particularly revealing to me is that you have something to learn from the people who match your allergies (usually not your best friends :)). He describes why it's hard to change yourself, and that the best step to take is towards an increased balance is to be aware of and accept your core qualities and pitfalls.

In this book, part two talks about organisational development and states that managers tends to be allergic to chaos, because they don't realise that chaos is the presence of energy without direction. He thinks management of energy will be a huge management theme. I think this links strongly to the power of communities of practice, if they achieve in connecting people who are passionate about their practice (which probably has a connection to their own core qualities) it combines and directs their energy. I see communities of practice as a potential entry point to change the wider organisation and bring it in closer touch with its core quality.

We can also talk about the core quadrant of an organisation (this is new to me). Drawing a core quadrant of an organisation, in a participatory manner, could help to see where communities of practice would fit in or meet with resistance. Including subcultures in an organisation (coupling their core quandrant can make it more visible where they bite eachother!)

I liked the way he revisits project management and 'projectmatig werken', because I'm very tired of projects, after 10 years in Mali, Ethiopia and Ghana. If a project turns into a controlmechanisms which leaves out anything coincidental and spontaneous developments, the result will be forced and will not be sustainable. Nevertheless, this is not a fault of project management in itself, if the essence is co-creation it can be a very powerful intervention. A creative proces can be facilitated as a technique (by formulating objections to an idea as challenges) , but it is also a competence in itself and reflects a philosophy which starts from the premises that everyone's work and ideas have value. Advice at the end of the book: try to be creative and not reactive (something I find easier in CoPs than in organisations or projects ...).

PS in this post I'm not really doing justice to the whole book, I just picked out a few things which resonated with my own ideas.

Technology: trackback

I knew there is something called trackback but never had the courage to dig into it till today. Nynke Kruiderink kindly sent me this trackback explanation which even links to a beginners guide for trackback. Since I slowly start feeling like blogging is going to stay with me, I try to understand it. It is explained:
1) The purpose of TrackBack is to let a site know that you are referencing them on your on site.
2) The TrackBack URL is different than the regular permanent link URL.
3) TrackBacks are fun. You should use them.

Ok, since they are fun: I go ahead. But it appears blogger doesn't have it. So I installed links to this post instead. I hope it is the same thing? I'm not convinced that this is something that works and is useful to me actually. When I pointed to Nancy's video, I could have used links her post.. oh, then she would know how many people have linked.... I think I get it. (this will replace the part where I normally send an email, and though that might be as fast actually it may not be as visible).

Communities of practice versus individual learning

I read about linkbaiting as a way to increase the number of visitors and comments on your blog. Though I don't think that's really my style it made me think about a discovery I had over the weekend that may be controversial in relation to communities of practice. I talked to an artist (painter) who is sharing a workspace with other artists. So I asked her about her interactions with the other painters and whether that is stimulating/influencing her in her work. But she said she doesn't like to interact with them and discuss her work, she intuitively knows what to work on and how to improve it. And it's hard work. They don't know her struggles and she's happy that she doesn't have to explain it others like in art school.

Since then I'm thinking about the space for individual learning versus group learning and group pressure to go in a certain direction. Maybe some people thrive when they are not (or not so much) connected to and influenced by others? Maybe individualistic journeys are more authentic? Do blogs create that space for online communities? Is this a linkbait?

Culture: Speaking Dutch on the street?

There has been some turmoil about languages spoken in the Netherlands on the street: In the paper Minister Verdonk was reported to be an advocate for a code of conduct for citizens which would include speaking Dutch on the streets. On monday I read though, that she had never intended to make this some kind of law. And lots of people ridiculised the idea fortunately.

I did not intend to blog it, till I saw the great reaction from Wim de Bie on his bieslog (weblog). He writes down a dialogue between a policeman and someone talking dialect. When the person speaking dialect gets arrested for not speaking Dutch, the policeman starts calling the assistance of his colleague using English terms. (Emurtjensie koll!!). What a great way of making the whole idea of blending cultures and languages clear.

Culture: Cross-cultural communication and emotions

With Meena Wilson and Ancella Livers from the Center for Creative Leadership, we collected short stories describing cross-cultural encounters, to look at crosscultural issues in communities of practice. The term cross-cultural was not restrictricted to national cultures, but included professional subcultures. From the stories 10 important themes surfaced, but the theme on emotions has stuck with me, more than the other themes. I thought about it again because I received two angry e-mails, or rather, I perceived the sender to be angry. Thinking about our stories made it much easier not to get upset and to realize that you don't know what's behind it.

The stories revealed that cross-cultural encounters can induce strong emotional reactions. Behaviour of a person can easily be misinterpreted and emotions are diplayed in cultures in different ways. (this reminds me that my colleague from Ivory Coast yesterday told me the story of a Dutch person reacting very undercooled to winning a huge sum of money, saying, 'oh, that's nice'!). Hence, acknowledging the importance of emotions is an important intercultural competency. The emotions are not only negative, but also positive, excitement and laughter also played a big role in the stories.

The other themes which emerged were:

• 
  * It helps to have, find or stress common goals and commitment - common practices and passions like in communities of practice can go a long way


* Attention for communication protocols is important for facilitators of the process (language, translations, explanation of meanings, non-verbal clues)

* Being open and willing to learn about yourself and the others is important personal characteristic which facilitates working through any differences

* It helps to have cultural brokers, people who understand different sides of the story

* Asking for, providing and receiving feedback is important yet perilous. Perilous because also practices of asking and giving feedback may vary.

* Resolving conflicts and misunderstandings is important as they can not be prevented. Hence the ability to work through conflicts is more important than trying to prevent them at all costs.

* Respect and openess for other people and other practices is almost the basis, but goes with developing the ability to suspend (quick) judgment.

* Trust is critical to maintaining intercultural relationships. Trust is difficult to earn but can be easily squandered by incidents that seem insignificant to some, but hugely important to others. Though there is also the concept of 'imported trust', trust people bring along from their previous experiences.

Technology: Nancy White on blogs and development

Nancy White was interviewed on blogs and development (if you click on her name you'll get to the video). I asked her I could point to it, but never got a reply so I'll just do it!! She points out the fact that blogs can cross boundaries, so it's a voice which can reach out beyond the 'regular' and physical boundaries of a community of practice. (This is at least what I remember about the webcase one week after watching it, if you want to know what she really said you have to check it out :))

Practical examples: Power relations in negotiating a shared object in NGO-development cooperation

Tiina Kontinen wrote a paper on Producing a 'project' -power relations in negotiating a shared object in NGO development cooperation. I read it sometime ago, but blogging and summarizing it will help me to draw my own lessons.

The paper is informed by postcolonial theory on continuous asymmetric relationships between North, South, East and West analyses a practical micro-level process within development cooperation. The micro-level process is a project formulation as a joint effort of Finnish and Tanzanian NGOs for improving the difficult economic siutation of retired professionals in Morogoro, Tanzania. She (is Tiina a she?) takes Foucault's methodological notion of intertwining of the relations of production, communication and power as a starting point.

Since 1980s NGOs in development cooperation have been regarded as representatives of partnerships that include more equal relationships, refering to a relationship of 2 parties that collaborate to meet each others' needs and that includes trust, respect and equality. Another key word in development cooperation has been 'participation'. Projects should be planned and implemented in a participatory manner to ensure 'local ownership' of the project. She argues that authentic and more ethical encountres presuppose the acknowledgement of these historical asymmetries. The whole debate calls for analysis of power and specifically how systemic power is produced and reproduced in the local practices of development cooperation. Hoes does this 'inherent contradiction' in aid (to aim at equality and partnerships in conditions of unequal distribution of resources) emerge in actual development encounters? A constuctive combination of the analysis of constructing a project and power relations will give new insights in the encounters which are both places of dialogue and sites of struggle in project definition.

The project described was an effort to improve the economic situation of retired professionals in Morogoro in Tanzania. A Finnish NGO with over 50 years experience in welfare of aged people in Finland (but not in development cooperation!) worked with a Tanzanian NGO established by a small group of retired professionals, organising group counselling sessions amongst other activities. In 1999, both organisations came together to discuss the planning of a project, through 7 planning meetings with 2 representatives from the Finnish NGO and 5 from the Tanzanian NGO. A draft agreement was produced, and some kind of consensus reached, but interviews raised the question how authentic the consensus was. Both parties had different planning agendas, with the main tension arising between the concept of the project as a training-only project versus a training project with micro-credit facility. Rather than solving the tension, the Finish representatives added a used computer to the project. The question was transformed into : "should we stop the project if a training-only project is not sufficient"?

Even small and trivial acts like discussions on advancing cash or not held importance in constructing the power relationship. The projet budget was not shared and Northern representatives controlled the use of the project money. Furthermore, the processes of divisions, exclusion and inclusion were also going on between the southern actors who might use the project to serve interests in local power struggles.

The conclusion is that the Northern agenda became shared and that the sharedness of the project was contested by continuous manifestations of tensions in the project - even though the project may be beneficial to the retired professionals. The practical difficulty of NGO partnership and participation calls for more macro and structural interpretation of emergent asymmetry. Acknowledgement of historically emerged features might help practitioners in understanding the problems in development cooperation.

Pff. (I'm now budgetholder for a small budget, which makes me feel like a donor for the first time in my life ;)). So what may help is to be clear on roles- and limits like budgets. And don't go for participation where the donor's mind is already set, only go for participation with open ears where you honestly want to listen. And maybe being clear on decision-making procedures, who decides on what? What are the joint decisions? Like in the described case, in fact the Tanzanian NGO's participation was restricted to defining the content of the training and the eligible training participants.

Communities of practice: a place to share what you are passionate about

I attended a meeting of a community of practice in the Netherlands, for teachers. I was again struck by the fact that a community of practice is a place where you can share with peers what you are passionate about in your work; peers who will listen (because they recognise it from a deep understanding) and appreciate it.

One of the teacher had worked for two weeks on a database system to keep track of competence development of pupils. When asked if he had so much time at hand to work on it, he answered that he did it partly in his own time, as a hobby. This community meeting was a place where he could share that- partly voluntary- work.

Communities of practice and goose

I read a story about a goose (with my children). The goose wants to fill a pond and puts up a bucket. Because the bucket fills up slowly, he starts to run around which doesn't help. Then he starts to tun around even faster and faster. But it doesn't fill the bucket. He finally succeeds when it starts raining much faster and with bigger drops.

The analogy with organisations supporting communities of practice struck me. I've seen organisations who continue organising another training and another training in the hope to build capacity, but it may not be within the real learning interests of the participants. The art of cultivating communities of practice is in linking up with natural processes and that sometimes means waiting to see what emerges rather than running around faster and faster.

Technology: blogging and audience

In the blogging discussion that I mentioned before, someone talked about obsession with audience and statistics. I think I am a bit obsessed (or thrilled?) by the location statistics you can get from the sitemeter. Amazing how you can follow who visited your blog, from which countries, from which URL (web address) they were referred and how long they stayed on .... 33% from the US, a country I have never been to. (and what is an unknown country? Bush trying to read my blog anonymously?). Though I still blog in the first place to digest what I read and observe, and enjoy the photo and video part, which is more creative, I start to become more conscious of audience. I might review some of the old articles I read on communities of practice as they are still relevant, and would keep my blog on track with its title. Without comments it's hard to know which posts are most appreciated and which direction my blog should take. (the posts I consider my best posts get the least comments).

And.. I discovered my brother-in-law follows my blog so I have to be careful as well what I write about the family :)

Technology: learning new ways to express yourself

This morning I found these notes on the laptop (saying sweet mama, sweet louka, stupid sil, stupid papa). Since my daughter learned how to write; I sometimes come home to find a note on the door saying 'forbidden to enter'. Or she helps her sister to write a letter for her teacher. It's great to see how it offers her new ways of expressing herself and how she is experimenting with it. Quite similarly I think, to how blogs (or other forms of expression!) can function in communities of practice. If it is taken up as an exiting new means of expression, it can energise a community of practice, if it is seen as an obligation, a weird idea or something which is time-consuming it won't work.

Personally, I cling very much to my painting class (and my blog recently). Even though I rarely show my painting works to anyone, it is a very creative, different way of expressing myself. Just recently I started to see the parallels in the way I paint and the way I work (so guess how my paintings look like :)).

Technology: CoPs and Blogs (&RSS)

I was so busy talking about blogs that I didn't have time to blog :), nor did I read blogs. I volunteered to summarize a discussion in CPsquare about communities of practice and blogs/RSS. Here's the summary, but based on the summary you can start a whole new discussion (if you want to read it, you may copy this JPEG image and print it).

Interesting and practical were the 12 cases shared and discussed and I will probably discuss a few in separate posts. Personally I see the distinction between existing communities of practice who incorporate blogs as a means of conversation, which will shift the dynamics and content of that conversation, as learning logs did during the online facilitation course I participated in. Blogs are more personal, quiet and safer spaces which are open to a slower pace and more reflection. On the other hand, people reported that blogs can create communities of practice because it is a way of finding likeminded people; which can subsequently lead to dialogue en even meeting face-to-face.

A friend, Maaike Smit, commented that she enjoyed reading my blog because it is so much easier to read a personal account than a long, dry article. I thought that's such an important point about the power of blogs in the overload of information on the web that I like to share it.

Technology: subscribe to my blog by e-mail!!

I actually thought it was already pretty technical of myself to add a 'subscribe to bloglines' button to my blog. Through copying from Britt Bravo, I have now added a subscription button so that you can subscribe by e-mail. I think this widens people's options to be able to follow my blog, not everyone will know bloglines or be happy with a web-based aggregator, especially people with low bandwith access to the web. It was very simple and easy to do (5 minutes or so), compared to times when you are busy for an hour because you overlooked something small. Some of these things look more complicated than they are which can keep me from trying. When it works, it really stimulates to continue!!

I went to the site of feedblitz and the rest is quite self-explanatory (you subscribe and have to copy a html code into your blog's template).

Technology: How to choose an aggregator

Denham Grey in a discussion on CPsquare about web 2.0 and communities of practice pointed to a podcast on aggregators. It rightly supported my own learning process on RSS. I heard about RSS about a year ago and was really lazy in finding out how and what (and life kind of continues happily without it :)). Then my colleague showed me google reader and I copied all her feeds as well (lazy again) and I used it together with bloglines for reading blogs. Now I'm very happy with bloglines and not too happy with google reader. Bloglines links with my interest in following some blogs and forget to check google reader at times. At times there are so many things you can dig into!

The podcast talks about aggregators a a means of subscribing to RSS feeds. She explains why 2006 can be the year of the aggregator because for instance, it is possible to be informed when a colleague has added something on a project you're working on. There is a basic choice to be made between:
* webbased readers, eg. bloglines, myyahoo, newaggregators
* desktop client readers- to quickly scan what's going on eg. blogbridge is mentioned as a good one because it is java-based, open soure and designed by someone who understands collaboration and can be integrated with delicious.

It's interested that your learning process is very individual, but it can be supported by your community of practice if it coincides with others at the right time. And it can stimulate action and change, my uneasy feeling about google reader will now be transformed into action by trying blogbridge (combined with uploading my own feeds more consciously).

Culture: the case for contamination

The Ashanti king (asantehene) on the picture. Beverly Trayner sent me the link to an article by Kwame Anthony Appiah called The case for contamination (note that you have to subscribe to the New York Times for free before the article opens). He describes a scene where he is seated on a palace veranda, for a ceremony which involves the Ashanti King called the Wednesday festival day, in Kumasi. But before the king arrived, people were taking calls on cellphones, and discussing contemporary issues like the teaching of science and technology at the local university. The king will be meeting the head of the World Bank next week in the states.

He argues strongly for cultural contamination as the opposite of cultural protection as defined by agencies like Unesco. Though contamination has a bit of a negative connotation I like his emphasis on the dynamics of culture and the fact that people drink Coca-cola everywhere does not means there is a case of cultural imperialism: 'cultures are made of continuities and change and the identity of a society can survive through these changes. Societies without changes aren't authentic; they're just dead.

And: ' change is more a gradual transformation from one mixture to a new mixture, a process that usually takes place at some distance from rules and rulers, in the conversations that occur across cultural boundaries. Such conversations are not so much about arguments and values as about the exchange of perspectives. ' ...' How much of the shift away from these assumptions is a result of arguments? Isn't a significant part of it just the consequence of our getting used to new ways of doing things?'

I recognise the depicted scene very much, last time when we went to the Ethiopian restaurant, we laughed with the son of the owner because he asked how long we all had lived in Ethiopia and his was the shortest of all (two years). Another Ethiopian friend lives in Ireland and is married to a French woman adopted from Brasil when she was eight. So she was asking us lots of things about Ethiopia because she had never been there. They talked to us about how Irish people interact. At the same time, I realize we are more likely to meet those 'cosmopolitans', as Kwame Appiah calls it in his article, through our work and travels.

It also reminds me of the day I travelled with my Ghanaian colleague to a visit the work of one NGO and we met a female chief in one of the villages in Western Region in Ghana. As I was surprised, I asked her several questions. She explained that she was of the family illegible for chieftancy and had been involved in several community tasks when the former chief passed away. She was then asked to take up the chieftancy by virtue of her contributions to the village, even though this is traditionally a men's role. A strong example of the fact that all cultural practices are dynamic.

To try and relates this to communities of practice: the conversations across boundaries, whether professional boundaries or other 'cultural' differences can contribute to gradual change and transformation. So fostering conversations across boundaries is important to innovation (this is my own interpretation).

Technology: ICT4D grey literature

Via ictlogy I found an archive of the Department of Communication of the University of Washington with grey literature on ICT4D. You can search the archive by country. When I was studying, more grey literature on development could be found in Western Universities rather than in countries in Africa, but through these online archives it's available for all with access tot the web! (left with being able to find it but for quickly passing on interesting links we have our communities of practice, isn't it)

Technology: a multi-tasking mobile phone

The multi-task mobile phone (forwarded by Annemiek van Schie)

Culture: Ananse and the pot of wisdom

Through global voices I found this story from Ghana told by Reverend Peter E. Adotey Addo:

ANANSE AND THE POT OF WISDOM..or NO ONE PERSON CAN HAVE ALL THE WISDOM IN THE WORLD

This is a very old story told when the world was young . It is about how Mr.. Ananse the Sly and greedy one among all the animals in the forest outsmarted himself.
As the story goes Ananse, that is still his name , but did you know that his first name was Kweku because he was born on a Wednesday ? One day Ananse collected all the wisdom in the world and decided to keep it all in a large pot for himself. Now he said “I have all the wisdom of the world for myself. At least that was what he thought being such a greedy person.
Kweku Ananse then tied the pot of wisdom around his neck with a strong vine rope and let the pot hang in front of him. But then he was afraid that someone would find the pot of wisdom and steal it.” What shall I do with my pot of wisdom” He thought and thought and at last he said,” I shall hide the pot on top of the the tallest tree in the forest.” So he searched the forest until he found the tallest tree which happened to be the thorny silk cotton tree and brought the pot of wisdom to the tree. While Ananse was trying to climb the thorny silk cotton tree his son was watching him.” Father,” he said,” “What are you doing” “Well” said Ananse , I have in this clay pot all the wisdom of the world and I am going to hang it on the top of the tallest tree away from everybody , then I will be the wisest in the whole wide world.” “I have an idea.” said his son ” Why not hang the pot behind you instead of in front of you. Then you will be able to climb the tree”. Well the sly one Ananse hung the pot behind him and to his surprise; he was able to climb to the top of the tree with his pot.
Finally Ananse sat on a branch of the tree holding the pot of wisdom. “I thought I had all the wisdom in the world” He thought to himself.
“I thought I had it all in my pot but my own son has wisdom not in my pot.” Then he made a statement that we still use today.” No one-person can have all the wisdom in the world.”On his way down he dropped the pot and it smashed into many pieces and scatted all the wisdom all over the world.