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.

The advisory role as puzzle solving

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

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

More oneliners

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

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

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

On carnaval and warts

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

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

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

First aid

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

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

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

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

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

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

Community of practice variety from a complexity perspective

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Peer assists in communities of practice

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tony Chocolonely talking to cocoa farmers

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

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

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

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

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

Britt Bravo's tips to start a nonprofit blog

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

1. Read blogs.

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

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

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

3. Post consistently.

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

4. Have an RSS feed and comments.

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

5. Just start.

All very good and recognisable tips!

Communities of practice, bronnen van inspiratie

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

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

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

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

Technology: nownow for all your questions

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

And part of the answer:

Ethiopia is a predominately Coptic Christian nation whereas Somalia is Muslim

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

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

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

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

Five things meme in pictures

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

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

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

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






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






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

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

Technology: You is fat and xenophobic

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

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

Virtual and real stereotypes

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

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

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

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

Patience as a new cultural dimension?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Communities of practice during the Global Development Learning Forum

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

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

So I decided to interview Erik:

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

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

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

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

Thank you, Erik!

Sinterklaas culture

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

sinterklaas
Originally uploaded by joitske.

boring you with several blogposts, this year only once!

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

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

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

Technology frustrations

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

knowledge management and the exploding whale

Exploding Whale


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

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

Challenges for facilitation in communities of practice

Recently I blogged about a facilitation taxonomy developed by Halbana Tarmizi en Gert-Jan de Vreede, you can find the article here.

Through a comment on a blogpost somewhere I found a follow-up on that article called challenges for facilitation in communities of practice written by the same authors, in collaboration with Ilze Zigurs. For this study they formulated two research questions:

1. What are the most difficult tasks in CoP facilitation?
2. What are the most important tasks in CoP facilitation?

Knowing the most difficult tasks would help facilitators and organizations to work harder on them, while knowing the most important ones might help facilitators to allocate sufficient attention to those tasks. The results are based on 45 people who took an online survey (I'm thinking I may be one of them, if it was announced at the com-prac yahoo group :).

The most difficult tasks were (according to facilitators with more than 5 years experience):

1. Encouraging new members to participate in the community's activities
2. Creating and maintaining an open, positive and participative environment
3. Creating comfort with and promoting understanding of the tools and tool outputs

The most important tasks (facilitator with >5 years experience):

1. Building cooperative relationships among members
2. Keeping community focus on its purpose; creating and maintaining an open, positive and participative environment; mediating conflicts and managing community through guidelines and rules (all equally important)

Encouraging participation is still the most difficult task, and is recognized as important too.

The results look a little biased by online facilitators (see the third most difficult task), and that may be the focus of the article, but that could be made more explicit (if so). What are my own experiences and do I recognize this? I think encouraging participation is important, but participation in a community of practice flows from having a solid base in practice a domain that's interesting enough to a number of people. I get the feeling that it might be different whether you talk about online facilitation, face-to-face or hybrid communities of practice. Next year, Sibrenne Wagenaar and myself will write down our experiences with facilitation of the e-collaboration group. This article claims the facilitator role in communities of practice is still under-researched. So we can contribute a practical case. We are already documenting our reflection in a wiki (which reminds me I should add something to that wiki).

Knowledge management: how to know what you need to know

Time for a story of about 500 years ago.... It came back to my mind yesterday in relation to my last blogpost on Claus and culture. When I studied at the Agricultural University in Wageningen, I had the chance to go to Gem Rae, in Kenya to work for the Provincial Irrigation Unit in Kisumu. I studied smallholder irrigated rice schemes and lived with the farmers there.

One of expatriate engineers worked in Gem Rae but lived in Kisumu. One of his remarks was that he never understood why the farmers did not plant their rice fields on time, at the same time. This was one of the assumption for the design of the waterflow. Because I lived within the scheme area, interacted a lot with the farmers and did interviews, I quickly learned that their system was as follows: there are different plots, of the husband, and of the various wives (there were many polygamous households). The men, often the sons, are responsible for ploughing. They plough in the morning and have a high number of plots to plough. There is a certain hierarchy in the plots that are ploughed, the male household head first, then the first wive, the second wive, etc. Women of migrated husband often have to hire a plough team and have to wait till the team has finished all their family plots. Not hard to see that all farmers can not plant at the same time, because they have to wait for their fies to be ploughed!

I was flabbergasted that it needed my study to highlight this (amongst other things). In a way I felt that the answer to the engineer's question was lying in front of him. The engineer knowledge (design of the waterflow) did link automatically to the relevant knowledge of the farmers (rotational system of ploughing) even though they did interact. And mind you, the problem was not that the engineer were designing from the drawing boards and did not go for field visits. Yet, it wasn't easy to link the relevant sections of the two knowledge systems.

This is something I often see, though people are interacting, have meetings, the relevant links don't surface easily. This is where I see a role for learning facilitator, knowledge managers, brokers, etc.

Claus on culture

Prince Claus was a German married to the Dutch queen Beatrix and as such was able to see the Dutch with German eyes and vice versa. He had a personal intercultural experience which influenced his thinking about development cooperation. Jan Pronk in his book Willens en wetens bring this again to our attention. Claus often said: 'on ne developpe pas, on se developpe', refering to the fact that people take their own learning and developement processes at hand, which you can stimulate but not orchestre or control.

He also felt that there needs to be more attention for the cultural side of the development cooperation (or international cooperation). "Rethinking development means first and foremost curbing ethnocentrism". "The poly-cultural nature of the world we live in is indeed something to be treasured and kept alive."

He thinks that "it is recognised that there is a cultural dimension to development, but it is at the same time regarded as a nuisance and solutions are ought by just adding a dash of culture to our development efforts which otherwise remain valid as before. Such a conception is rooted in the economically minded cultures. Economic achievements are still at the top of their scale of values."

Though it is written 10 years ago, I wonder how much things have really changed in this regard and how much the development sector has learned about the cultural elements at play in development cooperation.

PS. somehow it feels weird not to write about the elections in the Netherlands, you see how much blogging is somehow associated with citizens journalism.

Knowledge management and snow

It is by now famous that Eskimos have many different words for snow from 'crust on fallen snow' to 'soft, deep fallen snow on the ground'. And this is logical because they can and need to distinguish many different conditions of snow. (for snowboarding :))

But we live in a 'knowledge' society, I'm an 'officer knowledge sharing' and yet we have only one word for knowledge. And sometimes I go crazy because of the different meanings people attach to this word (same goes for learning by the way). So if knowledge is so important, can't we develop a bunch of different words to distinguish the different types of knowledge and learning processes?

Patrick Lambe just posted a taxomomy of ignorance here. With many attitudinal differences to the type of ignorance someone may display. Denham Grey distinguishes 3 types of knowledge in one of his blogposts of september and sees them as a continuum:

1. Tacit knowledge is closely related to intuition, gut feelings, compiled experiences and skills. This tacit stuff is very hard to explain, it comes from exposure, arises out of repeated learnings, consists of deeply held feelings and beliefs. Tacit knowledge allows us to reason without logic, to act without reflection and to make sense of new situations.

2. Implicit knowledge sits in the middle. Here we are able to model, explain, draw, surface, share insights and explicate beliefs. This often requires time, deep reflection, dialog, introspection and mulling around.

3. Explicit knowledge is documented, illustrated, captured, stored and retrievable. It takes many forms from transcripts, to business rules, from detailed definitions to evolving scripts e.g. such as we see in wikipedia or video sequences.

This is more refined than the common two-fold distinction between tacit and explicit knowledge, but does it help sufficiently to talk about knowledge and learning in practical cases?

Let's take two extremes of things I feel I have recently learned but which are very different.

A. In the office, I used to take a large cup of coffee from the machine, which overflows easily while climbing the stairs to my office. My colleague told me she takes a large coffee cup but draws a small coffee from the machine, plus an espresso. The cup doesn't overflow and the coffee is stronger and better. So this is what I do now. It doesn't cost me anything to change my habits.

B. On the other hand I have read about, observed and practiced acquisition of consultancies. It seemed very scary, but it's slowly demystifying a little. I feel I'm gradually learning how to do it and how it works (and realized this when someone told me that I talk about it differently) but it is still difficult. Sometimes I have to force myself into unnatural behaviour. (and sometimes I feel I'm doing the wrong things).

Here the model of explicit, tacit and implicit is not very helpful. The coffee case is not explicit knowledge (it is not documented), but a very superficial type of knowledge. The acquisition case involves tacit, implicit and explicit knowledge.

I'm tempted in this case to go back to Argyris model of single and double loop learning. I'd think in this case as well, we should rather see it as continuum from single to double loop learning where you can place a certain learning process at the appropriate level of learning. The two extremes determined by how deep your belief systems or assumptions have to change/will change. Knowing where to place a learning process will help to know how hard it will be to acquire the knowledge, how long it will take and what will be needed to guide the processes. Any pointers to interesting articles which delve into this?

Technology: One liners that stick in your head

Jack Vinson writes about blogs again and shares a quote from Martin Roell in his blogpost : "Blogs are like emails to someone you don't know yet". This reminds me of two quotes that have stayed with me lately:

One via my colleague who overheard two small boys in Burkina Faso. The first boy asked the second boy what a computer was ('qu'est-ce que c'est un ordinateur?'). The answer was: 'C'est une machine pour parler aux blancs.' (it's a machine to talk to the white people).

Angelica Senders from ICCO shared the other quote (don't know where she got it): "if you don't know how to cycle, walking is always faster": in the context of using new technologies or new tools to communicate. This ressembles the quote about talking about tagging to people who have never tagged like 'talking about sex to virgins'. (read this in a blog somewhere too).

Though I'm not such slogan person, a good one liner or slogan which captures an important notion can have its value, because it really sticks in your head. I think it sticks because you recognise it's a good compressed representation of reality.

Advising: Statements to facilitate discussions

Yesterday we had a CPsquare session with Robert Tollen who facilitates an online discussion group about Myeloproliferative diseases. He talked about the deep differences in beliefs between members (eg. believing in scientific treatment versus alternative treatment), and how you can deal with this as a facilitator. The lesson that I took from the discussions, is that as a facilitator you have your own beliefs too, and you have to be aware of your own biases, so that it doesn't limit the conversations. So working as a team you may be much more complementary (but you have to analyze that as well).

It reminded me of two practical sessions I facilitated at work where I tried to make use of statements to surface and bridge diverging group opinions, and which worked very well in my opinion. We are working towards a common strategy for network strengthening, based upon practical experiences in various countries. There seem to be very different ideas and beliefs amongst the group so the challenge is to work with this wide variation and arrive at a common strategy. So I tried to formulate roughly 10 statements (ended up with 11), which capture the main controversial issues. Everyone was then asked to look at the statements on paper, write down whether they agree or disagree, after which they transfer their opinions on a flipchart. The results were in our case very revealing in itself. Issues which seemed controversial ended up with a majority of the votes on the same side, showing that we'd agreed more than expected. The second step was to ask a person who agrees to voice his/her ideas and the same for a person who disagrees, after which a discussion follows. This discussion may lead to a complete rephasing of the statement, as the statements are to open the floor. In our case, it has helped us to improve understanding and get to a next level of the bottlenecks.

I guess it's important for the success of this method that the statements are phrased by someone who is familiar with the informal discussions so that he/she can get to the core dilemmas. The great beauty of the method (as compared to an open discussion) is that it highlights individual opinions. Without the counting of the individual opinions, it may look like there is a lot of divergence because two vocal persons disagree.

Technology: Great Britain's classification of ICT users

On the spatial literacy site you can find a classification of "neighbourhoods using data about our levels of awareness of different information communication technologies, how we use them, and how we think they might improve our quality of life." (in Great Britain).

The 8 main categories are:
1. E-unengaged
2. E-marginalised
3. Becoming engaged
4. E-for entertainment and shopping
5. E-independents
6. Instrumental E-users
7. E-business users
8. E-experts

It's not really linked to age-differences, though from the group of e-professionals it is said these are mostly young people. It demonstrates the wide range of comfort levels and uses of technology. Again, it's not really linked to type of access, yet I remember seeing a graph indicating how internet use changes with the change from dial-up to broadband. (and ofcourse this is different from use from cybercafes or other joint facilitaties).

Technology: how to backup your blogger blog

Quite some time ago, I did a presentation about blogging, and someone asked whether I had made a backup of my blog. Well, I hadn't, but he made me think about it. Now I'm a little lazy with these kind of things (as figuring this out takes some time investment) but they usually stay in my head. Today I managed to find out and back up my blog in less than 30 minutes (for free).

Though google I found the blogpost how to back up your blogger blog. I chose and downloaded htrack (for free!). You can indicate where you want to have the back up and the URL of the website you want to back up and there you go... Still amazing what's possible for free...

Technology: blogs and inequality on the web

Via a blogpost by Nancy White I found a piece written by Jakob Nielsen about Participation inequality: encouraging more users to contribute .

Jakob Nielsen refers to the famous 90-9-1 rule for large-scale, multi-user online communities that 90% of users are lurkers, 9% contributes and 1% accounts for most contributions. I think that you have to be specific: this rule may apply to public large-scale online interaction. I think the danger of the rule is the people working with smaller (sometimes pass-word) protected online community spaces take the same rule as a guideline and accept this high level of inequality. (which I would not)

The writer talks about 1.1 billion internet users, with only 55 million users (5%) having weblogs according to Technorati. Though I think that's enormous, and produces an overwhelming amount of information, he sees it from the side that blogs participation is very inequal on a world wide scale, with only 0.1% of the blogger posting daily. The problem is that the overall blogposts are not representative of web users. (giving more influence= power to the bloggers). He continues with some tips to enhance participation equality (like making it easier to contribute).

I'd rather look at the use of blogs within a single community of practice. For instance, for our e-collaboration community of practice with about 60 people, I think there are about 8-9 bloggers (plus a group blog) and some people want to start a blog. So the CoP may actually encourage others to start blogging. Unfortunately, it is hard to say how much the blogs influence knowledge sharing and relationship building. I know that it has helped me to know what blogging members are doing and thinking (I subscribed to their blogs). It could be interesting at some point to ask more explicitly how many people in the community of practice read the blogs. And of course it is not imperative that everyone should be blogging. (it sounds a little bit like that's the ideal situation for Jacob Nielsen). To be honest I'm happy that not all 60 have a blog because I wouldn't be able to keep up reading all.

In CPsquare (with about 200 members) roughly 12 (didn't count) people are bloggers and a feed combines all blogposts into a community of practice feed. My concern for this intiative was that people may blog about a wide variety of topics, but I guess in daily life you also talk about a wide range of topics. Again, it would be interesting to know whether it's mainly the bloggers using the feed, the other members, or whether it also works as a boundary tool (open for people outside CPsquare).