Post by Olivier Berthoud:

Some brief comments to the conference:
Here are the 3 most relevant case studies for me. Potential scaling up and mainstreaming are my major concern about these new technologies.

• Oxfam is using any new Web2.0 technology to mobilize mid-class professional and youth in wealthy countries (Myspace, Facebook, what ever) and it seams to works great for them.
• Dgroups, “Web2.0 before Web2.0”, is consistently used by development practitioners since 1996 (80’000 subscribers), but it is now an outdated technology: simple robust mailing list and discussion forum that are low band compatible, no blog nor wiki. Couldn’t we work together to improve it?
• Cell phones are all over the world in hands of billions of people: they are making a difference now. People are making money. Here is an example from Ghana.
• and the BROSDI-Uganda hype I don’t share.

I was less impressed than others by the presentation of the BROSDI project from Uganda.

“I felt like I had found a magic bean”(…) “My favourite was Cissy and her turkey farm. Ednah told us, ‘She learnt how to rear turkeys on SMS!’ “wrote Holly Ashley here in the Web2fordev blog. I am sure the enthusiasm is authentic. I just doubt that proteins deficiency and lack of incomes in developing countries will be solved by learning through SMS. It’s a pity, but development issues and learning opportunities are more complex than that. And we should stop getting exited by beautiful particular innovative projects that never scale up because they are based on very singular local circumstances and leadership that are rarely part of the project presentation.

Bottom line: Nice learning and networking, but I an not sure I will attend the 2009 conference on Web3.0 “Virtual Reality for Development”. I am convinced there is still in the coming years a great undisclosed and proved potential to reach the Millennium goals with pencils and paper, old Web1.0 low band artifacts and some Web2.0 tools for some people.

Olivier Berthoud
SDC, Berne

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