Web 2.0 here in the west means two things: broadband and a changed perception / culture about the net. the clever tools and opportunities for collaboration, etc… are only possible because of the the infrastructure and the knowledge we have.

Please spare the developing world web 2.0 and get the basic working instead.

Very encouraging to see web 2 being embraced by institutions across the world - makes a welcome update from blank incomprehension a few years earlier!

However I fear the same thing is happening for web 2 as happened for web 1.

IT specialists are jumping all over web 2 from its myriad technological angles - after earlier dismissing it as nothing new - rather than an information angle.

Links below show a couple of dozen blogs - but only three or four are actually hosted by blog services.

Unfortunately, this site itself is an example of that - no doubt the IT section had great fun setting up a “proper” website for this conference, pushing any actual web 2 interactivity to one side, as links on the sidebar, rather than as the main page itself.

What happens in a year or two when fees for this website run out - will it disappear like so many others before it?

Why didn’t organisers set up on something like Googlepages, with headlines from the blog and wiki running through the front page? So that the information here is at no risk of vanishing? And so that communities may see an actual web 2 site in action?

Speaking of action, it seems astonishing to me that what little was provided in the way of updates from the conference itself last year was a … webcast.

Living and working on remote Pacific Islands for 30 years, with roughly a dozen of those on the internet, I have learnt that most of the web bells and whistles are simply beyond the reality of most Pacific Islanders.

Forget video, audio, streaming or otherwise, flash graphics, database queries or anything other than text and a photo, preferably small - they just won’t download.

As for uploading, the only proven technology is email.

It is for this reason that my agency emphasises email-based methods for web 2, seeking the simplest of options rather than the most complicated.

Connectivity remains a problem not just in the islands but all over the world. This problem could also be an opportunity - for urban NGO’s to boost their relevancy by helping set up blogs and such for their rural counterparts.

Many rural teachers, doctors, nurses, agricultural and other officials now have their own digital cameras, video and laptops - but no way to get that multimedia information online reliably, even if they could afford it.

If rural NGOs were given the ability to update text and small photos via email, then multimedia could be burnt to DVD and posted in the mail. This means updates get a double hit of exposure - first with the email update, secondly with the addition of multimedia a week or so later.

Such information techniques - not technology - is where web 2 efforts should, in my opinion, be concentrated rather than worrying third world community leaders how to do a “mash-up.”

NGOs in metropolitan countries might also play a role in uploading multimedia content, or facilitating the same in their development partner countries.

Kia manuia, bon chance,

jason brown
editor
avaiki nius agency