Scholar literature is underrepresented on Internet and Southern researchers’ content remains invisible. There is a critical mass of “grey” knowledge which could highly benefit from the web2 opportunities. Ismael Peña-López from the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) expressed the importance of facilitating access to researchers’ work in a provocative manner “If you exist on Internet, you exist for real”.

He presented the Personal research portal (PRP), a combination of various Web2 applications, more than a mere communication tool for scientists, but a way to keep growing and learning. “It forces you to read and be well informed and, at the same time, you get connected to a network; it is a way to manage the knowledge you’re giving away and the one you’re gaining. The more you expose your work, the more you get comment and can reflect on your topic of interest.”

I asked him how he would describe the web2 and how that would be an opportunity for Southern researchers. I was also interested in what one’s could achieve through a PRP and why the individuals should complement institutional repository.
And a few other things…

Download audio

Additional info:

http://ismael.ictlogy.net

http://ictlogy.net

http://www.km4dev.org/journal/index.php/km4dj/article/view/92

Mark Davies of www.tradenet.biz talk about this website

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhCtRUAHFNA

Amit Dasgupta is one of the few presenters at the Web2forDev Conference with a private sector background. Currently he is working for IBM India as General Manager in the Global Business Services division. At Tuesday, the first day of the Conference, Amit Dasgupta will do a presentation on practical examples of how knowledge sharing and collaborative efforts within key stakeholders and community members can be more effective using Web 2.0, to improve the richness of knowledge sharing applications for the agricultural sector.

Amit Dasgupta: “The thematic context of my presentation has no relation to the type work I usually do in IBM, although from a technological standpoint one could say it is linked with my work. I have chosen to talk about making existing knowledge sharing applications and collaboration attempts within rural communities much more effective by using Web 2.0 as I strongly believe Web 2.0 will be helpful to the agricultural community in India.”

“Web 2.0 offers so many compelling advantages compared to older technologies, that I foresee an extensive use of this new technology. In order to develop effective knowledge sharing applications for the agriculture sector for example, academic and research institutions, government agencies, NGOs, commercial organisations and users must collaborate since, integration of data from multiple sources is necessary to provide meaningful information and content. Moreover, dissemination of this knowledge is crucial for successful deployment of these applications. The challenges for geographically dispersed organisations working in different fields, to jointly work together to address the requirements for such solutions are real; but could be resolved by leveraging the Web 2.0 framework which facilitates collaborative development of functionally richer applications”.

“Through my presentation I hope to create a better awareness on how Web 2.0 can be harnessed to provide useful solutions for agricultural communities and emphasize the need for collaboration amongst key stakeholders. Use of technology and collaboration are both essential, to develop applications that would make a significant impact on economically underprivileged farmers. I sincerely hope this conference will encourage government agencies, NGOs, research institutions and other organisations to set up collaborative working groups and use the power of Web 2.0, to make knowledge more accessible to rural people. Such initiatives would have a tremendous economic impact on agricultural communities – worldwide”.

African Journalists need to embrace the new revolution of Web 2.0 tools if they are to catch up in this globalised World. Below find an interview on Web 2.0 with Matongo Maumbi a journalist from Zambia whose blog matongo.blogspot.com

Maumbi recently attended an online training focusing on Web2.0 tools organized by PenPlusBytes, the International Institute for Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) Journalism. In 2006, PenPlusBytes launched an online course on ICT Journalism in Africa and it attracted about forty three participants from nine countries spread across Africa, Europe and Asia. You were one of these fortunate students.

Why did you want to engage in such a course? What were your needs?

Matongo: I engaged in the course because I have an interest in exploiting ICTs at personal level and also professionally. I have been working as a broadcast journalist since 2002 and I was lucky to have been exposed to the computer and internet right from the early days of my career. My ICT knowledge is driven by personal interest and enthusiasm. I needed some professional guidance on using ICTs in my career as well as how I would fully utilize them. I needed to know the pros and cons of using ICTs . The limits, the potential benefits the fun of using the internet and how to explore it better.

What did you learn? What did you prefer (e.g.,. learning about new tools, engaging with other journalists, sharing your ideas and knowledge with others, working together on a common article, networking and interacting…)?

Matongo: I leant quite a number of things. I initially only took blogging as an adventure. Writing whatever came to my mind without any real set objective or target. I guess this was because I did it just out of interest and curiosity. I learnt how to conduct better online research for background information. How to source documents, how to set good parameters for searching. My knowledge on Web 2.0 was improved. Blogging is a good place to express oneself freely without the censorship of your editor or superiors on your work.

How does, what your learnt, influence your current journalism practice? How did it modify your way of working? How did it nurture your work (if so)? How do you apply what you learnt?

Matongo: I preferred learning new tools and also interacting with other journalists from across the continent and globe. As curiosity satisfaction was among my needs, I was really looking forward to learning new tools on ICTs. My mind was more set on learning new tools from what I already taught myself. I guess from the many things I learnt, I now spend less time on the internet. I spend less time because I know better how to conduct my online research with in the shortest possible time but with maximum information. As I am now working better with internet, it has encouraged me to continue getting a local touch to what I read on the internet. During the course I found my self working on fewer but better researched programmes that are of great relevance to our catchments community.

You created your own blog. How do you use this blog? What is the main purpose (PR, information sharing, interacting….?). Did you reach your goal? What are the strength and the weakness of such an exercise?

Matongo: Initially had a website aimed at doing radical campaigns online on things that affect Zambia. Time and resources could not allow me to continue and my site died out. Then I though of creating blog with a similar aim. I basically transferred what my site to the blog. I use the blog to make and achieve my thoughts online. As my blog is more of expressing my self, I have not yet set a good objective. In a small way I have reached my goal of transferring my thoughts online. The greatest strength is that you are your own editor and can write anything you fell is morally right at your own pace and space. You get unlimited freedom besides that fact that you have sensitive stories. Weakness comes in as most of the time I only write about my thoughts without backup professional thoughts. This creates a sense of non credibility from readers. Updates are seldom coming on the blog as I use company equipment and internet to do the updates.

What are the main challenges for African journalists to use Web2.0 tools? Do you think that most journalists have already a “mindset” for Web2 tools? What would the African Media community gain by using Web2.0?

Matongo: The main challenges of African journalists using web 2.0 tools is that we do not have our own working space. We have to rely on computers and internet from our offices. How on earth could one fully use web 2.0 tools when one does not have their own resources? The mindset for most journalists is there but a mindset with out resources is meaningless. Internet connection and access is very expensive for most journalists and even when it is affordable it is very slow. There is plenty to gain such as information sharing, unlimited power to express oneself (group) without the trouble of going through the censoring editors and managers.

Do you think that web2.0 applications - if well used by African journalists - can make the Internet more “relevant”? How so?

Matongo: I think Web 2.0 tools if properly used can make it more relevant. There is a lot of information that African Journalists have but because they have to go through editors, such info is suppressed. Mostly it is as a result of editors, managers not appreciating the role of ICTS tools.

Have you advertised your blog. If yes to whom and how?

Matongo: I think my blog is an isolated one. I have not advertised it. The only people that know about are my friends. I never thought of advertising it mainly because I think I do not update it regularly.

Are you making money from your blog?

Matongo: I am not in any way making money from my blog . I still do not fully know how I can tap into that potential. I do not really see how I can make money. I guess this is something I have to learn next. I know I have what it takes; I just do not have the right guidance.

Have you taught other about blogging?

Matongo: I have not taught any of my close friends’ blogging and taking full advantage of the internet besides e-mail messaging. Training for African Journalists in necessary on new web tools because these are new things which are not taught in Journalism. It is also important to note that a blog helps to store content online for African Journalists which has been for a long time been stored in paper form. The content put on a blog is shared and people learn from that kind of content.

Blogs, wikis, podcasts, social bookmarks, and the like are all great ways of collaborating, allowing all Internet users to create new Internet content. Mashups go further, they liberate web users from the role of consumers of Internet services and allow them to create new services and share them.

So what is a mashup? The Wikipedia entry describes a mashup as a web application that combines data from more than one source into an integrated experience.

So what can be created in this way? The directory of mashups at ProgrammableWeb has over 2000 entries. Take a look, you’re bound to find something that interests you.

Or how about creating your own? I’ve put together a simple example at http://wemapr.blogspot.com The starting point is a standard Blogger blog, but to this I’ve added, Yahoo Pipes and Google Maps to give the option of a map based view of the blog entries, click on ‘See this blog as a map’ on the right hand column. On the blog I describe how to add this mapping feature to your own blog. (It’s not perfect, you’ll have to zoom out to see the markers).

Perhaps you’ve created your own mashup, or know of an interesting development related mashup. Please post a comment and share.

Researchers and research interests in developing countries are underrepresented in mainstream academic publishing systems. Reasons are many but publishing costs, research infrastructure financing and interest in topics are among the most apparent. Some of the consequences of this landscape are:

• Difficult access to international scientific production
• Invisibility of research
• Underrepresentation of development topics
• Invisibility of researcher
• Difficult access to mainstream publishing circuits
• Difficulty to build one’s scientific network
• Actuality of findings

Efforts have been made to mitigate this situation; an increasingly common and successful approach is open access to scholarly literature such as open access journals, self-archiving in corporate repositories and self-publishing — most of them, as can be seen, at the institutional level. But the concept and tools around the web 2.0 harness clear opportunities for researchers, acting as individuals, to contribute and build a broader personal presence on the Internet, at the same time benefiting from a better diffusion for their work, interests and publications.

Complementary to formal academic research dissemination and validation trajectories, and complementary to these institutional initiatives, the Personal Research Portal — a mesh of Web 2.0 applications like blogs, wikis and the like — should be able to contribute to achieve the following goals:

At the Personal / Researcher level, let the scientific community know:

• “who am I”
• “what do I do / what does interest me”
• “what have I done / what do I know”
• “where am I”

At the Work / Research level:

• Constitute a public repository for personal production, with past and present information and documentation, with everything interlinked
• Gather digital resources, news, general information and materials, on the same platform, accessible from each and every computer
• Self-archive & self-publish research results, ongoing research, reflections, doubts, findings
• Let know what one knows and that one knows
• Disclose and foster formal and informal relationships with the academic community

_____________________

The concept of the Personal Research Portal will be discussed with professor Ismael Peña-López, Open University of Catalonia (Spain), during the Web2fordev Conference. His work in this topic has been recently published at the Knowledge Management for Development Journal, where a full article is free to download.

I found this chart via the sun light foundation. It is also available in Spanish (sorry could not find any French version). The large version has 8MB and can be printed out as a poster. It visualizes very good the different dimensions of web2.0.

Hello Christian,

Many of your questions seem to be based on the premise that “web2.0″ is a single, identifiable phenomenon. In fact, it is many different things, though they all share some common features e.g. user-generated content.

With that caution in mind, please find below some brief answers to your questions:

Christian Kreutz (CK): What are the key challenges to be tackled for web2.0 for rural development?
Lawrence Agbemabiese (LA): In the short-term, poor rural connectivity and connectivity costs relative to average rural incomes. However, the technological and economic issue aside, I think the biggest potential challenge/threats will be legal in nature–things like copyright infringement battles with Microsoft, royalty rate increases (which for example recently caused the shut-down of last.fm, government control over content (like what YouTube seems to suffer constantly nowadays) etc..

CK: Is free and open source software the main driver for web2.0 technology?
LA: Yes, especially from the perspective of low-income developing country users.

CK: Does web2.0 is all about connecting people or does it really involve knowledge sharing?
LA: It is a lot more than connecting people. I think the most important potential value of web2.0 is “collective intelligence” although for this to be realized, a lot more work is needed on means to “filter” useful/relevant data from the junk.

CK: Is connectivity one of the main issues around web2fordev or only a shortterm challenge?
LA: Definitely short-term, I predict that 10 years from now the connectivity challenge–even at the most remote sites on earth–will be
history.

CK: How can developing countries realize their own web2.0 applications?
LA: Is this absolutely necessary?! One thing about web2.0 and the internet in general is that it offers at last the real opportunity for
collective intelligence to transcend national boundaries (and hopefully, one day language barriers as well…!). But anyway, there is already a lot of promising ‘developing country’ web2.0 applications starting to appear out there. Muti, for example is one, and there is also Afrigadget and a few others.

CK: Does the increase of social networks enhance potential for learning?
LA: Definitely.

Well those are my thoughts.

Cheers,
Lawrence

Recently I met Toni Eliasz from Ungana-Afrika in Pretoria. We discussed over web2.0 in the context of development. His thoughts were interesting on that of the potential and challenges of the collaborative web, given his experiences in South Africa and the region. Ungana is a NGO which devotes its work to find solutions for the capacity crisis.

A ‘capacity crisis’ is a mild expression to describe the skill levels and understanding of information and communications technologies (ICTs) within non-profits and small-to-medium enterprises in Africa. It will take a decade before the young, technologically literate generation can address these challenges.”

No surprise Toni highlighted first, challenges regarding web2.0 for rural development:

• The general problems of connectivity, such as the lack or high price for access. For example, a 3 GB ADSL connection costs up to a hundred dollars in South Africa, which is 15 times the price compared to Germany.
• Web2.0 requires often bandwidth or instant access for videos, podcasts or tools such as google docs.
• Before investing time and resources into web2.0, there is a question to be answered, ‘How do these tools benefit local communities and how can they contribute to development?’
• The computer and its appliances are complex and often need to be demystified for beginners, and like everywhere else, training is needed and that can also take quite some time.
• To use web2.0 tools such as wiki, blogs etc., requires well written documentation and training.
• The lack of technical expertise, which is often required, is currently very expensive and very limited outside of urban areas.
• Like many other ICT4D projects, the question for sustainability is important and yet not proven for concepts based on these new tools.

For Toni many challenges have to be overcome first before web2.0 can be adapted in rural communities or small organizations. I stated that there are examples such as the the Nata Village Blog, which shows how communities communicate their messages and interact with a worldwide audience. However, we both agreed, that it is the know-how, which at this stage it is mostly limited to intermediate organizations, who nevertheless have already a real benefit from the opportunities to interact and collaborate over the web. Ungana is on the APC network and will be sharing documented work experiences and toolkits, especially from their eRider project, to local technology service providers and networks to make quality support and capacity-building programs a reality.

We both agreed, in terms of connectivity, that the mobile phone is very promising. Whereas widely distributed and affordable Internet access will still take many years to arrive in Africa, first, interesting applications to link the mobile phone and web have to be offered. In South Africa for example Mixit is a big web driven mobile chatting portal. It got so far over 4 million subscribers. Toni concluded that ideas and its implementation have to be localized. As an example, two weeks ago a workshop in Kenya launched the development of a mobile advocacy toolkit, which is focusing on the needs of the organizations from the developing world. Homegrown approaches, which emphasizes the
sustainable need, are decisive.

I was curious when an article titled Web 2.0 can benefit the world’s poor appeared on Scidev.net. The authors Waleed al-Shobakky and Jack Imsdahl see in new web applications, such as Google docs, a great potential for developing countries. They write, “Web 2.0 can help these students create documents, track their families’ or villages’ business affairs in spreadsheets and save and store data online. Users only need access to the Internet to benefit from these applications.”

No doubt these applications will change the old concept of purchasing software for each computer. But what is the real benefit of having documents online? I think these applications have great potential to collaborate. But the article doesn’t stress enough the “capacity crisis” that developing countries are facing in the context of information and communication technologies. In Africa problems of simple training to use computers, affordable access, and having enough bandwidth, need to be solved. Furthermore, these online applications need instant access to the Internet which is only available to a minority.

A more helpful approach is open office, so people can work without an Internet connection. Another one is Jahazi, which has developed a USB flash stick full of applications. Also, Google wants to bridge this connectivity challenge with its latest tool called Gear, which will allow to work with online content while being offline.

But what strikes me the most about the article is that it leaves out the biggest opportunities about web2.0 and development. The potential lies in its users and what they do with these tools to communicate, share knowledge and create social media. New social networks are established online, which facilitate interaction and collaboration in an unprecedented way. Blogs, wikis or free sources are the drivers of web2.0.

The authors see language as an obstacle, but on the contrary, I believe that web2.0 with its open source dimension offers software in all kinds of languages (e.g. wordpress and drupal). This is a key factor to create own communities in local or regional contexts (e.g. the union of the Urban Poor from Indonesia, Afrigator, Egypt blog review). However, to which extent this can benefit the poor, will be further discussed on the web2fordev conference.

Crossposted: www.crisscrossed.net