Dear friends,

Recently aware of your iniciative and eager to contribute to a better understanding of the challenges and posibilities of the so called Knowledge Society, I would like to let you know of two projects who conceive the use of blogin to generate networks of participative conscience on different issues of social participation in which I have been part. One is LINC which stands for “Laboratorio de Inteligencia Colectiva” (you know, we use Spanish as lingua franca in this South…), and was a somehow successfull -and still unique by the time- experience, to establish free ways of expression and colaborative thinking between people working in different areas of the public administration in charge of the social protection program Chile Solidario. There you´ll find lots of entries on issues of social protection and TIC´s and some twenty links to other blogs who were being created on time and conform a network still active in at least a region of the country, altough the initiative was not “fully” comprised by the central administration… but that lead to another conversation on politics. Then, there´s our actual initiative using the same open media and still in social protection and technologies but from the private sector this time (8th Millenium Goal). Both links to this material could be accesed next. Needless to say that we´ll be very gratefull for your visit and coments. Please don´t hesitate to contact and make any question you want.

www.vc-on.blogspot.com

www.siischilesolidario.blogspot.com

Best Regards,

Rainer.

At the Web2forDev conference, everyone has been saying that it’s not about the technology – it’s about the people. It’s about what people can do with the technology – and what ‘mash-ups’ of tools and approaches are appropriate and really working.

I came to this conference to find people who are really doing participatory web – not just using the technology, but facilitating real empowerment and positive change. Our plan at IIED is to co-publish with CTA a special issue of the Participatory Learning and Action series on participatory web for development – so I needed to find real examples.

Well, yesterday I was lucky enough to see Ednah Karamagi give her presentation, Enhancing Knowledge Sharing in the Rural Community through Adoption of Web 2.0 tools.  

I felt like I had found a magic bean.  Ednah works for a Ugandan NGO, Busoga Rural Open Source & Development (BROSDI). It’s a not-for-profit organisation that works with government and civil society in improving rural livelihoods. Within BROSDI is a project called Collecting and Exchanging of Local Agriculture Content (CELAC).                       

Both BROSDI and CELAC project make extensive use of Web 2.0 approaches. But it’s a real combination of Web 2.0 and grassroots participation. For example, CELAC is almost entirely populated with locally generated content. As Ednah says, ‘We are sharing information from our great grandfathers that we are losing in our generation.’  

Essentially, it’s a great combination of the online – Blogs, Google Maps, Wikis, online documentation, chatrooms – and the offline – a weekly mobile phone SMS farmers’ information service, village knowledge brokers, monthly farmer forum meetings, village meetings, radio, and hard copy documentation. They are even developing an e-learning tool for primary school children. 

Ednah is candid about the challenges they face. ‘The Internet is expensive, and needs power,’ she says. ‘It’s a problem in a country where access to electricity is intermittent.’ There is also the issue that people need to change their attitudes towards sharing information, rather than ‘hoarding’ it. And sometimes the technology doesn’t work – and is abandoned. ‘We did have a Wiki,’ Ednah says. ‘But the staff rejected it, as it was too complicated. But we plan to have a new Wiki for developing training material so that we can all comment and add to it.’ 

Ednah was a real inspiration. There was a long list of real life examples – not just the different technologies – but how the technology has made a real, positive change to people’s lives. My favourite was Cissy and her turkey farm. Ednah told us, ‘She learnt how to rear turkeys on SMS!’

This morning, I overheard Dr Hansjorg Neun of CTA talking to Ednah Karamagi. He asked Ednah, ‘Why do you think you have been so successful?’

Ednah’s reply was, ‘You have to use as many methods as you can to reach your community.’

Well, BROSDI are doing that in style. Let’s hope they continue to get the support they need to keep this pioneering organisation going from strength to strength.    

Over the past decade, the ‘digital divide’ has been shrinking as the number of fixed phone lines, mobile subscribers and Internet users grow. It is becoming less a gap in access to ICT as a difference in quality and capacity. However, the International Telecommunication Union estimates that approximately one billion people worldwide still lack connection to any kind of information and communication technology. From FAO’s perspective, this conference could not be more timely. Over the past two years, our organization has been pressing forward with a number of major reforms including a new emphasis on FAO as a Knowledge-sharing Organization.

Duration: 59sec

In mp3 (Broadcast quality, Kb to be downloaded)
ftp://ext-ftp.fao.org/Radio/MP3/2007/Web-2-0/DG-e.mp3

Interview with Christian Kreutz, GTZ, Web2forDev Conference, Rome 24^th February 2007.  

Monday was a preliminary workshop day, prior to the start of the main Web2forDev conference in Rome. Participants were introduced to various web-based applications that are part of the Web 2.0. One of the presentations was about blogging. 

Presenter Christian Kreutz, of GTZ in Germany, described blogging as a very powerful communication tool: blogging is ‘a two-way conversation…’ – a great way of creating ‘virtual meeting spaces’ and sharing ‘first hand experience of what is going on in the field’. But perhaps not everyone agrees. Andrew Keen once referred to the emerging Web 2.0 – and phenomena such as blogging – as the latest and greatest ‘seduction’.[1] He argues that it will drown out traditional media and the ‘authoritative voice’, plunging us into a ‘nightmare of over-abundance’ of information and authors. However, Christian argues that ‘many blogs are covering niche topics that traditional media might not otherwise cover. The traditional media already rely a lot on blogs to get information from places such as Iraq or Lebanon.’ 

Yet according to Christian, there is still a general misunderstanding of what blogging is – and what it is useful for. So I asked him, how do we – the users – know what information is accurate or important to us? And, given that anyone can blog – to give opinion, fact or perspectives – how can we know or even define what is useful and relevant?  

‘It takes time to write, time to read and time to digest blogs. But, Web 2.0 applications can also bring you to blogs – there are blogging hubs that gather information so that you can follow up on your own chosen theme… and interesting new technologies like RSS feeds mean that you can see how popular different blogs are. And out of these numbers we can see what people jump on.’ To put it simply, these RSS applications are capable of generating qualitative information and statistics, and so monitoring how popular different blogs are. And Christian’s argument is that the more people read or respond to different posts in blogs, the more ‘authoritative’ the information contained in those posts can be said to be. But is the majority voice synonymous with quality? 

Blogs are now increasingly being used by intermediate development organisations, which are using them as a strategic organisational tool to share information and knowledge. So how are these organisations accountable to the people that they are apparently representing on these blogs?  

Interestingly, Christian commented that in his opinion, blogging ‘is still completely underestimated by the development scene’. Whilst he agrees that there is a lot of information generated, which is not necessarily accurate or useful, he also argues that the essence of blogging is that it creates a two-way conversation, which in turn creates its own feedback loops. The theory is that these feedback loops circulate between people at the grassroots, intermediate development organisations, donor organisations, IFIs and policy makers. He believes that this will be profoundly important in the development sector, creating a monitoring and evaluation system which will in turn push for better practice. ‘If a project isn’t working, people will write about it from the field.’

 Web 2.0 protagonists passionately believe that applications like blogging will open up a whole new era of openness and accountability in development. These all-important feedback loops will ensure greater accountability, transparency and representation, from the grassroots to the policy makers. 

Is blogging open to abuse? ‘Yes,’ says Christian candidly. ‘But it’s an open, cultural conversation. I’m amazed how well it works in many different contexts.’ He agrees that blogging can be very political, and also very partisan. However, he also argues that it’s not all about blogging. Face-to-face meetings are still fundamentally important – and what use is your blog if no-one knows it exists? ‘Just to have a blog alone, that isn’t the thing. You have to do something more to be a network. You have to interact, to make your blog known, and to convince other organisations to join in – it’s an overlap – many things have to come together.’ 

But perhaps his main message is that it is a low-cost, easy to implement technology that gets results. There are still clear disadvantages to the South, for example with connectivity. And more time is needed to develop capacities within organisations wanting to use blogging in their communications strategies. But while there may still be challenges to overcome, Christian’s premise is that blogging really can be a form of democratised, accountable knowledge sharing – where the majority voice can also become the authoritative voice.  

A final thought: Who is participating in the creation of ‘the majority voice’? How truly participatory is Web 2.0? What participatory processes are the Web 2.0 community of practice using? Is Participatory Web for Development a reality – on the ground as well as in cyberspace? The answers will emerge over the rest of the conference…

This morning Prof. Jayanta Chatterjee presented Kinsanblog (www.dealindia.org), an amazing virtual space where farmers can ask questions to tackle the agricultural constraints they face and get recorded answers in their local language. 

Two of the main barriers to sharing knowledge across farming communities are language and literacy. “Farmers are not literate and if they are, they’re certainly not English literate,” explained Chatterjee. At the same time, conversation is a key pattern in Indian culture used to share information. So audio material proved to be an efficient bypass to the constraints of literacy. The project also addressed the need for a horizontal network – not only to enable farmers to talk to scientific experts, but also to support farmer to farmer communication.  

The project started with 5 agricultural knowledge centers (46 villages, 300 000 people involved in Agriculture). Farmers can go there to record their questions, voice their problems and comment on what was previously recorded. This material is posted on the Kisanblog. This allows both experts and the farming community to respond to posts, so that the repository keeps on growing. A community of about 40 scientists and extension workers answer a wide range of questions tackling for instance issues around commodities, livestock or pest issues. They can also input extra material to supplement the answers.  

But a key success of the project is the commitment of the farming community to respond and provide answers. In fact, people in rural areas are eager to learn how other farmers are coping with the same constraints. The most popular posts appear to be not from the scientists but from their peers. Farmers place much more trust in their colleagues. 

Authenticity of the content is also an important issue. To ensure the quality of the content, answers are first seen by the extension officers. “They are responsible for looking at the answers first – and only those appearing to be OK are posted. This is particularly important for farmers: agriculture is the basis of their livelihoods and there is a need to supply reliable knowledge, added Chatterjee. Otherwise the consequences could be disastrous. 

Those who contribute to the blog can record their audio from any place as long they have a microphone is attached to a computer connected to Internet. Alternatively, they can send their off-line recording to the knowledge centre, saved as MP3. And before the end of 2008, the project will integrate mobile phone technology. This is the most popular device in rural areas for recording farmers’ questions and retrieving their information in the database. 

The Dealindia team made the project popular amongst farmers by “actively spreading the word” in the field. They participated in farmers’ fairs, at rural exhibition, they demonstrated to technology to farmers’ groups and traveled to farming communities to tell about the potential benefit just like story tellers were doing in the past. As Chatterjee put it¸ “We went from place to place and told our story.”   

But the best element to motivate farmers to share their knowledge proved to be recognition. “We all want to be stars, we want to be known. That’s what Web 2.0 is about.” Actually, that’s also how the project managed to get scientists volunteering for the job. Even though they are public servants, dealindia needed to find the right incentives for them to participate. The reward came in the form of a personalised page created to showcase their experience and input – and thus recognition from their peers about the project and their involvement. 

Kinsablog now reaches a community of over 100 farmers and 40 scientists. They are committed to sharing agricultural information. If we consider that after only 9 months there are more than 1200 discussion threads available, the success of the project seems to be on the right track. 

For more information: Dr Janyanta Chatterjee jayanta@iitk.ac.in