We had a training session on podcasting by Mark Fonseca. I interviewed him to hear why he thinks podcasting can be an interesting tool for development. He said, people should know about international developments. As development organization you probably have something to say, a message. You don't want intermediaries to tweek or twist your message, so podcasting is the right solution to be able to get your message out. How to find an audience for your podcast remains a challenge though.

To see the video or to read more about the training see the blogpost on my blog: http://joitskehulsebosch.blogspot.com/2008/01/interview-with-mark-fonsec...

I blogged about Milieucontact International experimenting with a mashup of google earth and wikis: Riny Heijdendael explained during a meeting what he is working on right now: One of the major problems I encountered was that more and more the network faced the problem of finding the relevant information, both on a geographic as a thematic scale.

Questions arose like these:

How do I know what other themes are being addressed in my region or
country?

Who is working on the same theme as I am?

How can i quickly connect to the part the network that can enhance my strategy for my own region or theme?

How do I present my local knowledge to a broader audience without having to set up a "website", including all the hassle?

Britt Bravo from Netsquared invited me to contribute a blogpost with my ideas about the return on investment of the social web for nonprofits.

Since I think inviting bloggers to write a blogpost about a certain topic is a great method of generating ideas, I'm respond with this blogpost. Let me answer it from the perspective of nonprofits working for international development.

I interviewed Chris van der Sanden from Milieukontakt International because I heard that they use wikis in a new way.

Chris has the impression that working with wikis has had a large influence in changing the way people collaborate. The dynamics of collaboration change, working together becomes flatter, more democratic and more creative, and working through wikis seems to really contribute towards that change. For instance: ‘we had a new member from Moldova in the international training group. She introduced herself in the who-is-who part of the wiki, she had direct access to all materials that were developed so far and could start immediately contributing to the training materials.

To read the full story go to:

I've been working hard for two days (actually three, the next day there was still a lot of uploading and blogging to do) to blog/vlog part of the EUFORIC/CONCORD meeting in Brussels. The idea behind blogging/vlogging the event was to make sure that other members or interested persons who can not make it to the event for whatever reason, can also engage with what happened and what was discussed, and be part of it or learn from it. This is a group that are for the majority not yet 'web2.0' users, so it would also be a way of showing what you can do with the tools. By the way, is a blog which combines 'normal' blogposts with 'vlogposts' a bvlog or a vblog? Anyhow you can see the result here.

In the e-collaboration group, I have asked for skype tips. We have gathered 10 great tips for the use of skype in a development setting. Ofcourse some tips can be applied by any skype user but some are particular innovation for people working with irratic internet connections, like the option to dial in people into skype conferences using skypeout.

You can find all 10 tips plus a story of skype use in Ghana here:
http://icollaborate.blogspot.com/2007/04/10-skype-tips-for-advanced.html

On the e-collaboration blog I have posted a video interview of 4 minutes with Michel Wesseling about his efforts to build FOCUSS, a specialised search engine for development. Though he started with the idea to develop a new search engine, they have changed to use Google Coop instead. One of the interview questions:

What are challenges to make FOCUSS work?

You'd expect that developing the technology is a challenge but the biggest challenge, however, is to get people to work together. To stimulate them to make bookmarks is the biggest challenge. So now one colleague will work one day per week on marketing and stimulating people.

On the e-collaboration blog I have posted an interview with Joost Oorthuizen (here) One of the questions I asked him was:

 

You are an experienced face-to-face facilitator, and this is your first online experience. What is different as an online facilitator?

Well, my first observation is that there is more similarity than I expected. Also e-conferences need facilitation, and participants do want such facilitation, and strongly relate it, very much similar to the way they appreciate face-to-face facilitation. So, as a facilitator, one can ‘connect’ to the participants, take ownership of the process of the discussion, ‘lead’ participants towards certain outcomes. This is easier and more similar to facilitating workshops than expected.Another observation is that e-conferences are far less intrusive than face-to-face meetings. The latter requires people to sit together, to listen to each other, to listen to a facilitator for often too long a time, etcetera. How often do we not feel that we waste a lot of time during face-to-face meetings, or that we have to work with/listen to people who do not really appreciate. So, this e-conference method leaves participation much more open. One can easily ‘vote with your feet’ (mouse) if not interested. Put more positively, people can participate whenever they like, whenever they are up to it, in their own time- and energy frames!

If you click here http://icollaborate.blogspot.com/2006/12/experiences-with-online-conferencing.html you will find an interested blogpost from my e-collaboration group. We experimented with skype and interwise teleconferences and have some interesting observations like this one on the level of security and comfort: 

 Level of security and comfort. A teleconference (using a new technology or for a person unfamiliar with teleconferences) adds to your level of insecurity and discomfort, that you have in new groups. So if you have a new group, you can hardly get people to feel secure enough to get good work done. After all, these are all things that you have to consider while choosing for a f2f meeting, an online asynchronous discussion, a chat or a teleconference. A participant who was new in the group: ‘If it had not been for the explicit remarks that we were dealing with an experiment, I would have felt disappointed about this meeting. It was emotionally stressing. I compare this with meetings a had in South America, were I just started speaking Spanish. Even though I did not understand everything, it did not feel right to keep questioning: 'what do you mean', or 'would you repeat this?'. Still, people might ask for my opinion and expected you to participate in decision making. The experience with skype may be even worse: In the situation of our conference I could not check your faces, there were no lips to be read, no clues from the context. I felt insecure. I was so busy trying to listen that I had no energy left to check with the notes. I did not make notes myself, because I felt insecure about the content-value of what I could add.’’

At the Dutch e-collaboration blog, Maaike van Steenhoven has posted the conclusions of her interviews with about 15 development organizations about the introduction of new tools for e-collaboration: http://icollaborate.blogspot.com/2006/11/findings.html

She describes the overall phase Dutch NGOs are in, concerning the implementation of e-collaboration in their work and how they became enthusiastic.  Then she describes the implementation stage of the various new tools that were introduced (ranging from moodle to social bookmarking). How did people start looking for the right tool, how did they approach and convince others and how are they planning for the future? She also presents an overview of the benefits e-collaboration brought to the people who are experimenting with it and the difficulties they encountered in the broadest way.