My Blog

globalvillages April 19, 2010

Hi Franz and everyone.

I am reluctant to enter into serious techie-speak discussions as my comfort zone there is fairly limited - but I would like to share what I have been developing with Andy and Ryan for Dadamac as some of our explorations may be a useful addition to your discussions (and they can follow up later with techie-speak).

First the background to my online community experiences, then the technology I have used and some explanation of the thinking behind what has been used so you can judge its relevance.

My personal "online community" history has been through the development of a "three part" inter-related network made up of: an online network; a F2F network in the UK; and a F2F network in Nigeria (and a little in East Africa). This Internet enabled networking all began ten years ago when a close friend in London persuaded me to get involved in a community project that her Nigerian husband was starting "back home" in the ten local governments of rural  Oke-Ogun in Oyo State SW Nigeria.

At that stage my computer knowledge related to using ICT in schools and my Internet use was mainly email and some web-browsing. I had never heard the term ICT for Development - and had no intention of ever visiting Africa. However, that was ten years ago - and "life happens". I now have considerable experience of ICT4D, of being in online communities, of nurturing online relationships and communities, and pushing maximum information back and forth online (and beyond the boundary of the online network) to enable ongoing collaborations, shared learning and friendships (with especial emphasis on collaborations between the "bandwidth rich" and the "bandwidth poor - or bandwidth challenged"), and knowing first hand how things do work and don't work in certain parts of Africa.

Technically the story went like this (written from a personal perspective, but within a gradually growing network and aided by a variety of helpers and collaborators, written in an approximate "starting to get important" date order - but it all developed organically so things are really very interwoven and overlapping. I have not included every detail, just enough to give an idea of the gradual development and scope )

  • Emails
  • Emails with attachments
  • Other people's websites
  • Travelling in Nigeria helping to field test a prototype solar-driven, low-power, email-sending, computer with a touch screen (2004) organised through my Oge-Ogun network.
  • Other people's discussion lists and yahoo groups
  • Writing and moderating an online newsletter - for the Oke-Ogun project (thanks to Kabissa)
  • Getting my own yahoo email address (set up in a Nigerian cyber cafe)
  • More trips to Nigeria - always including non-formal ICT training
  • Setting up and moderating a  yahoo group - to support preparations for an ICT programme called Teachers Talking Fantsuam Foundation in North Central Nigeria
  • A wiki that grew from the information content generated by the yahoo group. (It was fine as an information warehouse  but not so good as an information self-service store.  My TT participants needed 'wiki guides' to help provide the relevant links. We needed something more friendly and better suited to the participants' needs)
  • Presenting ICT training courses on various occasions with the limitations of "the Nigerian factor" (also repeated in Kenya) - all contributing to my growing online network as well as my local knowledge/ 
  • The "friendly wiki" (This was my first introduction to how different people could relate to information in differently structured ways through a system of "permissions". It was a difficult learning curve as "content" and "purpose" ie me, and "technical capability" i.e. my patient Open Source mentor and collaborator, struggled to understand each other.)
  • Yahoo chat
  • Yahoo conferences
  • Developing a conceptual model for successful online collaboration (finding there were missing bits and improving it)
  • Using the model to initiate a collaboration which gave rise to People'sUni.org
  • Skype
  • Explorations with audio-grahic conferencing
  • Experiments with digital cameras (video and photos) and with putting information online
  • Regular (once a month) use of the Minciu Sodas worknets chat room
  • Experimenting with Moodle (A leap forward from the 'friendly wiki". I could consider the individual interests of people and allocate them to appropriate Special Interest Groups. There can be different permissions for different people within the group. This means for example that some people can only see "tidy, ready-to-use" information, and others can also see messy "work in progress', some have information sent out to them, others only see information if they choose to visit the information store, and others are able to help stock the information store - or even just leave things there for their own future use, which is quite handy if you don't have computer of your own to rely on - especially a few years back before data sticks were around. Forums can be used for emails between SIG members. )
  • Skyping
  • Website that I was responsible for generating (Useful experience, but, as it turned out, not permanent - one of my "eek!" learning experiences)
  • Blogs, for communication, as an information store to point to in emails, and as a temporary web-presence
  • Joining with John Dada to form Dadamac
  • Joining various NING groups
  • Joining facebook
  • Joining other social media/web2.0 groups 
  • More setting up and moderating of yahoo and google groups
  • Use of google docs and spreadsheets in our extended virtual office.  
  • Weekly use of typed online conferencing (first yahoo, then skype) for regular weekly Dadamac UK-Nigeria team meetings
  • Treating UK-Nigeria team as one of our Moodle SIGs and using Moodle to send out agendas, store relevant documents, keep meeting archives etc.
  • Drupal as an alternative way of generating a website (setting up www.dadamac.net on Drupal with help from Ryan of Equitasit and Andy of NewMediaThinking)
  • Adding blogs to Dadamac.net
  • Various experiments in collaboration, especially related to roles of teachers and learners now we have the Internet. 
  • Start of experiments with containers and forums on Drupal - to be followed up later - just a learning experience so far, no real migration of our community activities to that space.
  • Continuing to develop use of Moodle - and using that for some community activities that I hope to make more visible later by moving over to Drupal
  • Use of twitter
  • Setting up a NING group as a learning experience for the Dadamac Social Media SIG
  • Discussions with Andy about CCK and development of better Drupal enabled discussion groups and "community happenings"  at www,dadamac.net (CCK = Content Construction Kit and is what allows you to set up different content types / fields sets etc.)
  • Experimenting with posterous as a mid-point between private emails and letters written as "open letters" for my blog

As I read the discussions about people's NING groups and why they want them it seems to me that there is a considerable overlap with Dadamac's interests and efforts so far, and so there might be beneficial opportunities for collaboration. Dadamac recognises various kinds of "currency" for win-win collaborations - money, time, skills, knowledge,information, trust-building, etc. It is small, flexible and independent so is open to new ideas, strategies and projects.

Pamela

Pamela McLean
UK-Africa Connections
Dadamac Ltd - Knowledge Brokers
www.dadamac.net

On 19 April 2010 07:43, Franz Nahrada <f.nahrada@reflex.at> wrote:
   In a discussion with Markus I wrote up some points that I find essential about NING.

a) the potential to form groups of individuals that have thematic
coherence;

a very good balanced relation between community spirit and
embeddedness in a larger space where individuals can move freely (you can
bring your friends from other networks) , fractal in its approach that
gives us sense of belonging. (*)

b) in the framework of this: the ability to request theme specific
profiles and not just general profiles like in Facebook or Wiser Earth.
This is very important to understand the degree and kind of motivation
that people have from the beginning.

b2) in the framework of this: the ability to add one level of fractal
subgroups in a theme, with its own membership and discussion fora.
*** I wanted us to do this in the videobridge NING, so we can identify our
technological etc. capacities.
*** I wanted us to do this in the globalvillages NING, so we can identify
our research base

c) a very good and fine tuned email notification system that allows me to
leave the community and only be drawn there only when it is necessary.

d) a very flexible way to upload files in thematic contexts. I lack that
for example in even similar systems like MIXXT.

I gladly learn from others how they feel about this. I think its important
to think about ways of organizing cooperation online that are realistic
and coherent.

And I know tons of things are missing in NING. But I feel we need a kind
of center or several types of centers to group other patterns around them,
like Skype, GoogleDocs, Facebook,

The natural centers for me are mailing list and social network.

Franz

(*) Wiser Earth is not fractal enough, it gives me endless lists of people
and solutions and does not carry through even its internal order system
which would provide ordered fractality. The internal order system is
detailed but it lacks some categories.
Also, WE is still extremely buggy - I tried a test network there also and
it behaves weird. http://www.wiserearth.org/group/globalvillages

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