November 12th-19th at Dadamac November 20, 2010

Posts on posterous

Not so many posts this week as we've been busy thinking and re-organising. The first three may look familiar (they got included by mistake in the review I wrote last weekend) I'm reposting them as part of the new Friday to Friday approach.

• Biofuels, biomas, irrigation, pumps, Attachab, Appropedia, and introductions. - November 14, 2010 - introducing people with overlapping interests related to appropriate technology / power generation / alternatives to traditional fuels / and eco-related issues

• Elfneh - great to hear from you - and Ahead. - November 14, 2010 -  introducing, and starting to catch up with, Elfneh Bariso and his work in Ethiopia. (We now plan to meet face to face next Wednesday - and there is a lot of catching up to do).
  

• Countdown to Coalition Movement Camp online today 7-11pm GMT - November 14, 2010  - announcing what was an excellent event. (There is now a wiki pulling related things together at Coalition of the Willing wiki and there is a Coalition Of The Willing blog. Pattern Language - PL - got a mention from someone. In later discussion with Michael Maranda we discovered, and started to explore, a shared interest in PL.)

• Kickstarter - funding for creative projects - November 16, 2010  Explaining how Vinay Gupta used Kickstarter to fund "The Future We Deserve" and wondering if it could be relevant for projects we know. After writing this post I put it on the agenda for Dadamac's weekly UK-Nigeria team meeting. I wondered if it might be a way to fund a video.
• • John responded  "My thought immediately was how can we use it to tell the story of FF's integrated model of development? If we called it A Day in Life of Hajara, a rural microfinance field officer, and use that to show how the FF model works? By following Hajara from home to FF to the communities where she works, we can showthe roles of GAIYA, Academy, Health Clinic, Kakas, etc in our various services. This will be an uodated documentary of FF with a shorter version for U-Tube. In the process, we could get a professional camera person to work with Yakubu and other FF staff to improve their video skills"

• Health at KRC - education, training and research - November 16, 2010  -  Email to John Dada, reviewing our health projects, and how the service delivery side of things ties in with research, education and training.

• ICTD and Attachab - part 2 of a true eco-story - November 19, 2010  -  Please read this story, and know that I would really appreciate feedback.  
  
  • • You can read it for the story itself (probably the best plan) or for some other issues that it illustrates about ICT for Development. I want to share this story on both levels - simply for its own sake, and also as an example of something wider (I'm back to that struggle for the local-global perspective, and how a better understanding of Pattern Language might help me). You can ignore all the wider stuff and simply appreciate the straight-forward story. 

Wider context

If you've ever moved house, or even just cleared out a cupboard, then you know the chaotic stage of "making things worse so they can get better". That's where I've been with Dadamac over the last few weeks (including some elements of confusion and misplacing things that are part of the process.) We're at the flip-over now - that stage where things do start to look better (at least, I hope so).

Reorganising the weekly update

The update will now run from "sometime on Friday" to "sometime on the next Friday", and will usually (but not always) get posted to dadamac's posterous on Friday.

Dadamac.net - influenced by Dadamac day

Dadamac day was inspirational - and is influencing www.dadamac.net. The Dadamac Day discussions will have a long-term impact on how we see things, do things, and make them visible to others. We realised afterwards that some of the most important things we were all sharing about Dadamac are not reflected at www.dadamac net - so we are making some changes  I won't try to explain the shift we're trying to achieve. Maybe I'll reflect on it when more has been done and the benefits start to be felt.

Changing www.dadamac.net will be a gradual process. If you come across any glitches - or any omissions that you want us to remedy sooner rather than later - please email pamela.mclean@dadamac.net or nicola.fishman@dadamac.net and we will sort it as soon as we can.

The big picture and the little details

The theme that emerged around Dadamac day was “Dadamac Goes Glocal”. This is something that Nikki and I come back to again and again. Our "local" work is equally in Africa and online. How does this "local" work tie in with the "global work" that is going on? We see its relevance - but how and where can we connect with others who might be thinking along similar lines? How can we offer what we have learned in our local work to others, in a more generally applicable way?

Some evidence of these local-global explorations appear now and again on Dadamac's Posterous. Recent examples are my involvement in Movement Camps and what I have written for "The Future We Deserve".

Pattern language is also influencing how we think about the “Dadamac goes glocal” theme. I'm currently learning about pattern language, and look forward to sharing what I learn, and applying it to what we are doing in Dadamac (reordering things under the influence of Pattern Language thinking is part of the current reorganisation and “getting worse to get better”).

Posted to  Dadamac's Posterous by Pamela McLean

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Email -  pamela.mclean@dadamac.net
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