Stepping Higher - Reflections on the Knowledge Age

Social media for activism – Driver for societal change or overhyped myth?

noreply@blogger.com (Stepping Higher - Reflections on the Knowledge Age) — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 22:10:00 +0000

For a while now I am following what seems to be a trench battle between the so-called “cyber-utopians”, who see social media as the guarantor of a new age of equality, democracy and civil rights, and the critical skeptics who point out that they’ve seen it all before and who see social media as an overstretched hype with no real impact on the real world.

The Arab Spring and the related media coverage regarding the role of social media have surely added a new quality to the conversation and seems to have sharpened the above cleavage even more. The debate gained such prominence, that entire training courses are now dedicated on social media activism, like the TechChange course on “Global Innovations for Digital Organizing” which I just participated in during the last three weeks.

A key point of this discussion is the question whether or whether not social media actually helps spurring and supporting social activism, or whether all the protests that occurred lately would have happened anyway, with or without social media.

Personally, I always felt that the assessments by traditional media of the role of social networking tools, blogs, etc. have been rather ad-hoc, guts-based and skewed towards a sensationalist viewpoint in order to create a story. Shortly after the Arab Spring lots of - mostly Western - writers were very quick to praise social media for its breakthrough role in initiating democratic change (see e.g. Blake Hounshell’s Foreign Policy article “The revolution will be tweeted”), followed by a counter-reaction in which the role of social media was dismissed as a mere reflection of the change process, without having much of a role in causing the change itself (e.g. Frank Rich’s OpEd in the NY Times “Wallflowers at the Revolution”).

Of course, this dichotomy did not only show itself with the Arab Spring or the Green Revolution in Iran, but is part of a wider debate around social media. And this debate is itself again part of a much larger picture of culture critique, in which technology pioneers and enthusiast are focusing on the positive potential, the personally experienced benefits and anecdotal successes, while the cautious and skeptic zoom into the potential dangers and limitations. We’ve seen this cleavage all through history (think of book printing, electricity, fuel motor, nuclear energy, microprocessor, cloning, TV and internet). And there are indeed voices which try to tell this larger story, which in turn leads to rather grand conclusions regarding uniqueness of the current moment within the last 2000 years of history (e.g Paul Levinson's blog post “Occupy Wall Street, Direct Democracy, Social Media: A Thumbnail History of Media and Politics Since Ancient Athens”)

As always, when two extreme viewpoints are battling with each other, the truth lies probably somewhere in between. And I would like to think the same is the case with the topic of social media and activism.

Yes, there have been a lot of utopist views around, claiming that social media almost inevitably leads to more democracy, because social media is wiring society that way. But some of these “cyber-utopians” also have some good points. The authors Clay Shirky (“Here Comes Everybody - The Power of Organizing Without Organizations”) makes a compelling case how reduced cost and barriers of group formation lead to increased engagement and activism. Just think of the many niche topics you now can join into respective online groups, say for self-help or special interests, which facilitate interactions which would not have happened in the past (and which often lead to actual face-to-face interactions at some point in time).

And yes, as a reaction to this type of “cyber-utopianism” there have been very outspoken voices against too pink-painted views which ignore the downsides that come with new technologies. Some of the most prominent among them is Evgeny Morozov. In his book “The Net Delusion” he makes a very valid point of highlighting that any social media can also be used by oppressive governments against their citizens (by scanning faces from photos featuring protesters, by tracking communication in social media sites, analyzing sentiments and political opinions of individuals, etc). He even goes so far to state that e.g. in Iran’s ‘Twitter Revolution’ those repercussions “often strengthened rather than undermined the authoritarian rule”.

Others criticize that the exponential growth of communication channels and groups must lead to a depreciation of attention which itself will make activism overall less likely. Mary Joyce brings this up in one of her most recent posts, “Cacophany: Why Digital Activism Isn't Helping America” where she argues that "America’s democracy and pluralism make digital activism less effective at bringing about dramatic change. In a country where everyone is free to speak and mobilize, many will. Attention is divided and the impact of any one initiative represents only one voice among many clamoring to be heard."

In his famous New Yorker article “Why the revolution will not be tweeted” Malcom Gladwell, a prominent voice drawing also on the work of Morozov, takes apart existing success stories of mass mobilization through social media (a prominent one being the case of Ewan Guttman’s friend Ivanna who got her smart phone stolen and through Facebook campaign initiated by Ewan managed to get local police pursuing the case which previously had dismissed the case as closed). Gladwell basically argues, that due to the inherent nature of social media interactions (low cost, loose ties, not centrally organized) compared to the nature of face-to-face activism (high cost, close ties, hierarchical organization), no meaningful activism can come out of social media.

Such voices are supported by a general sense of the rather low cost of online activities, which led to the term ’slacktivism’, describing the tendency to affiliate with causes in a passive manner just for the sake of peer approval, rather than taking real action.

Positions like this draw again sharp criticism of actual activists, who do make use of social media and who strongly object to the outright dismissal of any value in activism through social media.

A nice recent example how proliferation of online activism is not damaging but rather unleashing the potential for engagement is the Tar Sands Action campaign, which has brought together a number of environmental groups, first nation tribes, farmers, and people from across the US party specturm. @daryncambridge uses this example in the TechChange course to demonstrate that “through online organizing of the kind that Shirky refers to in his book, the largest civil disobedience campaign for the environmental movement in a generation was born and continues to this day.”

One highlight of rebutting the above critics is Maria Popova’s essay “Malcolm Gladwell Is #Wrong” in which she makes the point that online activism is in fact very high-stakes for many political bloggers in totalitarian countries. She also accuses Gladwell of not understanding the online world, in which social media reputation does lead to the natural formation of hierarchies in which communication influential opinion leaders trickles down through a pyramid of follower bases to a large number of individuals. (Of course, one can also argue that Maria tries too hard to fill the gaps identified by Gladwell instead of questioning some of his assumptions, such as whether hierarchies are in fact necessary for activism to succeed).

What I think is particularly interesting is Maria Popova's statement that "Ultimately, Gladwell's mistake is seeing online and offline social networks as disjointed mechanisms". Sudanese human rights activist @daloya put it in an online discussion board of the TechChange course on social activism mentioned above, “what Popova is telling us here is that the new technology will not replace traditional forms of activism, but will rather tranform them. And this moves the conversation away from the extreme rejection or acceptance of digital technology for social change, to the more practical terrain of how to use this technology strategically and smartly, and how to create lasting and effective linkages between online activism and offline traditional activism.” Questions which articles like How Cyber-Pragmatism Brought Down Mubarak touch on in more detail.

Also, my colleague @bkumpf pointed out that “Gladwell´s assumption that online activism ‘shifts energies’ seems intuitively wrong and was contradicted in real-life by the Arab Spring. Many of those who participated in online discussions and mobilizations in Tunisia, Egypt or Libya actually went to the streets. And there the support of other social and political movements was crucial to bring about change.”

In particular when looking at the Arab Spring it is quite clear that we can find numerous instances that support both cases: (a) where Facebook wasn’t the effective logistical tool it was taken for (e.g. "The Secret Ralley that Sparked an Uprising: Cairo Protest Organizers Describe Ruses Used to Gain Foothold Against Police; the Candy-Store Meet That Wasn't on Facebook"), and (b) where it was a powerful instrument to strengthen indirect support, building awareness and a social environment that is conducive to activism.

Regarding the latter, I was very inspired by the many examples that I’ve come across which tell the stories where social media did make a difference for activism in the uprising of Tunisia and Egypt. In her comprehensive article “Egypt's Revolution 2.0 The Facebook Factor” Linda Herrera makes an excellent point in describing how “Digital communications media have revolutionized learning, cognition, and sociability and facilitated the development of a new generational behavior and consciousness”, something which Tunisia’s and Egypt’s “old guard simply did not get”. This goes beyond just the practical application of tools, but points to a deeper change, a “generational rupture” within the fabric of society that seems to be a factor for the change movements we have witnessed the recent past. Herrera describes how in politically authoritarian states like Egypt, Tunisia and Iran, “youth have been fashioning Facebook into a vibrant and inclusive public square. They use it to maintain their psychological well being as a space to metaphorically breath when the controls and constrains of the social world become too stifling”. And indeed, Facebook with millions of users in Egypt alone became a central part of a youth culture of open self-expression. Herrera explains that as the tensions with the government grew, “many young people were worried that the government would close down Facebook”, explaining that the government “feared the flurry of critical political activity that would invariably precede an election”. Though many expressed that turning off Facebook would be akin to suffocating them, as one young man put it, it would be like “blocking the air to my lungs”.

Her conclusion, far from being utopian, is that “what is happening in Egypt is not a Facebook Revolution. But it could not have come about without the Facebook generation, generation 2.0, who are taking, and with their fellow citizens, making history.”

As with any case of intellectual debate, first of all I believe that some of the positions featured above are to some part deliberately extreme, for the point of filling a niche in the debate that guarantees visibility and audience. But all of them add valuable dimensions to the conversation, which otherwise would be missed out, thus successfully fulfilling the role of either a forward-looking pioneer or a devil’s advocate (both of which are always needed).

Eventually, we will all arrive at pragmatic approaches for tools and methodologies which to a large part have become mainstream elements in the middle of our post-modern world (a fact that social media thought leader Brian Solis points to in his blog post “The state of Social Media 2011 – Social is the New Normal”).

I won’t hide the fact that I find myself mostly on the optimistic pioneer’s side, so when I look at the debate above, it will come as no surprise to you that it seems to me the actual benefits do outweigh the negative effects to date. But then again, this is more based on collected anecdotal evidence, rather than scientific research. I would love to see some thorough studies done on this to understand better the actual effects for a larger number of cases, and compare the actual variables that were involved in making protest successful. Another interesting PhD thesis I will never get to write... Any researcher out there up for the task?

What does it take to make a ShareFair happen? Don’t ask ‘what’, ask ‘who’!

noreply@blogger.com (Stepping Higher - Reflections on the Knowledge Age) — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 18:28:00 +0000

When walking through the IFAD corridors this warm Italian September week one cannot help but be amazed by the buzzing, vibrant energy that is felt in every part of the building. People chat in corners, engage in up to 15 parallel group sessions, share their thoughts with someone with a video camera or sit in the hallway with their laptop on their lap, communicating one of their many impressions through email, Twitter or a blog. Over 600 participants, 160 projects, 200+ scheduled group or plenary sessions, and one is left with an immediate question: How on earth did they pull this off? After all, there is no professional event management company involved here that pulls the strings. This event is done by the sponsoring organizations themselves, with a surprisingly low budget and mostly with staff who – if they are not helping plan and implement knowledge fairs – have other jobs to do.
I talked to some of the organizers to get a small glimpse of the machinery that made this event happen behind the scenes.

Planning for this ShareFair started already in January 2011, with a one-day facilitated brainstorming workshop where the Rome-based stakeholders ( Bioversity International, CGIAR ICT-KM programme, FAO, IFAD and WFP) got together to determine the general direction and approach they wanted to take with this event, building on the first event that took place at FAO in 2009. After that a Steering Committee was established in February to plan the event.

As there is no general existing budget for Rome ShareFairs, the team members from the different host organizations had to raise funds for the significant logistical and programmatic requirements (which include necessities such as security, ambulance, infrastructure and communication expenses) as well as to fund travel expenses for proposals from participants who otherwise could not come to the fair and share their learnings. Yet, I was surprised to learn that this entire event is realized with notably less than $200,000 (actual and in-kind) accumulated resources overall.
Talking about proposals: roughly 300 proposals were submitted after the Steering Committee publicly announced the ShareFair through their website http://www.sharefair.net in May 2011. The submissions were reviewed and filtered down to about 160, the maximum capacity of content sessions that the IFAD building can accommodate during the three main days of the fair with up to 15 parallel sessions at a given time slot.

These sessions, however, are rarely self runners. If the thematic expert is not by chance also a communication professional, a facilitator is needed to help the presenter avoiding tiring PowerPoint slides and instead turn the presentation into an engaging, participatory learning session using knowledge sharing (http://www.kstoolkit.org/KS+Methods) approaches. But where to get those versed facilitators from? Luckily, Knowledge Management staff in Rome are well connected with the Knowledge Management for Development Network (KM4Dev), a community of KM practitioners working in development. Additionally, a call was placed also within each of the participating organizations for facilitators. By calling on about 50+ volunteer facilitators, the ShareFair organizers were able to provide professional facilitation for almost all project presentations, drawing on a range of creative and participatory facilitation methodologies which were introduced in a pre-conference training day for participants interested in these tools.

The training sessions of this so-called “Training and Learning Day” included not only facilitation techniques, but also introductory sessions into a range of social media tools for knowledge exchange and communication, such as Twitter, Facebook, Photos, Blogs or Podcasts. That those sessions were not just theoretical exercises was demonstrated during the entire week by the social reporting team, a group of about 30+ social media enthusiasts who committed to report live from event sessions and interactions in between sessions through the full range of social media tools. This way, the immediate audience of a few hundred on-site participants could be extended to many thousands of interested practitioners that followed the event online, by reading blogs, viewing video interviews or responding to tweets posted during the event.

Finally, as a participant of the Fair, besides noticing some of the more visible faces of the fair that give announcements and introduce sessions, you will most likely run into one of the many volunteers who are supporting the logistics behind the scene at any given moment: as registration desk volunteers, as information focal points and helpful guides on each floor, behind the technology that provides meeting room infrastructure, WLAN access and live webcast, or as runners who help fixing the many little and bigger emergencies that we mostly don’t even notice as participants.
So again, what does it take to make such a ShareFair happen? It takes all those people, seen and unseen, and I think they deserve a collective tipping of hats for the astounding work they do. Or you just walk up to the next one you see and give that person a ‘thank you’. And if you bring them a cup of coffee they might even reward you with more interesting details on life behind the scenes of the ShareFair!

The Need to Fail Safely - Reflections on Principles of Evolution in Development

noreply@blogger.com (Stepping Higher - Reflections on the Knowledge Age) — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 19:07:00 +0000

Last week, I participated in an extremely interesting webinar by Owen Barder, Senior Fellow, Center for Global Development. His key message was that development problems are complex and cannot be solved with linear thinking. In his presentation, Owen shared his perspective and research findings on “the role that knowledge can play in tackling ‘wicked’ problems such as poverty reduction, illustrating how concepts derived from evolution theory like variation and selection are a useful framework to think about the way ideas and knowledge are applied in development projects”.

(You can click on the presentation above, or you can download the presentation as a pdf file here. )

In general, Owen ran in open doors with me with the concept of diversity & selection, as am trying to advocate for more open, crowed-sourced innovation approaches within development already. However, the webinar also made me thinking, and I had a good follow up discussion with colleagues afterwards, as well as an email exchange with Owen himself. A question that was bothering me was the human dimension of the failed experiments that Own was referring to as a necessary output of diversity & selection paradigm. In a purely technical industry it might be ok to say we try 100 approaches for potential products and 95 won’t work (see the the famous nozzle example). But in development we are talking about people’s lives. If you initiate a project and it fails, there is a danger that the actual people involved are in an even worse place (often economically, but certainly emotionally) than before. Promises are made, communities are mobilized, social capital and energy is invested, trust is built, and when the project fails, you don't get that back anytime soon. It’s a rather bureaucratic approach saying this will be the case in 95 of our projects, in order to gain the great value we get out of the 5 successful projects. Can we afford people’s lives and the social capital of communities being the collateral damage of our innovation efforts in development? From a global perspective you can of course say that the overall cost of not innovating through experimentation in the end will be even higher, but that is hard to explain to those individuals and communities which happen to be the guinea pigs for our failed development experiments. (I'm actually surprised how much of an ethical question this becomes when thinking about it. I'm sure Michael Sandel at Harvard could make a great lecture out of this example).

A colleague of mine had concerns along the same lines, as we know that there is the ‘do no harm’ approach, but I we also know that even if it’s considered, there is no guarantee to avoid substantial risks for the humans involved. The organizer of the webinar, Giulio Quaggiotto, suggested that the answer might came again from pointing back to feedback loops that Owen highlighted in his presentation. If you have the appropriate ‘loops’ then you figure out you are going in the wrong direction much faster than if you stick to the original plan just because you have to declare to the donors that you had a ‘success’.

In a follow up email exchange, Owen himself elaborated a bit more on this. First, he pointed to Tim Harford's new book, “Adapt – Why success always starts with failure”, that a key characteristic of successful adaptation is the ability to 'fail safely'. If you bet everything on one approach, you can't afford for it to go wrong. You have to find a space in which it is safe to experiment.

So the question is: how we can do that in development? If we apply this diversity & selection approach, we must (and we can) do this in a way which respects people and communities. Owen mentioned “medicine in which we already have quite tightly controlled ethical standards which must be applied in a clinical trial. In universities, researchers are required to get approval from their Ethics committee before conducting any experiments” (e.g. randomized controlled trials) with human subjects.

While there is probably no general answer to this question, Owen indicated we should always look at specific cases and assess whether they meet agreed ethic principles. There are definitely cases where variation & selection can be applied without doing actual collateral damage, being more innovative and experimental in ways that respects the human dimension of our ‘development experiments’. And then there will be other cases where we can't (though Owen says he thinks these might be few and far between), in which case we probably shouldn't be using the diversity & selection approach.

Owen’s explanations made a lot of sense to me. My own conclusion from this discussion is that what seems would be needed then are some sort of ethical as well as practical guidelines which help assessing for which scenarios the approach should be applied and for which it shouldn't, including an outline of the recommended steps to mitigate any potential collateral damage. I think Owen is indeed right that what is key is the ability to "fail safely", and I think what is needed is a methodological approach for this.

I’d be glad for comments. Maybe you have examples and ideas under which conditions we should go for this “development by evolution” approach – and when we shouldn’t!

Development 2.0 is not ICT for Development. In fact, it is something entirely different!

noreply@blogger.com (Stepping Higher - Reflections on the Knowledge Age) — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 22:04:00 +0000

The other day, I had a conversation about emerging development topics. In this instance, I was referring to a discusson on “Development 2.0 - using social media for development projects” among colleagues of mine which in a very short period of time got quite an active following. And the question is raised whether “Development 2.0” should be an actual service line in an organization's portfolio of advisory service topics.

One response I got was that this is not a new topic at all, but that “ICT for Development” has been around as a service line in the development community for a long time. I startled for a moment, as it never occurred to me that someone could use these two terms as interchangeable synonyms. Only then I realized why we sometimes struggle to get the message about the potential of social media in development work across: It might be indeed because so many people equate social media with ICT4D.

From a purely bureaucratic perspective, this might not even be entirely wrong. Yes, looking at the literal term, Web 2.0/social media tools are technologies used for information and communication. Yet, lumping them together with what we traditionally label as ICTs, makes it impossible for us to understand the nature and implications of social media. Because the true nature or identify of social media is not technology, but culture.

The term ICT4D comes from a time where our major concern was to “bridge the ‘digital divide’” between rich and poor countries, connecting countries and communities to the internet, providing communication infrastructure and building capacity for the use of ICT to support access to information and economic growth. It was about getting computers into schools and mobile phones into the hands of small businesses. It was a mostly about infrastructure and training.

Social media is entirely different. It assumes ICT is there and available. What it does, however, is introducing a new way of working, engaging and communicating. This new way is bottom-up, participatory, democratic, networked, open, transparent, fluid, ad-hoc, serendipitous. It is not replacing, but complementing existing process and structures by a dimension which was previously underleveraged. It affects the culture of an entire generation and with it the workforce that emerges out of it. And thus, eventually, the way our organizations do business and societies live.

What is happening when we are currently discussing how to leverage social media within development projects, is not so much that we talk about how we apply technology (although this is also in parts the case), but how we can leverage the fundamental strategic principles of Web 2.0 within our projects: How to initiate an inclusive and participatory deliberation process about our activities and results. How to tap into the collective knowledge, experience and creativity of stakeholders to improve effectiveness and quality of results. How to raise awareness and reach out to more stakeholders more effectively. How to make planning, decisions, activities and results more transparent and open them up for wider accountability. Those are clearly not technology questions answered by engineers and IT experts, the profession primarily involved in ICT4D. Those are question raised by thematic development experts who do not think about the tool they want to use (in fact they couldn’t care less about tools), but about behavioral change they want to initiate as part of their project objectives.

And it doesn’t stop here. Social media is not just changing the way we work within our projects, but it raises questions regarding culture change within societies, as we recently witnessed in an exemplary fashion in the Middle East. What role do Web 2.0 tools play in democratic processes, regime change, access to information and services, and the development of knowledge economies? Again, these are not technology questions, but questions coming from the fields of social science, political science and economics.

With this in mind, we understand that using Development 2.0 interchangeably with ICT4D not only falls short of the full picture, but deprives us of the chance to understand and apply the true nature and potential of this emerging field. Only by handling Development 2.0 as something essentially new, we can make full use of all the opportunities that social media offers to us. And by acknowledging that it is really the widespread application of the principles behind social media which are of importance, rather than the tools and the fact that there is some technology involved.

How we deal with what we know - or don't know

noreply@blogger.com (Johannes Schunter) — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 02:18:00 +0000

Through the KM4Dev.org network, I came across this interesting article in the New Yorker: "The Truth Wears Off". It elaborates in the "Decline Effect"or empirical science, which is the phenomenon that the more scientists try to replicate previous empirical results, the more the statistic effects of these results wear off.

"Such anomalies demonstrate the slipperiness of empiricism. Although many scientific ideas generate conflicting results and suffer from falling effect sizes, they continue to get cited in the textbooks and drive standard medical practice. Why? Because these ideas seem true. Because they make sense. Because we can't bear to let them go.

And this is why the decline effect is so troubling. Not because it reveals the human fallibility of science, in which data are tweaked and beliefs shape perceptions. (Such shortcomings aren't surprising, at least for scientists.) And not because it reveals that many of our most exciting theories are fleeting fads and will
soon be rejected. (That idea has been around since Thomas Kuhn.)

The decline effect is troubling because it reminds us how difficult it is to prove anything. We like to pretend that our experiments define the truth for us. But that¹s often not the case. Just because an idea is true doesn't mean it can be proved. And just because an idea can be proved doesn't mean its true. When the experiments are done, we still have to choose what to believe."

First, I think the article makes a nice point about the fact that we are all humans, and even in our most sincere efforts to acquire objective knowledge, often fail to deal with our world in an objective manner. Nothing really spectacular or contentious about that. It just reminds us that a healthy dose of humility in all that we do is always a good idea.

However, the article also points to a deeper issue. Some might argue that there is such a thing as gravity. There is such a thing as electrons. That one can measure toxins in the environment. That mere belief can never diminish scientific results. And that it was one specific contribution of Enlightenment that we must still answer the question whether what we believe is true or false.

But I don't think it's as easy as playing out "perception" (non-science) versus "fact" (science). Besides all the wonderful blessings that the Modern Age and Enlightenment brought us, that specific era also had at least one flaw, namely that it made modern society believe it eventually could know everything, and every subject could be approached with a dualistic scientific model that looks for true or false statements.

The last 100 years, however, have taught us that the universe is far more complex than that. We learned that sometimes two opposing statements are true at the same time, that light is both wave and particles, that the movement of the subject experiencing time is changing how fast time goes by, that it is physically impossible to determine the location and the vector of an electron at the same time and that by the mere fact of observing a scientific experiment, we are sometimes changing its outcome. And these are only the examples of physics.

What these discoveries did to us was moving us towards a post-modern society, in which we still build on the achievements of Enlightenment and modern science (modern in the sense of the clear-cut causalities of Newton mechanics), but in which we also acknowledge that there are boundaries to our cognitive capacity to get a hold of absolute "truth". This allows us to go beyond a dualistic world view in which we can only deal with phenomenons in yes/no or true/false categories, but in which we can embrace complexity, paradoxes and unanswered questions. Such a mindset even allows us to deal with unanswerable questions in an productive way (e.g. in the areas of ethics, social justice, law, culture, arts, philosophy, religion) which dualistic science was never capable of doing.

Let's not be afraid of a world that is bigger and more complex than our little boxes of knowledge are made for.

The case of “Need to know” vs. "Need to protect" - How widely should we share information?

noreply@blogger.com (Johannes Schunter) — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 16:26:00 +0000

When discussing knowledge sharing and exchange of material and documents with professionals in charge of information classification policies and standards, the question is often what the "default mode" for an organization should be. Should unclassified information such as documents, articles etc, be treated as “for internal use only” or as “public” information?

I want to use this post to affirm my strong conviction that any international development organization has an overwhelming interest in making unclassified information by default public unless it is specifically designated as internal to a specified group of people only (a small group within an organization, or members of the organization as a whole). And here is why:

Being an actor in the knowledge business calls for an information policy that fosters the distribution of knowledge, not prevents it. The paradigm of “need to know” is right for an organization whose main concern is the preservation of what it has. But development organizations are not in the business of heritage preservation or patent protection. Our business is innovation for development results. Innovation, however, only happens in an environment that is open, transparent and conducive for vibrant interaction and exchange on all levels. We must understand that the development community will only be able to achieve the our common vision of development and make a tangible contribution to reaching the MDGs by changing the paradigm of “need to know” into a paradigm of “need to protect”.

This is understood by the World Bank Chief who, in a groundbreaking speech in September, announced a fundamental paradigm shift in the way the bank plans to deal with its previously internal information in the future. This initiative called “Open Data, Open Knowledge, Open Solutions” intends to “open the treasure chest of the World Bank’s data and knowledge to every village health care worker, every researcher, everyone”.

As part of the “push for greater accountability and openness”, on July 1, 2010, the World Bank launched a new Access to Information policy which “sets a new standard of disclosure for international organizations. This enhanced transparency and accountability will allow for [...] enabling better development results; making information more accessible to the general public; and providing an opportunity to better track the use of public funds” (see source attached).

Of course at this point this is still not much more than pledge yet, but even as such it is a signal that knowledge workers in development have been waiting for a long time. If we are looking for good practices and leadership regarding information policy in our partner organizations, it is this approach we have to look at.

Yes, we have an interest to protect our organizations from reputational harm and legal liabilities, and we have to do what is necessary to ensure this protection. But we have to carefully weigh this internal interest against the overarching interest to fulfil our mandate and serve our clients and partners. If our policies at the end of the day prevent us from doing our job as best we can, then something went wrong.

The Significance of Online Social Networking for Knowledge Management

noreply@blogger.com (Johannes Schunter) — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 00:57:00 +0000

In the middle of all the enthusiasm about the use of Social Networking and Web 2.0 in knowledge management (in particular in UN organizations), it is of course important to keep in mind that Online Social Networking applications are not the final panacea to all our KM or other problems. Nothing really is. However, it is important to note that Online Social Networking has certainly gone beyond the experimentation stage of IT geeks. And it has proven to do one thing extraordinary well: Connecting people which otherwise would not be connected, and facilitating sharing of exchange which otherwise would not occur.

I’m stressing this, because if the KM community learned one thing during the last decade, then it was the insight that Knowledge Management is most of all about people. We learned that knowledge sharing in an organization (whether working development or other things) doesn’t happen when a paper is written or a file is stored in a database, but most of all when people talk to each other. That is why Knowledge Cafes, Knowledge Fairs, Peer Assists, After Action Reviews and even brownbag lunches are awesome non-technical KM tools, and why email and phone are still the greatest electronic KM tools ever. Facebook & Co. fit the same purpose. It facilitates people talking to each other (both in terms of non-substantive chatter, but often enough in terms of substantive knowledge exchange) in ways and across boundaries we’ve never seen before, which is at the core of what we want to achieve when we do KM. Personal Social Networks have always been the basis of knowledge exchange. That is why in an internet-penetrated organizational environment, I believe we cannot think KM anymore without online social networking. I’m even willing to go as far as to say that it will be together with traditional email the “operating system” on which we will do most of our virtual knowledge sharing beyond face-to-face interactions in the time to come.

It's not about Technology, but about a Culture Change - But which one is driving the other?

noreply@blogger.com (Johannes Schunter) — Wed, 19 May 2010 20:02:00 +0000

In a recent discussion with KM colleagues on KM4Dev whether Facebook could be a useful tool for a professional context, a good friend of mine stated that “we tend focus too much on technology” (even though he happily agrees that he is always fascinated by new technology and trying to find ways to use it, just because he likes it). His view was however that “the primary question is: What is it that we want to achieve and how do we acquire the skills needed to achieve that? Only then the question of the tool arises.”

This made me thinking quite a bit. On one hand I agree that tools should never dominate the discussion about KM, and that they should be seen as a means to an end rather than a purpose in itself. However, I’m also skeptic about the absolutistic dogma that we always have to identify the need first before talking about tools. Yes, in general and from an organizational development point of view I believe this is often true. But at the same time we’re losing sight of the fact that we only realize most of the possible applications of a new technology once it is in place and we start using it. Here an example. When I started my studies in 1994, I didn’t feel any need and didn’t see any value for myself when a friend of mine tried to convince me that I should get an email address. “Why would I need that? Typing a message into a keyboard instead of talking or writing a letter? When I want to communicate with you I just take the phone”. Well, he insisted, I finally signed up for an account with my university – and it changed the way I studied, worked, learned, advocated, networked and maintained relationships for the coming 16 years. And so did it for all of us. It was not me identifying a need and choosing the tool. The sheer existence of tool was reaching out and offering its not-asked-for benefits to me, and it transformed my world, my culture, my life.

We are often stressing (and rightly so) that KM is not at first about process and technology, but most of all about culture change and people, about the way people interact and share. But at the same time we often forget that technological innovation itself is so often the original cause for societal transformation. This is true for the printing press, the steam engine, electricity, the computer, the world wide web. Clearly not all technology is a blessing per se, and I’d rather wish we never discovered nuclear fission, to give just one example. My point is that we cannot look down at technology and reduce it to just its role as tool when useful. Technology is an expression of who we are as human society, so is arts, music, architecture, politics, science and religion. It is changing us as much as we are producing and shaping it. That is why I don’t think one needs to cut back on experimenting with new technology just because we haven't made a business case yet. Because this is who we are, and this is as much part of our mandate as KM pioneers as is the careful evaluation which of tools and methods and processes might be best for a specific business scenario. And if we see that Facebook, Twitter & Co. are changing the social sphere into a more open, sharing, transparent and collaborative environment across institutional and geographic boundaries, we are as KM people (who are spending our time on promoting exactly this) not mistaken if we explore what this approach could do for us in our organizations.

Facilitation overkill: Give me my classroom back!

noreply@blogger.com (Johannes Schunter) — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 00:36:00 +0000

I’m back from another workshop and I have enough. I’m through with it. Seriously. When did we reach this point where our fancy facilitation techniques turned adult learning into kindergarten settings and our obsession with participation, combined with a wild proliferation of Web 2.0 tools, made workshops the most stressful things ever? When did we lose sight of the simple, yet wonderful purpose of learning: Learning something useful that I didn’t know before?

Instead, I’m finding myself again sitting with scissors and pens around the table with people I don’t know, cutting shapes out of colorful sheets of paper and pinning them onto flipcharts. A facilitator is soaring around with a Tibetan singing bowl in his hand encouraging people to be creative and have fun. But it’s not fun. It’s a noisy room full of strangers with whom I have to share thoughts and ideas and interact as if they were long-year colleagues, even though I just met them 30 min ago. I am told to work on some artificial make-do exercise around an artificial generic question which of course touches my field of interest, but which has no direct relation to the very real and specific questions I have in my head about my everyday work.

After that the room turns into a Tunisian cloth market where we look at each others’ humble pieces of colorful art, trying to figure out what important message the many bubbles and arrows and pins and tree leaves and stars are supposed to deliver. Luckily there is always someone standing next to the chart who reveals him or herself responsible, and you try to chip in and listen to what he is right now explaining to another colleague. But because you were coming by the stand two minutes too late you have trouble following the conversation, you soon get bored and go on to the next chart just to face the same dilemma again. At the end the Tibetan singing bowl is activated by an enthused facilitator who shines like a happy child in awe of all the vibrant creativity and knowledge exchange in the room.

If the workshop is really ambitious, we also have participants who were following us online. There are laptops with people connected via Skype or WebX and people are holding them like babies (a delivery which cost us about 1/4 of the workshop’s time when we tried to establish all the audio and video connections) to show them what’s going on in the room and make them feel included. For further interaction we also prepared ourselves with a PBwiki set up, a Yammer and/or Twitter account, a Flickr tag, a YouTube channel and a workshop blog, tools we are supposed to use to document our outputs of this morning. This results in me not having a single break during the entire morning as I find myself busy either running around with a video camera or uploading pictures or writing a blog post or updating an online colleague via Twitter on what’s going on in the room. Considering that the photos are always showing people in conversation around flipcharts which were hard to understand in the first place, and the videos are mostly featuring fragments of conversation out of any context, I’m wondering who the heck gets any value out of these in, let’s say, one month from now? Or at all? At least the facilitator is happy that our knowledge gets documented so well and we all look so engaged.

But I’m just standing there realizing that I spent the last 4 hours not learning a single thing of lasting value, yet am more exhausted than after 4 days of straight work in my regular job.

And a sweet thought comes to my mind. I picture myself, in a classroom, with a bunch of students. And there, in front, is someone who knows something, because he is working in that field on a daily basis, and he prepared himself for a few hours for this lesson. And he is just talking to us. Maybe with scribbling something on a chalkboard, or – oh my God, what heretic thought – even clicking through a few well-dosed PowerPoint slides. And he is explaining something to me which I didn’t know or didn’t understand before. And I am listening, focused and concentrated. And after 90 min a bell rings and I go home, satisfied because I learned something new today. And I am not exhausted.

But that is a distant past. Today we all know that learning without peer-to-peer interaction and participative engagement is evil. So I will never see my old classroom again, but will instead prepare many colorful collaborative flipcharts in the future. Sigh. Can somebody hand me the scissors?

How Twitter can support live events

noreply@blogger.com (Johannes Schunter) — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 19:20:00 +0000

Early October I was in Brussels attendeding a workshop of the Knowledge Management for Development Network (KM4Dev.org), the leading Community of Practice on KM issues in development.

In one of the sessions there were several people with Twitter accounts persent, and we started twittering during the sessions with out laptops. It was really interesting to do this during a normal face-to-face session when one person was presenting and others in the room where adding context and opinions while the resource person spoke. This side communication (a bit like whispering in the classroom, but less disruptive) made the session very rich and added a lot of different perspectives. At one point we even exchanged comments across different sessions which took place in different rooms of the building at the same time. This created a connection and some information flow between events which otherwise would not have been possible.
Then in the afternoon we scheduled a discussion session to be held in Twitter (marked with a particular #tag so people can find contributions easily), and announced it to other KM colleagues all over the world who couldn't attend the workshop. And even though the announcement was on short notice, we had several external people who were engaging into the live discussion, which really opened up the face-to-face event to a virtual audience.

This was definitely an interesting good practice on how a status update feature can add value to live events, and something which could be easily replicated in any corporate system where a status update feature is included.

Does Web 2.0 save time, or eat up even more of it?

noreply@blogger.com (Johannes Schunter) — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:34:00 +0000

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal published an interesting article on Web 2.0: Why Email No Longer Rules… And what that means for the way we communicate. After nicely outlining different implications of the new communication tools, it ends with a critical remark regarding the potentially time consuming aspect of Web 2.0:

"We get lured into wasting time, telling our bosses we are looking into something, instead of just doing it, for example. And we will no doubt waste time communicating stuff that isn't meaningful, maybe at the expense of more meaningful communication."

I've been asked this question many times before, and I realize that it is an particularly important issue for senior management witin organisations. However, I think the question approaches the topic from the right angle.

I would rather look at this from a perspective of an empowered workforce. Unlike in past times, where we had one job for a lifetime and a clearly defined top-down hirarchy would determine and control exactly what a worker has to do, we are as workers today much more in charge and responsible of our performance management, our learning, our networking and our career planning. Anything which doesn't help us becoming better professionals and getting our job done, will not be used. On the other hand, if we use something, that means that there was value for us as professionals and for our work results. And that value is determined individually by each user, not by the organization as such.

That is why not everyone is using all Web 2.0 tools & techniques, but only those which provide value for a certain user in a certain situation. Providing these tools from a corporate perspective is therefore not a matter of telling people what to do, what not to do, and how to do it, but rather creating an enabling environment for users who are free to use whatever helps them (according to their own judgement) to achieve results and improve in their jobs.

Moved on to New York, implementing Social Networking and Web 2.0 for UNDP

noreply@blogger.com (Johannes Schunter) — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 22:43:00 +0000

Being here in New York for already 1 month, it is high time to give an update on this site, which has been painfully abandoned by the author due to major stress caused by a change job and location. I've concluded my assignment as JPO with UNDP in Bangkok, funded by the German government, and moved on to a full staff contract with UNDP headquarters in New York. Since mid June I'm now with the Knowledge Management Group of UNDP's Bureau for Policy Development as Knowledge Services Specialist.

My main area of work is the implementation of UNDP's new Knowledge Strategy, which entails as a major component the development and roll-out of a UNDP-wide Social Networking Platform, similar to Facebook. This is indeed something I was wishing for since I'm with the UN, as networking across countries and units is a critical factor not only for UNDP's work, but also for my own professional development. After having been able to comment on first concept stages of the project during last year, I'm now very happy to be at the heart of its conceptual development. And I'm looking forward to all the change that the introduction of Web 2.0 in a bureaucroacy like UNDP can bring to teams, project, relations with partners and finally development results.

My major responsibility will be the liaison with users, both from internal teams and external partners, as well as partnership building with organization which might be interested to connect to the Social Networking Platform and engage in collaboration with UNDP entities. Although the scope of my work now seems a bit more technical than my work on Communities of Practices in Asia-Pacific, it's major part will actually be change management, advocacy and partnership liaison. Exciting new tasks, and I'm very much looking forward to the next months and the new services and business cases that will emerge out of this project.

Key ingredients for the success of a Community of Practice

noreply@blogger.com (Johannes Schunter) — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 09:54:00 +0000

Lately I was asked what I would propose as major key ingredients to ensure the success of a Community of Practice (CoPs) in a United Nations environment. It made me think a little bit about the issue, as I've never pinned that down explicitely for my self before. Three items which immediately came to my mind (although these are surely not the only success factors) are "Needs monitoring", "Use of Web 2.0 opportunities" and "Linkage to Knowledge Products".

Needs monitoring

Communities of Practice are dynamic and sensitive animals which evolve, develop and change over time, both due to developments in the fields they are focusing on, as well as due to the constitution of its membership. They need to be carefully taken care of and require capacity to adapt to new developments. So, to ensure long term success of a CoP I think one should on one hand emphasize careful monitoring of the CoP in light of an organization’s business challenges and strategic objectives. The needs of practitioners need to be regularly monitored in order to identify:

What substantive issues are of interest to members;
Which topics require special attention through featured e-discussions;
What are knowledge gaps within the community for which external knowledge might need to be tapped and new knowledge needs to be generated;
What are CoP outputs that members need, both in terms of services and knowledge products. Maybe new challenges require adjustment of existing services (e.g. expert referrals) or new partners call for the introduction of a new type of knowledge product;
What activities beyond the email network could increase impact of community interactions and knowledge generated (e.g. knowledge fairs, specific training activities, etc)
And most importantly: How can the activities and outputs of the community be further aligned with activities and developments in context of the organizations results.

Adequate mechanisms to ensure the CoP’s success in context of the above questions are regular CoP audits (at least yearly) through surveys and interviews with CoP members, but also UNDP clients and partners.

Use of Web 2.0 opportunities

On the other hand an organization should foster the use of Web 2.0 and social networking tools within the CoP as they can provide powerful mechanisms to increase further a sense of belonging among community members. They also help to capture community knowledge in a more dynamic way (e.g. through wikis or blogs), to add value to community interactions by contextualization (commenting on each other's links, status messages or content) and to broaden the audience and therefore the impact of knowledge generated within the community by disseminating knowledge though additional channels.

Linkage to Knowledge Products

Finally, the link between the CoP and the development of knowledge products (KPs) needs to be strengthened. UN organizations in particular produce a wide range of KPs and invest significant resources into their development and dissemination. The question whether these products actually respond to a critical need of the community which should apply them often remains open. The UNDP Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery published an excellent Knowlede Management Toolkit including guidelines which encourage the consultation of their Community of Practice as a peer review instance during the development of a KP, by posting a query on the respective knowledge network asking for feedback on a first draft. Such CoP peer review approaches need to be strengthened and may be expanded by introducing a “Virtual Peer Assist” (to learn more about Peer Assists see this video from Ottawa University). This would mean that an author is expected to get community feedback already before embarking on developing the new product by submitting the concept note in a query on the network.

How stupid can a company be? A comment on the latest Facebook "Terms of Use" policy disaster

noreply@blogger.com (Johannes Schunter) — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 02:53:00 +0000

Has anyone ever considererd, that e.g. FedEx or UPS may own the written letters or christmas gifts I send through them to my friends? Of course not. However, when it comes to internet content, these
self-evident truths established as a common sense in modern society over years suddenly seem re-negotiable. Facebook now tried to strech this silent agreement to an extent which could be regarded as ridiculous - if it wasn't so outrageous.

As reported by The Consumerist Blog, Facebook silently amended their existing Terms of Use a few weeks ago by a statement which allows Facebook to

"use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you post"

through Facebook. Basically do everything they want with any personal message or photo you send to your friends, even after you have deleted your account.

The reasons I was outraged was twofold. On the one hand, this clearly is in stark contrast to any prior committments to protect the privacy of Facbook users as they try to establish a dangerous example how ownership over private data of users is misused for commercial purposes in open social networks.

But on the other hand I was furious because I still believe that social networks are the coolest thing that happend to the web in the last years. And by it's awesome usability and great ideas the Facebook application has the potential to set milestone standards for any private or corporate online networking environment in the years to come. However, by messing around with the most important capital they have - the trust of users - through such an outright stupid move Facebook risks that thousands if not millions of users turn their back not only at Facebook, but at the whole social networking approach as such. Simon Davies of Privacy International made a good point when he said that

"...it appears to be going down the same road as Google. Its halo is starting to slip. [...] Now, there are other kids on the block, like Twitter, Facebook can only survive a certain number of disasters like this. It will only last three years if it continues to make these errors".

I hope that this will not be the case though as I just like Facebook too much (the application, not the company that is).

But honestly, how stupid can you be? Following critical discussions around Google's greed for user data and about Facebook's own privacy settings in 2008, the reaction of the public was absolutely forseeable. It seems Facebook has learned nothing from the past as they once again clearly underestimated the power of the community itself. Within only a few days the Facebook group "People Against the new Terms of Service (TOS)" grew up to over 100.000 users and the group "Millions against Facebook's Terms of Service" gained over 2.000.000 members within weeks. It had actually been the first time that I invited ALL my 360 Facebook contacts to a group I've joined. And it was worth it.

Yesterday, Mark Zuckerberg announced the temorary withdrawl of the new policy and invited the community to participate in the formulation of a Bill of Rights for Facebook users online. A clear proof that the power of the crowd is very much alive. But the damage to the trust of users has already been done. I sincerely hope that this episode will not endanger the further adoption of social networking approaches in the coming time, as I still believe the potential of an open and networked knowledge society outweighs the pitfalls and loophole issues we are trying to sort out right now.

Core elements for designing an Enterprise 2.0 portal

noreply@blogger.com (Johannes Schunter) — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 03:38:00 +0000

Lately I was invited to comment on a concept for an Enterprise 2.0. Based on the range of Web 2.0 applications I’ve seen in the past years, I was thinking about some of the most critical elements one should consider when designing a Web 2.0 application for an organisation. Second, I had to consider that typical Web 2.0 principles and features wouldn’t be known by all those reading the comment. Keeping that in mind, I came up with the following points. This is of course not a comprehensive list, but just what sprang to my mind immediately:

Configurable, dynamic newsfeed on start page
The most important element for any Enterprise 2.0 portal is a one-stop entry page with a dynamic so-called "newsfeed" about activities of people it’s core. It is what made Facebook so successful and why Facebook has actually built its recent redesign around such a “newsfeed” as the core piece of the site. When you get to the start page, the navigation to places where you can go (documents, links, groups, photos, blogs, etc) is still there, but it takes a backseat. What is more important is what has happened on the portal recently with your peers. In an application for a working environment this could look like:

- Which of your contacts added other contacts to their peers
- Which of your contacts joined which work groups/team spaces/communities and events
- Which of your contacts added new documents, blog entries, links, wiki pages, photos, etc
- What happened in your groups/workspaces/communites (new documents, blog entries, links, wiki pages, photos, etc)
- What new events are coming up
- To which new groups/workspaces/communities and events have I been invited by my peers
- What comments have been posted by your peers on new/your documents, blog entries, links, wiki pages, photos, etc

Unlike static document records, such a dynamic feed will trigger constant ad-hoc interaction between peers, users in groups, and between people which haven’t known each other before. It is where people get connected around activities and events which are directly relevant to them and where further follow-up activities or knowledge exchange is triggered. Of course there need to be sufficient options to configure what kind of newsI see from my peers, as not all information of all peers might be relevant to me.
Status updates
Another key feature in Facebook to trigger lively interaction between people has been the status update (also featured by http://www.twitter.com/ as stand-alone tool). By making a statement about “What are you doing right now?” people in an organisation could create visibility about their work, and stay on top what’s currently going on with their peers in their teams and communities. It is important to note that this is not just a fancy bell&whistle-feature for private socializing, but it has proven to be an excellent feature within professional work environments. How could these status messages look in your office?

a.) “Writing a report on urban development in South Africa”
b.) “I’m off for a ICT4D workshop in Dakar with the World Bank”
c.) “Need good examples how to strengthen ownership in service delivery projects. Any ideas?”
d.) “Do we have formal templates for handover notes? Can’t find any in the intra”
e.) “Great times article by on One UN reform: http://www.times.org/unreform. Check it out!”

Messages like this, even if only updated once per week, can be an excellent source of peer-to-peer learning. They can trigger associations and interaction which would otherwise not been possible, such as:

a.) “Oh, you’re writing that report, great! Make sure to also include this issue: http://www.greatresource.com/”
b.) “hey, can you come by and give me an update how that workshop was?”
c.) “You’ll find good examples here: http://www.greatresource.com/”
d.) “Don’t know about formal templates, but John Smith has developed something last year which seems useful.
e.) “I don’t agree with the viewpoint of the article, it’s way too optimistic”

By allowing users to comment on status messages, further discussion and sharing of references will be triggered. This is where the instant knowledge exchange happens and – more importantly – knowledge will lead to concrete action. An organisation envisioning an internal Web 2.0 portal should absolutely consider to make this a prominent feature on its entry page.
Social Bookmarking
An additional feature which seems crucial to me is Social Bookmarking. From my experience, this has probably been a tool which has been the easiest to convey its benefits to Web 2.0 newcomers and non-techies. By maintaining your professional bookmarks for your work online instead of your browser, you will have them with you everywhere you go (on mission, working from home or at a colleagues PC) and get independent from computer crashes, etc. More importantly, you make your bookmark collection available to your peers and you will be able tap into their bookmarks at any time.

By highlighting newly added bookmarks in the newsfeed of the start page (see point 1) you will in addition always stay on top of the current important items found by your colleagues. This has proven to be an invaluable source of ad-hoc peer-to-peer learning with similar effects as the repeated status message update with regard to triggering further interaction and exchange (see 2).
Integration of external tools
While it is important to build such feature like status updates and bookmarking within the application framework for those who are new to Web 2.0, there are already many colleagues who are effectively using similar free online tools for their work, such as http://www.delicious.com/ (bookmarks), http://www.twitter.com/ (status updates), http://www.dopplr.com/ (updates about upcoming travel), individual blogs, etc. In order to harness the current knowledge sharing activities of these Web 2.0 champions within your organisation, it will be crucial to provide integration of existing Web 2.0 services within your platform. This is also common standard for any Web 2.0 portal today. This way, users can link their external tools with the corporate tool so that their new delicious-bookmarks, twitter and dopplr-updates as well as blog posts show up automatically in the corporate news feed of the user (and therefore their colleagues see them in the main news feed on the entry page of the corporate portal).
Commenting
Finally, it will be important to allow for easy user comments (see Facebook on how it’s done well) on every item in the website. This includes newly posted documents, links/bookmarks, blog posts, announcements, wiki entries, status messages, events, photos and videos. And of course all these comments, if they are posted from people within my peers list or work groups, need to show up on the my main newsfeed on the start page.

Review of KM Workshop with ENRAP/IFAD in Bangkok

noreply@blogger.com (Johannes Schunter) — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 06:26:00 +0000

Last week, I had the opportunity to attend a KM workshop in Bangkok hosted by ENRAP (Knowledge Networking for Rural Development in Asia/Pacific Region), which is a collaboration of IFAD (International Fund for Agricultural Development) and IDRC (International Development Research Center in Canada). The workshop was facilitated by Lucie Lamoureux and Allision Hewitt which I knew from the KM4Dev network.

It was very interesting to see how they managed to make the workshop very participatory and interactive (and this is said by me who actually doesn't like to be forced into group discussion on a topic which I couldn't choose myself). I particulary liked the way they consistently mainstreamed the use of Web 2.0 tool as natural mechanism for documenting workshop content in Wordpress, PBwiki, Flickr, YouTube and SlideShare (so "when the workshop's done, the documenting is done"). The good thing was that these tools were not just set up for use during the workshop, but the facilitators organized a scavenger hunt in which participant teams had to complete a list of tasks in each of these tools. A very energizing and funny way to introduce newcomers to Web 2.0!

Even more so, the different non-IT approaches to facilitate and organize knowledge sharing, discussion and capture were delivered very effectively. I particularly liked the chat show, in which a moderator sets up a TV-show like environment, introducing his guests and asking them intriguing questions. But also tools like After Action Reviews, Speed Rounds or Peer Assists where introduced very well. I also liked the way in which reference was made to valuable outside resources such as the CGIAR KS Toolkit. After all it's not like any KM facilitor would need to pretend they have developed all the knowledge by themselfs. It's good to acknowledge that we are all a large learning community.

All in all, time well spent, even though and I was not able to attend all the sessions. Downsides where only the painful leaks in the internet connection and a bit too many organized group discussion for my taste. But you can see from the After Action Review done for the workshop itself, that this can be a workshop approach worth replicating.

Wordle: Nice visualization tool for text content

noreply@blogger.com (Johannes Schunter) — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 01:27:00 +0000

Just discovered this neat online tool called Wordle (thanks to Sarah Cummings for posting it on the KM4Dev.org network!). It's a visualization tool for any kind of text content. You can use it to visualise whole documents, short texts like poems or lyrics, websites and even your del.icio.us tags. As the website of Wordle states, the tools is meant to "generat 'word clouds' from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like."

See below an example of the tag cloud that is generated for this blog. You can see, that the prominent "Web" word should actually be "Web 2.0", but apart from that minor flaw, I really like it!

Why is mainstreaming Enterprise 2.0 so difficult?

noreply@blogger.com (Johannes Schunter) — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 07:05:00 +0000

There is an increasing acknowledgement within the organisational development and management sector that Web 2.0 can bring concrete benefits to organisations - labeled under the tag "Enterprise 2.0". If you want so see some examples, Mashable.com published a list of 35 corporate social media examples in action and I was also very happy to see that players like IBM indicate a shift to Web 2.0 in their own organisational development. In addition, as a tool for self-assessment, Brett Bonfield compiled a set of indicators whether your organisation is ready to benefit from Web 2.0 approaches.

However, the Web 2.0 community also realizes that something is different, when you want to apply the benefits of Web 2.0 from your personal development to an organisational environment. I found the analogy of the "two tunnels" by Thomas Vander Wal quite striking in this regard. He argues that while Web 2.0 is like building a tunnel through a mountain, where imperfections and leaks will not prevent the tunnel from being useful, Enterprise 2.0 on the other hand would be like building a tunnel under water. Any leak or or inconsistency could cause the tunnel to break and therefore fail.

While this image is very valid, I think the core of the Enterprise 2.0 issue is another one. There is a significant difference between Web 2.0 tools and traditional IT tools in organisations: The success of Web 2.0 is built on voluntary participation. The value of communities of any kind come from people participating because they have an intrinsic motivation to do so. This is the reason why their contribution also tend to be of good quality, as well as of a very open, flexible and innovative nature. And it also acknowledges the fact that Web 2.0 is a style of communication in itself, which not necessarily fits which the personal characteristic and style of any person.

In organisations on the other hand, motivation is rather external. People participate in and contribute to processes because they have to, because it's part of their job. And defined processes and guidelines establish a framework in which employees have to use certain IT systems in order to deliver specific results their are accountable for according to their job description.

Therefore, introducing Web 2.0 tools as a way "colleagues have to work from now on", won't work as such. Web 2.0 tools only work on a voluntary basis. Meaning that we deliberately have to allow people to also choose not to use it. We can see that this then won't work for organisational workflows which try to reflect mandatory business process within the organisation.

What does that mean for Enterprise 2.0? In my view, we need to acknowledge that Web 2.0 tools can always only add value to the extent its usage is not indispensable for a certain business process. However, where traditional IT tools are already in place and support mandatory business processes effectively, Web 2.0 can actually add great value to the process. This is the entry point where we need to come in when we want to advocate for Enterprise 2.0.

Let's encourage colleagues and managers to let the free and dynamic use of Web 2.0 blossom within our teams. But let's not fall for the illusion, that we could at any point introduce Web 2.0 tools as mandatory work flows for our business processes. They can only unleash their power if you don't have to use them.

Moving on to do Knowledege Advisory Services in Bangkok!!

noreply@blogger.com (Johannes Schunter) — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 11:47:00 +0000

As I got the confirmation already 2 weeks ago, it's about time to announce it here formally. Having worked for UN Volunteers for almost 2 years now, I will move on to Bangkok in October where I will take up a one-year position in the Knowledge Services Team of UNDP Regional Center Bangkok.

There I will support the KM team in providing knowledge advisory services to UNDP Country Offices in the Asia-Pacific region, promoting knowledge networks, delivering training and consultancy services and - together with Country Offices - developing knowledge management strategies for the region. The environment will surely offer me some opportunities to further develop my skills in applying practical KM approaches and I am looking forward to learn a lot from the team and the new counterparts there.

I have already got to see some of the South-East-Asian region last years during training mission and travel in Malaysia, Indonesia and Burma, so I am very excited to spend the next year in Thailand and dive into a new culture. Hopefully I will still be able to stay in touch not only with friends and former colleagues in Europe, but also with the enthusiastic group of KM practicioners all over the place which I got to know during the last too years (and of which a lot are based in Europe).

That makes it all the more important to make use of all the different ways to network, share experiences and stay in touch globally, which the knowledge age offers to us.

Your recommendations for your organisation's KM in the future?

noreply@blogger.com (Johannes Schunter) — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 17:21:00 +0000

In our organisation, we are currently conducting a Knowledge Management Review (often also called a Knowledge Audit). The objectives of the review are to establish a baseline regarding where the organisation is now with respect to KM practices, to develop a better understanding of existing good practices and perceived needs in regards to knowledge sharing and to identify priority KM initiatives for the future.

One component of this review is a quite comprehensive online survey, mostly with multiple choice questions, but also with some fields to state opinions in free text. Even though it was part of the team which developed the survey, as a staff member I was also entitled to fill it in myself. The final question in the survey asks "What are your personal recommendations and expectations regarding the organisation's knowledge management in the future?". So here's my answer to this question:

Let's not go for a big bang KM strategy, but rather launch various different small initiatives (e.g. introduction of handover procedures, FAQ for newcomers, etc).
Let's not discuss KM further on a too broad level. Let's start doing something. We should just try things out. Some of the small initiatives will work, others will fail, and that's ok. Every organization is different. We will only learn and improve our KM if we go and start doing it.
The introduction of communities of practices could surely improve the way we work and enable us to learn from each other across units, duty stations and countries.
Especially online social networking within and across these communities could be a great tool to improve internal communication and to overcome the gap between headquarters and country teams, as well as the issue of each HQ unit working for itself (working in silos).
Realize that Web 2.0 is all about focusing on people, rather than documents or technology. There is a huge potential for organizational change in there, to create an open, transparent, collaborative and knowledgeable organization. Let's make use of this opportunity!
Let's thoroughly analyse the organization’s business processes and brainstorm how we can learn before, while and after doing whatever we do. Let’s develop prescriptive contents (guidance on how things should be done) for our business processes and link them to open contributions by users in which they can add tips & tricks on how these processes work in practice. This way, lessons learned are not dumped in a database, but are accessible exactly where the process takes place (and where prescriptive content is looked up).

What's your opinion is about these recommendations? And how about your organisation? Do you think these are rather specific comments on a specific organisation's case or could these remarks apply to more organisation's out there?

What is the potential of knowledge brokering?

noreply@blogger.com (Johannes Schunter) — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 18:00:00 +0000

On my latest field trip I made an interesting observation with regard to Knowledge Management. First, I visited our field office in Kosovo to learn about volunteer related activities and projects in the brand new nation. After two days, I travelled to Macedonia to visit a UN colleague from a partner agency there. Hanging out with the colleague I also got to know a volunteer who is working in the country office there, highly motivated and enthusiastic about possible opportunities to involve community volunteers in local development projects. However, he felt very disconnected from other volunteers in the surrounding countries and he found it difficult to find partners for possibile joint activities in the region.

It hardly took any effort for me to connect this committed individual with the focal point for volunteer activities in Kosovo, once I had seen what both were working on. But none of them would have found out on their own.

When we talk about KM and that the focus of KM should be on people, I think we highly underestimate the impact that the role of an institutionalized knowledge broker could have. To some extent KM work could just be described as match-making. Looking at what different people do and trying to set up linkages and partnerships between individuals, teams and units, that could benefit form each other in a certain area.

For an international organisation, I even wonder if it might be a worthwhile investment to create the position of a Knowledge Broker who is mostly travelling around and talking to people. Not necessarily to document the experiences that people share (although that can be a valuable by-product) but to establish connections and matches among people who otherwise wouldn't know about each other's work.

The important point here is that someone is much more likely to connect to somebody else with the intentiona to exchange knowledge if s/he was referred to that person by somebody else, rather than just finding a name in a lessons learnt database. The downside of course is that this approach is costly. But then, who said good KM is for free?

How to handle information stress

noreply@blogger.com (Johannes Schunter) — Mon, 05 May 2008 15:06:00 +0000

This spring, I experienced an unpleasant downside of Web 2.0 tools. During the last 9 month, I had accumulated a wide range of different web information channels and online tools regarding KM and Web 2.0. Everyday I was literally plugging my brain into an accelerating flow of information via RSS, Twitter, email lists, online fora, news websites, online social networking sites and portals, in my professional and my private life, from 9am until 12pm. Plus I was contributing to these channels myself by writing my own blog and twitter posts, as well using email and website applications excessively.

I hadn't recognized it at first, but after serveral weeks this spring I felt that I got more and more exchausted. Not physically, but mentally. It wasn't a classic burn-out, as I was still working normal hours, I didn't have immediate deadlines and the social climate at work was excellent. I just couldn't process information properly anymore. The Neurologist later said, that my brain had just been doing too much of the same activitiy, causing a neurological imbalance which resulted in a constant painful headache in the temples whenever I had been looking at a new RSS feed or Twitter message. Finally, the headache started even when I thought(!) of a website, and evenings or even weekends weren't enough anymore to recover. Was this the end of my way into the wonderful Web 2.0 world? Did I have to give up web-based knowledge management because it made me sick?

Well, today I'm working normally again and also resumed reading my RSS feeds, even though I'm still carefull. Several steps helped me to find the balance again. On one hand I first reduced the information overload as much as possible:

I took 1 week off from the screen and written text. No computer, no TV screen, no mobile phone display, no work-related text in paper. Without compromise, which of course means taking a week off from work (I even guess 2 weeks would have been much better, but my projects didn't allow me to).
After this week, I continued to ban Computer as well as TV from my private life for another 2 weeks (leaving a 'not available' message in my private mail and on Facebook). But at least I could work again.
Back at work after the week off, I scheduled my mobile phone to remind me to take a 5 min break from the PC screen every hour. For lunch I took a 90 min break of which I used 60 min to have a nap in an empty office. And of course, I tried to avoid overhours if possible for the first weeks.

On the other side, there were alternative activities which helped me to get my brain cleared out again:

Of course: sports! Running, biking, long walks, gym, ball games, everything where my brain doesn't have to think, but can loose itself in the physical activity.
Second, and more surprising: Singing! Sitting at home and playing guitar and singing along, or even joining a Karaoke party helped my brain to do 'something entirely different', thus getting refreshed.
Yoga exercises and meditation also contributed to my inner balance, as well as being out in nature.

After 4 weeks of this procedure, I now have the capacity again do my work 100%, plus writing on my blog, following RSS posts etc. However, I have learned that the ability to process information is not a given, but a skill which relies on a healthy mental and physical environment. If I have to work physically outside everyday, I need to treat my body carefully, give him regular rest, good nutrition and alternative activities to stay in balance. The same applies to the knowledge workers's brain, and I am actually glad I had the opportunity to learn this lesson now, which will enable me to effectively handle my professional life in the future. For work life in the knowledge age is very much about this one skill: how to effectively deal with information stress while delivering knowledge work results.

Twitter concept study for categorized feeds

noreply@blogger.com (Johannes Schunter) — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 10:44:00 +0000

How can you filter better what kind stuff you want to follow on twitter? Doing some further research on this, I discovered that there are indeed already a few options. First, there's the Twitter Pack Project, a free wiki where you can find users who are only twittering on specific issues. Some people are also automatically feeding their twitter with Twitter Feed, which can then be used to sharpen a twitter profile towards a certain issue.

A great way to create a thematic twitter feed within a community has been presented by the Nonprofit Technology Network. By using a combination of a new common community Twitter account, Twitter Feed, Terraminds and a unique keyword like "ConferenceXY", they were able to produce a collaborative feed on an event where every post of users which contains the keyword "ConferenceXY" is published.

However, I would still love to have in Twitter the option to define different categories (job, private life, hobby X, interest Y, etc). Then anyone of my contacts could suscribe to just the one of my specific thematic feeds which (s)he is interested in. I played around with Photoshop and created the quick concept study below, which shows how such a categories feature could look like in Twitter. Would be interested to learn what you think about it!

The flaws of Twitter: About message noise and categorized feeds

noreply@blogger.com (Johannes Schunter) — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 19:14:00 +0000

I’m using Twitter now since 4 months. And I’m still note sure whether I should continue using it, whether I should promote it or whether I should just abandon the tool. There are indeed benefits. Like with the status messages in Facebook I can monitor what’s going with people which are important to me and by writing directly to that person through twitter I can hook in on an issue whenever I want to. However, I experienced two very critical flaws which in my view hinder Twitter to be a really excellent application.

Some people are sending messages just every other day or once a week while others are twittering twenty times a day. That makes it awfully difficult to identify the valuable contributions from the ones which are only writing rarely within the very “loud” twittering by the frequent users of which only a certain percentage might be useful to me. I wish I had a button where I could “quiet down” certain people without having to kick them out of my contact list totally. Maybe there could be a policy which defines that one could only twitter a certain amount of times per day. But then – who would decide on the frequency? And what if I actually have already used up my amount of messages and then something comes up which would be also critical to post? One option could be that for each user you follow you could vote on how often you’d like to hear her/him per day. The average of these votes then gives the user a (non-binding) hint what might be the optimal amount of daily entries his network contacts feel comfortable with.
It’s very annoying to have professional messages mixed up with private messages. I personally would desperately need a mechanism to only receive professional entries as I’m really not interested on the dinner menu of a professional colleague on the other side of the world. In the beginning I tried to set up two accounts, one for private and the other for professional purposes. But that of course doesn’t work, as you can only be logged in with one account at a time. Using a different tool (e.g. Dodgeball) in parallel is kind of cumbersome, because then you need to promote a different tool for each purpose. Of course you can’t force your contact to twitter only on certain items which are of interest to you. Maybe a tagging system for twitter might be a good thing so you could filter the pieces you are interested in. Or actually, there is still quite some space left on the twitter overview site. Why not have different columns on different topics on which I frequently want to twitter about (e.g. private, job, studies, promotion, sports, hobbies)? Then everyone could decide which of my different personal news feeds (s)he wants to subscribe to.

In general, I don’t think we have seen the full potential of microblogging yet in terms of user-friendliness and added-value features. Let’s see what developers might come up with in course of this year!

Devil's advocate: Forget about KM strategies?

noreply@blogger.com (Johannes Schunter) — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 12:25:00 +0000

There is a consensus in KM literature that every knowledge management setup in organizations needs to be based on a corporate knowledge management strategy as a mandatory prerequisite. Dealing with KM strategies myself, I don’t disagree. However, when reflecting on KM approaches with other KM practitioners, I realized that one could also take a different position, which would be the one of the devil’s advocate below:

"I don’t believe in corporate Knowledge Management strategies. Since I am exploring possible ways of doing knowledge management in organizations, I increasingly become to think that instead of strategizing, promoting and enforcing top down KM concepts, we should just start doing the things at hand. Because the business needs are already there (and already incorporated in strategic business frameworks). People do projects, people launch initiatives, people communicate and participate in the exchange with each other and their partners. And they are hungry to learn about more effective ways to do it right. We as KM people don’t need to reinvent business. We need to provide tools and mechanisms to do what we already do – just better.

Actually, the way of doing KM under the surface (“stealth KM” or “guerilla KM”) would be a much better approach, rather than trying to convince teams and business units of new strategies that cost a lot of money, cost a lot of time and imply that things should from now on be done completely different.

The thing is that people are happy to change if they see there is an immediate benefit. So what we ought to do is to provide tools which give that immediate benefit. Users of course don’t know in advance that a certain approach might help them, that’s why we need to communicate clearly. But instead of strategizing for a long time, how about we give them some tools that respond to their micromanagement challenges? Tools like social bookmarking or wikis, peer assist and after action reviews. Let’s play around and experiment with these tools. The ones which prove to provide a real benefit will survive. Some of the offered tools are not beneficial? So what? Most of them don’t cost anything, so we can drop them again. Instead of setting up a strategy and designing from top down what people ought to use, let people decide what’s useful for them and what’s not.

Now this of course will become difficult when we talk about approaches which’s benefits will only become visible over time. That’s why it is still important to have a KM Unit. Cause we need to have people who can do the experiments, who can pilot new approaches of communicating and exchanging knowledge. The KM team also will identify knowledge champions in the organization which are willing to listen, which are open to new approaches and eager to experiment. There are always some of that sort in each organisation. Get them on board and show them what did work for you personally and what did work for other organizations. Once it appears that a certain tool is indeed beneficial, the word will spread.

We are dealing with networked and interconnected societies and organizations. Instead of desiging KM stratgies top town, plant the virus and let the virus spread itself!"

Here we have again the bias between the view of organisations as fixed hirarchical structrues versus networked organisms. If the view of organisations as flat networks, which are (as Christian Kreutz posted today) democratic, flat and passionate, also makes top down KM strategies obsolete can be subject to discussion. I would be interested in your comments: What's your take on KM strategies? What makes them indispensable for your organizations?