Yes We Can 2.0

It’s amazing what transformative power Web 2.0 services are increasingly making available to everybody at (almost) no cost. Using Animoto “The End of Slideshows” I just made a professional looking video supported by (Creative Commons)-music out of my collection of 1993 Clayoquot Sound uprising-pics for only US$ 3,- (30 sec videos are even free):

Compare this to the static slideshows “of old”.

Of course, such “fast and furious” MTV-style videos are not always the best choice, but they could play an important role in energizing, for example, youth to participate in community-building campaigns.

Happy Change Year!

Strategy interviews

CommunitySense now offers a new service, strategy interviews, which may be of interest to you if you are a  management level professional. Such a one-on-one  interview allows you to break away from day to day operational issues and instead to jointly reflect upon the important questions: what is the mission of my organization or department? What values are we after? What services do and should we provide? Where do I want us to be a couple of years from now, and so on.

The interview takes place in a relaxing setting and can range from a couple of hours to half a day. I will prepare a couple of questions to get the interview going, and will process and structure your answers in an interview report. This report can be used in various ways, including personal use,  internal strategy documents (a good basis for a team-building session), PR materials, your web site, and so on.

An example is the strategy interview (in Dutch) I held with Tim van der Avoird, head of the Centre for Knowledge Transfer of Tilburg University. Goal of the interview was to explore the link between science and society, as well as the strategic role that his Centre could and should play in improving this relationship.

Liberating Voices book published

A while ago, I posted some ideas on the socio-technical infrastructure needed to create a network of “thinking communities”. I was then contacted by Doug Schuler, coordinator of the Public Sphere Project, who asked me to create a Thinking Communities Pattern  for their Liberating Voices: a Pattern Language for Communication Revolution project.

A selection of patterns, including the Thinking Communities Pattern, has now been edited and published as a book by The MIT Press (ISBN 0-262-69366-6). See also the book flyer. To get an idea of how these patterns could be used, see, for instance, the post by Justin Smith, who lists some requirements for a pattern-based knowledge system.

The best way to introduce the book is by using Doug’s own words:

After eight years of work, the book on our information and communication pattern language project, “Liberating Voices: A Pattern Language for Communication Revolution,” is finally available. Liberating Voices brings together a multitude of ideas and suggestions from a variety of perspectives including activism and social change, education, community informatics, governance, media, development, information science, economics, journalism, arts and culture.

We believe that this book can be used by researchers, by practitioners in a variety of fields including teachers in the classroom, by activists, and by citizens and community members throughout the world.

I’m writing to you as a colleague or, in some cases, as a person whom I’ve never met but whose work I admire. In either case I’m hopeful that you’d find this work compelling. If you do, please read this note and send it along to friends and colleagues who might also be interested.

I believe that this book is particularly relevant at this time in history. It is a holistic call to arms for social change based on a revolution in grassroots information and communication. It takes the form of a pattern language that contains 136 patterns. Each pattern is a template for research as well as social critique and action. And each pattern is linked to other patterns into a single coherent whole. We (myself and 85 co-authors) have tried to show that the struggle for liberatory information and communication systems is absolutely critical.

In recent decades we have witnessed the creation of communication systems that promise unparalleled connectedness. Now is the time to unleash our collective creativity—social as well as technological—and develop the communication systems that promote community and civic innovation and engagement to address serious challenges like climate change and environmental degradation.

Inspired by the vision and framework outlined in Christopher Alexander’s classic 1977 book, A Pattern Language, the book presents a pattern language containing 136 patterns designed to meet these challenges. We are proposing a new model of social change that integrates theory and practice by showing how diverse information and communication based approaches can be used to address local as well as global problems.

The pattern language was developed collaboratively with nearly 100 co-authors using an online pattern language management system. The patterns from the book are all online as are approximately 300 other patterns in work. We are treating the publishing of the book as an important milestone rather than the culmination of the project. While we are very enthusiastic about what we’ve produced so far we realize that people and organizations who use the patterns will often need to adapt the pattern language to their specific needs which may even include developing new patterns. For this reason and others we are revamping our web site to encourage collaborative pattern language construction and allow people to readily share ideas and experiences with others.

Our goal was to create an intriguing and informative catalog of intellectual, social, and technological innovations, a practical manual for citizen activism, and a compelling manifesto for creating a more intelligent, sustainable, and equitable world.

BarCamp Berlin 3 revisited

On October 18-19, Barcamp Berlin 3 took place. It was organized in the impressive Berlin Representative Office of Deutsche Telekom. Over 800 people attended, a true bee hive of creative tech people from all walks of Internet life.

BarCamps are a special kind of conference, sometimes even called an “unconference”:

BarCamp is an international network of user generated conferences — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants — often focusing on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies, social protocols, and open data formats.

BarCamps live and breathe Web 2.0, not only in what they are about, but also by adopting its user-driven style in how they are organized. There is much attention on participatory process, or, rather, on providing an overall infrastructural framework, while making participants responsible for what topics are going to be discussed and in what way.

Traditionally, BarCamps are rather small and informal events. This one was huge, and very well organized, infrastructure-wise.  It was also amazing how they managed to offer all of the considerable facilities for free. The contrast between the large scale/professional setting, with the creative/anarchistic BarCamp culture was interesting. Although some were not so amused by this, I think it’s testimony to the multi-faceted, evolving nature of the BarCamp concept, that it can live in so many different skins. I agree with the claim that “‘You are BarCamp!’ and everybody has to take part in making each edition a success”. My compliments to the organizers for getting this most stimulating, very well organized event off the ground!

An open question is still to what extent, apart from organizing the infrastructure, these  unconferences need organization of content. Personally, I think many sessions could benefit from some form of preparation, although there should be sufficient space for “emergent organization” to keep the inspiration and flow of the moment.

Dutch Innovation Seminar 2008

On October 9, a beautiful autumn day, I went to the De Baak estate, in the wooded centre of the country to attend the Dutch Innovation Seminar 2008. De Baak is a well-known training institute, established by the largest employers’ organization in the Netherlands. As their site states, it “is the place for leaders, business people and professionals in search of inspiration, motivation, knowledge and insight”. Well, inspiration abounded, plentifully.

The seminar comprised a couple of keynote addresses, as well as a number of workshops, and lots of opportunity to network in a very pleasant atmosphere. The theme of the event was “Pulverizing Borders”, about how the Internet allows all kinds of borders to disappear, borders between people, organizations, supply and demand, and so on.

Interesting to observe were the different foci of innovation approaches of large-scale, corporate organizations like Shell and DSM, and new kids on the block like Nabuur and SellaBand. Shell and DSM are mainly interested in involving the “wisdom of the crowds” as idea generators, but themselves want to keep  close control over their often very complex, long term, and expensive product innovation processes.

Nabuur and SellaBand, on the other hand, act much more as facilitators, delegating substantial control to the users of their site. Nabuur, the “Global Neighbour Network” is an NGO that mediates between villages in developing countries having concrete requests for development assistance, and volunteers, from both North and South, who are able to help address these requests, leading to long-term collaboration and relationship networks. SellaBand facilitates between beginning bands looking for investment capital to produce an album and music lovers who are willing to invest small amounts of money. Once enough money has been raised, each music lover receives a limited edition copy of the album.

An interesting question is whether the “control paradigm” is really necessary for large scale product development, because of, for example, the need to protect intellectual property rights. Or could the new business models being developed by the likes of Nabuur and SellaBand in the longer term be adopted/adapted by their larger, more bureaucratic peers? Innovation of innovation…

Mr. Community President

[The text of an e-mail I just sent to the Community Informatics Researchers-mailing list]

What a wonderful moment in  emancipatory history we have just experienced! No need to add here to the deluge of analyses of the profound impact Obama’s election is going to have on all levels of U.S. and global society. At any rate, congratulations to all American and international colleagues on this list who are so very much in need of a change of societal paradigm.

One thing some of us discussed at the conference in Prato (another great event in the series, it was, as always, good to be back) was what Obama’s election could mean in terms of boosting community informatics research and practice.  His is very much a way of community (informatics) thinking and working, both in philosophical outlook by putting community first and in practical approach, see, for instance:

http://fairsay.com/blog/obamas-win-and-the-power-of-networking

In particular, community informatics researchers and practitioners have a great wealth of experience, contacts, and lessons learnt at their disposal which could become much more visible and widely applicable now that new winds are going to blow. In particular, if Obama is going to live up to at least part of the sky-high expectations, our community (through its conferences, CIRN, individual contacts, projects, etc.) might be of use for him and his team in order not to waste precious time and seize this unique moment to make the paradigm shift lasting.

We were wondering if anybody would have any idea how we as a community of social change catalysts could practically link up with the now permanent campaign for social change forming around the Obama nucleus? This could – and should – be our moment too, but we have to get our act together…

Aldo

Evaluation SURFnet pilot Active Worlds

After a very intense period of finishing projects, I am now recharging my research batteries. As I am travelling and networking a lot, time for my blog is limited. However, I will try to give brief summaries of some of the events I have attended recently, but not written about yet.

SURFnet provides a high-quality network specifically intended for higher education and research in the Netherlands. It is a subsidiary of the SURF organisation, in which Dutch universities, universities for applied sciences and research centres collaborate nationally and internationally on innovative ICT facilities. One of its R&D topics is how to use virtual worlds in higher education.

On October 1, an inspiring evaluation meeting was organized to discuss the results of a pilot using the Active Worlds virtual world environment. Several pilot projects that had been using Active Worlds for educational purposes in the past year presented their results. Interesting was the wide variety of applications, even in only such a small number of pilot projects. Overall, the gist was that virtual worlds can be very useful in education, as the constructivist, collaborative way of working in virtual worlds immerses students to the subjects in a much deeper way than allowed for by traditional textbook learning. However, this immersion comes at a cost, as considerable preparatory and facilitation efforts are required by lecturers for such projects to succeed.

Clearly, more advanced didactic approaches are needed to more effectively and efficiently apply virtual world resources in learning. Developing such innovative ways of using virtual worlds will require testbeds and more trials and (errors) by lecturers and students jointly. Many questions will need to be answered, ranging from which worlds to use (Active Worlds, Second Life, open source based environments?), when to lead and when to let students take the initiative, how to link virtual worlds to other web based resources, which collaborative and communicative workflows to define and support, and so on.

For another impression of this day, see the post by Inge Ploum.

Pitching social enterprises at The Hub

Having finished my portal project, I am in Berlin now. As it’s been a very intense project, I really felt the need to “reset my brain” and decided to have a creative breather in Berlin. It’s a great city to visit for such a purpose, and to get inspiration for new R&D ideas. At the end of the week, I will be attending Barcamp Berlin 3.0, more about that later.

To warm up, I attended a nice event organized by Self Hub Berlin yesterday. Such hubs are increasingly being established in cities all over the world as creative places for social entrepreneurs. I already visited The Hub Rotterdam, and was curious to find out how things are done in their Berlin counterpart.

Yesterday’s event was dubbed “Pitching for Inspiration” and allowed a number of new social entrepreneurs to present their visions and solicit feedback from fellow entrepreneurs and other interested members of the audience. Afterwards, there was space and time for informal discussion. There was quite a variety of themes. To give you an idea, presentations included proposals for an institute for intergenerational learning, an academy for developing and realizing visions, a network of experienced entrepreneurs helping new ones, a theatre of young people performing for primary and high school kids showing them how to better deal with conflicts, an organization  that aims to apply “wisdom of the crowds” by allowing many persons to vote on competing project proposals after a bidding period in which the proposers develop and defend their project ideas using blogs, an initiative to use web mashups to show wheelchair-barrier free locations in first Berlin, then Germany, then the world. There was also a presentation of an already established annual contest in which students can develop communications campaigns for non-profit organizations.

Most proposals were still in quite a premature stage, but it was nice to see the variety and enthusiasm with which they were presented. These hubs are all about developing relations, connecting ideas, and releasing energy, and there was plenty of all that around.

It is interesting to see how these hubs are very much place, i.e. city-based, yet at the same time they are part of a growing worldwide network, a “meta Hub”, as one of the participants called it. They remind me very much of Saskia Sassen’s work on the global and the local being necessarily very much intertwined when trying to understand what globalization really means.  In particular, these hubs seem to be a key example of thinking communities, for which providing a good communications infrastructure and location, as well as resolving a wide range of social, professional, and financial constraints is essential for their success.

The Tilburg University student portal at a glance

Some information on the Tilburg University student portal, which was launched on September 30, 2008:

Students target group page

The Tilburg University web site has dedicated information pages for the various target groups, including students, lecturers, and prospective students. Through the students target group page, students can login to their personal portal. The portal has been implemented in Blackboard, and integrated with its existing Digital Learning Environment. Once logged in, the student sees three tabs: My Study, My University and My Stuff. The portlets (channels or views on applications or information resources) on the portal tabs are by default only, and can be (re)moved by students as they like.

My Study tab - part 1

My Study tab - part 2

My Study tab - part 3

My Study contains study-related portlets. The default portlets on the My Study tab include My Courses, My Course Announcements, My Study Facilities, Webmail Notifier, My Week Schedule, My Schedule Changes, My Exam Schedule, and Language Tools.

My University tab - part 1

My University tab - part 2

My University tab - part 3

My University-portlets are related to the organizational context in which students study. Depending on the faculty a student is studying at, different faculty-related portlets are presented. The default portlets on the My University tab include Course Catalog, Organization Catalog, a Faculty Hotlist, Faculty News, Tilburg University News, This Week at Tilburg University, Univers News (the university newspaper), University Address Book, My Library Facilities, Library Search, News from the Faculty student associations, Portal News, and My Portal Suggestions.

My Stuff tab

The My Stuff tab is empty and can be filled with portlets by students as they like.

Modify content

Modify layout

Using standard Blackboard functionality, students can select portlets from an ever growing list and add them to their tabs. This way, they can also modify the layout of their portal environment and portlets.

Student portal launch movie

Communication with stakeholders has always had a very high priority in the project. A suggestion form is available, and suggestions are publicly accessible, and a weblog is used to communicate about the progress of the portal development. To prepare students (and other stakeholders) for the consequences of the changes in functionality, a series of electronic newsletters was published. To draw attention to the student portal, a humorous “all throughout history, mankind struggled with technology” launch movie was produced, together with the Tilburg University theatre sports association Rataplan (click here for the “Making Of”).

Building Capacity for Learning: towards a Library 2.0

On August 27, I attended the Library & IT Services Innovation Lecture at Tilburg University.  The speaker was Stephen Abram, SirsiDynix’s Vice President of Innovation. His talk was titled “Building Capacity for Learning: Affordable Technology Preparedness“.  Stephen held a passionate plea for reform of university library practice, urging librarians to fully embrace rather than feel threatened by the Web 2.0-and-beyond world that students live in. Stephen raised many interesting points, a few of which I will mention here, as they are so relevant to collaborative and learning community capacity building in general.

The rate of library change is going to be orders of magnitude higher than before, we ain’t seen nothing yet. There is going to be a change of paradigm. To mention only a few of many fundamental changes that will need to be absorbed : e-books, the dawn of a “paragraph-level instead of an article based universe”, the role of libraries in distance education, and so on.

Context of use is all important. For example, there are hundreds of citation styles, but who (besides librarians!) uses which particular styles in which workflows? A fundamental issue is how to move content into context?  Facts out of context are useless. Rather than overloading students with facts, universities should be teaching them the processes that let them get the facts when they need them.  For instance, they should deeply understand the politicized knowledge processes like web search engine retrieval results manipulation. More in general, what are the information literacy pieces needed to contribute to the students’ success? Rather than working with isolated steps, we should work with an information ecology.  Professors, TAs, students and so on should all be trained at the community level.

Using Web 2.0 thinking will be essential to accomplish these goals. Basically, the meaning of Web 2.0 is “the things you can do times the people you know”. For librarians, this means that they are not anonymous, interchangeable staff, but accessible individuals with unique skills who interact intensively with their student community.  Social software like Facebook could play an important role supporting this process, e.g. through the wise use of pictures and descriptions.

In sum, the main question is: how do we prepare library staff to do things and know people? In the “Library 2.0″, the user is at the centre, not the librarian. Web 2.0 tools are affordable and easy to experiment with. We should not be afraid to try and make errors, such an experimental approach is the best way to learn how to empower students by building on their skills. The Special Libraries Association Innovation Library has a wealth of resources to discover and discuss emerging Web 2.0 software learning tools and see how they can be used in the library context of the future.