ComPart FAQs and guides

In ComPart, we pay a lot of attention to the need of the users and make a constant effort to provide them with the adequate support material. Even though we believe that the different ComPart tools are rather easy to use - at a basic level - we recognize the value of support and self-learning material.

In the past months, we have focussed our attention on developing a series of FAQs that can provide quick reference and step by step guidance to the use of different applications.

Do you have questions related to the ComPart Network on PBworks? Or questions related to the use of specific tools? Do you want to know how these tools can support you daily activities?

The FAQs are updated as new questions emerged. Of course we welcome your comment and suggestion - please use the comment field here or at the bottom of the FAQs page if you want to suggest a new item not currently included in the list.

Introducing new 'ComPart thematic surgeries'

In the ComPart project, we are constantly looking at new ways to improve the support and backstopping we offer to our users in the ICCO Global Office as well as in the Regional Offices and in partners' organisations.

A well known element of this support system are the weekly ComPart surgeries which we are now running for several months now. We started with the surgeries in late 2008; back then, we offered the possibility for ComPart users to come and meet us face to face, bringing along the link to their wiki, a coup of coffee and a friend, to work together and learn and improve the use of wikis and other ComPart tools to support their daily work processes. With the decentralization becoming a reality, we then changed this system from face to face to online surgeries using At&T: two times a week, at different time, we are online and provide remote and virtual support to users across the globe.

During the review meeting we had earlier in the summer, we decided to improve this support system and have a thematic webinar preceding the usual surgery session. Each week, we will address a specific topic related to the different tools and approaches we use in ComPart.

This new system will kick off as of next week. Given the fact that several new people - from the Alliance as well as from partners' organisations - are joining the ComPart Network these days, we think in the first weeks should focus on 'wiki 101', exploring and explaining the ins and outs of the PBworks, and how wikis have been used to support daily activities and business processes.

The calendar of these thematic surgeries for the rest of September and October is as follows:

• 21 and 23 September 2010: The ComPart Network and the ComPart workspace - Structure and access
• 28 and 30 September 2010: Editing wiki pages and managing folders
• 5 and 7 October: Uploading, resizing and inserting images
• 12 and 14 October: Embedding images, videos and presentations
• 19 and 21 October: Working with table of contents, feeds and other plugins
• 26 and 28 October: Searching pages, files and folders

These sessions will take place every Tueseday morning (9am - 10 am) and Thursday afternoon (5pm - 6pm). The overview of these sessions, as well as the details to join the webinar, are available on the ComPart Support page.

We hope you'll find this approach interesting and that you'll join in and participate. Any additional topic you would like suggest is also very much welcome!

ComPart wiki structuring workshop

As testified by the Q1 report on stats and traffic, the usage of the ComPart wikis has increased quite substantially in the first three month of 2010. The decision to use wikis in the process of writing the ICCO Alliance business and strategic plan contributed significantly to these positive results.

However, this is only part of the story. Over the past months, several teams and departments have been introducing wikis to support their daily activities, adapting their practices and moving part of their work-flow onto workspaces created on the new ComPart network platform.

As clearly emerged also in the ComPart lunch time meeting in February, two main issues need to be addressed at this stage:

1. How best to structure the different workspaces so that their navigation and usability can be improved?
   
2. How best to structure the 'ComPart wiki garden' in its all complexity, improving the linkages between the different workspaces?

To answer these questions, on April 20, 2010, we organised a wiki structuring workshop with some 15 ICCO staff from the Global Office in Utrecht.

Walk in the shoes of your readers
In the first part, ICCO colleagues were divided in small groups, and were tasked to look at one specific wiki of their choice through the eyes of the end users.

Beforehand, we had developed different personas and shared them with participants. Each persona exemplifies a potential ICCO staff in the Global and Regional offices, their task, their working habits, their personalities, and their needs in terms of information that they would like to find on a specific wiki.

We asked each group to choose one persona and review a wiki through the eyes of this character. Will he/she be able to find the information he/she's looking for, in an easy way, avoiding the feeling of overload and the subsequent "death by wiki"?

In a nutshell, the groups come up with the following recommendations:

• Wikis start from content, and not from people: it would be good to improve the use the social networking functionalities already embedded in the PBworks platform and focus more on the community aspect behind a workspace;
• It is sometimes difficult to get a clear overview of what a wiki is about: 'you get a lot of documents and information, some of which is outdated'. This calls for more 'gardening', better document management and a clearer file storing system;
• There is a need to develop better introductory pages that explain in a nutshell what each wiki is about. At the moment we often have lengthy information pages;
• The same goes for sub-level pages: Each page should have a quick intro text, a table of contents, and a clear message about what readers can find.
  

Do you use scents or the paths to find your way round a garden?
The second part of the workshop instead focussed on the whole 'ComPart garden', to see how this could be better organised.

At the moment, out of the 100 created wikis, some 70 are in use (at different levels). Are we on the right track? Which workspaces are we still missing? Which other should be merged? Which to be archived or deleted? And how can we improve the linkages between the different workspaces?

Working in groups, participants were given series of cards with the names of the workspaces, divided by colours for the different themes/issues covered, and departments they fit under. Starting from this, we asked ICCO staff to review what we have, and come up with suggestions on structuring the whole.

As a result, different perspectives emerged:

• For some, the structure of the garden has to be as flexible as possible, using tags and combinations of tags to make sure the wikis (and their pages) can easily be findable from users coming in from different perspectives, and with different needs.
• Others suggested a model based more on a 'corporate perspective' derived from ICCO Alliance strategic plan, clustering wikis by activities of the global and regional offices, strategies and thematic programmes. A top level wiki on ICCO values and identity could be developed.
• A third group proposed to structure the garden around programmes, strategies, and department of the global office that provide 'services and support' to the regional offices.

The ComPart team really appreciated the valuable suggestions and the conclusions that emerged from the workshop, and will take these recommendation forward in the support we are providing to ICCO staff, and in the ComPart enablers works planned for 18-21 May 2010.

Tips&Tricks #4: Table of Contents

In principle a wiki page can be made as long as you like. However, the longer the page, the more difficult it will be for readers and users to find the exact information one is looking for.

A simple page element can help us to make our pages more user friendly, and create a table of content at the top of different wiki pages so that we can see immediately what we can expect to find on them. Clicking on the items in the table will lead you inmediately to the right place, and even copying the URL in a link - on another place, e.g. the sidebar - will lead exactly to that place on the page.

This post explains how to create this "Table of Contents" on a PBwiki page.

As usual, we need to have rights to access the wiki and do the login. When we're in the wiki, we then edit the page where we want to insert the table of content.

At the top of the page, type "Table of Contents" and make it bold. Then click on the button "Insert Plug-in", mouse over "PBwiki magic" and choose "Table of Contents". Define the "Depth" (the number of levels) you want to have in your ToC. Click on "Preview" and then on "OK".

You will see a green box in the edit mode of the page. The plugin is in place now.

What still need to be done it's to define which words or phrases you want to appear in the table of contents. These will be the major sections of your page, so it is important that you have a clear idea about what these sections will be.

Once you have this clear, you need to format this sentence or words, using the "Format" option in the editor Toolbar. Mark the words or phrase and choose the H1, H2, or H3 format. Only lines that are formatted this way will show in the TOC. (Make sure not to include the space behind the last word before choosing the format!)

H1 will define your main heading in the ToC; when you choose H2, this will be displayed with indent in the ToC. You can go on with H3, H4 etc to define more subheadings in the ToC.

When you have defined all your headings with the format that you want, click on "Save" and your page will now have a nice Table of Content on top as is shown in the figure at the top of this post.

Be aware that text you do not want to appear in the ToC, should not be formated with a H(eading) format. So if you want to have some bigger or otherwise bold fonts in parts of the text, use the "size" and/or "bold" formatting tools.

Just try it out and play with these features, that's the way to learn how to work with them. Be sure, nothing can go wrong, you always can go back to an earlier saved version of the page!

Please also have a look at the PBwiki help files on this topic.

For other Tips & Tricks follow this link.

ComPart Tips & Tricks #3: Accessing the PBwiki2.0

As ComPart-admins we are getting a lot of questions about how to access the wikis after the change to the new version. If you want to read a 'private' wiki - and unfortunately too many of the ComPart wikis are set as 'private' at the moment - or in general if you want to add a comment or edit a page, you have to have request access to the wiki. On the other side, you may get an invitation to join a wiki. Today we explain step by step what to do in both cases.

Access after an invitation
You may get in your mailbox an email from do-not-reply@PBwiki.com with the subject “xxxx has invited you to join their wiki”. The message will look like the image at the right.

However if you click on the “log in here” link, you will only get access to the wiki if you already have a PBwiki account. Most of you do not have such an account yet. This means you will have to create a PBwiki account first. Once you have a PBwiki account you'll use the same personal password for any PBwiki you have or will get access to.

So, how to create a PBwiki account? There are different ways you can do it.

You can go to a public wiki, such as http://compart.pbwiki.com/ and click on “create account” in the upper right of the window. This will lead you to a page similar to the figure at the left. Fill in your name, your email address and two times a chosen personal password. Again: this password will be valid for all Pbwikis you have or will get access to. A general “invite key” as we could use in the previous version of PBwiki will not work anymore.

The way to create an account is slightly different when you have asked access to a wiki yourself without having already a PBwiki account. You can ask to join a wiki by clicking the “request access” button; on a public wiki this will appear on the right panel, on a private wiki it will appear on the login page.

Requesting access
When you use the “request access” button, you will send a massage to the administrators of the wiki with your own email address and hopefully with a message telling you why you would like to access that particular wiki.

Having requested the access, you then will get a massage back, saying that the access is granted. In this message a link is given saying “Please click here to join [wiki name]”. This link will lead you to a webpage looking like the image below.
Just fill in your name and enter twice a personal password. In that way your account is created and with your email address and the chosen password you can get into any PBwiki you have access to.


Forgot your password?
Of course with all these Internet based tools, we are managing too many passwords and often forget them. If you have forgotten your password once you have created a PBwiki account you can always “reset” it. When logging in to a wiki you always have the option to click a link “Forgot your password” besides the login button. After clicking that button, you fill in your email address and the button “reset”. Nearly immediately you will get a message with gives you an easy way to reset (or re-enter) your password.


Please also have a look at the PBwiki help files on this topic.

For other Tips & Tricks follow this link.

A rich exchange at Compart South workshop

The ComPart South workshop in February 09 brought together people from seven Southern organisations with colleagues from ICCO and a team from Euforic. Our aim was to discuss and plan how best to extend ComPart to the areas in the ‘South’ in which partner organisations of the ICCO Alliance work. There was a rich exchange of ideas, including in face-to-face meetings between Southern participants and ICCO staff in Utrecht. Six blog stories were written and thirteen blips were made by participants during and in preparation of the workshop, which helped grow awareness of the ComPart south workshop. Concrete proposals for next steps were developed.

A one page summary of the report is available here, and the full report here.

The Southern ‘enablers’ brought new perspectives to ComPart and helped develop the approach. Awareness was raised within ICCO about the enabling organisations and their potential role while the participants from those organisations gained a much deeper understanding of ICCO. Their expertise and experience convinced participants at the ICCO group workshop of the positive role they can play in supporting ICCO Alliance programmes.


“I especially liked the fact that five organisations from the South are involved and seem to have so much expertise on the subject and who have been working on this issue for a couple of years. So I am quite confident now: my question mark has turned into an exclamation mark!” (Irma van Leeuwen, Learning Facilitator, SFED: )


In looking at how ComPart could support different parts of the development programme life-cycle we have “tumbled the approach”, “putting the needs of the people in the first place … what do people in a certain context or moment need and how can different tools help them” (Henk Gilhuis).

Planning

During the next phase of Compart in 2009 and 2010 we propose to connect with ICCO’s major change processes in a number of ways:

• Work with ICCO’s Regional Working Offices (RWO’s) to set common goals and milestones.
• Develop pilot activities in three thematic areas globally, to be identified with teams
• Arrange in-country meetings, to get to know the partners, adapt ComPart to the reality on the ground and share findings across the community.
• Arrange regional thematic meetings, to map actors and identify champions
• Through surveys of ICCO partners and other civil society actors deepen our understanding of e-readiness and ks-readiness
• Continue to develop the Compart resource and support materials, ensuring users can identify relevant tools and approaches for their specific needs and tasks through an additional view onto the materials - web2do

Concrete proposals developed with ICCO Programme or finance staff

• In South Asia SAP International (SAP I) will be supporting the ICCO programme, ‘Food Security for Ultra Poor Women in Gaibandha’.
• In Central America, there is a proposal for a ComPart workshop for internal staff and partners when the new office in Managua is operational.
• In Andes Rimisp will provide help/assistance with “mesas financieras”, currently being conducted in Bolivia, strengthen organizations’ capacities and prepare the other countries (Peru, Ecuador, Nicaragua) to implement “mesas financieras” in the future, with a regional workshop planned for later in 09.
• In West Africa Christophe Hien and Oudou Bengaly continue to provide support to the Education programme, feeding and moderating the blogs and wikis established at the Burkina workshop. They will also be exploring how they could collaborate with ICCO’s junior professionals placement programme, beginning with needs analysis amongst NGOs for junior professional skills.

......oh, and perhaps arrange the next workshop somewhere a little warmer and drier ...

Wiki, wiki, wiki, meet David Weekly..

Wiki is a Hawaian word meaning quick ... Well for those who are really quick, you might still run very wiki wiki wiki, to be able to meet David weekly. This afternoon a public meeting discussed the use of wiki's in development organisations at the ICCO office in Utrecht from two o'clock onwards.  

This public meeting closed the ComPart South workshop. Some closing words on the workshop by Maarten Boers were the following 'my expectations have been exceeded in the sense that I feel that we have things in hand with which we can convince others involved. Your intense work and commitment gives me much confidence for the coming years.'

David Weekly in the blip below, explains his interest to listen to experiences of wiki users from Nepal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Chile and Costa Rica during his participation in the ComPart support workshop in the Netherlands. He also explains how PBwiki continues to try to make wikis easier to use and how valuable it has been to meet some major daily users of the PBwiki platform.

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David Weekly on the ComPart South workshop

Who will blip the blip and blog the blog?

We went to ICCO this morning on a very important mission: explain to ICCO staff what the ComPart approach in the South was and how it could help them achieve their objectives communicating with partners more effectively. In other words, we had to be prepared to do a lot of convincing.

The room was nicely arranged; coffee, tea and cookies were available to warm up and be comfortable. Stephanie from Euforic was very smart and brought some stroopwaffel (special Dutch treat) to break up the ice, which worked quite well. But still, I saw our audience a bit skeptical, somehow doubtful perhaps, without knowing what to expect from the session.

We blipped a few attendees to get their first impressions before the presentation actually started. So, we were able to capture some of their expectations or, rather, some of their hesitations about what they were going to see in the morning.

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The ComPart support team had worked until quite late the previous evening to have everything prepared for this great moment! Discussions, printing and paper cutting, blipping, blogging were going on, combined with a bit of laughing… It made the time go by quite quickly, but very entertaining.

The presentation consisted on explaining the ComPart approach and how it had evolved since it first began its implementation. Real experiences were drawn from the work being conducted by enabling organizations in Southern Africa, Latin American and Southern Asia regions. The stories highlighted good practices and lessons learned from these experiences and gave our audience a flavor of what it was like working with the ComPart approach and how this system could establish a social network of partners across the globe.

As the presentation went on, I could see excitement in their eyes growing when watching clips of a video that documented the activities of a conference that took place in Burkina Faso last year. The use of ComPart tools allowed organizers and participants to express their thoughts and reactions about the discussions that were happening during the event, record and register important analyses and conclusions and show -whoever wasn´t able to attend- a taste of what was going on. They used short videos, blogs with questions and comments that furthered discussions, not to mention the wiki space that was created to help plan and coordinate the event more effectively and facilitate the work of the organizers.

Once the presentation finished, I was curious to see if the perception people had in the morning had changed or had remained the same. For better or for worse, I wanted to know if the ComPart approach in the South had achieved its main goal: convincing ICCO staff that this approach can actually benefit and complement their work and engage them in communicating and collaborating across borders.

What did our audience say?...

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So, after these impressions, my next natural question was: did we manage to convince them to blog the blog and blip the blip? What is your take?

by Rosamelia Andrade, RIMISP

Tips to grow your garden from the ComPart South workshop

“Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow?”

No disrespect to Mary Queen of Scots or her English counterpart (as the historical explanations for the popular nursery rhyme goes), but if you really want your web 2.0 garden to grow, according to participants at the ComPart South workshop currently underway in Utrecht, here are two tips to help you do this:

Tip 1: Work from where the garden is; and not where you think it should be (consider the context, particular concerns and respond to these. The appropriateness of the tools is important) . 

A lesson from Compart South partners relates to the different contexts in which organisations operate – limited connectivity, varying skills and resource levels, different interests and needs etc. One thing though that we shared about our experiences is that often organisations buy into new tools and approaches when they see the relevance for their local context. So, rather than introducing new tools in isolation or emphasising tools that have little relevance or for practical reasons can't be adopted, it is useful to start from what organisations express as a need, ‘what can we help you do better?’

This gardening tip is also known as: Why you shouldn’t try to grow a water lily in the desert.

During our walk this morning, Margarita Salas, from Sula Batsu in Costa Rica shared her experiences working with poor connectivity:

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Christophe Hien, from Burkina Faso also shared his work introducing web2.0 with teachers in West Africa.

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Tip 2: Encourage cross pollination (sharing what you are doing and reshaping existing resources helps build rather than replicate and can lead to innovation and creative problem solving). 

Another lesson shared today was that while we may imagine that the challenges we experience are unique to our organisations or programmes, when we meet with others, we see many commonalities. We also share solutions – building on what others have done and in that way, deepen our knowledge and find innovative ways to solve problems. Using wiki’s and some of the other ComPart tools are useful in this process.

This gardening tip is also known as: why birds and bees that have the most fun, and help in creating new species of exotic flowers, are those who stray out of their regular gardens.

“Mary Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow?
With silver bells, and cockle shells ... and wiki’s, blogs and photos
(not so) neatly all in a row”

Jan Moolman
SANGONeT, South Africa

The constant gardener, ComPart gardener?

Today, Tuesday February 10, 2009, participants in the ComPart 'south' workshop focussed on deepening their understanding of ComPart thinking. Various ComPart tools, prospective web2.0 tools and ComPart gardening were introduced, shared and discussed throughout the day.

The day started with a nature walk. Participants explored some trails in the woods and paused at various stops to reflect on their feelings and expectations required to grow a blooming ComPart garden.

This was followed by a marathon session, facilitated by Chris Addison, on various flowers in the ComPart garden by Pier Andrea Pirani and Maarten Boers. They gave a brief overview about the various ComPart flowers - the toolbar, wikis, blogs, igoogle and delicious. Later, participants divided into various teams to integrate, discuss and develop a real scenario from their day to day experiences, where ComPart tools could effectively fulfil the needs of ICCO colleagues and partners.

SangoNet's Janine Moolman reflects on the day:

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There are so many Web2.0 that could be integrated into ComPart. We all contributed ideas for new additions to the garden, so many that we were almost dazzled by the various possibilities.

Chris Addison, one of Compart's original gardeners, sums up his day:

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Yvette Petit reflects on Euforic's use of web 2.0 tools within the team.

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Some first steps at the ComPart South Workshop - 9 February 2009

Today, Monday 9 February 2009, participants from the ComPart south workshop took some initial steps in sharing knowledge and learning. Expectations were shared, a snapshot of latest developments in the ICCO alliance and the current status of ComPart were presented by Maarten Boers. Some latest developments on 'the wiki garden', which shows the 53 wiki's and their content were presented. Gerrit Visser from ICCO presented the latest developments in synthesising knowledge and information structuring.

Various sessions were led by "Southern participants" who shared their experiences with ComPart. Rosemalia Andrade from RIMISP explained how they developed an internal learning and knowledge sharing platform to practice what it preaches. Second, she explained how to stimulate the use of tools for partner organisations. She explained that responsibility needed to be shared, that we should just get started and that everything implemented should be simple.

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Rosemalia Andrade reflects on the day.


Hempal Shrestha from SAP International reflected on his experiences with ComPart in Nepal. Yorsaon Christophe Hien showed the blip they used to reflect on an education workshop held in Burkina Faso in late 2008.

Finally, participants discussed in three groups (1, 2 and 3) required improvements in program development in general and how ComPart could meet those needs. You are invited to leave a comment on the notes on this blog.

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Reflections by Bengaly Oudou on the day in French

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Reflections by Hempal in the day

ComPart South 2009 workshop

In 2007, ICCO started a project (with support from Euforic) working with Knowledge and Learning Networks. The project aims to contribute to ICCO Alliance capacity building, learning networks, and knowledge.

The main focus of component 1 is to support the information, knowledge and communication capacities of partner organisations of the ICCO Alliance in the ‘south.’ The proposal states that this component is developed with a group of partner organizations and allies, in the South, that will share knowledge and learning through thematic information exchange networks. A first meeting of this so-called ‘ComPart South’ component was held in June 2008.

Since then, a series of ‘South’ activities have been undertaken, notably in Angola, Chile, Brazil, and Burkina Faso (these are reported on the ComPart blog). Steps have also been taken to develop memoranda of understanding with several enabling organisations to provide a framework for further collaboration among the parties.

In February 2009, a second ComPart South workshop will examine and agree concrete ways that the various partners can combine to extend ComPart to Southern partners of the ICCO Alliance.

Who's attending? Some of the participants introduce themselves:

Hempal Shrestha, associated with Bellanet Alliance of Social Entrepreneurs – BASE in Asia, hosted at South Asia Partnership International (SAP I), Kathmandu, Nepal.

BENGALY OUDOU of Mali, Economist data processing specialist I am the manager of cyberkene technical information of the communication (health education agriculture trades) since 2006.

Christophe HIEN, french teacher in Burkina Faso. I teach since 1997. First I was in Po and since 2007 I work to capital Ouagadougou. I begun with IT in 2003 with Global Teenager Project supported by IICD through TICE BURKINA. I am a product of IICD in IT. I provide in my school educational use of IT by training teacher and pupils.

Danny Aerts, I work for ATOL, a Belgian NGO. So if you look at it from a Dutch point of view, I'm actually from the South ;-). At ATOL, I'm head of information services. In Congo, ATOL accompanies three networks of documentation centres, in which I'm also involved.

On 13 February, we will hold a public 'working with wikis' workshop with David Weekly. Join us!

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Getting ComPart to Angola

Lately we started the important step to expand the ComPart training sessions to our partners in the South. As you might have read in this blog, a couple of weeks ago two colleagues from Euforic were in Ouagadougo training participants of a Seminar on education; last week I was in São Paulo to introduce ComPart to the participants of a seminar on Land and water rights; and this week I was in Luanda to “train” staff of several partner organisations in Angola. It is really great we have now come to this stage because in the end ComPart is meant for communication and learning with and among partners, is it is very important that they know how to use the tools.

Certainly here in Angola it is clear that the (good) use of Internet communication tools can be very helpful. Transport is very expensive and difficult to organise and normal telephone quite costly. So the felt need for good and cheap means of communication is evident. Although very much in the Angolan way only after some reminders and at the last moment, 22 staff of about 14 partner organisations subscribed to the training. Nearly all of them attended all three days. Luckily enough, my colleague Arie Jongejan managed to hire a “ICT-lab” with 30 PC’s connected to Internet just one day before the training started., which is quite an achievement under these circumstances. So everything was prepared as well as possible.

The training itself went well, although it was not always easy. Far more than twice, in the middle of a presentation or explanation an energy cut forced an unwelcome pause. I really admired the patience of the participants and their ability to come back with their attention (although at some moments it was clear we all felt real frustration). As one of the most expressed needs was to have an alternative for the expensive telephone (mobiles) Skype was one of the tools I explained right after the general presentation. Perhaps that was a mistake, because all the time afterwards one could hear the well known sounds of skype calls, and thus the internet connection slowed down nearly all the time (I must admit also because one or two participants were downloading videos). In general the Internet connection was OK, but sometimes and especially the last day really very very slow. It took about 3 minutes to load a page and often resulting in the so well know notice that the page could not be loaded at all because of a time out. To say the least, that makes it difficult to explain and practice!

Most time was spent on the explanation and practice with wiki’s and blogs, but we also worked on Dgroups, Skype, Feeds, RSS, iGoogle and other tools. Participants were really enthused and regularly it was difficult to get them to have a break and even lunch. Several times they were also teasing each other by messing up each other’s pages or posts. So we also had fun ;-).

However by the way they were working and the questions they asked it also became clear that part of the participants had great difficulty to really understand what Internet is, e.g. understanding that saving a text on your own computer is something different than saving a wiki page or a post. So I had to spend quite some time on explaining the very basics. And I must admit sometimes I had quite a hard time because I felt I didn’t always manage to explain them in an understandable way. Fortunately also some participants helped each other (levels of understanding varied much), so for most, in the end, much became more or less clear. At least they said they learnt much and made some concrete plans to work with the tools within their work for the Education for All and the Hiv/Aids programmes and other activities.

As for future training activities for expanding ComPart to the South some main lessons learnt are:

• Training should really start at a very basic level;


• Whenever possible try to do separate trainings for “beginners” with ICT and the “advanced” users (e.g. it was impossible to explain the embedding of videos and presentations, even though it was an explicit question of a few participants);


• It is necessary to have enough time for personal attention (explanation) so their must be at least one trainer for at the most 12 (?) participants;


• Certainly at the start of the introduction of ComPart it would be better to have a couple of training sessions every one or two months than one longer one. Anyhow follow-up sessions should be planed from the beginning;


• It is important to involve local trainers because they know the wording used in the different countries (Brazilians and Angolans both speak Portuguese but some ICT terms are very different and cause confusion);


• Connectivity of course is also an issue. Although it is always needed to take low connectivity for users into account, whenever possible the training sessions should take place in a venue with as good as possible connection (interruptions make it really difficult to maintain attention and keep the training somewhat inspiring).
  
  Luanda airport, 6 December 2008
  Maarten Boers

Rimisp: catching up with the web 2.0 proliferation (2)

Hi, this is Virginia Soto-Aguilar Cortínez journalist of Rimisp. I would like to thank Maarten and ICCO for teaching us this new tools. This is an opportunity for Rimisp to improve its communication and learn “how to survive in web 2.0’s world”.

As a Latin American Center for Rural Development we really need to be in daily connection with our partners, and these interactive tools are really good to create virtual communities. We wil use the calendar tool to share information about our internal activities, we will show our videos, photos and slideshows with the tools BLIP.TV, FLICKR and SLIDESHARE.

Rimisp: catching up with the web 2.0 proliferation (1)

By Rosamelia Andrade*

Rimisp (Latin American Centre for Rural Development) is a small regional NGO working on research projects related to rural development, poverty reduction, economic growth, social inclusion and environmental governance in various countries of Latin America. Its office is located in Santiago, Chile, but as a regional organization, Rimisp also has personnel based in other countries such as Bolivia, Ecuador and Costa Rica. Rimisp partners with several public and private institutions that help implement our projects and collaborate with us in different capacities.

The structure of the organization in itself bears important challenges to the internal communication process. This is probably not that uncommon nowadays when many organizations have flexible working environments and human resources located in more than one geographic setting.
Several project coordinators in the organization have expressed repeatedly the need to have communication systems in place to improve the internal communication amongst team members in a way that is easy, yet effective, and without investing an enormous amount of time figuring out how something works.
With this challenge in hand, the communications team at Rimisp received the visit of Marteen Boers from ICCO, an old friend of the organization who knows well the limitations and challenges we currently face.

Maarten worked with us setting up a 4-day hands-on workshop schedule that included collective and individual meetings with team members as well as working sessions to learn specific collaborative tools that could help our organization deal with the difficulties of communicating in the world of web 2.0

The week with Maarten opened a whole range of new tools, platforms and ideas that we could implement in our organization, not because we didn´t know about the existence of this material in the web, but mostly because he showed us how these tools have changed the way people work with one another and how we –as an organization- could benefit from it.

I think the most important thing that I learned from these sessions is the fact that we –Rimisp and its members- have to start thinking about a different approach to our work. This means, we need to change the way we do things; the way we view things. We are not alone in the world. Other people are doing similar things and they are interested in what we do. The present times prompt us to share information as opposed to restrict knowledge. And we need “to get out there,” where other people co-exist (collaborative platforms), to share with others what we do best.

I believe there is significant potential for Rimisp to begin implementing and using collaborative platforms and tools. The first step would be to bring on tools that could directly solve their most pressing difficulties, for example sharing a common calendar of appointments, meetings, events, etc, so everybody in the organization and in specific teams are informed of what is going on with one another. Or a platform that would help them share documents and allow them to work collaboratively to obtain a final version that incorporates everybody´s input.
The next step is to show all the members of the organization the type of tools and platforms that are available and what they can do for the organization and the teams. I think this could motivate people to incorporate new instruments into their daily routine and activities. Sharing experiences from other organizations going through similar processes could also be useful to encourage people to adopt this new way of doing things.

Finally, training and capacity building are extremely important in the success of integrating new collaborative avenues in an organization. People feel much more inclined to accept something when they learn how it works and when they see that is actually working.

In Rimisp we have started producing a strategy to implement new collaborative platforms and tools to our daily work. This will not be easy and it will take time. At least we know that our people have needs and challenges to resolve and they are open and excited to learn how the web 2.0 could help them. A good indication is that they have begun asking what this is all about...There is hope.

Rosamelia Andrade is the Communications Coordinator of the Rural Territorial Dynamics Program at Rimisp. She is a communications professional with experience working on international development projects. For more information about Rimisp, please visit www.rimisp.org

ComPart goes 2 Burkina

This week part of the Compart support team is in Burkina Faso working with the Education programme of ICCO at the Conference on Informal Education and Literacy. Christophe Hien of Burkina Faso and Oudou Bengaly of Mali are providing the local support for the participants. Danny Aerts and Chris Addison have been working with them explaining the integration of the ComPart approach behind the scenes.

The Conference on informal learning and literacy being held here in Burkina Faso by ICCO with partners from Mali, Senegal and Burkina is being supported by the use of online tools to collect, disseminate and exchange information. In introducing how the ComPart approach has been used to support the ICCO programme (of which this conference is a part), we presented to delegates how the systems have helped to arrange, coordinate, record and disseminate findings from the conference. Christophe and Oudou presented briefly how the wiki, Dgroups, blog and delicious have been used to facilitate the conference.
We had the opportunity in the introduction to link up with ICCO and hear from Maarten Boers in Utrecht by video with Skype, you can see what he had to say on the conference blog. This was not without connectivity problems, but gave the message that ICCO colleagues in Utrecht are able to follow aspects of the meeting here.

The exercise with the wiki used the questions raised in the first part of the conference. Questions raised for each country, Senegal, Mali and Burkina were placed on three pages. These linked to separate page for each answer. Within one hour many of the pages were completed giving answers to the questions in a fraction of the time it would be possible to collate in any other system. Several threats were needed to get people to go for lunch. For the blog exercise we have encouraged people to take notes for a story from the field visit tomorrow and they will be able to include photos.

Blips and videos: The format of taking short videos to record opinions and feedback from participants has worked well. You can see a selection on http://compartuser.blip.tv/. On the same channel we have also captured some of the sessions with minimal editing. The videos have been optimised for displaying within the wiki and supporting lower speed connections.

Presentations: We have taken the opportunity to try out a new site for the presentations which has a French interface and just French language content, see http://www.slideo.com/espace/?compartuser.

Local copies: Videos will also be available on the USB-stick used to store the outputs of the wiki and blog. Creating local copies of the blog and wiki is complicated by the passwording and local copies created when logged into the respective systems. We hope both systems will be public at the end of the conference. Key documents have also been loaded onto the USB.

Support materials in French: A range of French language materials were prepared for the conference and to continue ComPart support in Francophone countries. The web2partager site now provides introductions to web2 material in French and here you can find a nice introduction to RSS. A French compart toolbar has been created (click the plus on the far left hand on your toolbar). We also prepared a tutorial printout that explains the basics of using a ComPart wiki.

Compatibility We have used participants' own machines in the conference for demonstrating the ComPart tools, and as a result have found some of the compatibility issues in using for example the wiki. We have identified some minor problems with the display of the menu in Internet Explorer 6 (This can be remedied by reloading the page.) The scroll bar disappears occassionally in full screen with Explorer 6, by reducing the window it reappears.

Connectivity has generally been superb from the conference venue, with speeds up to 150Kb/s allowing viewing of videos from blip.tv and easy upload to blip.tv and flickr.

From the conference we already have new wiki pages, several blips, some new documents and plenty of photos online. You can find the blog, wiki and videos from the ComPart toolbar, click on the 'plus' sign at the far left and choose 'ComPart FR'.




by Chris Addison and Danny Aerts

ComPart: Upcoming plans

On 1 October, the Euforic team and Maarten Boers met in The Hague to review ComPart plans for the coming period.

Two recent meetings guided our efforts - Lisbon in June and Utrecht in May. The Lisbon discussions were more focussed on possibilities with partners in developing countries; the Utrecht meeting on actions needed to reinforce efforts here in the Netherlands.

The plans include:

• ComPart goes to Burkina Faso: In mid-October, 2008, we will run a series of ComPart sessions as part of the regional education programme conference in West Africa. For the workshop, we are involving expertise from two additional Euforic members: ATOL and IICD.
• Extending the ComPart 'alliance': We will agree cooperation frameworks with some of the organizations joining us in Lisbon, building up a capacity in the South to support information, communication and knowledge-sharing activities with ICCO partners in the South.

• E-surveys of Aliance partners: One of the first collaborations is to survey ICCO alliance partners in different regions to better understand how they engage in information, communication and knowledge-sharing, and their connectivity situations.
  

• ComPart in Brazil, Bolivia and Angola: We are exploring with ICCO colleagues and partners how best to embed ComPart activities in emerging programmes.
  

• ComPart 'surgeries': Following the May discussions in Utrecht, we will start a regular weekly 'surgery' where anyone working with ComPart can drop in, meet the experts and champions, and get advice answers and share tips (starting 4 November every Tuesday afternoon from 14:00 to 16:00 in the ComPart training room - 041 - at the ICCO offices).

• Documenting and sharing the learning: While the amount of ComPart activity is growing, we will reinforce efforts to capture knowledge and learning across the Alliance, making sure that that various tools being used are properly presented, tagged and described to allow easier access. Stephanie Zwier recently joined the Euforic team working on the project; she joins ICCO's Gerrit Visser who is already active on this ComPart Blog and elsewhere.
  

Watch this space for news and updates ...!

ComPart South Workshop 16 and 17 June 2008, Lisbon (3)

In June 2008, ICCO held a workshop in Lisbon to think through next steps and plans for the ICCO ComPart 'South' initiative. The workshop was held in Lisbon to coincide with the annual KM4Dev workshop, to enable ICCO sponsored participants to contribute to and learn from this community.

The report of the workshop outlines the origins of that workshop, its activities and findings and agreed next steps.

See related stories with the label 'compartsupport'

Plus ca change...or...how far have we come?

On the one hand I feel really positive about the two day workshop. The participants brought together an enormous amount of experience and creativity, from across the globe, and people worked very hard ("it was really intense" was one feedback I feel guiltily pleased about, as a facilitator.) As Maarten said, the output is forward looking and imaginative yet also practical and focused.

But, the issue of how to engage and encourage people in organisations to share learning and ideas with each other inside and across organisations South and North is as old as the development business. Olivier Sagne encouraged us to recognise that both horizontal and vertical sharing are important but we know it is the horizontal sharing which is the most difficult.



My own experience starts with the Arid Lands Information Network-Eastern Africa (ALIN-EA) which promotes exchange of ideas and experiences among Community Development Workers (CDWs) in the Arid and Semi-arid Lands (ASALs) of Eastern Africa. www.alin.or.ke.

"The origins of Arid Lands Information Network-Eastern Africa (ALIN-EA), formerly Reseau d'Information des Terres Arides - Arid Lands Information Network (RITA-ALIN), date back to 1987 when Oxfam GB held a partners conference in Cotonou, Benin. As a follow-up of workshop resolutions the Arid Lands Unit (ALU) was established within Oxfam GB in the United Kingdom. In 1991, RITA-ALIN programme moved from UK to Senegal as a unit of Oxfam, and was later launched in 1995 as an independent British charity. In 1999, RITA-ALIN closed the offices in Dakar, Senegal, leaving the eastern Africa wing of the network operating as ALIN Eastern Africa with concentration in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Ethiopia."

ALIN stands out because it has evolved its methods with technology. It still produces a paper quarterly, Baobab, but it also uses WorldSpace satellite services to reach remote locations with its information; has CD archives; increasingly uses Video and links with Community Radio. So on the one hand this is a story of a tenacious NGO maintaining its core business through intelligent evolution. On the other, much of the work that they are doing - workshops with grass-roots community development workers, training in communications (writing) with workers and community leaders - is exactly the same as some of the techniques and ideas we were discussing.

Does that matter? Isn't it simply that the old techniques still have their place? But there is still a strong demand for services of intermediaries like ALIN in the same areas they have always worked. So perhaps the most relevant question for ComPart is what will be the impact of the new technologies that we are introducing? The reaction from the participants at the workshop is positive - they see a need and believe the approach and tools will make an impact. Our challenge, I think, is to explore how to improve communications long-term with these approaches.

..as the kids always chant at the back of the car, "are we there yet"?


Pete Cranston, Lisbon, 19/6/08

ComPart South Workshop 16 and 17 June 2008, Lisbon (2)

It is amazing how much a group can do in two days. After all introductory and explanatory talks yesterday, today we mainly used to work in two groups. The question to the groups was Each Group imagined a programme and a region in which it would be executed, and find out what should have been done and how by the end of 2010 as to make the ComPart idea support the quality of the programme. After hard working both groups came with very realistic and good scenarios about what could happen. Of course we did not find solutions for everything, many points have to be worked out still, but we have an excellent basis to work on further. It was also very nice to hear that all expressed their willingness to keep on working and contributing on the support of ComPart in the South.

As an interesting detail we also learnt about a for most of us new way of presenting the results of group work, using “Freemind”. In the picture below such a presentation is shown.



As so often during this type of workshops we had some moments of confusion as you can hear from David Barnard (SangoNet – South Africa), but - also as so often - confusion can very well lead to clarity.

Click To Play

So after two days of hard working we all enjoyed a good meal while watching “The footbal games”, and together with the one Italian and the one Dutchman we could end the day satisfied an very content. Many thanks to the Euforic team for the very good preparation, logistics and facilitation!

Now we are looking forward to the following next days in which we will participate in the KM4dev meeting.

Maarten Boers