Action Researchers Programmatic Approach and Internet

The coming months a group of five young professionals is going to do action research on the programmatic approach of the ICCO Alliance in 5 different regions. This research process intends to get an insight whether the programmatic approach is fulfilling the expectations and then especially as seen from the perspective of the actors involved in the programmatic cooperation processes. The programmes the group of researchers will work are:

• The youth and security programme in Central America
• The local market development programme in Peru (organic production)
• The food and nutrition security programme in Nepal
• The local market development programme in Burkina Faso (shea butter)
• The food and nutrition security programme in Madagascar

During these first weeks of their assignment the young professionals are involved in an intensive preparation phase at the ICCO global office in Utrecht. Beginning of February 2012 they all will start their work in the regions.I had the pleasure to work with this groups of young researchers last week.

We had a very nice day in which we discussed and experimented with a whole range of web based tools which could be of use for their communication, exchanges and documentation of their researches.
We started with the question “What role will the Internet probably have in your work?”. It became clear that they all expect to use the internet for communication with the partners they are going to work with bacause of geographical distances, but also to communicate among themselves, with the ICCO Global office and of course with their friends and families.

Usage of digital tools in ICCO - Stats 2011

In January 2012, while planning the activities for the first quarter of the year, we also took a look back at 2011 to complete our progress report and see what has been the overall usage of various digital tools over the past year.

The last interim report showed a mixed picture. By the end of the 2011, some trends are confirmed. The total number of pageviews on the ComPart Network on PBworks dropped from 90k in 2010 to 55k in 2011. This clearly reflects the decreased support at the organisational level for this technological solution. However, as also confirmed by the increased number of visits, some ICCO Alliance staff are still very much using different workspaces. In particular, the Studio workspace has proved to be useful and informative space for staff to find information about learning activities and events, as well as tools and procedures. By the same token, several Learning Communities have started using wikis as the home-base and knowledge-base for their activities. Likewise, SharePeople has fully integrated PBworks in their work-processes and they use a workspace for their internal communication and collaboration.

This blog, unfortunately, recorded again a negative trend, in spite of the fact that several new posts had been published throughout the year. Hopefully the new design implemented in December, and more regular and relevant postings, will help in bringing back some users and increase the traffic back to the level of the past years.

Finally, some great news come once again by SlideShare that really proved to be a gold mine in terms of traffic - as well as, from a user point if view, being a great space to find interesting content. In 2011, the presentation uploaded on the ICCO Alliance account received a total on almost 16k views, in line with the traffic recorded in 2010. The following 3 presentations resulted the most viewed in 2011:

• Human Rights Framework
• Value Chain Development in the Philippines
• Business and Human Rights