The expectations

By Diego Reinoso, Rimisp - Centro Latinoamericano para el Desarrollo Rural

¿Qué esperaba antes de venir?

Al salir de Santiago de Chile esperaba poder aprender y compartir con un grupo de personas sobre cómo las herramientas Web se pueden convertir en una excelente herramienta de trabajo.

Antes de ver si se cumplirían mis expectativas, recorrí Amsterdam por dos días. Imperdible: Museos, canales, coffeeshop, barrio rojo...

El lunes llegué a Amersfoort junto a otros participantes del ComPart Enablers' Workshop.

Mi otra gran expectativa era conocer a personas de distintas partes del mundo. La expectativa fue sobrepasada por los hechos y puedo decir que he conocido a personas de Mali, Burkina Faso, Kirguistán, Uganda, Nepal, etc.

Han pasado dos días y mis expectativas han sido satisfechas. Ha sido una interesante experiencia para reforzar mi conocimiento sobre algunas herramientas y redescubrir otras que no conocía. Me es especialmente útil para mi trabajo en la actualización del Blog Red Prensa Rural y el sitio Web del programa Dinámicas Territoriales Rurales de Rimisp.

Aún quedan dos días y creo que surgirán nuevas expectativas que seguro serán satisfechas en el Workshop.

[An English translation attempt..]

What I expected before coming?

Leaving Santiago de Chile hoped to learn and share with a group of people about how Web tools can become an excellent tool.

Before seeing if it would meet my expectations, I walked around Amsterdam for two days. You can not miss: Museums, channels, coffeeshops, red-light district...

On Monday I arrived to Amersfoort with other participants of ComPart Enablers Workshop.

My other big expectation was meet people from around the world. The expectation was surpassed by the facts and I can say I've met people from Mali, Burkina Faso, Kyrgyzstan, Uganda, Nepal, etc.

It has been two days and my expectations have been met. It was an interesting experience to enhance my knowledge and rediscover some other tools did not know. It is especially useful for my work on the update of the Blog Red Prensa Rural and the website of the Rural Territorial Dynamics program of Rimisp.

There are still two days and I think that surely will create new expectations will be met at the Workshop.

Extra! Extra! Extra!
You want to see the best zoom of the history and listen to a Chilean speak a bad English, press play:

Murphy’s Law always present

Santiago de Chile. These days I am having the wonderful opportunity to work with one of ICCO’s partners on the introduction of Web2 tools for their communication and sharing needs. The objective is to share ICCO’s experiences on introducing ComPart within the own ICCO organisation and to discuss and realize the first steps for this organisation on their challenging new path.

It is all about RIMISP a well known - and I would guess respected - organisation working on all kinds of rural development issues in Latin America. They are obviously not unknown to publishing on the web. Just have a look at their website(s) and I am sure you will agree they are very well made (content wise and also for the clear “navigability”). However the staff is very interested to get to know more on how to use the Web2.0 to improve their internal and external communication.

This 4-day workshop was really well prepared. A few days ago I received quite a long list of the expectations of the individual staff members about the workshop. In the short video below Rosamelia Andrade, who has been preparing and coordinating the workshop, summarises these expectations. I really do hope that, together with all involved, we will be able to answer them.

Click To Play

Anyhow the first day was tempting. As so often in these occasions Murphy’s Law was confirmed once again. Although I already knew that one never should combine an on-line and a face-to-face meeting because it is impossible to give due attention to “both listener groups” at the same time, I did it again because most of the staff wanted to participate in the introductory presentation of possibilities and quite a lot of them live and work all over Latin America and/or are travelling. Of course right before and during the actual presentation all possible technical problems showed up (failing headsets, crashing laptops, connection problems, etc). Nevertheless we succeeded to have a good start and a discussion with more questions then I could answer. The interest and even “hunger” to get to know more about all the possibilities was very evident.

Of course I will keep you informed about the results once we have finished these interesting and also for me very “learning” days.

by Maarten