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

Setting up online learning communities is just like learning to skate inline

This year 2011 the digital energy within the ICCO Alliance has been mostly dedicated to the setup and give life to the Learning Communities (LC’s). Several LC now have been formed around the themes the Alliance is working on together with its partners in a large number of programmes. And yes, it was confirmed again: people sometimes believe online facilitation simply happens, that it is something like breathing that everyone can do automatically. But fast skating inline down a frozen canal is a better metaphor. To skate inline you need first to learn to walk, then to skate and then skate well and finally to skate with other people. And like skating, online facilitation is best learnt with and from other people by doing it. However you always need the right weather and ice conditions to skate. Anyhow many colleagues within the Alliance have really put lots of energy and creativity in the setup and animation of their community. Need assessments have taken place, as well as discussions during face to face meetings about how to continue to deepen ideas and share experiences while working around the world. The LC’s Private Sector Cooperation, Basic Health and HIV and Food and Nutrition Security definitely have ‘taken off’.

Lately we have been talking with a quite a number of the facilitators, which was a really motivating and inspiring round of conversations. The feedback they gave us showed that most are struggling with ‘what’ and ‘how’ they need to do to energise the communities, help them become vivid and interesting for the members. The idea now is to develop, together with all facilitators, ways of working with their communities that really aim at usefulness for all members. As it is in our DNA, we’ll be practice what we preach and have started already to discuss these issues online in the ‘facilitators’ learning community’ and we’ll deepen this conversations in a couple of online sessions which will be held beginning of 2012.

Usage of digital tools in ICCO - Stats 2011 Q2

An important element of the project we are supporting in ICCO consists of monitoring the usage and traffic of the different digital tools.

The statistics from the first two quarters of 2011 show a mixed trend.

While the pageviews on the different workspaces have slightly decreased compared to the same period of the previous years, the visits have instead increased quite significantly - from 8300 to over 21000. We do not know what this really means, we are looking into possible reasons and inform you as soon as we found out more.

As also experienced last year, the traffic on blogs and video is also diminishing, and this is clearly due to the fact that less content has been posted on this spaces.

What keep on being very popular instead is SlideShare: in the first 6 months on 2011, the presentations uploaded on the ICCO Alliance account recorded well over 7000 views. For this period, two presentations stands out in terms of views: "Human Rights Framework" and "ICCO, Connect4Change and ICT for Economic Development".

In the coming weeks, we'll look more closely at these results and see how we need to change and adapt our work and the support given to the usage of the different tools.

ComPart Evaluation - Three key roles to support collaboration and learning

We are still thinking through the implications of the recent ComPart evaluation, first announced on this blog, We know it wasn't the perfect time, given the changes the ICCO Alliance has been going through lately, but if you have been able to contribute to the evaluation in one way or another, we really want to thank you for your time and effort.

One of the suggestions of the evaluation team was to develop and work with three key roles (though not necessarily three distinct people) to support this way of working. If you're somewhat familiar with ComPart, you probably know the ComPart admin team (based in Europe) relies heavily on the continuous efforts of the ComPart ambassadors (personnel of the regional offices) and the ComPart enablers (web 2.0 and collaboration experts in the regions).

The evaluation suggests working with three 'roles':
converer - technology steward - facilitator

The evaluation team suggest a somewhat different constitution of the roles: conveners, facilitators and technology stewards. The conveners are the ones that bring people together and they make sure that there is trust among the group. The facilitators focus on the processes and the activities that come with it. The technology stewards, in their turn, will assist the group on technological issues, but without loosing the community perspective.

We believe that these three key roles can have a big impact on the adoption and implementation of new ways of working where collaboration and learning are vital. When looking back at our own experiences with ComPart, we have seen several examples of how this can work in practice.

One such case was when ComPart went global for the first time. During the Conference on Informal Education and Literacy in Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) several sessions were to be held in which the participants would be introduced to ComPart with exercises to get acquainted with this new way of working. The very first day of the conference, however, the people who had organised the workshop came to us with a problem. During the presentations, the three countries had so many interesting questions about the others' programmes that they needed to spend at least an additional two hours to this session, which, in turn, would seriously mess up the schedule. So we were asked if ComPart couldn't solve this urgent problem. And it could...

We quickly created wiki-pages for the questions per country and instead of starting a 'ComPart session', as we had planned, we briefly introduced the event wiki as a way of getting the work at hand (i.e. answering all the questions) done as quickly as possible. So instead of having a seperate ComPart session about wikis, we integrated it in the session Presentations – part 2.

The wiki was used to let the participants of the
different countries asked and answer each others questions

There were several reasons why this worked so well. First of all, we were lucky to have conveners and facilitators like Machteld Ooijens (ICCO) and Tine Veldkamp (IC Consult) present. They knew the group very well, spotted the need for a ComPart intervention and had the authority to suggest and introduce this 'new way of working'. Local enablers Christophe Hien (Burkina Faso) and Oudou Bengaly (Mali) had good knowledge of the ComPart tools but also had a perfect understanding of the local context, the technical difficulties people might encounter during their daily work and they were acquainted with the theme of the conference. The results of this experiment (it was improvised after all) were remarkable. All questions were answered in less than an hour, where it would have taken more than 2 hours to answer them in the 'traditional way'. Everybody had used and contributed to the wiki without it feeling as a burden or something 'extra'. Instead, it was seen as a real time saver and something that helped them get on with the job at hand.

We think this example not only shows the validity of working with conveners, facilitators and technology stewards. It is also linked with other recommendations of the evaluation team, like blending learning with getting work done, create time-delimited experiments or change one thing at a time.

The evaluation has a lot of valuable suggestions for the ICCO way of working. Luckily, we don't have to start from scratch and we can build on previous experiences (successes but also failures) ComPart and ICCO have had. And that's what learning's all about...

Danny Aerts

Evaluation of ComPart – The real question

As if there wasn’t enough going on in ICCO in the last quarter of 2010, the ComPart evaluation came to a head in December. Marc Coenders and Nancy White, the lead evaluators, held a validation workshop on 9 December 2010 to discuss their findings and the final report was presented to management on 12 December 2010. It was a deep investigation and the findings described in the report are rich, balanced between positive and negative, subtle and far-reaching so it is hard to summarise the main points in a blog post. This is therefore a personal take on the findings, from my own point of view, as both a ComPart admin team member for three years and an independent consultant with experience in KS and the use of digital technology to support the work of development organisations.

A storm tossed cork

In terms of context the report acknowledges that ICCO has been through a period of turbulence unrivalled in recent times, one that will unfortunately continue for at least the early part of 2011, and not simply because of the current financial pressures. The longer term change illustrated opposite is about

continuing to move to a more networked organisation at a time when public money is reducing sharply. In that context staff and partners are much less likely to be able to – or want to – prioritise learning about a ‘change project’ such as ComPart, especially one that is associated with a ‘way of working’ that is different to the status quo. ComPart, by definition, is focused on ICCO’s partners and alliance members, which, the report notes, has meant that the ComPart way of working has become associated with the wider changes taking place across ICCO during this period, which in many cases produces negative connotations. This provides a context for the finding that internationally based people generally had more positive views of ComPart and its role than Utrecht based staff. This is despite the fact that, as the report notes, international offices in their set-up phase were generally unable to engage with ComPart as they would have liked to and so the ambition to use ComPart with partners has not yet been achieved.

The ComPart Lab

The report notes early on that, "ComPart turned out to be a laboratory with a series of experiments rather than a project with defined, measurable goals." In terms of evaluating the results and impact of ComPart, the report acknowledges and speaks positively about the range and scale of the work that has been done; the quality of support provided; the continual experimentation and the consequent well documented lessons learnt; and the resultant growth in awareness across ICCO of how digital tools can support business and learning processes. However, the number of active users is still small. This, suggest the evaluators, is a product of the complexity of the ComPart toolset, the difficulty of choosing between or integrating ComPart with corporate IT and Communications tools and the fact that its usage is not seen as an essential part day to day working but as an extra. The one occasion where ComPart was integrated into a core Business Process – the development of the Business Plan – did raise ComPart’s profile and usage of the wiki but also generated a lot of extra work and some confusion as it was introduced rapidly and with inadequate preparation. That example also highlighted one of the key weaknesses raised in the report, that wikis are often difficult to introduce into organisations because a lot of people do not like their structure – or lack of it – and are not comfortable with the way of working they encourage. The ComPart wiki has become a rich source of information and learning but many people are less aware of the other tools in the ComPart toolkit.

Questions to do with ways of working as well as attitudes to technology and information storage or retrieval are central to the report, mainly because the evaluators note that there isn’t a consensus about these issues within ICCO. For example, to some people a wiki is a place to store information and should become as reliable, searchable and up-to-date as other online resources. Other people see a wiki as a dynamic and flexible tool to support collaborative processes and are not rigorous in how information is organised and stored. Wikis, of course, can be used in both ways but the result is an inconsistent collection of material not always accessible to new staff or others not so engaged in the ComPart experiments. At the same time, to many people ComPart was simply the toolkit and the ‘way of working’ which it promoted – and indeed depended on for its success – was not conceptually well understood, perhaps too open and flexible for the current ICCO way of working. This leads to one of the most fundamental findings which is that the questions which are raised in the review are not essentially to do with ComPart but to do with ICCO itself, how the organisation wants to go forward in terms of learning and Knowledge Management. The evaluators suggest the most important questions are about what ICCO wants to do with its learning and knowledge sharing, about what is the ICCO way of working - rather than the ComPart way of working; about how Departments work with each other and how ICCO is going to adapt to its evolution to a networked organisation. They suggest that ICCO should concentrate on thinking about those issues, and then look at what can be learnt from the ComPart programme to support those new ways of working.

A rose by any other name…

Names are important. Marc has some interesting things to say about learning and naming/theory (see blip below). The recognition that ‘ComPart’ has become associated with problematic issues for ICCO staff suggested to the evaluators that, “the ComPart brand carries enough misunderstanding that it could become a liability. We suggest this is a turning point where ComPart becomes the historical name of a period of experimentation and learning”. We need to talk about the “ICCO-Alliance way of working” rather than the “ComPart way of working”.

From pioneering to deploying

In the new decentralised (and down sized) ICCO social media and other digital tools definitely have a role to play. So the pioneering phase is over. The time has come to really deploy and integrate working with digital tools in the organisation its processes as it regionalises. Therefore it is time to launch a new phase, taking into account the experience gained and all lessons learnt from the “ComPart phase”. As well as the ongoing regional office development programmes there are other new initiatives, such as the learning communities programme, which could benefit from that experience. However, the report also suggests that two other key areas of attention. Firstly, ensure that the next phase is integrated within the whole organisational way of working. Secondly, as part of that, there must be smoother and more cooperative relations between directly involved departments (P&D, ICT, Communications) and thereby with all staff within the Alliance.

Pete Cranston

(If you are interested you can ask for a copy of the full report at compartadmin@gmail.com)

Evaluation of ComPart kicks off

Even if the name ComPart - Communication with and amongst Partners - came in only at a later stage, at ICCO we have been busy with this project since 2007.

The main idea behind this project was that it would contribute to ICCO Alliance capacity building, learning networks, and knowledge in two main ways: first, by supporting the information, knowledge and communication capacities of partner organisations in the south; second, by supporting these same activities within the current alliance members.

During the implementation of the project ICCO was undergoing a profound organizational transition process. One of the major elements of this process is the decentralisation, which means that much of the daily work is being transferred to Southern based regional offices, with the transition of ICCO from a Dutch-based and located organisation to an international decentralised network organisation. This meant that new (internal and external) communication issues arose. Already in its early stage it was foreseen that ComPart could play a role in helping to address these communication issues.

The ComPart project has been designed and implemented with the strong support from Euforic, a cooperative of European Development organizations mainly supporting their members with relevant information and the use of information management tools. This cooperative closed down in the end of 2009 and fortunately part of the involved staff could continue the support to the ComPart project by way of the newly created consultancy firm Euforic Services.

During the 4 years of the projects, as documented here in this blog and in the ComPart timeline, numerous achievements have been reached, and different challenges emerged as well. More in general, a great deal of learning has been done as far as introducing and applying social media and collaborative tools in an changing organisational context is concerned. It seems now a good moment to look back at what has been done so far, reflect on the project sore assumptions and implementation patterns and learn from our achievements and, more important, form our mistakes. Therefore, since a couple of week, the ComPart project is undergoing its evaluation phase.

The purpose of this evaluation is twofold. In the first place to get an appreciation of the ComPart approach itself, the way it has been introduced and the results of the project until now. In the second place it is expected to get practical recommendations on how to further improve and implement the “ComPart way of working” within ICCO, the ICCO Alliance and among their partners. This implies that it is expected to get an overall validation of the project towards its objectives and based on this to get recommendations on how to better use and introduce internet based tools for an open, collaborative and learning culture within the decentralized organization/alliance and also possible (technical) improvements on the tool-set itself.

Nancy White and Marc Coenders are leading this evaluation, and we're glad we can count on their knowledge and expertise to help us learning and reflecting on ComPart.

The methodolgy follwed for the evaluation comprises the review of the documentation, plans and the ComPart tool-set; the preparation of a learning history for this project; a web survey; individual and collective interviews with champions and active users, new users, users who aren't very active, non users, the ComPart admin team and ICCO management; a 'findings validation' workshop with users, the admin team and others involved to share findings and gather feedback.

Most of the above is already happening these days and the evaluators are busy reviewing the documentation available, as well as interviewing people in ICCO Global Office in Utrecht and in the Regional Offices. The validation workshop will be held in Utrecht on 9 December 2010.

As usual, we'll use this blog to document on the progress of the evaluation and report on its finding and the validation workshop.

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!

Preparing the ground for ComPart in the second half of 2010

In last week blog post, I announced the interim review meeting organised to "see how we are doing against the targets and objectives set at the beginning of the year for the ComPart project, and plan activities for the remaining months of 2010."

In less that 1.5 days, we had a very busy agenda to go through - discussing stats and tagging structure, wiki mapping and surgeries, activities in the regions and support to the global office, budget and deliverables...

A complete meeting report is on its way and it will be soon circulated and linked from here too. In the meantime, here a few highlights of what we discussed and agreed upon:

• From 'open' to 'thematic' surgeries: We'll continue with the online 'surgeries' 2 times a week; however each week we'll have a theme or topic that we will address in the first part of the session - we'll use this blog, the ComPart calendar and ICCO intranet to announce the weekly themes.
• Wiki mapping and tagging structure: We did quite some work already on both these aspects, but we need our findings and ideas to be validated, by colleagues in the Global Office as well as in the Regional Offices. For this, we'll organise a workshop in Utrecht, as well as online sessions with the different regions to move this further.
• Calendars and maps: Responding to the requests of several users, we'll do some more work to introduce and integrate the use of GCalendars and GMaps across the different offices and teams.
• Toolset and guides: We'll make sure that all ComPart tools and processes have an introductory page and relevant sections in the FAQs - all in the 4 working languages of ICCO.
• External Review report: This will be commissoned to get an appreciation of the ComPart approach itself, the way it has been introduced and the results of the project until now. In the second place it is expected to get practical recommendations on how to further improve and implement the “ComPart way of working” within ICCO, the ICCO Alliance and among their partners.

Some other tasks and activities were listed to be completed by the end of the year, differenciating between what we 'must' do and what we 'would like to', if the time allows and other conditions independent from our will are met.

Overall, as we have busy months behind us, it seems we'll have an even busier time ahead - but we stay confident we can deliver on what we promise, and we can continue fostering the way ComPart is used and applied across the new ICCO, the partners and other Alliance members.

ComPart updates: Interim review and stats 2010 Q2

On Tuesday 20 and Wednesday 21 July 2010 Maarten, Pete, Danny and myself will meet at the ICCO Global Office in Utrecht for an interim review of the ComPart project, to see how we are doing against the targets and objectives set at the beginning of the year, and plan activities for the remaining months of 2010.

So far, 2010 has been a busy year for ComPart, and the sign of its coming of age are visible throughout the organisation.

The Lobby and Advocacy team uses a wiki as core element in their workflows, as well as videos to produce guidelines and manuals, and delicious to share and organise links. Other departments, like FED and Mission, are also developing a similar strategy. The Conflict Transformation and Democratization workspace has been heavily reorganized, providing users with informative news and documentation of ICCO work in the area. Wikis have been used to write the funding application proposals for two alliances ICCO is involved in, the ICCO Alliance and Connect4Change. We have been supporting users from outside these groups in our weekly surgery session, and supported, facilitated and covered and face to face events, also with social reporting.

A major milestone for the project has been represented by the Enablers workshop held in Soesterberg last May. For the first time, we brought together representatives from 6 of the 8 regional offices, and the network of enablers that are supporting ComPart in the different regions. New friendships, connections and plans have been made during the workshop, with the result that ComPart is now much more known and understood across the whole decentralized organisation. And it is taking off in the Regional Offices, with trainings, introductory sessions and implementation in Delhi, Bali and Kampala.

The statistics from the first two quarters of 2010 confirm this positive trends and clearly show how wikis are now at the core of several business processes of the organisation. We have already reached almost the same number of pageviews as for the whole 2008, and we hope to reach the 100,000 by the end of the year.

We are doing less good on blogs and blips, but this might be related to the fact that - shame on us! - we haven't been doing much of this lately. More important, we haven't been able to identify yet other ICCO staff that could champion the use of blogs in the organisation.

Presentations, instead, are still very popular: some 20 new ones have been uploaded onto SlideShare, but because of the fact that most of them are kept private (i.e. only for ICCO staff and not for the wider public), the number of views has declined compared to last year, but it is still strong against 2008.

However, in spite of these numbers, and the growing interest and usage of ComPart, much is still to be done; in the review meeting we will discuss and focus on upcoming activities, improvements and pending issues to finalize and resolve, as well as carry on with some more strategic thinking for the next year, and what the project might look like further down the line when the decentralisation process will be completed.

Closing the ComPart Enablers Workshop 2010

The ComPart Enablers workshop 2010 has come to an end last Friday and everybody is heading home again. The day before all finished the assignments, after which we went to the ICCO offices and had the opportunity to visit the city of Utrecht. We had a lovely dinner in a restaurant on the ‘Old Canal’ in the centre.

The last day was mainly used for the planning of the follow up. For every region the representative of the ICCO office and the enabler(s) for that region worked together. This resulted in a set of very concrete and realistic plans for the activities to undertake during the coming year aiming at the integration of the ComPart way of working in the daily work of all ICCO staff world wide.

The great thing is that all participants now have gained the skills to be able to support and together with the enablers train their colleagues. All have got the ‘ComPart Driving license’ with at least the basic level for working with: wikis, blogs, delicious and feeds.

As told earlier, the participant who would produce the most complete and technically well made multi media trip report on the blog and wiki would be awarded. The quality of the end products really surprised us. We were amazed by the technical quality but surely also by the content itself. It was a pleasure reading, seeing and listening to them. This made it a very difficult job for the jury to choose the winners. Only looking at (minor) details, distinctions could be made. And by doing so the prize for the best blog and wiki in the category ICCO regional staff went to Jennifer Kironde (Kampala - Uganda), and with Diego Reinoso of Rimisp (Santiago Chile) we had a deserved winner in the category "Best blog and wiki – Enablers”. Congratulations for both!
Now looking back at the four days it is clear all participants are trained, good follow up plans have been made and we do all feel part of the ‘ComPart enablers team’ which means all objectives are reached.

Personally it was really a joy to participate, meeting (again) with the participants and getting to know new colleagues. I was impressed by the commitment and hard working and the fast way all captured the idea of the ComPart way of working. Perhaps as an afterthought (also expressed by one of the participants) the competitive element could have been used also in another way. Although the working ‘together alone’ (each working for themselves on their product during free hours until late in the evenings) also helped to build the team, it might have been good to include a collaborative element in the assignment, as collaboration is a key word in the ComPart way of working. This might be something to take into account for the future.

Anyhow I can say that my expectations where more than fulfilled largely thanks to the great group of participants whom I want to thank again for their commitment and all the nice and inspiring contributions. And of course this all could not have been achieved without the much appreciated support, facilitation and contributions of the Euforic Services team (Pier Andrea Pirani, Pete Cranston and Danny Aerts). Many thanks to you!

Maarten Boers

PS: Unfortunately two of the offices were not represented because of visa and flight problems; but somehow we will make sure these offices (and enabler) will catch up and join the team.

See more posts about the ComPart Enablers workshop 2010

Reflections

by Nicolle Beeby, SANGONet

Okay, another gathering – workshop! This time on another continent! So what? And then aptly named – ComPart too – Communication among Partners. If communication is your game – why was I trekked halfway across the world to have a face-to-face discussion? “Catch you online” is my favourite saying as part from friends or acquaintances I usually chat to on one of my many chat applications – which are all integrated into Pidgin … Don’t want my gtalk, msn, yahoo messenger and skype all popping up as soon as I log on… Yes! I’m just that famous! J

Sooo… let this journey begin properly. A few months ago, SANGONeT was contacted by Pete Cranston attend the Compart Enablers Workshop in Soesterberg, Netherlands from 18 – 21 May. Yours truly was requested to attend this auspicious occasion. Now, you may be reading this and thinking – WOW! but this young lady is ungrateful… However, I’m working toward to something … just go with the flow ;-)

Rewind to four weeks ago and I need to get a VISA. Now, if I knew that, that process would be so horrific, I would’ve had myself cloned just to take the hour long drive to Pretoria to queue at the Dutch Embassy on my behalf… needless to say, the only appointment I could get was for 12 May – with a 48 hour wait … and wait for it! Wait for it!! The Embassy was closed on 13 and 14 May for Dutch public holidays. Well, I’m not entirely blaming them – they did after all accommodate me by guaranteeing my visa to be ready on the 17th of May – the day I had to be in Netherlands already. Good enough I suppose… I did eventually get here! My tale of woes does not end there however, upon arrival at the O R Tambo airport in Johannesburg – it turned out that I was SIX hours too early! Due to volcanic ash over Europe - my flight was delayed by three hours… hmmm… now who to blame for that one?

Anyway… the food and hospitality on the plane was lovely, the flight itself was pleasant and found walking through customs to be a breeze! Imagine that! From frowning faces at the South African Dutch Embassy to delightful smiles upon arrival at Schipol in Amsterdam. Now now, don’t mistake my sudden outburst of sweetness, my woes have not ended! YET!

Soooo… Nicolle makes her grand entrance at the Kontakt der Kontinenten in Soesterberg, just outside Utrecht! And welcomed by an awesome bunch of warm smiles, leaving me feeling like Miss Universe had just entered the building (Where’s my crown people?)… is it in the water? Why is everyone in the Netherlands so happy? I mean, there’s a dark cloud hanging over you, for heaven’s sake – where is the doom and gloom? Or is it just me?

Well… turns out – it was just me! GERMS!! They spoil everything…

BUT! All was not lost… this was just day one… And Thanks to Michelle’s contagious laughter at the dinner table, Oudou and Hempal clicking away at their camera’s (I did say I felt like Miss Universe, right? Well, if there’s no crown – 50 Euros will also do J *hint hint nudge nudge*), to interesting conversations with Danny and of course, Diego being a great sport by allowing me to use our ZOOOOOOOOM video over here… Let’s just put it this way, the ice princess was starting to melt. And rapidly too… while very low on energy and growing weaker and weaker… Pete, my knight in shining armour comes to my rescue with meds – and again the sun that never sets in Netherlands starts to shine even brighter for Nicolle. Special thank you to the amazing group of participants… meeting and working with you all has certainly been a pleasure … Hope to stay in touch… in fact – in classic social media style… Click here and become my friend on facebook!

I guess at some point I have to mention something about the workshop, right? Well click here and get the low down on the past two days on the ComPart Wiki!

It's working

The silence in the hall (except the blips on test) during the ComPart 2010 enablers workshop, was a visible sign of ComPart way of going together. People on the same desk were just chatting on the ComPart networks chat, so that the silence is not disturbed.

I was following the policy of wait and see for the assignments. Thus, this allowed me to have a great time reading and viewing of everyone's story, blips and blogs, but left me with hardly few hours to do the tech update stuffs for myself.

So, I thought to follow the ComPart and crowd sourcing approach of working, which works :D. So, here I want to put forward my appreciation for all the enablers for developing such a wonderful knowledge bank.

You can visit my wiki page for all other development in the ComPart enablers workshop 2010 here.

by Hempal Shrestha

Finally ... Soesterberg

by Arnel Moya Astillero

“Siempre que te pregunto que cuando, como y donde. Tu siempre me responde. Quizas, quizas, quizas !”

The paragraph above quoted from a song describes the mood and the actual situation while I was preparing for the ComPart workshop. It also resonates with my general attitude in life. Being a Christian, I live on faith and trust in a Heavenly Father who is in control of my life. So I said to myself, given the difficulty in coming to the workshop, perhaps He has other plans for me. However, I believed that God willing, I will be able to attend.

The journey actually started with a forwarded email from a colleague (he is actually my boss but given the highly democratic culture at ICCO, we call each other colleagues) in the ICCO Regional Office Southeast Asia & Pacific while I was touring the countryside in the Philippines. I was with my Dutch counterpart visiting partners to formally introduce me as the new Program Officer. The email was from Machteld Ooijens inviting the RO managers to nominate a staff to attend the ComPart Enablers Workshop. The regional office is quite new so we haven’t gotten to the point of discussing “other tasks that may be assigned”. Why the email landed in my InBox (there are actually 10 people equally qualified to attend) is another story. And so it came to pass that I have to prepare for a trip to Holland while I was working on the project transfer and relocating my family to Bali. It doesn’t matter, I wanted to attend! A workshop on an internet-based knowledge-sharing platform using the popular internet tools otherwise used for gossip and exhibitionism and voyeurism seems fun!

The journey, however, was long and full of challenges. One of Murphy’s Laws which says “If anything can go wrong, it will!” was very much evident in this trip!

The first leg is Manila to Bali. This trip however did not happen as scheduled. We were supposed to fly March 31 but our actual flight happened on April 14. The first challenge was the Indonesian visa. It took sometime before me and my family got a visa from Indonesian immigration. The staff working on the visa is not allowed to pay the usual facilitation fees hence she has to go through the slow, patience-draining process! The second challenge was the Dutch visa. The main document needed was the formal invite from ComPart. It was written March 23 but somehow got lost in transit so I received it April 10. It takes the Dutch embassy in Manila 10 days to schedule a visa interview and another two weeks to process the application so working on the visa in Manila was out of the question. We leave in four days for Bali!

And so I flew to Bali with my family. The airline companies have perfected the science of squeezing the most Euro from their passengers. They are following a Calculus theorem which says that “the shortest distance between two points is a curve.” So the flight went from Manila to Singapore and Jakarta before finally going to Denpasar (see the map). We can actually derive the equation of the curve using methods in Calculus. Why do I keep remembering lessons in Calculus that were given ages ago? Maybe the ComPart discussions triggered or reconnected some broken neural connections in my brain!

Anyway, it took us about 15 hours to complete the trip. We even had to cross a time zone even if Manila and Bali is in the same time zone. However, travelling for me is always fun – a chance to meet people and see interesting things. I focus on the trip and not on the destination and this trip is a bonding opportunity for the family.

Upon arriving in Bali, the first order of the day is to resettle the family and catch up with work at the office. A couple of days passed before I had a chance to go to the Dutch consulate and apply for a visa. In a very nice way, the visa officer told me that it would take them a month to process the visa. But I only have three weeks before the workshop! Then you have to go to the Dutch embassy in Jakarta! They can do it in two weeks! So I sent all documents to a representative in Jakarta. It is a business related trip so the office can work on the visa. Or so I thought! I am working with a Dutch NGO funded by the Dutch government so the visa officer needs to see me in person! Life is good, another reason to travel. And so I got the chance to soak in the culture, taste the food and breathe the fumes of Jakarta.

The visa officer asked me three questions: when is my trip, what is the purpose of my visit to Holland and why am I applying very late! These are questions of national security! Then she said she needs to consult her boss. Maybe my responses to the questions were sensitive in nature! A Dutch guy took a peek, sized me up and maybe thought “ICCO is indeed downsizing, from 6’4” to 5’4”. I am no threat!

Anyway, the visa officer finally told me that they will give me only a BeNeLux visa and it would take three days to process. I’ve had enough of Jakarta in one day so I gave an authorization for somebody to claim my passport and courier it to me in Bali. The interview was scheduled on a Friday, so the work on the visa only started the Monday of the following week. The release date was a Wednesday but my representative had medical emergency so he failed to go to the embassy. Thursday happened to be a holiday (Ascension Day – the day when Christ, after his resurrection, finally ascended to heaven) so Friday is the last chance to get my passport in time for my May 16, Sunday flight! I left the office that day still uncertain if I’ll be able to go!

Meanwhile colleagues in the Global office who were arranging for the plane tickets were also facing their own challenges. Because of the uncertainty of the visa, they did not buy the tickets yet and seats for the flights were fast disappearing. I finally got my passport evening of Saturday, May 15 and a ticket departing in the evening of Monday, May 17. The delays were actually a blessing in disguise because had I left on the original date of departure, I might have been stuck of a day in another airport since Schiphol was closed on the date of my arrival due to the ash clouds from the volcanic eruption in Iceland.

And so finally, I’m here is Soesterberg!

It was a tiring journey but being met by Maxime at the airport and being welcomed at the workshop venue by a roomful of smiling and friendly faces of beautiful/handsome and seemingly interesting people somehow gave me a boost of energy. I am optimistic, that the trip would be worth it!

And now the headache starts. It takes my body a couple of days to notice that it has crossed several time zones… but this is another blog story!

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:

From blip to blog*

We just started our second day at the Soesterberg 2010 Compart enablers conference (not entirely sure in what order I should use these words) with a reflective walk in the woods surrounding the conference venue. While the people from Europe were enjoying the nice weather, our colleagues from the regional ICCO offices and the enablers had a somewhat different experience. Some of them actually come from 45+ degrees Celsius!

As part of the workshop, all participants will create a blog and a wiki that they will use to shed their light on the workshop. The assignment includes the embedding of multiple media formats into the blog and wiki. Camera's have been flashing and recording all day long and as a result, a lot of information and media has already been produced and uploaded. If you'd like to follow what is happening here in Soesterberg, you have several options, as usual:

1. For images, please visit this set on the Flickr account of compartuser.
2. If you prefer moving images, you can check compartuser on blip.tv.
3. The Compart support wiki has more information about the workshop, with, among others, background information on regional contexts and the raw notes of the different sessions.
4. And for those who really want to stay up to date with everything as it happens here in Soesterberg, some of us are tweeting with the hashtag #comparten
5. And finally, we will keep you updated on this blog.

Let us know in the comments if you have questions about the process or if you want

to hear more from the participants or the different regions. We'll study them in detail!

by Danny Aerts

* Nice reference (credits to P. Cranston) to the embedding of videos into blog posts, that has nothing to do with this article.

Communication, pleasure and connection

Lessons I've learned in ICCO Enablers Workshop
by Michelle Prazeres

I'm Michelle Prazeres. I'm a journalist and I work for Acao Educativa, a brasilian organisation that fight for education, youth and culture rights.

I came here with at least three wishes/expectations: communication, connection and pleasure.
Each day, I've learned one (or more) lesson (lessons).

A lesson (that I already knew, but it was very important to find people who think just like me!)
Communication is a process and not a set of products.
Technology is not a set of tools, but use what you do to them and the role we assign to them politically and socially.

Lesson 2: I learned to use Delicious.
I created an account for me and I will definitely continue to use in my daily work.

Lesson 3: The countries whose representatives are presented at the workshop have very similar realities in relation to access the Internet and technologies.
In fact, Brazil is one of the most advanced countries in relation to this, although it is a reality beyond desirable and ideal for the work of organisations.

Lesson 4: Using the tools of Compart it comes to curiosity, pleasure and fun and willing to learn without fear of making mistakes. Check on ten fears and miths about technologies.

Lesson 5: Two major issues in relation to such tools are: how to maintain the enthusiasm that is created in a workshop like this at work everyday, and how to reconcile the traditional work with this new way of working, and that Compart?

Lesson 6: I've learned how to use feeds, and created an account in iGoogle to receive feeds sites that interest me.

I guess my expectations were accomplished and - more than that - they were exceeded!
I discovered that Compart is all about communicating, having fun and connecting!

It's been such a fantastic moment.
I've shared my view of it in a video that I made with all the participants of the workshop.
Take a look at it!


PORTUGUESE VERSION

Eu cheguei aqui com tres desejos: comunicacao, prazer e conexao.
A cada dia, eu aprendi uma (ou mais) licao (licoes).

Licao 1 (esta eu ja sabia, mas foi muito importante encontrar pessoas que pensam como eu!):
Comunicacao e um processo e nao um conjunto de produtos.
Tecnologia nao e um conjunto de ferramentas, mas o uso que voce faz delas e o papel que conferimos a elas politicamente e socialmente.

Licao 2: aprendi a usar o Delicious.
Criei uma conta para mim, e com certeza vou continuar usando no meu trabalho cotidiano.

Licao 3: Os paises cujos representantes estao presentes no workshop tem realidades muito similares em relacao ao acesso as tecenologias e a internet.
Na verdade, o Brasil e um dos paises mais avancados em relacao a isso, ainda que seja uma realidade aquem da desejavel e da ideal para o trabalho das orgaziacoes.

Licao 4: O uso das ferramentas do Compart se trata de curiosidade, prazer e diversao e vontade de aprender sem medo de errar.

Licao 5: Duas grandes questoes em relacao a estas ferramentas sao: como manter o entusiasmo que se cria em um workshop como este no trabalho cotidiano; e como conciliar o trabalho tradicional com esta nova forma de trabalhar, que e o Compart?

Licao 6: aprendi a usar feeds, e criei uma conta no Igoogle para receber feeeds de sites que me interessam.

Regional Context for Central & Eastern Africa

Janet Achola and Jennifer Kironde from the Central & Eastern Africa Region attend the ComPart Enablers Workshop in Soesterberg.

Each region was to talk about their context so that others would understand the conditions we are or will be working in especially elements that favor or complicate the use of compart or ICT.

Our presentation was summarised in a poster (see image on the right) and the following outline:

The Geographical Region of Central and Eastern Africa: The Region covers 8 countries of Burundi, DR Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda with the RO in Kampala and 2 suboffices in Juba and Congo. According to the concept of trilocation, these 3 offices together form one regional organization even though they are geographically separated.

ICT/Gender Policy:
In E.A, all the 3 countries have a draft ICT policies, ministry if ICTs, ICT Parliamentary committees.
Attitude towards learning or exchanging information:
Poor culture in information exchange exists and the use of compart should play an important role in solving this problem.

Connectivity:
The existing state of telecommunication in the country leaves much to be desired as a gate way to internet. On the whole, internet diffusion is severely constrained by low levels of telephone penetration, the high cost of telecommunication connection, lack of telephone service to homes and businesses , frequent and long power interruptions among others. On average cost of internet connectivity in Uganda ranges between USD 100-1600 and monthly subscription can go as high as USD 2400 a month depending on the bandwidth and service provider.

Availability and usage of internet: Internet statistics
The Regional Office has 48 staff out of whom 36 accesss and use computers/internet, the other 12 staff who don't have computers don't actually need it for their work and atleast all the staff have the basic knowledge on how to use internet. This is different for our partners in the remote areas who are affected by a number of factors ranging from high costs, slow and unreliable connections, lack of power and frequent power interruptions among others. The penetration rate of internet in Uganda per say is very low for example in the year 2000, there were only 40,000 users out of a population of 24.4m people and by the year 2009, only 2.5m users were registered visa vis a population of 32.3 million acording to the International Telecommunications Union publications 2010.

Related Gender Issues:
Government has intervened by promoting internet at Multipurpose Community Telecentres (MCTs). MCTs represent shared internet public access facilities aimed at providing access to advanced information and communication services in rural and remote areas as well as deprived or underserved urban areas which also takes into account the women in development.

Government is also in the process of rolling out 1 computer per child in UPE schools with an American company. This has advantages because it favors those who can't afford including women.

For more information look out for background information on regional contexts under May 2010 Soesterberg NL

By Jennifer Kironde

ComPart training: Learnings by IAM

These are what I learned within 1.5 day:
1. Converting video files into wmv files, editing in Windows Movie Maker and the result is here:

2. Blogging, which means to publish the text, videos, pictures in ComPart network.

This is really fun!!!

by Iskenderbek Amanbaev

ICCO - South America

La oficina de ICCO Sud America se habrio hace dos semanas, para siete paises de Sud America.

Nos estamos introduciendo recientemente en el manejo de las herramientas tecnologicas que ICCO utiliza para realizar su trabajo y es ese el motivo por el cual estoy participando de este taller, que ademas de contextualizarnos, nos permite compartir una linda experiencia en equipo.

by Ivett Rodriguez

ComPart Workshop in Soesterberg 2010

Hi all!

I am Andi K. Yuwono from Praxis Association, Jakarta - Indonesia. I am the national coordinator for Collective Learning Forum - People Initiative. The forum is directed not towards specific issue nor sector but towards the effort to develop the interaction intensity among actors of change. Through consolidation among agents of change the vision to achieve democratization, justice, peace, and or the promotion and protection of human rights whether in civil, political, economy, social and cultural aspects can be expected to be accomplished.

This is my second day at KdK in Soesterberg. We are still learning about the "power" of ComPart. It is held by ICCO, and facilitating by Pete, Pier, Danny and Maarten.

Well, ComPart (Communication with and among Partners) is an initiative of the ICCO Alliance. By enabling more effective knowledge sharing and exchange, it aims to support ongoing strategic changes in the Alliance members – and the way in which they and their staff collaborate with partners worldwide. It also offers a set of tools and processes that individuals and teams may use to optimize the effectiveness of their work.

It is good to be here, even it is too cold for me. Thanks to everyone.

For further info please visit my full Trip Report.

By Andi K. Yuwono