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

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.

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 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.

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.

Seven reasons why the new PBworks Business Edition is good for you!

PBworks is the wiki platform that we are using in ComPart and they have recently released a new version that has a lot of new and improved features. In fact, PBworks offers now more than just the possibility to create wikis, and the benefit of this can summarized as follows:

1. PBworks offers the possibility to create a 'securely open garden' for the ICCO Alliance flowers to grow in a protected environment, leaving the possibility open for 'outsiders' to view and comment on the greater part of the content.


2. It has chat and instant messaging functionalities, to exchange with colleagues in real time while you are working on a wiki.


3. Users can create project related milestones and assign tasks.


4. It makes possible to differentiate between 'network users' that can join all workspaces in the network, and 'guest' that are invited only to specific workspaces.


5. It provides a better overview of what's happening in the garden, bringing together in one single place all the notifications about changes in the different workspaces.


6. It has social functionalities, with each user able to create and update his/her profile and status and to 'follow' others users.


7. Economically, it provided to be a great deal!

We as ComPart admin team are very happy with these new development, even if they entails some extra work for us in terms of getting all the network users aboard and setting rights and permissions for users and guests...

To support ICCO Alliance staff and partners in this process and to help you find your way in the new ComPart network, we're developing a series of user manuals and guides. Please let us know if something is still missing, and if you need specific explanations we are not yet providing.

ComPart comes of age

"We've stopped playing and now we've started the game", said Reinier van Hoffen after the ComPart lunchtime meeting last week. He was referring to one of the themes that emerged at the ICCO Alliance Working Conference last year.

For the last two years ICCO staff have been working with the ComPart team to explore how best we can support collaboration and knowledge sharing across the Alliance using modern online tools. Browsing through the over 100 wikis, regular blog posts and collections of conferences and workshops material from events across the globe, it's clear that we are in a new, more advanced, phase.

A key indicator of this, of course, is that the ICCO Alliance Business Plan is being developed in a wiki, which means easier management of documents and comments than is possible in the traditional approach that has large numbers of documents flying around the organisation by email, risking confusion over which is a current version and increasing the email flood. At the same time several teams have developed workspaces to support their everyday work, with rich and varied content, using a number of tools.

Just do it!

To share the work that is being done across ICCO, ComPart organised a lunchtime 'show and tell' on Tuesday 23 February 2010. It was a well attended meeting, with staff from all areas of the organisation. The central activity was a chat show - a presentation from three teams of how the the ComPart approach is supporting their work. As you can see from the recording below, the teams are gathering a wide range of material and using several tools. Possibly more important is their enthusiasm for their work. All of the presenters echoed Mariken Gaanderse when she said, "For me the best advice (to my colleagues) would be just to start using (ComPart), because only then you'll find out what it provides you."



However, in spite of the progress and enthusiasm, many challenges still remain: not all staff are at ease with technological changes and the learning curve seems to be a bit steep for some. Moreover, some desktop or web based applications are not easily available for staff inside the ICCO building, limiting for example the use of Skype, the synchronization between Outlook and Google calendar, or the availability of AT&T Connect. Lastly, the enormous pressures on the Regional Offices during their set-up phase means many haven't yet been able to explore in any depth the ComPart approach and toolkit. ComPart is especially relevant in the new decentralised ICCO. So it is good to hear that regions such as Central Asia, which are more established, are now keen to engage with the programme, as Pepijn Trapman confirmed on his recent visit to Utrecht.

The debate and lively discussion offered us as ComPart Admin Team a great deal of insight in terms of expectations, challenges and issues that ICCO Alliance staff are facing as far as information, communication and knowledge sharing are concerned, and how ComPart can further support their work. The recommendations and issues raised are being integrated into our plans for 2010, and will be reflected in the way we support ICCO Alliance staff and partners.

IWC09: Lessons learnt supporting the process

The ICCO-Alliance International Working Conference has come to an end last Friday. This conference was a success, many things have been thouroughly discussed and on essential issues agreements have been reached. So the ICCO-Alliance partners have a good basis to (quickly) build on the plans for the future.

In supporting this conference with over 120 people with sessions running in parallel, attempting to capture information for the group and allow access to a further 200 interested colleagues with passworded access, as "wiki-moderators" we are bound to have learnt a few lessons. Many of the approaches we have used here have been tried and tested elsewhere, but a few are new.

Social reporting
In a passworded context - discussing the business plan 2011-2015 for the ICCO-Alliance obviously is not public - means working in a more restricted space than we have been used to in previous work. Using Twitter in combination with blog posts, Slideshare and Blip.tv proved very powerful as a way of recording discussions at the EADI Information Management Working Group for example. There we could have an initial session to raise awareness of the new tools and then agree on some simple rules to tag all the materials and feature them through one site, while people published throughout the web. Last week we had to define what to share where and whith whom so things got a little bit more complicated.

Walled Web2
Instead in this situation we find ourselves relying on one 'walled garden' (the wiki) to record the internal deliberations, and report on the work in progress. Some products can be released to a broader audience to provide an idea of the process, and give some idea of the content (e.g. the post on this blog). However participation can still be social within this garden, but the barriers to contributing are higher and the motivations quite different. In comparison with some other meetings, this time many more traditional reporting tools were used; with summaries and presentations on flipcharts, and digital written content being rare. The wiki was not really embedded in the process of facilitation, (group reports could and/or should have been directly written and documented on the wiki) also because most delegates did not know how to contribute directly to the wiki.
Connectivity and contributions
The venue for the meeting (Kontakt der Kontinenten, Soesterberg) has superb connectivity, but with pressures of time, this is used in the breaks for catching up on emails and other work. As always during this type of meetings there was not much opportunity to review the contents of the wiki. However the documenting work was also meant to be used by those unable to attend (colleagues in the offices in Utrecht and overseas and members of Regional Councils and partners organisations). Of course it can also already be seen to be a future resource for continuing discussions and developing ideas after the meeting.

Multiple channels
What has struck us all about the meeting is the multiple channels being used to communicate the activities during this week. Screens in the common areas ran the 10 minute daily news bulletin which featured activities from that day. Short videos (blips) were used to capture content from the sessions which could be shared with a broader public such as work on the gender policy and regional analysis. These blips were also used to illustrate the process log showing the work of the facilitators and the cartoonist. Presentations were shared on Slideshare and photos through Flickr, this meant they could be available to others.

Multiple approaches
A number of approaches have been used by the facilitators of the meeting. We have changed the way we cover the outcomes of these activities. As the approach to presenting and capturing information is primarily paper based and verbal in the way the process has been organised we have had to rely on photos of flipcharts and audio to quickly capture materials.

Methodologies such as the timeline have been proven to bring identity and understanding to a community, and this way of introducing the discussion on values worked well. By using tools such as the online timeline we were quickly able to showcase the discussions and feature on the wiki and the blog.

PBworks
Again the PBworks platform has proved itself with the speed with which templates for pages can be created, files uploaded (directly transformed in wiki pages) and linked and large volumes of information managed. The spellchecker proved itself as high speed note taking affected the accuracy of data entry. A production line where photos of flipcharts could be uploaded into tables and transcribed later made the wiki a significant reference resource.

What would we change
To start with, we think that working with the wiki needs to be more embedded in the facilitation of the meeting. In developing ideas where virtual discussion will have to continue after the meeting, materials need to be captured as early as possible. Whilst not every group could have worked easily around a screen to report their thoughts, some could have and this would improve capturing the details of the meeting. We need to see when the notes made in word by group members appear on the wiki later.

Further, we needed more preparation in promoting the wiki, improving ease of access for participants, and considering distribution of printouts (this was limited by environmental concerns). It is also important when working like this to integrate communication and facilitation support, something that proved its value as the conference progressed.

Overall feeling
This was a demanding assignment but very worthwhile for the value it brought to some of the participants and management. It proved to be an opportunity to be innovative in some areas. It was an opportunity to see and combine new approaches and to build a communication vehicle for ongoing discussions and a channel for feedback in the conference.

The ComPart admin team (Pier, Chris and Maarten)

See more from the IWC 2009 and subscribe to the IWC09 newsfeed or email alert.

Formation des personnels du CCEB

Dans le cadre du renforcement des capacités du personnel du CCEB, Burkina Faso, une session de formation sur l’usage du wiki fut organisée du mardi 20 au samedi 24 février 2009 dans les locaux du CCEB. Cette formation visait à familiariser les participants à la mise en ligne d’informations dans le wiki : http://educafroc.pbwiki.com.

Objectif de la formation : mettre en ligne dans un wiki des documents multimédias (textes, images, diapositives et vidéos)

Objectifs spécifiques :

1- Traiter et formater une image au format web
2- publier du texte
3- publier des diapositives sur slideo et les partager dans le wiki
4- publier des images sur flickr et les partager dans le wiki
5- monter une vidéo avec movie maker, la publier et la partager dans le wki
6- créer une page wiki et l’éditer

Cette session de formation visait à outiller le personnel du CCEB à la mise en ligne d’informations sous plusieurs formats (texte et multimédia) afin d’offrir une plus grande visibilité aux actions quasi quotidiennes du CCEB et donner ainsi à voir aux partenaires les actions entreprises.

La formation qui s’est étalée sur 5 jours a permis aux cinq (5) participants de maîtriser la mise en lignes de documents textes et multimédias dans un wiki.

Liste des participants :

• NEBIE Modeste
• DAGNON Oumar
• Madame BAMOGO Hamsatou
• KABORE Abdoulaye
• SANKARA Assane
  

Un participant, Hassane Sankare, donne ses impressions sur la formation WIKI




Christophe HIEN, animateur

Formation en wiki des membres du Réseau de Plaidoyer et Lobbying (RPL) Mali

Contexte et justification


Dans le cadre de renforcement des capacités des acteurs membres de son réseau en matière de collaboration en ligne, partage des ressources et connaissances, et la bonne vulgarisation des informations au bon moment, le Réseau de Plaidoyer et Lobbying a organisé une formation en wiki et les outils collaboratifs du Web 2.0 à Bamako le 12 avril 2009.

Démarrage des activités

M. Oumar Dembélé, le Coordinateur du Réseau de Plaidoyer et Lobbying (RPL), a donné les premiers pas par une brève introduction tout en soulignant les objectifs que visent cette formation : l’utilisation efficace des outils Compart Web 2.0 et autres outils collaboratifs (wiki, blogs, tagging, flux RSS etc.…). Au moins chaque participant a eu un ordinateur connecté à Internet pour mieux s’exercer en la matière. Des post script jaunes ont été remis à chaque participant lui permettant d’exprimer ses attentes de la formation dans un premier temps et me permettant en tant que formateur d’intégrer ces attentes dans les objectifs de la formation en second lieu. Les participants ont été mis dans le bain de la formation grâce au film sur le wiki et ensuite les participants ont posé des questions après la projection de film et chacun a eu plus ou moins satisfaction de réponse à sa question. Une autre projection de diaporama a fait suite pendant laquelle les outils Web 2.0 on été développés, l’interface, la différence et le passage du Web 1 au Web 2.0 ont été édifiés. L’accent est mis sur le Web 2.0 et les outils, les supports, le fondement du Web 2.0, le pourquoi du Web 2.0, et ce que l'on peut gagner avec le Web 2.0.

La barre d’outils Compart a été téléchargée et installée sur toutes les machines avant le début de la phase pratique de la formation ; à travers de laquelle l’accès est facile sur le Wiki du choix. Chacun a pu accéder au wiki du programme multi acteur du Mali de façon rapide grâce à la barre d’outils Compart. D’autres méthodes d’accès au wiki on été pratiquées pour permettre aux participants d’accéder au wiki depuis n’importe quel ordinateur connecté à Internet (http://educmali.pbworks.com/FrontPage) par exemple. Pendant le démarrage de la phase pratique, on sentait et voyait comment chacun était motivé à apprendre et comprendre tous les mécanismes des différents exercices en ligne, chacun voulait lui-même mettre un document ou des photos en ligne. Compte tenu du temps reparti - surtout parce que dans le groupe certains devraient voyager sur plus de 1000 km - nous avions voulu arrêter la formation à midi et nous avons été surpris par le temps. La pause déjeuner a été prise vers 13h30mn pour permettre aux voyageurs d’être à l’heure pour l’autobus. Les échanges de contacts, quelques photos de famille et blips ont été effectués que vous pourriez suivre en ligne sur le wiki.

Perspectives, recommandations et conclusion

Quelques recommandations ont été faites dans la salle par les participants dans un premier temps : disposer de plus de temps pour une autre formation, mettre toutes les adresses en ligne afin d’une meilleure utilisation de l’ensemble des services du wiki, revoir pour l’organisation d’une autre formation permettant de toucher d’autres points sur le wiki, aider a créer des blogs et mieux comprendre les autres outils du Web 2.0, et encore corriger quelques imperfections de tout ce qui a été appris. Mais pour les participants, disposer de plus de temps pour une telle formation, organiser de nouveau une autre formation pour mieux assimiler les sujets abordes et ceux n’ayant pas pu être abordés.

Je ne pourrais tirer une conclusion sans pourtant remercier M. Dembélé, le Coordinateur du Réseau de Plaidoyer et Lobbying (RPL). Il a su relancer un système qui avait toujours eu du mal à décoller et l’ensemble des membres du Réseau présent ou n’ayant pas pu faire le déplacement a la formation. Mes remerciements vont a l’égard de l’ensemble des membres du Réseau qui m’ont facilité les tâches grâce à leurs motivation et l’envie d’apprendre qui ont suscité beaucoup de questions et la satisfaction en réponses. C’était la première fois que je rencontrais la plupart des membres du réseau à part ceux présent à l’atelier de Ouaga, mais on avait l’impression d’être en famille, vu la qualité de l’ambiance dans la salle.

Quelques réactions de la part des participants

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Oudou BENGALY, animateur

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

Workshop: Working with Wiki's in Development Organizations - 13 February 2009

More and more development organizations are turning to wikis and other social tools to better communicate, document and share knowledge, collaborate, and exchange information.

Wiki’s are one of the most-used examples and are widely used in the ICCO Alliance ComPart initiative, as well as other development organisations.

On 13 Febrary 2009, ICCO and Euforic organised a workshop on 'Working with Wiki's in Development Organizations'.

This knowledge sharing session capitalized on the presence of David Weekly (founder and CEO of PBwiki) and other partners to share lessons and experiences, exploring how wiki’s are contributing to more effective development exchange.

Who's David Weekly?

I've been programming since I was about five, went to Stanford after coding for MIT and Harvard Physics, and am the founder of PBwiki. Our company has 30 employees and serves over 700,000 groups around the world - The Netherlands is our 12th most popular country for originating traffic, with about 30,000 uniques/month. My first trip to the Netherlands was in 1999 for the ACM International Programming Competition in Eindhoven; my girlfriend was our "team coach" and we snuck out to go clubbing in Amsterdam between events. A great deal of what motivates our team is the positive impact that we make in the lives of those that use our product: getting emails from Peace Corps workers in Namibia or seeing pictures of labs full of children in Costa Rica using our service really fire us up. I personally am very interested in this topic – I gave a talk in Geneva at the Palace of the United Nations in 2001 on community development technologies and attended the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunisia on the same. I flew to Ghana in 2004 to teach kids how to use computers. So of course we're very excited to be able to support development organizations with collaboration technology. I'd be delighted to hear what people are doing or hoping to do with their wikis and what other collaboration tools they're using in their organizations. Thanks so much for this opportunity!