[Sigiii-l] Fwd: [km4dev-l] Workshop: Transforming and sustaining inclusive development communities: an evidence-based approach

[Michel J. Menou]

Regards,

Michel J. Menou                mailto:Michel.Menou at wanadoo.fr

This is a forwarded message
From: Chris Schultz <cschultz at smtp.aed.org>
To: Knowledge Management for International Development Organisations <km4dev-l at lyris.bellanet.org>
Date: Wednesday, June 4, 2003, 10:47:23 PM
Subject: [km4dev-l] Workshop: Transforming and sustaining inclusive development     communities: an evidence-based approach

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Transforming and sustaining inclusive development communities: an evidence-based approach

Workshop and Networking Event
19 September 2003, 
De Rode Hoed, Amsterdam

Outline of the workshop

This one-day workshop will examine ICT-enabled communities in the field of
international development. The objective will be to initiate the move away from
an anecdotal analysis of these communities towards a more vigorous,
evidence-based and outcomes-based implementation. In addition, the workshop will
aim to provide an inventory of the research needs of practitioners working in
the development field. The workshop is taking place as part of the International
Conference on Communities and Technologies to be held on 19-21 September 2003 in
Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

The workshop is being organized by practitioners with a professional interest in
online communities in the development field. During the workshop, case studies
of development communities will be presented, together with a consideration of
the technological issues affecting these communities.

For more information about the International Conference on Communities and
Technologies and this pre-conference Workshop, see below:


Transforming and sustaining inclusive development communities:
an evidence-based approach

Workshop and Networking Event
19 September 2003
De Rode Hoed, Amsterdam

Outline of the workshop
This one-day workshop will examine ICT-enabled communities in the field of
international development. The objective will be to initiate the move away from
an anecdotal analysis of these communities towards a more vigorous,
evidence-based and outcomes-based implementation. In addition, the workshop will
aim to provide an inventory of the research needs of practitioners working in
the development field. The workshop is taking place as part of the International
Conference on Communities and Technologies to be held on 19-21 September 2003 in
Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

The workshop is being organized by practitioners with a professional interest in
online communities in the development field. During the workshop, case studies
of development communities will be presented, together with a consideration of
the technological issues affecting these communities.

The conference
The International Conference on Communities & Technology will serve as a forum
for stimulating and disseminating research into all facets of communities and
information technology. The nature of the field requires multidisciplinary
research efforts involving researchers from different fields of applied computer
science and the social sciences. Communities are social entities whose actors
share common needs, interests, or practices: they constitute the basic units of
social experience. For a number of reasons, researchers are increasingly
interested in the topic of communities. First, within a global knowledge-based
society, communities play a pivotal role. Problems such as new forms of
political participation and civic engagement, the maintenance of cultural
identities, or the integration of minorities need to be tackled on the community
level. Second, communities also re-shape the processes of learning and sharing
knowledge in and among organizations. While earlier approaches focused on
storing and retrieving explicit knowledge represented in documents, communities
are believed to be important structures to share implicit situated knowledge, as
well. Research issues include trust-building, maintaining (awareness of) social
relations, increase or decrease of social capital, visualization of social
relationships, matching (unknown) actors, bridging between physical and
electronically-mediated interaction, etc. For full details of the conference,
please consult its website at: http://www-winfo.uni-siegen.de/wulf/CT2003/.

Background to the workshop
Village communities have often been at the heart of the development discourse.
In the development field, they are commonly used as the unit of social analysis
and for delivery of clean water, agricultural practices, participation and other
development interventions. Since the 1990s, the role of networks or communities
made up of non-governmental development organizations (NGDOs) has received
increasing attention in the literature. Such networks, including ‘communities of
ideas’, ‘communities of practice’ or ‘communities of purpose’ have been used to
upgrade the quality of the activities, outputs and impact of these NGDOs; to
facilitate a collective learning process; and to contribute of a ‘shifting up’
of development activities to an national and international audience (Engel
1997). In the last 5 years as a result of increased adoption of information and
communication technologies (ICTs) and particularly e-mail and groupware,
existing and new networks have taken to online interaction ‘like ducks to
water’. In the development field, communities of practice have, for example,
come into existence to consider evaluation practice, ‘open’ knowledge,
agricultural research, and even knowledge management. Communities of purpose
have been active in international campaigns related to international events,
such as the Fourth World Conference on Women and the World Summit on the
Information Society (WSIS).

The staff of many NGDOs are involved in these communities as a way of furthering
their organization’s objectives and, indeed, development itself. In some
circumstances, these virtual communities are becoming as important to community
members’ work as their own organizations. Many donor organizations have invested
heavily in these online communities but the cost-benefit from these investments
is by no means clear. Despite this growth in online communities, issues of
inclusion and exclusion remain important in the wider development community.
Barriers to access North-South include language, gender and poverty. Technology
both exacerbates and, at the same time, can be applied to help overcome these
barriers.

Structure of the workshop
1 Two keynote speakers will provide an overview of the state of the art of
development communities and how to move towards a more evidence-based and
outcomes-based approach.
2 Case studies of some ICT-enabled development communities: communities of
practice such as the Open Knowledge Network; and communities of purpose, such as
the international campaign at the WSIS to push for the adoption of a civil
society agenda.
3 A ‘Peer assist’ session will be held in which the participants will divide
into break out groups to examine case of three development communities, focusing
on lessons learned and potential research needs.
4 Inclusion/exclusion will be a major theme with language, gender and local
knowledge receiving attention.

Target audience
The workshop will aim to attract researchers in the area of online communities
from the wider conference, as well as development researchers and practitioners.
An audience of 40-50 persons is expected.

Call for workshop papers
The organisers welcome contributions from researchers and development
practitioners which represent evidence-based approaches to and examples of
ICT-enabled development communities. Deadlines are as follows:
30 June:                     Submission of abstract
7 July                          Author notification
31 August                  Submission of paper



Contact addresses
Sarah Cummings s.cummings at kit.nl
Julie Ferguson jferguson at iicd.org

Personal details of workshop organizers
Monica Allmand is Head of Library and Documentation at the International Service
for National Agricultural Research (ISNAR)
Sarah Cummings is an information practitioner at the Royal Tropical Institute
(KIT). Her current interests include ICTs in development, communities of
practice, and evaluation of information.
Julie Ferguson is part of the IICD knowledge sharing team, responsible for
coordinating and catalysing thematic networking on subjects such as livelihoods,
e-governance, education, health and environment.
Katherine Morrow represents both the Bellanet International Secretariat and
IICD. She has almost 10 years' experience in development communications
involving both traditional media and ICTs.
Dr Christopher Schultz is Director of Knowledge Management at the Academy for
Educational Development (AED).

Sponsors
IICD    International Institute for Communication and Development www.iicd.org

References
Engel, P.G.H. (1997) The social organization of innovation: a focus on
stakeholder interaction. Amsterdam, KIT/CTA/STOAS
Version:3 June 2003

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