Joitske Hulsebosch, who lives and works in Netherlands, writes a blog called "Communities of practice for development" where she writes about topics related to her work of facilitating processes at different levels; teams, groups, organizations, networks, and communities of practice. After studying irrigation and soil and water conservation, which pays attention to the interface between social systems and irrigation technology in developing countries, she worked for ten years in Africa.
Notes Joitske, "I lost the irrigation technology part long ago when I started to specialize on the human systems, first farmers around irrigation, later farmers federations, NGOs and networks. My interest in online interaction is very recent; last year I asked what a blog and a wiki was. I didn’t have a clue."
She has worked in Africa as a trainer and later as an organisational advisor. She notes, "I started in Kenya working with a water users association, living in a
thatched hut!" Later, her work brought her to Mali, where she advised on participatory methods. In Ethiopia, she did organizational capacity building work for a local network of NGOs.
1. What is your sense of how these social networking tools, tagging, blogs and the like – are they relevant to the people you work with in developing countries?
PersonallyI see a huge potential for web2.0 tools for development, because everyone can now use the web as a space to express themselves, interact and co-create. Through my blog I see what’s possible with free tools. The tools can be useful for in-country connections, in local languages, or north-south connections.
In Ghana people are interested in knowing about new tools, because they need to stay in touch with what’s possible in order to decide what may be useful or not. On the other hand, the tools match a mindset of openness, co-creation, ease of writing and expression, etc. and that’s does not always match the way people communicate.
My question is whether you need to work on the mindset first, or whether the tools can help shift the mindset as well. I think it needs both, but starting too early to push is not helpful. An offline newsletter or meeting is very important in Ghana for instance for reaching people as they don’t have a habit of reading on the web.
I blogged a discussion on web2.0 in Ghana here and a story about the use of a wiki in Zambia by my colleague Saskia here.
2. Your blog is almost a year old! I know because I encouraged you to start blogging! Looking back over the past year, what has your blog done for you? What benefits? What’s the downside?
My blog has really stimulated me to read and gain insights. Blogging an article or a book helps me to go one step further because I push myself to formulate what I really learned from it. And it’s a wonderful archive for myself, I use the ‘search this blog’ button a lot on my own blog. And I’m delighted with the positive feedback, the growing readership and the contacts I made. I've also been inspired to experiment with video blog posts and podcasts. But that really takes up time. It’s a creative part of the blog I really love. Lastly, now that I'm blogging, I’m reading other blogs through bloglines (I try to stick to around 50), it's a different way and fast way of learning too, which is very inspiring to me.
The only downside is the additive nature of blogging, and it does consume a lot of time. And another disadvantage is that sometimes the best insights are unbloggable, because it is private or sensitive information you don't want to be public.
3. If you were to introduce yourself to someone online via your blog, what 3-5 posts would you have someone read and in what order?
Here's what I recommend by topic. I would be interested to know if this is what readers think. Sometimes I think I have an important post, but it does not get comments, so I don't know what people think (and if they even read it :)). I'm too shy to do an online poll.
4. What advice would you give to someone about starting a blog?
Start when you have enough time to get a good regular schedule going, think about the topics you want to blog about. Try and get some people interested beforehand to read it, so that you are sure some people will read your blog. It is good to have some experienced bloggers around who can help you out with simple questions you may have. And do it because you like the topic and write about it, don’t do it for an audience. The audience may come, but to keep going regardless of readership, it’s good to have a solid reason why you want write and keep a blog for yourself.
5. What do you think are the best blogs to read in your field?
Depends how you define my field! My bloglines profile is public so you can see what I'm reading.
For Communities of Practice, it is very nice to subscribe to the CPsquare member’s blogs feed (if you can deal with an overflow of posts that is.) For technology I follow Techcrunch though it’s most of the time too much for me and I just scroll through very rapidly. And Netsquared. For development, there are blogs from agencies like bellanet or global s for a selection of blogposts from any country you are interested in.
6. You work, you travel for work, you’re online, you blog and you have young children. How do you balance all that?
I feel I need quite some free, unplanned time to think of new ideas, stimulate creativity, so I try to safeguard my own creative space by planning well ahead by what I take on. I do say no at times. I found a new balance since the children go to school and want to play with friends rather than with me. I try to avoid taking on too much. But my children still complain at times and tell me to close down the computer!
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