Conditions and Functions of an Informal International Knowledge Network Considerations for ICT Support 4 th Metaphorum Conference St. Gallen, March 9-10, 2007 Jan Jacobs

2 4th Metaphorum Conference, St. Gallen, March 9-10, The International Knowledge Network (IKN) Functions of the network Functions of communication Specific conditions of ICT use IKN experiences and strategies Overview

Jan Jacobs 3 4th Metaphorum Conference, St. Gallen, March 9-10, 2007 The International Knowledge Network for Sustainable Development (IKN)  Participants: academics and practitioners from all continents.  All active in some field of sustainable development.  IKN columns:  Research  Education  Application in practice  International exchange and network building  Personal and institutional capacity building.  IKN ideology:  Exchange and cooperation in partnership.  Participatory development, considering from sociocultural conditions and endogenous resources.  Coordinators: Prof. Werner Siebel and Stefan Wolf (Berlin), and Prof. Osvaldo Romero (Sancti Spiritus, Cuba)

Jan Jacobs 4 4th Metaphorum Conference, St. Gallen, March 9-10, 2007 The International Knowledge Network for Sustainable Development (IKN) IKN projects (examples):  Training of Nicaraguan community representatives in Cuba, to become multipliers of applicable knowledge of renewable energies.  ARCA-Net summer schools and regional conferences (as consortial partner).  Master and doctoral thesis projects.  El Pan Alegre: integrated waste management, bio gas, and nutrition project.  Community development in Mongolia.  Intense bio gas research cooperation.  …

Jan Jacobs 5 4th Metaphorum Conference, St. Gallen, March 9-10, 2007 The International Knowledge Network for Sustainable Development (IKN) Informality and personal ties:  Easy access and integration of new potential partners  No clear limit of participant group  Projects emerge through IKN and are supported by it, but do not necessarily belong to the IKN Each project in the context of the IKN is individual:  Group of participants and partners  Responsibilities  Formal institutional base  Financing Formal institutions:  TU Berlin project group under Prof. Siebel, and other universities and professor positions.  Inter-university cooperation agreements  NGO AgEnt e.V.

Jan Jacobs 6 4th Metaphorum Conference, St. Gallen, March 9-10, 2007 IKN Communication  Resembles personal character and informality.  Mainly along personal ties or within project / meeting groups.  Hardly any communication of the coordinators to all participants / contacts.  Hardly any communication among all participants. Media  Face-to-face personal / group meetings.  to one or many recipients (no mailing tools).  Telephone / VoIP / Instant Messaging.  IKN and AgEnt information flyers.  Internet forum of Berlin group in  Internet use since > see below.

Jan Jacobs 7 4th Metaphorum Conference, St. Gallen, March 9-10, 2007 IKN Network Functions Conceptual Division between Network and Projects:  The network…  …is mainly informal and consists of personal ties.  …is open to new people and ideas.  …has no clear group of members. People participate in different ways and different and changing degrees of involvement.  The projects that emerge in the network…  …have a clearer group of participants.  …have more specific goals.  …require personal commitment and responsibility.  …need to acquire their own funding.  …might get legally formalized.

Jan Jacobs 8 4th Metaphorum Conference, St. Gallen, March 9-10, 2007 IKN Network Functions How does the IKN network make possible and support concrete projects? Through…  …the brokering of trustful personal connections.  …the mediation of other resources.  …the dissemination of information.  …the provision of identity. How do the projects help develop the network?  Participants get in contact and develop trustful relations on the occasions of concret cooperations.  The IKN’s identity and perspectives develop through its experiences in activities.

Jan Jacobs 9 4th Metaphorum Conference, St. Gallen, March 9-10, 2007 Functions of Communication What communication is needed to provide the network functions? External -> open internal -> confidential internal communication. External communication  Attractive and comprehensive presentation of the IKN  Contact info.  Idealy, short presentation of ongoing activity.

Jan Jacobs 10 4th Metaphorum Conference, St. Gallen, March 9-10, 2007 Functions of Communication Open internal communication  Involves members as well as new / potential participants.  Concerns ongoing and potential activities, ideas, experiences, useful information…  More one-to-all and all-to-all communication should support and complement, not replace, communication through personal connections. Confidential group communication  Need for good knowledge of each other, including cultural backgrounds and institutional conditions.  Need for frequent reassurance of the others’ motivations, intentions, and understandings.  Need for detailed discussions and for coping with conflicts.  Collaborative work on documents and data collection.

Jan Jacobs 11 4th Metaphorum Conference, St. Gallen, March 9-10, 2007 Conditions of ICT use  No money for commercial solutions & limited own programming knowledge  Use publicly available, easy-to-use technologies.  Some participants have very slow computers and internet connections.  Use technologically simple solutions.  No coordinator or other person with much time for website editing and maintenance.  Shared or distributed responsibility for website and subpages.  No single common language, but many multilingual participants.  Tools should support many languages.  Neutrality regarding the language of the contents.  Sort-by-language function.

Jan Jacobs 12 4th Metaphorum Conference, St. Gallen, March 9-10, 2007 Conditions of ICT use (Cont.)  Openness and gradual limits of IKN communication sphere  Content should be as public as possible, but as confidential as necessary.  Different levels of accessibility / confidentiality  Personal user account  Easy and non-bureaucratic creation of user accounts.  All participation and communication is voluntary  ICT must convince participants. No use can be commanded.  IKN has been acting and communicating for years.  New solutions must be non-exclusive to existing technologies and practices.  Offer a communication tool kit.

Jan Jacobs 13 4th Metaphorum Conference, St. Gallen, March 9-10, 2007 IKN Experiences and Strategies My analysis and our discussions led to a concept for an integrated Internet Platform for Information and Communication, in the summer of Since then, we have not succeeded in implementing such a platform. Change in perspective:  Away from a ‘solution’, thought of as a state or integrated platform.  Towards a process of trial and error and – hopefully – overall improvement. Process of communication improvement characterized by overlapping, recursive activities:  Discussions among the IKN participants: what are information and communication problems and potentials? What could be solutions?  Individual or small group experimentation with technologies. Implementing technologies for use in the IKN.  Motivating IKN participants to use new technologies. Developing new information and communication practices. Making experiences with technologies in practice.

Jan Jacobs 14 4th Metaphorum Conference, St. Gallen, March 9-10, 2007 Discussing communication problems, needs, and potentials

Jan Jacobs 15 4th Metaphorum Conference, St. Gallen, March 9-10, 2007 Small group experimentation with technologies. Implementing technologies for use in IKN.

Jan Jacobs 16 4th Metaphorum Conference, St. Gallen, March 9-10, 2007 Developing new information and communication practices Motivating IKN participants to use new technologies. Making experiences with technologies in practice. Our new attempt is to use a patchwork of simple and available technologies:   Instant Messaging and VoIP through Skype, MSN Messenger et cetera  Yahoo! Group  Unfinished Drupal content management system.  A simple static HTML website.  Free blogs, e.g. on blogger.com.  File storage and exchange systems, e.g. BSCW.  Simple content management system, e.g. Joomla.  …

Jan Jacobs 17 4th Metaphorum Conference, St. Gallen, March 9-10, 2007 Thank you for your attention!