Dgroups is used as a communication tool within most of SDC’s thematic networks, allowing both the channel of information through newsletters as well as e-discussions among network members. Carsten Schulz from AGRIDEA reflects on his own experience with Dgroups as a tool and his evolution from a sceptical and critical reviewer to an “aficionado” of the newly designed next.Dgroups platform. (more…)
After Riff Fullan’s comprehensive contribution on e-collaboration and on its prerequisites, in this blog post Andreas Schöne concentrates on more general terms of information management and on the e-collaboration infrastructure to be expected in the near future for FDFA employees and external partners. (more…)
E-collaboration has been around since computer networks were invented, but of course our increasing interconnectedness presents more opportunities for us to do it, and to do so with a greater variety of tools. What is e-collaboration? A brief way to describe it is working together to produce something (a document, a position, a decision) using electronic media. It is easy to get lost among the tools, but successful e-collaboration is much more about the people who are involved and how their interaction is facilitated, than it is about the technologies used. (more…)
This blog post explores the guides on e-facilitation and on linking f2f events and online dialogues in more detail. The guides are part of a set of interlinked guidelines available on the website of the SDC Learning and Networking Division. Two users of the guides on these closely related issues share their first reactions, personal reflections and further lessons from their daily work. (more…)
By Nancy White
In our first part on accidental technology stewardship we focused on the technology acquisition and design issues. In today’s post we’ll look at what I think is the really fun stuff: how we build useful practices USING technology together. (more…)
By Nancy White
How many times have you been faced with coordinating work, knowledge sharing or learning with a colleague who is not close by? Of course, we have the magic of the internet, right? Which knits us across countries and contexts, right? Well, it could, but most of us lack the magic wand to make this happen flawlessly. There is a useful practice to picking and using technology in service of groups called technology stewardship. Let’s take a peek into tech stewardship together. We will focus here on definition and some design principles, and look at implementation practices in a second blog post. (more…)
by Bertha Camacho and Adrian Gnägi
Solution Exchange pioneered a structured way to conduct e-discussions, called “e-discussion campaigns with consolidated replies”. The structure of those e-discussions looks like this:
This post reflects on the first “e-discussion campaign with consolidated replies” conducted by SDC’s “decentralization and local governance” network (dlgn) (more…)
by Corinne Sprecher, AGRIDEA / Team International 
In 2007 and 2008 SDC’s former Knowledge and Research Team collected and documented tools and methods for planning and reflection of own activities, for drawing lessons and for sharing insights and applying them. This work resulted in the publication of the SDC Knowledge Management Toolkit on the Learning & Networking website and in print. However, km-tools are only of use if applied consciously. And they are only applied if they promise to better reach a certain goal. They must be well applied to be effective. We have been looking for champions who consciously apply tools in their work and who find them helpful. In this post, they share with us some of their experiences and their lessons – practical examples for illustrating the toolkit. Use it as inspiration to try them out by yourself! (more…)
In the first part of this blog I looked at e-faciliation and how it compares to face to face facilitation. For this second part I asked myself, what are the strengths and weaknesses of the online situation and what would be the content of a twenty minutes crash-course on “the specifics of online facilitaiton”. And as a round-up of both blog posts on e-facilitaiton I share my thoughts on the future prospects of facilitation in cyberspace. (more…)
By Olivia Hartmann, AGRIDEA
The e-factor is omnipresent in the West and increasingly also in other parts of the world. It has become difficult to imagine a life without it.
BUT – the e-factor in facilitation is actually a rather recent development.
A look at a young skill and how to skillfully use it for learning and exchange - Part I.
Looking at the history of the development of communication means I came to realize what a recent development the internet and with that e-facilitation actually is! E-Facilitation - the art of sucessfully planning and guiding online interactions of various kinds and with a wide variety of purposes – has existed for barely 15 years. (more…)