Web 2.0 in African Civil Society

This paper was produced using Web 2.0 technology - a wiki tool that facilitates collaboration and ready access to content. The Wiki start page contains the full document and the chapter start page for each section contains the full contents of the Reseach, Experiments and Resources sections.

Online Usage: The wiki features will enable collaborators working online to browse the document using a navigation menu or carry out keyword searches. More significantly, the collaboration tools provide features for suggesting improvements or give feedback on any pages in the document (see the “discussion tab”) as well as adding links directly to the resources section (see the “edit this page” tab).

Print it out: Also, thanks to the wiki tool, we are able to provide printable versions of the whole document as well as individual chapters and pages as needed. To print, go to the desired page on the navigation menu and use the print feature of your Web browser - it will then print only the content area of the page. For a preview of how it will look, click the “Printable Version” link in the toolbox on the left.

“There is a tremendous yearning, not for technology per se, but for what technology can make possible” -Kofi Annan

The Marc Lindenberg Center¹⁾ has asked Kabissa to research and analyze how African civil society organizations are, will be, and could be using the latest technologies of blogs, wikis, and social networking tools, commonly known collectively as Web 2.0.

Web 2.0, while arguably overly hyped in the media, presents a powerful new opportunity for African organizations to make more effective use of their often limited Internet connections. Thanks to dynamic and user-friendly Web 2.0 services and tools, organizations can now more easily create a stable and up-to-date presence on the Internet, establish lasting and useful relationships with like minded organizations around the world and join a global conversation on issues and concerns dear to them.

As a technology assistance partner providing web hosting services and training for African organizations since 1999, and with over 1000 organizations in our network, we at Kabissa have a keen interest in Web 2.0. Through this research we will be able to better serve our members by establishing Web 2.0 services of our own and support our members reaching out to us for guidance on how to create blogs, wikis or otherwise take advantage of Web 2.0. More generally, we anticipate that this paper, published on the Kabissa wiki²⁾, will be a useful resource for the Marc Lindenberg Center, Global Action Network³⁾ and other stakeholders seeking to harness Web 2.0 to strengthen and empower civil society organizations in Africa and around the world.

In the first section, we introduce Web 2.0 concepts and terminology, provide useful case studies for considering the concepts, and then discuss the relevance of Web 2.0 for African civil society.

Then in the second section, we document a parallel set of experiments we are running at Kabissa to examine real, concrete use cases for Web 2.0 and evaluate the benefits and obstacles of using these tools within African civil society. In this section we will get more deeply into the technical nuts and bolts of creating Web 2.0 websites. Specifically, Kabissa will:

• Produce a website version of our Time to Get Online training materials using a wiki tool
• Launch a Kabissa blog

The goal with the experiments is to give practitioners a deeper view into the planning and implementation of Web 2.0 websites for African civil society.

In the resources section, we provide additional resources that we hope will be useful, including a Glossary of the sometimes bewildering array of Web 2.0 terms such as Blogosphere, Folksonomy and Tag Cloud. We also include Kabissa's blog and wiki implementation plans. And finally, we provide a list of relevant Web 2.0 websites and resources encountered during our research. Readers are encouraged to contribute to and comment on the resources, and indeed any part of this wiki document.

So what is Web 2.0? Put most simply, Web 2.0 is the name given not to a new version of the web, but to the new way people use the web. No longer do people go on the web expecting to merely access information provided by others. Everyone can expect to comment on what they read, change it, rate it, and put up information of their own - all using dynamic and user-friendly features on the websites they visit.

Millions of people throughout the world are now using the web to engage with one another and collaborate very actively on all sorts of activities. They are sharing music, videos, print-ready photographs and of course text, also known as content. They now approach the Internet not just as a place to go find useful information but as a social place as well where they can make and develop relationships, network professionally and socially, and create an image for themselves. So Web 2.0 might also be called the “read-write web”¹⁾.

As we will see in this section, this shift has occurred thanks to a new emphasis on attractive, fun to use web interfaces (e.g. shiny new icons as depicted above) on web services that are actually useful and make it really easy to share content and network with others around that content.

As with all things Internet, it is best to jump right in. Let's learn some Web 2.0 vocabulary (see the glossary for detailed explanations of key terms) and look at three representative examples of types of Web 2.0 services. Via these examples we can gain an appreciation for the constellation of Web 2.0 services and the characteristics that make them powerful. We can then consider their relevance for Africa and the missions of African civil society organizations. You are encouraged to visit and explore the websites described.

Perhaps the best example of the “read-write” web is Wikipedia²⁾, the self-pronounced “biggest multilingual free-content encyclopedia on the Internet”. Wikipedia is indeed an extremely convenient source of information on a wide range of topics, with more than two million pages of information created and maintained by millions of volunteer contributors around the world. A quick wikipedia search can bring an answer or definition in moments. The “wiki” tool used to create it is designed to facilitate collaboration and consensus building, so for example there is a discussion tab for every page where contributors discuss the page contents and hopefully resolve any disagreements so the information on the page is as accurate and balanced as possible. Contentious topics can be nominated to be checked by editors for their neutrality, and the discussion pages for those pages tend to make very interesting reading (take for example the Ebonics page³⁾). There is frequent debate surrounding the accuracy of information on Wikipedia, and while it is a very useful resource it generally is recognized (even by its own editors) that it should not be considered a reliable exclusive source for academic papers.⁴⁾

Meanwhile, a new generation of online community websites devoted to social networking is attracting a new generation of Internet users, who spend many hours a day checking their e-mail and exchanging photos and other information about themselves with their friends. “The process of using these sites is as simple as logging on, writing a bit about yourself and what you do, e-mailing your friends asking them to visit your profile, and before you know it, you're interacting with your friends, your friends' friends, and even people you've never met – all by sitting solo at your computer.”⁵⁾

Typical examples of trendsetting social networking sites are MySpace⁶⁾ and Facebook⁷⁾. Facebook is a social networking site originally created for university students to meet and keep in touch, while MySpace is more like an enormous bulletin board or forum where anyone can get an account and connect with others around shared interests. Two other well known social networking sites are Flickr⁸⁾ and Youtube⁹⁾, which facilitate connections via the sharing of photos and videos.

Beyond social networking sites is blogging and the so-called blogosphere, which are described on Wikipedia thus: “The notion of a blogosphere is an important concept for understanding blogs. Blogs themselves are essentially just the published text of an author's thoughts, whereas the blogosphere is a social phenomenon. What differentiates blogs from webpages or forums is that blogs can be part of a shifting Internet-wide social network formed by many links between different blogs. The blogosphere is emerging as a gauge of public opinion and cultural memes, and has been cited in both academic and non-academic work as evidence of rising or falling resistance to globalization, voter fatigue, and many other phenomena.”¹⁰⁾

Unlike Wikipedia (which is hosted by a charitable nonprofit) and online community websites (mostly nonprofit networks or commercial operations driven by advertising), the blogosphere exists because many independent blogs link to one another, forming an organic network of shared interest and concerns. The networking and linking of blogs is enhanced by innovative blog aggregator websites that make useful blogs easy to find and engage with such as Global Voices¹¹⁾, Technorati¹²⁾ and FeedBurner¹³⁾.

The best Web 2.0 websites appear to share the following seven characteristics:

1. Clear purpose and real utility
2. Creates a community around that purpose
3. Free to use or very affordable (usually tiered pricing with free lowest tier of service)
4. Easy and fun to join and use
5. Connects to or builds on other Web 2.0 sites
6. Allows anonymous (or pseudonymous) use
7. Contributors own and control their content and identity

The three Websites discussed above, Wikipedia, Flickr and Global Voices, all share these characteristics. In the table below, we have summarized how:

Open Source Software is an important feature of Web 2.0. According to the Open Source Initiative¹⁷⁾, “Open source is a development method for software that harnesses the power of distributed peer review and transparency of process. The promise of open source is better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility, lower cost, and an end to predatory vendor lock-in.”

In the last year or so, several very good open source products have emerged that have brought Open Source software into the public consciousness, most notably the Firefox¹⁸⁾ web browser. Firefox is extraordinarily user friendly, feature rich and runs on all major computer platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux). Thanks to Firefox and several other mainstream open source projects, the principles of Open Source are becoming more broadly understood and followed by Internet users.

Open Source Web 2.0 applications have similarly evolved and are becoming remarkably easy to use for non-technical people.

One outcome of this evolution is that Creative Commons¹⁹⁾ has become a widely used standard for licensing online content. Creative Commons is to content what Open Source is to software. According to the Creative Commons Website, “Creative Commons provides free tools that let authors, scientists, artists, and educators easily mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry. You can use CC to change your copyright terms from All Rights Reserved to Some Rights Reserved. We're a nonprofit organization. Everything we do — including the software we create — is free.”

Well designed Web 2.0 websites make it very easy for contributors to decide who can access their personal information and contributed content - nobody else, or just their friends and family, or everyone visiting the website. And if they allow everyone to access the content, then they can also decide to restrict its distribution using a copyright notice or - and here it becomes very exciting - to allow others to republish without asking first.

Creative Commons makes this possible for thousands of content creators on the Internet and thus ensures that content spreads widely and quickly, and that creativity is spurred rather than stifled.

A compelling example for the impact of Open Source on Web 2.0 is WordPress²⁰⁾. WordPress is a wildly popular blogging tool with millions of users around the world. Other blogging services and tools are available, but WordPress has, thanks to its user friendliness and Web 2.0 philosophical approach, fast become the standard bearer for blogging tools. The tool makes it easy for anyone to create a blog that meets the seven elements rule discussed above - indeed, Global Voices is built using WordPress software.

Three variants are offered that are very useful for people as they become more acquainted with WordPress:

1. WordPress.com: An online service similar to others where anyone can sign up for free and start blogging in minutes
2. WordPress.org: a free open source software application that can be downloaded and installed on one's own server through a fairly user-friendly process
3. mu.WordPress.org: a sophisticated multi-user free open source software application for those seeking to offer an online blogging service themselves

In this manner WordPress is quintessentially Web 2.0: it supports and is supported by a broad band of blogging afficionados in its community with a range of technical capabilities that all have a vested interest in continued development and progress of the WordPress software and services.

In many ways Web 2.0 - as exemplified by Wikipedia, Flickr and Global Voices - represents an evolution in the philosophical approach people take to creating websites - whether they are to make money as commercial services, for use by advocacy networks or nonprofits, or even for personal or hobbyist purposes. Creators of powerful, useful Web 2.0 sites have clustered around a couple of very good principles that set them apart (the seven characteristics) and that motivate Web users to trust them and depend on them.

There has been a technological evolution as well, occurring hand in hand with the philosophical evolution. Freely distributable Open Source software has long been known to be a powerful alternative to Microsoft and other proprietary commercial software, but in practice real exposure to it has been mostly been limited to technical people or enthusiasts. This has changed with the arrival of popular, mainstream open source applications like Firefox and WordPress.

As a result, it has not only become fairly easy and inexpensive to create a website offering the full range of Web 2.0 functionality, but the principles of open source are becoming more mainstream and are filtering through into many aspects of online interactions by ordinary people - from creative commons licensing by hobbyist photographers to job seekers crafting their own persona online by taking ownership of their own online identities.

Kabissa recognizes that Wikis are powerful online collaboration tools. We have had an “intranet” wiki as a team/project management tool for over a year, and it has been a very useful addition to our other typical office tools (shared file server, e-mail, etc). With it, a team of people spread across the globe is able to work closely together, and new people can quickly get up to speed with Kabissa's organizational logistics, policies and procedures. This last is very important because we have several intern positions that are regularly being filled by new people.

But as exemplified by the Wikipedia Online Encylopedia¹⁾, the revolutionary value of wikis is in using them for collaboratively working on text-based resources. Wikipedia is the prime example of a large scale Wiki encyclopedia project, with its thousands of contributors creating a tremendously valuable shared resource used by millions of people around the world.

To explore this potential on a smaller scale and to address the shared ICT capacity building needs of Kabissa, our training partners, collaborators and 900+ member organizations in African civil society, Kabissa will wikify (create a wiki version) of Kabissa's popular Time To Get Online Internet training manual. Our goal is to produce a wiki version of the guide that is more readily accessible through a web browser and can be contributed to and used in revolutionary new ways.

In 2003, Kabissa launched the Time to Get Online program, which combines self-learning materials with hands-on workshops to empower African organizations to fully integrate the Internet into their work. The program is designed specifically for the needs of African civil society organizations and structured around Kabissa’s Steps to Success methodology. This methodology promotes the idea that organizations must gradually build their Internet skills and use those Internet tools most appropriate for their own priorities, communities, and environment.

Responding to the demands of past Time to Get Online workshop participants, Kabissa incorporated a Training-of-Trainers (TOT) program in 2005. This intensive program is designed to prepare trainers from civil society organizations with the tools needed to conduct their own Time to Get Online workshops. The program covers approaches for training adult learners, specific Time to Get Online content, and the development of sustainability plans. The TOT model creates more learning opportunites for organizations throughout the region and empowers a network of ICT training partners to adapt the curriculum to the needs of their own communities.

Time To Get Online has been very successful and has become an integral part of Kabissa's identity as a capacity building organization in Africa. The manual is a trusted source by all organizations that participate in our workshops and otherwise get their hands on a copy, and our training partners have been very busy spreading the benefits of the program in their communities through their own workshops.

More information about the program is available at http://www.timetogetonline.org

The 150 page core manual is currently produced using Microsoft Word and is published both online as an Adobe Acrobat PDF file and in print form in a sturdy and user-friendly binder. We use an attractive, consistent layout based on tables and large icons separating different kinds of information (e.g. exercises, key points, case studies, etc) for easy reading. Where possible, we use screen shots to illustrate points. The printed binder version has large tabs to make chapters and appendices easy to find, and is accompanied by a CD-ROM containing a useful range of Free and Open Source Software, full websites and further reading materials discussed in the manual.

The manual is updated by Kabissa when we are funded to support or run training workshops. Thus far it has been published and used for workshops in English, French and Arabic. The latest version can be downloaded from the Time To Get Online website.

The current production method has served us very well and enabled us to produce top quality training materials. However, Kabissa now has many training partners wishing to contribute to the manual and adapt it for their local conditions. We also have a growing number of members that are seeking to benefit from the lessons in the manual and do not have access to face to face workshops.

There are several challenges we will need to keep in mind when moving our manual from Word to Wiki. For one thing, there is a potentially steep learning curve for new people to learn how to contribute to wikis. Wikis use a markup syntax, much like HTML but simpler, to handle formatting of documents, inserting images and links, and automatically generating titles and navigation menus. This syntax can be tricky to learn, particularly for those not familiar already with HTML code and other similar formatting syntax. To make matters worse, the syntax varies somewhat between Wiki tools so if you know how to contribute to, for example, Wikipedia, you may still have to learn some new syntax to contribute to another wiki project. However, the wiki syntax is fairly straightforward and committed collaborators will be able to get up to speed quickly without training. Some wiki tools get around this issue with WYSIWYG editors, online help, keyboard shortcuts (e.g. CTRL-B for bold) and toolbars for commonly needed syntax.

Another related issue for new collaborators is that, to view a wiki page with formatting as it will be seen in its final form, a web server is required. It is possible to install a web server on a PC and web servers come installed on Linux and Mac OSX systems, but still the web server requirement may be a stumbling block for those mainly familiar with typical Microsoft Office software. So while it is possible to work with plain text files offline to develop wiki pages, it is not possible to see the results without access to a web server and wiki tool either on the Internet or on the PC. Initially this will not be an issue since only the Kabissa team and close collaborators with good Internet connectivity will be editing the wiki. Down the road, we may need to address this issue by providing more support to collaborators in Africa with poor or intermittent Internet access.

Wikis require constant “gardening”. While it is beneficial to enable multiple people to edit and contribute to a wiki, the web is full of examples of poorly managed wikis that become unusable. For a team wiki a certain amount of managed disorder is acceptable, with many works in progress, notes, and discussions related to various areas of work, but of course for a larger project intended for wider consumption this is not acceptable. A disciplined workflow is needed with good communication among all collaborators, with a chief editor that is in charge of quality control for the whole document. Wikis have features to facilitate the collaboration process, enabling collaborators to closely monitor all changes made by everyone, and to compare recent changes with past versions. If they are unhappy with a change, they can revert back to an older version if needed, and then start a discussion about the proposed changes with others.

Access Control for contributing to various sections of the document will be a concern once we open up the wiki for use by our training partners and other collaborators, members and the general public. Initially we will want only the Kabissa team editing pages, then once the content has been completely transferred from the word document we will want to open up access gradually to others. As we provide read/write access to others, we will need to train them and provide them with guidance on editorial guidelines for everyone to follow. Ultimately an ideal goal is to provide complete read/write access to our training partners and perhaps write access to the rest of the world for specific sections where we want broad public involvement (e.g. case studies or resources).

Wikis separate content from presentation through the use of customizable templates. By default these typically are designed for relatively simple documents. A challenge will be to customize the templates to suit the unique presentation needs of our manual. In particular, to produce downloadable PDF versions and print versions will require significantly customized templates.

In our implementation plan, we list all of our known requirements and preferences in detail. A strong emphasis is on open source, so that the tool we use and contribute to is available to other African civil society organizations. It also must be user-friendly and relatively easy for us to install, configure and begin using in our existing Joomla CMS enviroment. As we move along, we must also be able to expand the functionality to meet our future needs. The choice we make now is important, however thanks to the consistent syntax used by wikis and conversion tools available it is possible to migrate from one wiki tool to another later if our needs change.

There are many competing wiki tools available, and thankfully there is an excellent website called WikiMatrix.org which provides detailed descriptions of wiki tools available and line by line feature comparisons.

We have firsthand experience with three wiki tools that stand out from the crowd. These are (with links to their WikiMatrix descriptions) as follows:

• MediaWiki is the open source wiki tool that drives Wikipedia. It is very powerful, clearly can be used for very large projects, and has sophisticated collaboration features (access permissions, page discussions, user discussions, etc). Because it is the largest wiki project, it has a large community of developers and contributors to the software, and seems most likely to have conversion tools and add-on functionality.
• DokuWiki is an open source wiki tool that Kabissa has been using for our team wiki for the last year. It has a straightforward syntax and is very userfriendly and simple to use compared to other wiki tools. DokuWiki has an impressive pluggable technology which means that by default there is a simple feature set but it is easy to add a range of add-on functionality as needed. There is a very active developer community working on all sorts of interesting web 2.0 functionality. Integrations are possible with the WordPress blogging tool, our own Joomla content management system, and more. Dokuwiki uses plain text to store wiki pages so has relatively light server requirements (no database server required).
• Confluence Wiki is not open source but available for free for nonprofit use. As a commercial product it is very polished and has very powerful functionality by default (excellent WYSIWYG editor, sophisticated file management, access controls and more). Unfortunately Confluence has very heavy server requirements so it is not straightforward to host it on our own server.

Based on our research and the very useful feature comparison at wikimatrix.org, we have decided to continue working with DokuWiki for this project.

The 3.5: Wikifying Time To Get Online Implementation Plan contains more detailed information guiding the process of implementing this project.

Contributed by Ryan Cargo, Special Projects Intern at Kabissa, Spring 2006.

Converting the TTGO materials to a wiki format required both a technical and contextual review of the material. The technical side included the addition of wiki syntax, creation of wiki-specific images, layout of templates for ease of use, and organization based on wiki’s content structure. The contextual side included reformatting and rewriting the materials to best suit the change in publishing mediums.

Overall the wiki syntax learning curve is fairly minor, although I did have prior experience with HTML and several programming languages. The wiki syntax is straightforward and Dokuwiki provides an efficient means of previewing your page while editing its code. Icons, example images, and screenshots used in the wiki all required individual attention in a separate imaging application (e.g. Adobe Photoshop). This ranged from resizing to the addition of borders and arrows to call out areas of importance. Laying out the TTGO wiki using templates required attention at the administrative level of the wiki, and thus are not features that will be adjustable by future users.

Organizing the content based on Dokuwiki’s file structure warranted special attention which was ultimately worthwhile. Although technically identical to Window’s file and folder structure, the wiki’s organization by “namespace” and “page” is a bit harder to conceptualize. However, many important functionalities (e.g. automatically generated table of contents) depend on the proper setup of this hierarchy. Keeping with this structure will be important as the TTGO wiki grows, and may warrant special explanation for future contributors.

Much of the review necessary stemmed not from the conversion to a wiki format, but from the TTGO materials being over two years old. Updates included verifying that online references were still available and revising mentions of current internet technologies and software (e.g. Mozilla Firefox’s rising popularity over Netscape Navigator’s). Some content, however, did require changes due to the change in publication medium. References relevant only to a printed version, such as “See Page 37”, were changed to an active link to that page in the wiki. Additionally, care was taken so that no information would be lost should the wiki be printed, for example all links to external websites included the full URL as a footnote.

Some general considerations arose from the possibility that the wiki’s audience may have slightly different interests than those of the printed version. Because the wiki format may be used more as a reference than a cover-to-cover guide, the ability to search, a more detailed sub-chapter table of contents, and easier linking to outside sources was desired. In addition the icons used in the printed version were revised to provide streamlined visual cues for quickly finding information of interest. Despite these considerations, a means to “page through” the materials was still provided for those wanting to read an entire chapter at a time.

Summarizing the time required to convert the TTGO materials into an hours / page value is not only difficult, but would be somewhat misleading based on the lessons learned from the entire process. Converting the raw content from Word format to the wiki was merely an exaggerated exercise of cut-and-paste once coding and formatting standards were settled upon. Editing and inserting the images, while tedious, was also straightforward once a routine system was begun. However, the universal changes to the wiki after its conversion as a whole were painstakingly slow, as described further in the Lessons Learned section.

Deciding on a universal format for the wiki before the entire contents have been wikified seems to be the deciding factor when it comes to efficiently implementing a wiki. Although we conducted a serious internal (and to a certain extent, external) review of the format used for the first test chapter, the standards decided upon based on that review were ultimately changed significantly. Unfortunately, these changes were not made before the rest of the materials were wikified, so extensive work on every page was duplicated. It can not be stressed enough that making universal changes to an extensive, existing wiki is vastly more time consuming than simply doing so in the initial, one-time-only conversion process.

While the wiki has not yet been released for use, it appears that most of the proposed benefits of its format will be fulfilled. After interacting with the wiki during the creation of these online TTGO materials, the only concern I have regards the commitment required by users to learn and understand how the wiki works before editing and contributing to it. In the meantime, slightly more gardening may be required by the administrators. These concerns, however, could easily be alleviated by the addition of material specifically about the wiki to the TTGO materials.

• Navigation
  • Users were very comfortable navigating forward and back through chapter sections using the left and right arrows in the page footers.
  • One user tried to click the “Case Study” icon in the <note ttgocase> instead of the link to that case's website.
  • Clicking “Time To Get Online” in the navigation box or the top-left TTGO logo wasn't an obvious way to return to the main TTGO home page. One user tried clicking “Time To Get Online” in the chapter table of contents, which happened to be a section heading, when they really wanted to return to the main TTGO home page. Maybe we should consider a more eye-catching “Click here to return to the home page” kind of visual to be shown on all pages.
• Discussions
  • The fact that links in red (especially discussion tabs) mean the page doesn't exist proved confusing to some, we may want to highlight this.
  • To one user, “edit this page” wasn't the obvious method to “add to the current discussion”. Perhaps this needs clarification - the fact that discussion are indeed pages that must be “edited” in order to contribute to the discussion.
  • Users typed ”–name” at the end of their discussion submission instead of using the Signature button.
  • Clicking “Save” after editing and “Previewing” wasn't intuitive to some users.
• Searching - NEEDS ATTENTION
  • On a positive note, everyone found the search box quickly and used it as the first method to find a word or phrase of interest.
  • The Wiki search is case sensitive, yielding some searches useless. Is this a wiki option that can be modified? Also, the search feature seems to work intermittently, sometimes finding a word and other times not finding it. This seems crucial.
  • The functions of the search field buttons “Go” and “Search” are not obvious at all, yet they do very different tasks. This resulted in several users ultimately giving up their searches. Can we add explanatory text within the search box regarding this? This also seems crucial.
• Glossary
  • When editing the glossary, users clicked the “Entire glossary” link, which is not itself editable because the use of includes. Some language specifying that editing must be done in the single “Letter” pages should be added.
  • One user tried multiple times to click on the small “page” icon used in the indexmenu for the glossary. Indexmenu icons are not links themselves, just the text next to them (e.g. “A”, “B”, etc.), however this isn't obvious. Some explanation should be made regarding this, especially in the glossary, but perhaps to TTGO as a whole as indexmenus are used throughout.
  • One user wondered how universal internet jargon is, even within the English language (i.e. USA vs. Great Britain.) Something for future TTGO wiki users to sort out I suppose!

On a final note, screen casting was the perfect tool to test usability in this situation. Sound enabled the reviewer to hear when a user was trying to click something that wasn't clickable, or sense verbal frustration / excitement at the wiki. It also gave a real sense of the time it took users to complete various functions and navigate the wiki in general.

Kabissa will begin blogging in a variety of key ways that have a potential to contribute in a big way to our work and the work of our member organizations:

• Kabissa team members that want to will set up their own blogs, syndicated to the Kabissa website and to technorati, digg.com and other blog bookmarking and aggregation sites including Global Voices
• We will set up a centralized blog on the Kabissa website that enables the team to blog from the Kabissa perspective as well as to promote guest bloggers. The blog will provide feeds relevant to Kabissa from Global Voices and other bookmarking and aggreggation sites. The blog will also feature a Kabissa badge/feed with instructions that others can add to their blogs and websites.

One major goal of Kabissa is to keep our members informed of opportunities and ICT in Africa developments on a timely basis. We do this through the Kabissa website as well as the Kabissa Gong Gong member newsletter. The newsletter is produced on a monthly basis and distributed by e-mail to members as well as posted on the Website. Generally, the website content and newsletter are produced in a relatively formal style appropriate for an organization, and this format is well received by newsletter subscribers.

We do have two regular “columns” that are dynamic and personal. One is the “Member Spotlight”, designed to provide a soapbox for organiations to introduce themselves to the community and describe in their own words how they are using ICT successfully. The other is the “Dear Mimi Internet Advice” column, written generally by Tobias Eigen and occasionally other guest writers. Because of her projected personality and friendly writing style, the Mimi persona could be described as a blogger. These columns are also quite popular and, because they are original and appear first in our newsletter and website, are often blogged by others and drive quite a few readers to our website from all over the globe.

Our method for adding content to the website and producing the newsletter is rather rudimentary. We have an Online Community Coordinator internship position, currently based out of the University of Washington in Seattle, and the coordinator is in charge of monitoring the editors e-mail mailbox for submissions and correspondence, evaluating submissions and posting the relevant ones in the appropriate category on our website. The website is built using a content management system called Joomla, which enables the coordinator to add articles via a web interface with a minimum of training. S/he also produces the newsletter on a monthly basis by copying and pasting content into a wiki page which is then reviewed and edited by other members of the editorial team. When the newsletter is ready to go out, we send it via an email mailing list.

The existing content management system and procedures works very well, however we have realized that the content we are making available can be made even more useful and accessible if we start blogging. On a purely personal level, members of the Kabissa team are eager for more opportunities to share their views using their own voice. We often have very interesting discussions (if not heated debates!) in internal meetings and with partners and collaborators. We share e-mails we receive amongst ourselves with interesting articles, discussions from e-mail mailing lists, upcoming conferences, new books and resources - many make it into our website and newsletter but not all of them do. In particular, when sharing resources we do not usually have the time - or space! - to explain to the online community coordinator why we think an email is particularly interesting or important. It is this piece that is particularly valuable and is currently being lost.

We also have many people involved in Kabissa, especially our members, training partners, advisors and board members, who have very powerful views and insight into the state of ICT in Africa. While we are often amazed by what we learn from them, the benefits of what we learn often stay with us or only emerge later in the form of improvements to our programs. A “guest blog” feature would enable us to spread the benefits of their knowledge while also giving them credit and encouragement through a public “endorsement” on our blog.

On a technical level, the website can be improved with blogging features in a number of important ways. Currently it is possible to search for content via keyword searches, or to browse via the navigation menu or “read more” links from the home page and section main pages. Blogs have new ways of enhancing the navigation and accessibility of website content just like ours, including for example:

• tags/keywords/categories
• linkbacks
• bookmarks (Technorati, delicious, digg etc)
• rss feeds (Feedburner, etc)
• add comments/discuss article
• links to profile page and other articles added by the author

And finally, Kabissa's standing in search engines will be greatly improved by having a set of closely related blog websites sharing tags/keywords/categories and linking to each other frequently. So for example if Kabissa announces an event and Kabissa staff all blog about the announcement, the event will immediately be given high rankings in Google search results and on Technorati, Feedburner and other blog aggregation sites. This will also increase the possibility that other bloggers will find out about the event and add their voices as well.

A number of blogging tools will be experimented with during the course of this experiment, with feedback provided by team members on the tools they work with.

Given our background with Joomla and tools we have had exposure to in the past, we are considering the following tools:

• Joomla CMS and Add-ons
• Wordpress Free/Open Source Software
• Hosted on Wordpress.com
• Hosted on Blogger.com

Helping to decide are these resources:

• Asymptomatic Blog Breakdown - feature comparison of a large selection of blog software (does not include hosted blogs like blogger.com).
  • Same author also described his decision-making process and ultimate choice of WordPress
• Weblogmatrix.org - same creators as wikimatrix.org, feature comparison of a limited number of blog sofware, but including the main ones and blogger.com

As we get into blogging, a number of Web 2.0 services that enhance and support bloggers keep coming up that we will also experiment with. More may emerge as we move along, but at first sight the most relevant appear to be:

• Del.icio.us
• digg.com
• Flickr.com
• Technorati

As part of our experiment, we will create accounts on a range of these services for Kabissa team members and for Kabissa, and use these services for cross linking and sharing between the blogs.

• 3.4: Kabissa Blogs Implementation Plan

We will share our experiences once we have been blogging for a short while.

This glossary covers terms used in this paper that readers may not have encountered before. It is not intended to be exhaustive - if that is what you seek then please check out the web 2 page on wikipedia ¹⁾ or the Web 2.0 glossary at Professional 2.0²⁾.

AJAX ³⁾ is a web development technique that makes websites a pleasure to use. To contribute to an AJAX powered website, you no longer have to submit content and wait for a whole new page to load up. This is particularly exciting for Africans accustomed to (for example) waiting minutes on end for their webmail to load up or who frequently see a white screen instead of a confirmation message that the email they have been working on for the past thirty minutes has been delivered successfully.

Badges (or banners) are a terrific, widely used tool on blogs and websites. When something particularly notable or outrageous happens that affects you, like Hurricane Katrina⁴⁾ or the arrest of a blogger⁵⁾, you can show your affiliation and solidarity by placing a Badge directly on your own blog or website. Badges are also often used to promote particular human rights campaigns, such as “I blog for human rights” at Human Rights Watch⁶⁾ and “Stop Violence against Women” at Amnesty International.⁷⁾ Badges, as exemplified by Global Voices, ⁸⁾ also serve to simply bring together a community of bloggers with shared concerns.

According to Wikipedia, “A blog is a user-generated website where entries are made in journal style and displayed in a reverse chronological order.”⁹⁾

If you ever wondered “what's so special about blogging, anyway?” then you will find the answer by taking a closer look at the various links associated with specific blog postings. Whether you have your own blog or not, you can use these links to interact with and participate in blogs in completely new ways. Most simply, you can leave comments to express support or to argue with someone's assertions. You can also add it to a shared bookmarks site such as del.icio.us¹⁰⁾ or digg.com¹¹⁾ for later reference or to show others you find it interesting. You can see who else is blogging about a blog using a feature called trackbacks¹²⁾ or pingbacks. Permalinks are permanent links to blog entries that will not change - so you can share them with others with the assurance that they will see the plog entry the same way you did. Permalinks and trackbacks are particularly useful together since, if you have your own blog, you can post a comment on your blog about a particular blog and start a conversation between your two blogs.

Let other people use your content without asking by labelling it with a free, open-source like license. Creative Commons¹³⁾ has done the legwork for you by providing both human readable and legally binding licenses that you can use, and badges that you can use to link to them from your website. According to the Creative Commons Web site, “Offering your work under a Creative Commons license does not mean giving up your copyright. It means offering some of your rights to any member of the public but only on certain conditions.” This is a powerful Web 2.0 strategy for releasing the benefits of your creative works to the world while retaining your copyright.

It is now possible to organize photos, blogs, useful links, and any kind of content using multiple keywords, commonly referred to as “Folksonomy” Tags and Tag Clouds¹⁴⁾. Folksonomies differ from traditional taxonomies because they include keywords that are made up by the ordinary folks (people) using the website. This might give a librarian a heart attack because it means dozens of different terms might be used for organizing the exact same content, but it also makes the organization of the content more user-driven and dynamic.

Combine content and features from multiple websites to create a new, interesting and maybe revolutionary way of looking at content. Made possible largely through new standards in Really Simple Syndication (RSS) of blogs and any other kind of website content and “Open” Application Programmer's Interfaces (API) for Web 2.0 sites. Prominent examples include Google Map¹⁵⁾ and Flickr.

Thanks to the Flickr API, anyone with a blog or website can add an attractive photo slideshow to the sidebar. YouTube also provides similar functionality to allow people to display YouTube videos directly in their own blogs. A simpler example is RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds, which enable anyone to grab the latest headlines from a Web 2.0 website and display them attractively in a newsreader or on their own website. RSS feeds are the bread and butter of many Web 2.0 websites like Technorati and Global Voices that add value to blogs by delivering RSS Feeds to people in innovative and useful new ways.

Web 2.0 websites place a particularly strong emphasis on usability of web interfaces, meaning that they are intuitive and easy to use. It is so important that “Usability expert” is a new job description.

The term itself originates from an years-long discourse among techies about the evolution of Internet technology (Web 2.0 as a step up from Web 1.0).¹⁶⁾ In fact the underlying technology driving the Internet and web browsing is nothing new. The purpose of the web was always to facilitate the sharing of information, and the fundamental standards and principles established for this decades ago still stand. But today Web 2.0 has come to represent a growing perception and excitement among investors, enthusiasts and practitioners that the promise of the Internet as a tool for collaboration and information sharing is now finally being delivered.

• Meet up to discuss this plan and make improvements to it

• Identify priority areas we each want to focus on

• Discuss everyone's comfort level with blogging
  • Tobias is very comfortable participating in the blogosphere “conversations” on a regular basis, and has joined delicious, technorati, feedburner and other sites like that to get out there and start blogging. You all may want to just do this on a limited basis (e.g. only start making more active use of delicious and contribute to a shared Kabissa blog)

• Discuss technical issues - which blogging tools, how they fit in with joomla, which social networking sites to plug into and set up accounts on, etc.

• Establish initial list of “Kabissa tags” everyone is encouraged to use on their blogs, del.icio.us bookmarks and related web 2.0 sites
  • Kabissa
  • Kabissa programs
  • thematic areas
  • regions/countries
  • ICT terms (e.g. loband, ict4d, etc)
  • Names of people in our team, board, advisory group
  • TTGO steps

The three blogging tools that seem to most closely match our requirements are WordPress, Joomla and Drupal. We have worked with all three of them and they stand out as well known blogging tools used by organizations like ours.

Of these, WordPress is the only one designed from the ground up to be a blogging tool. The others are content management systems that offer blogging along with alot of other functionality. The particular advantage of Joomla is that it is the CMS we already use for our website so we would be adding blogging to an existing site. Drupal is a competing CMS that we are evaluating.

Below is a table comparing these three against our own requirements. (Note: blanks are as yet unknown - further research might be needed)

• Create Kabissa blog
  • Install blogging tool
  • Add users
  • Set up blogroll/links
  • Create about page
  • Create badge page with instructions for linking to the Kabissa blog
    • e.g.
      • http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/top/how-to-help-with-global-voices/
      • http://www.opendemocracy.net/about/oD_buttons.jsp
    • TODO: Kristin make nice badges?
  • Editorial Guidelines page
  • Create headline RSS feed on Kabissa homepage
  • examples to follow:
    • http://www.picnet.net/blog/
    • http://www.nten.org/blog/
    • http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/node/2523
• Create independent blogs for Kabissa team
  • Tobias - done using WordPress at http://www.saidia.org
  • The others were not interested in having their own blogs

• Who
  • Kabissa (using editors@kabissa.org)
  • Tobias, Kim and Liz

• Where
  • WordPress
  • Akismet antispam module
  • Del.icio.us (kabissa)
    • todo: set up a delicous tag cloud on blog
    • todo: add kabissa to my network (kim, liz, tobias)
    • todo: start adding bookmarks and send them to kabissa bookmarks
    • todo: invite others to add kabissa to network and to start submitting bookmarks to kabissa
  • Flickr (kabissa_africa tabar1)
    • http://www.flickr.com/photos/kabissa/
    • Todo: set up some groups:
      • “Kabissa Group”
      • “Time To Get Online”
    • Todo: start uploading pictures
    • Todo: add Kabissa team members to the Kabissa “family”
    • Todo: invite others to join as Kabissa “friends”
    • Todo: Set up a flickr badge on blog

• Skype:
  • Todo: add “Call me” skype badge to blog: http://www.skype.com/share/buttons/

• Technorati (kabissa, soccer)
  • Todo: sign up for technorati once we get a blog
  • todo: add technorati badge: http://www.technorati.com

• Everyone: look for more sites like these and sign up and experiment with them by adding badges to your blogs etc.

• Remove plesk password
• Turn on pingbacks in wordpress options
• Claim blog in Technorati and add search snippet to blog sidebar
• Set up blog at mybloglog.com and add snippet to blog sidebar
• Post a blog posting!
  • Tag at delicious and technorati, digg, muti

• As a matter of course, blog actively about Kabissa and comment on articles on the Kabissa website and other Kabissa blogs.

• After a brief “soft launch” of a week or two of active blogging, announce blogs in Kabissa Gong Gong member newsletter and Kabissa website.

Kabissa's Dear Mimi Internet Column covered Web 2.0 in our Gong Gong Member Newsletter in November 2006
http://www.kabissa.org/mimi/web-2.0.html

Social Web? What's that? Sometimes Mimi likes to push the envelope, and to encourage her gentle readers to sit back and reflect on the latest advances in technology that are now - or soon will be - affecting African civil society. The social web, also called Web 2.0 by trendsetters, represents a new era of the Internet in which people no longer go on the web expecting to merely access information provided by others. Everyone can now comment on what they read, change it, rate it, and put up information of their own - all using new user-friendly web interfaces. As a result, many now approach the Internet as a place to make and develop relationships with friends, network professionally and socially, and to create an image for themselves. Kabissa is taking an indepth look a Web 2.0 right now and will be sharing the benefits with Kabissa members - for now, all Mimi can do is to give a preview of the promises (and pitfalls) Web 2.0 offers. She welcomes your feedback!

• Information wants to be free.

People are sharing all kinds of online content at unprecedented levels, and one reason for this is that it is being licensed under new, unrestrictive licensing agreements. This is largely driven by the Free and Open Source Software movement. But a nonprofit organization called Creative Commons makes it particularly easy by providing standard “human readable” license agreements for various circumstances that anyone can choose and apply to any original work they make available. This is a bigger shift than you might realize, since the alternative is that all content is by default limited by copyright laws whether or not it was marked copyright or not. Large companies like Yahoo and Google are taking advantage of this to create new services that encourage active sharing of content. Civil Society Organizations (see the footer of this page) are doing it too! These licenses are also internationally recognized, so very applicable to Africa.

• You can share anything!

In the last year, people started to share and download not just text, but also photos , audio and video. It’s become incredibly quick and easy to do, thanks to technological advances. Portable USB drives, MP3 players and iPods, digital cameras, camera phones, video cameras, and webcams have come down in price and are available in increasingly portable form factors. Innovative entrepreneurs are responding by offering online services to facilitate the sharing of content produced for and by these devices.

• Learn the existence of things you care about in new ways.

It used to be that if you needed to do some research on a topic online, you would either go to a website you know is likely to have the information you need and hope they have it readily available. Then search sites came along - this made it easier, assuming you were looking for something commonly needed and knew the right combination of keywords! Now, with the new interactive features in Web 2.0, such as commenting and keyword tagging, people help one another and themselves to make connections in new ways. By combining tags and observing what others are keeping track of using tags that you care about, you will be amazed and astonished at what you will find.

• Interact in real time!

Voice over Internet (VOIP), video conferencing, and their precursor instant messaging are a powerful addition to e-mail for personal communication via the Internet. Web 2.0 services and websites also encourage immediate interactions with others. People are able to remain remarkably closely connected, right now and in real time, thanks to these tools. This makes it possible to work from home or from a cybercafe, to collaborate over long distances, to remain in touch in a substantial way with family and friends no matter where they are - as long as you all are near an Internet-connected computer. This is a tremendous shift since the days of relying on only “asynchronous” e-mail for keeping in touch.

• Spend less time online while moving more of your work online.

This sounds like a contradiction, but Web 2.0 makes it possible to make the time you spend online more productive, so you can do more faster - while also encouraging you to move things you used to do offline, online. Web 2.0 services are springing up that make it quicker and easier to take care of tasks online, from storing your email to managing your calendar, saving you time and, amazingly, enabling you to do more work online and keep track of your obligations online as well.

• Use your Mobile Phone to access the Internet.

Many people, also in Africa, look at their Mobile Phones and the Internet as separate things. Increasingly, however, innovative people are finding ways to use them together. For example, it is possible to post to a blog via text messaging, to podcast via mobile phone, and to send photos and videos created on mobile phones to websites. It is also possible to use text messaging to stay connected to a community or advocacy group that also has a website presence. We will see more innovations like this to connect the Internet with other day-to-day tools.

• What to do when you’re away from the Internet?

People that spend alot of time online begin to take it for granted - this was already the case before Web 2.0, but now new Web 2.0 services are encouraging you to do more online than ever. What do you do when you’re not near your Yahoo mailbox, your blog, your flickr account? Please be very strategic and don’t fall into the trap of being in a life threatening situation without critical information that is only available on Yahoo and you are 200 miles from the nearest cybercafe.

• Choose online services carefully.

There are now a great many online communities, news portals, support forums, instant messaging providers, and advocacy sites that are serving every conceivable interest and perceived business need. Think carefully when you land on a website and are asked to join, participate, sign petitions or add your e-mail address/mobile phone number. At the least it can become tricky to maintain profile pages on many sites, but you might also find yourself getting unwanted phone calls or e-mails that don’t interest you and clutter your mailbox.

• A “stale” blog makes you look incompetent.

Setting up a blog is quick and easy to do - but keeping it going takes perserverence, nurturing and planning. Many make the mistake of creating a blog, adding an optimistic launch post and then abandoning it forever. This is even more disheartening than the many old and out of date websites we see on the Internet belonging to organizations that pay somebody to set it up for them without planning ahead to ensure they are able to continue updating it.

• The web is forever.

This may be hard to imagine, but thanks to sites like Google and the Wayback Machine, anything you add to blog websites or post to an e-mail mailing list might be retrievable even years later. So think on that when you want to make an angry reply to someone’s libelous comments about you or are thinking about posting a video or photograph of a controversial event on the Internet.

• Bad information is worse than no information.

With a read-write web, any nutcase can set up a beautiful, legitimate-looking blog website and start posting falsehoods to the world. We have always had to be vigilant when using the Internet for research, but now that it has become so easy to post content we need to be more careful than ever when checking out websites that we come across.

Hopefully this taste of the power and pitfalls of Web 2.0 has piqued your interest. We will be sharing the results of our research soon, as well as incorporate as much Web 2.0 functionality as possible in our Web projects. in the meantime, here are a few particularly interesting examples of Web 2.0 that Mimi recommends. Explore and reflect on how you can incorporate these tools into your organization's work!

• Human Rights Watch Blogging Resources: Blogging for Human Rights
  • http://hrw.org/blogs.htm
• Global Voices Online (Example: Sub-Saharan Africa)
  • http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/-/world/sub-saharan-africa/
• Del.icio.us Bookmarks (Example: bookmarks tagged with Africa and tech)
  • http://del.icio.us/tag/africa%2Btechnology
• Flickr.com - photo sharing (Example: photos tagged with poverty)
  • http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/poverty/