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I, Tobias Eigen, am blogging about Africa at Kabissa.org

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August 20, 2008 in Africa, Civil Society, Kabissa, Bainbridge Island, Web 2.0, Social Networking, WordPress, Blogging, Free/Libre Open Source Software, ICT4D, Drupal, web2fordev and freecycle. 0 Comments

Visitors to saidia.org may be wondering what is happening here - not much it seems. I set up this blog some time ago as an experiment, to learn about the ins and outs of blogging and to learn about the free and open source WordPress blogging tool that makes this particular blog possible. My reasons for carrying out the experiment were personal but also related to Kabissa, the organization I started 9 years ago to enable me to be a reliable technology partner for African civil society. The Kabissa team was exploring the participatory web, also known as Web 2.0, and the blogosphere was - and remains - an important part of that, so having some of us blogging was an important part of our research. Outcomes from that along the way have been a research paper available on the Kabissa wiki, a “wikified” version of Kabissa’s Time To Get Online training manual in English, French and Arabic, and of course various articles, interviews and presentations we gave at Netsquared and Web2fordev. These are floating in the blogosphere and hopefully useful to folks seeking to explore the power of Web 2.0 in civil society no matter where in the world.

In February 2008, Kabissa watchers will have noted the launch of our new online community website at http://www.kabissa.org including blogs for staff of all 1200+ member organizations. This includes me! I am now blogging there very regularly, along with Sokari Ekine, Kabissa’s in-house blogger and community coordinator, and a range of very idealistic and courageous people working in African civil society. Check out the blog at http://www.kabissa.org/blog

Thanks to the Drupal open source content management system we are using, the site has some very powerful functionality we are exploring that is relevant and useful for African organizations. This includes a granular notification system allowing registered site users to subscribe to posts by specific bloggers or containing specific tags or a range of other combinable filtering methods. We also are able to do special mailings containing opportunities and timely announcements addressed to a subset of our membership (eg in a specific city or region, or working in a specific thematic area) and then to generate reports on the effectiveness of the mailings. Our monthly member newsletter contains a selection of our best content from the past month along with a member spotlight and “Dear Mimi” Internet advice column. One of the niftiest new tools we are playing with is a blog-by-email gizmo, allowing our members to send email to a specific email address to be posted (by them) on the blog, or to reply to notifications to add comments to blog posts.

So this is the long way for me to tell you quite simply - looking for posts by Tobias Eigen about tech in Africa? Go to http://www.kabissa.org/blog/1 to see them! While you are there, please go ahead and sign up and join the Kabissa community, and if you have something to say please start blogging yourself and participate in blog discussions with others that share your passion about African civil society and the role technology can play.

And as for saidia.org - I like having my own personal blog where I can speak out on my own recognizance without concern for the bylaws of Kabissa or any other organization, and also talk about any topic that spurs me to post.

For example, I have been mulling over a decision to leave freecycle Bainbridge Island, a really neat Yahoo group community I have been part of for three years now. This would be a big decision for me but if I take it I don’t want to do so alone - thanks to my blog I wouldn’t have to. If I do leave, then I would post my explanation on the blog to try to start a discussion in my community about it so I can understand better how best I personally and we as an island community can keep items out of the landfill that others might still be able to use.

Images FOR Africa - Flickr group promotes Creative Commons and sharing of Images FOR Africa

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Tobias Eigen

September 4, 2007 in Africa, nptech, Web 2.0, WordPress, Blogging, Media, ICT4D, Flickr, web2fordev and Creative Commons. 1 Comment

I love Creative Commons. I love pictures. And I love Africa! So I was very pleased to encounter - and promptly join - the Images of Africa - Images FOR Africa group on Flickr. The group gathers images of Africa by people who want to share them with others. The photos shared by the group can be used freely under a generous Creative Commons license, and of course can be browsed, discussed or searched in the usual nifty Flickr ways.

There is even a beautiful Flickr map so you can place your own photos on the map and allow people to browse them by country.

I am enthusiastic about the new channels this provides for building networks of shared interest among likeminded and generous people in Africa.

I would gather that Flickr groups like this with such a clear common benefit for group members will provide a wonderfully gentle route into Creative Commons for people that otherwise are skeptical of the hype surrounding Web 2.0.
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Interview with Walter Turner on Kabissa, Web 2.0, African civil society and more…

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Tobias Eigen

September 4, 2007 in Africa, Civil Society, nptech, Kabissa, Web 2.0, Social Networking, WordPress, Blogging, Free/Libre Open Source Software, Democracy and web2fordev. 0 Comments

I was pleased to learn from Nunu Kidane (Priority Africa Network) this morning that an interview Kim Lowery and I did with Walter Turner back in May aired on KPFA in Berkeley yesterday and is available online.

The interview came on the heels of the Netsquared conference on “remixing the web for social change”, so Kim and I were very much jazzed up by - and no doubt still processing - the attention our Kabissa 2.0 proposal received at the conference and the many remarkable projects and ideas we were exposed to. We discussed Web 2.0 concepts but Walter Turner also challenged us to go into detail about the history and justification for Kabissa, on what we think civil society is and how we support the important work of organizations in Africa.

Movin’, Movin’, Movin’…

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Tobias Eigen

July 10, 2007 in Africa, Civil Society, WordPress, Blogging and Free/Libre Open Source Software. 0 Comments

Anyone attempting to visit saidia.org today most likely encountered some fairly hideous database connection errors. Pole sana = many apologies! Especially after asking a bunch of people on the DDN list to come and help me identify the best Open Source in Civil Society book. D’oh! It’s not too late - please come and add your suggestions.

In any case, it’s good to have the move behind me. I had been planning to move to a new server for a bit now but the timing was decided by some severe errors I was suddenly getting on the old server relating to posting comments and a bunch of other things. Now I’m happily moved to this ridiculously powerful Dreamhost server and I can’t wait to see how I will take advantage of the space and cool features. Let me know if you notice anything unusual after the move.

greenlightnigeria.org - it begins!

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Tobias Eigen

April 8, 2007 in Civil Society, nptech, Social Networking, WordPress, Blogging, Politics, Create Peace, Nigeria and Democracy. 0 Comments

In a comment to my Blueprint for a Nigerian Civil Society Election Blog, Tim Concannon announced greenlightnigeria.org - I’m glad to see this development and hope it catches on. Congratulations SDN and IDASA! Please help spread the word and make this - and the Nigerian election - a success!

greenlightnigeria.org

… it begins

Thanks for inspiring us to get this started, Mr Eigen, and for the support. We owe you and Kabissa yet another one.

Apart from some of the technology issues that people are raising here - and which you and I have talked back and forth offblog - I think Imnakoya and Sokari are highlighting the main challenges we have to overcome:

Nigeria and Africa isn’t up to speed with “blog” technology.

(I.e.: How to get Flickr, Technorati, Twitter, Wordpress, Joomla, Tagging, YouTube and everything to work together so you can do something useful with them.)

To be fair… I think some European human rights activists, who think they know a thing or two about websites, are also lagging somewhere behind in understanding how it all works together… I’ve learned a lot this week

The other main challenge for us, which Imnakoya and Sokari are correctly identifying is that the Nigerian “blogverse” is fragmented at the moment.

I think that is a reflection of Nigerian politics… things are not falling apart, so much as very slowly crumbling. (I have written about this here. I also write a little there about my experiences in Port Harcourt at Easter in 2003. On which note, by a coincidence I’m writing this on Easter Sunday 2007 so Happy Easter everyone :))

Greenlightnigeria.org is going to be an interesting experiment, to see if we can get a wave of enthusiasm for blogging going across the whole country.

In fact, why stop there? If this becomes a useful tool during Nigeria’s elections - with the biggest electorate in Africa - it must be possible to use the same technologies and approaches throughout the continent.

But we are very much aware of the fact that this is an experiment. April is the start of the process… the real crunch time is in February, when local government elections are scheduled.

For now, the main advantages greenlightnigeria.org has are for election monitors, activists and indepedent witnesses to the elections; all of whom want to be able to get information, experiences and opinions out, but want to minimise the risks to themselves of going public.

I am going to have to do a bit of editing and managing as we will have multiple bloggers, plenty of opportunity for people to interact through comments and in other ways.

We will have to manage the garbage-in / garbage-out problem with having multiple contributors… there’s no getting around our legal obligations as publishers in the UK, so a certain amount of fact checking is unavoidable.

For this reason we would love people to approach us to become bloggers - as well as to be “commenters” etc - but we will probably have to pick people up slowly, do basic ID checks, etc…

However, despite these limitations I am really excited by the huge opportunities for people to interact and use this as a tool to create debate.

More to come… -t

Audioblogging by Mobile Phone? Round 2: Nigerian Election Blog Blueprint

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Tobias Eigen

April 4, 2007 in Africa, nptech, Web 2.0, WordPress, Blogging, Media, Politics, ICT4D, Loband and Nigeria. 6 Comments

When considering a Civil Society Election Blog for Nigeria, we realized fairly quickly that it has to be possible for people to contribute to it via their mobile phones. Post via the web and e-mail, yes, but also somehow via phone.

The obvious first destination is blogging via SMS, for which various tools are available. However, the constraints of SMS are immediately apparent - the limited number of letters you can send in a message, and that (apparently) SMS service is spotty in Nigeria. SMS messages simply do not always arrive at their destination. There are also not many carriers, and it seems risky to develop a strategy that depends too much on one carrier even if it seems likely that service will not be interrupted (after all, the police rely on their mobile phones as much as anybody else).

The next destination, audioblogging by telephone, is compelling. In fact, it’s so compelling that I’m surprised it has not caught on already.. especially in Africa. Why should it not be possible for activists and election monitors - and indeed citizens - to call a number and leave a message about problems they are experiencing or issues dear to them, and be able to expect their message to be immediately made available for listening on a blog?

We brainstormed on the topic, and it is remarkable how many affordable options are available. Read on to join me in looking into three of them - PhoneBlogz, Skype-In with Voicemail, and Evoca. Maybe you know others? None so far seem to make it particularly easy to provide a local Nigerian number to dial into, however it may be possible for some Mobile Activista to figure this out - so stay tuned for that.

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Kabissa is now blogging! And at the NTC!

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Tobias Eigen

April 4, 2007 in nptech, Kabissa, WordPress, Blogging and 07NTC. 0 Comments

Greetings, and welcome to the Kabissa blog!

The Kabissa team is now blogging at http://www.kabissa.org/blog - and I for one am very excited about it. I have enjoyed having my personal blog here at saidia.org, but having a team blog at Kabissa will encourage all of us to share more regularly about our day-to-day experiences and the learning we are doing about ICT in African civil society. The blog will also give us opportunities to take some of our fiery Kabissa debates to the blogosphere so others can join in the fun!

And just in time, too. Kim and Liz are participating in the huge NTEN Nonprofit Technology Conference, which kicks off today in Washington DC. I don’t plan to quote myself often between these blogs, but I will now to avoid repeating myself:

Participating in NTC over the years has been greatly influential to my thinking about emerging technologies and how we as Kabissa can contribute to the important work of African civil society organizations as they grapple with new opportunities the new technologies are offering.

That Kim and Liz are at the event and I am at home on Bainbridge Island is an exciting change for us. I participated in the last three conferences, in Philadelphia, Chicago and Seattle. This year, my colleagues will be mixing with friends I have been getting to know over the years, and also meeting new people. As for me, I will be vicariously enjoying the events from afar, by monitoring their contributions to the Kabissa blog as well as the online activities of some of helpful “Web 2.0 hype enabled” colleagues (such as Ryan Ozimek at Picnet and NTEN) that will be providing blow by blow reports of the action.

Thanks K2 for the powerful new WordPress template!

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Tobias Eigen

March 16, 2007 in WordPress, Blogging and Free/Libre Open Source Software. 1 Comment

If you’ve been here before, you might have noticed that I’ve updated the saidia.org site design. I’ve moved to the K2 Template for its powerful new functionality. I was initially looking for a simple means for adding rotating images to the header like Grandiose Parlor but then found the K2 template which does this and so much more.

K2 Loves you like a kitten..
This picture has nothing to do with K2, but seeing their tag line “K2 loves you like a kitten” made me think of the old viral picture that went around many years ago. I just found it again here - Every time you vote Republican, God kills a kitten. Think of the kittens!

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Blueprint for a Nigerian Civil Society Election Blog

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Tobias Eigen

March 15, 2007 in Africa, Civil Society, nptech, Web 2.0, Social Networking, WordPress, Blogging, muti, Media, Politics, Create Peace, Nigeria and Global Voices. 15 Comments

Nigeria’s election in April promises to be full of surprises - and I am worried for the people in Nigeria and the region that it may not go well and descend the country into chaos. A Nigerian friend who should know has already said the country has only a 50/50 chance of getting through this unscathed. I don’t think he’s exaggerating, considering the rather shocking reports coming out of the country, such as this recent Amnesty International Urgent Action alert about another old friend, Anyakwee Nsirimovu. The organization Anyakwee started in Port Harcourt, Institute for Humanitarian and International Law, is one of the first 10 members of Kabissa. Here’s a quote from the AI alert:

Anyakwee Nsirimovu, Executive Director of the Institute for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law (IHRHL) in Rivers State, in the Niger delta, was attacked on 4 March, a week after an apparent threat to kill his family if he did not stop his human rights activities. Amnesty International believes that his life may be in danger.

There will no doubt be more reports of incidents like this as we get closer to the elections, which is discouraging to contemplate. However, I am heartened by the strong solidarity shown by members of the African Democracy Forum in response to a posting on their e-network of the AI alert about Anyakwee. People around Nigeria, Africa and indeed the world unequivocally stated their support and readiness.

One way to perhaps help to prevent widescale abuses might be to make this solidarity more readily visible on the Internet through a Nigerian Civil Society Election Blog. I did an Internet search and while there are some bloggers (like this and this and this ) discussing the election and Global Voices and Pambazuka News have been covering the elections, I did not see any clear effort to use blogging specifically to prevent violence during the election.

Perhaps I am being naive and there are good reasons for this - I’d love to hear them. But I’m very enthusiastic about the blogosphere and am always wondering how it might be applied to the important work of civil society organizations in Africa. I have jotted down some ideas below that perhaps others might pick up on or that might spur a collaboration. And if not in Nigeria, maybe it will be useful for someone trying to do the same in another “emerging democracy”. Read on, and let me know what you think.

Even if such a coordinated effort does not take off, I’d like to encourage everyone that knows anything at all about what is going on in Nigeria these days to blog actively about it and to tag blog postings at Technorati, Del.icio.us and other social networking sites. The election must be carried out as much as possible in public view, and Nigeria must know the world is watching. If you are concerned for your own safety, you can always blog under a pseudonym at WordPress.com or one of the many other free blogging sites out there.

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