Mekong ICT Camp - Day 1
February 25th, 2008
Today was the first day of the Mekong ICT (Information Communication Technology) Camp which I am attending in Thailand. The camp is for people from Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar, and despite that I am neither from this region, nor working in the region, I felt that Indonesia was close enough, and it sounded interesting, so here I am. The camp is along the lines of a BarCamp, which means that it doesn’t have a ridged schedule and participation is encouraged.
I am in the Information Management Track, which began with a group activity on presenting an Information Cycle.
Here is our final product:
And another Information Cycle prepared by another group, which I found interesting:
We then got into a discussion on the differences between Data (raw numbers), Information (analyzed data) and Knowledge (applied information).
In the afternoon, there was a discussion about various tools available for Information Management, which lead to me engaging in the Online vs. Offline debate with one of the facilitators.
We also started an exercise where a blog was created, to which each of the 24 participants of our track could contribute – to help manage the information coming out of the Camp. I thought it was rather ambitious, but it seems to go quite well. I’ll be interested to see how it gets used throughout the camp. Unfortunately at the moment the blog is only hosted locally, so you can’t see it yet.
I also managed to get myself roped into presenting a stream on Database Design for NGOs, which will provide me with a good motivation of finally compiling my thoughts on this topics.
The hardest part of the day was choosing between the Yoga and Salsa in the evening time slot… I think I could get used to this!
February 26th, 2008 at 9:23 am
go yoga and salsa!!
February 26th, 2008 at 10:16 am
Glad you are “could get used to this!”
Wonder if the knowledge controllers of a certain state know where barcamps lead to? Looks like abit of HPX Opensapce to me - Roll on Freedom of the masses.
March 1st, 2008 at 9:21 am
I’m sad to see that in your Radio Programme Information Cycle, there wasn’t a feedback loop for Online Distribution.
It’s about starting conversations and engaging your audience, regardless of medium. It just so happens that Internet provides the perfect platform for serving said conversations (podcasts, message boards, youtube comments, flickr photos, etc).
March 3rd, 2008 at 12:29 am
I actually think you’ll see that there is a feedback loop (and not just because I’ve gone back and corrected the file!).
It links from the audience (not the distribution itself)
You’re absolutely right about starting conversations, and I think that is something that NGOs need to work on. Interestingly enough, one of the people who were doing a radio show admitted that at the present time they weren’t getting any feedback from the audience. It is understandable that with limited time and money, monitoring the outputs of a project is one of the first things to get dropped. Of course this does mean that there is no way to evaluate how effective you are being, or improve!