Today is MandelaDay

Today is Mandela Day.
Make your imprint!

Share Fair 09 already finished

Ok, the Share Fair is well finished and I keep on putting pieces together after that nice, funny, interesting, free, relaxing, tiring, visionary week.

Soon, I’m going to blog some internal reflections.

CHANGE CHANGE CHANGE

CHANGE seems to be the KEY word all over the world these days.
At FAO, two main events just took place last week. The Organization is undertaking a deep and serious process of internal restructuring. After the IEE (Independent External Evaluation) report, which suggested many and different changes in the strategy, the approach and the structure, [...]

Visiting the radio and video studio of FAO

Some days ago a group of communicators working for different services of FAO had a very interesting visit to the radio and video studio of the organization.

Ten of us, part of the “bluebar” communicators list, spent the morning with the responsible for the infrastructure debating on: how to use the facility, the recent and past [...]

Mongolia and the power of human relationship

Mongolia is a very interesting country. Both on the geographical and the social point of view. Human relationships are so important there that everything relays on mutual support. Why?
Here is my explanation. The country is huge, more than 1.5 million square km (five times Italy and almost half of West Europe) while the population is [...]

Web2forDev

Ok, it is now open and living: it is the Web2forDev Conference, held in Rome at FAO Headquarters, from 25 to 27 September, 2007.
The title talk about participation to support development. I’m really looking forward to see if people will focus on tools and technologies OR on the “2″ of the title, that stands for: [...]

KM4DEV meeting in Zeist

Two weeks ago some of the members of the km4dev list met in Zeist, The Netherlands, for a three days workshop. I was there and it was a very interesting meeting.

People with different background and from very different contexts met and spoke freely about many different topics on knowledge management. You [...]

TRUST and TIME: the crucial factors of online communities

The 3rd workshop on online communities just finished and Nancy and I are here collecting the experience and trying to find out what was good and what wrong (if any!). Personally, I’m very positive after this training as I see many people really interested in what we are proposing. And we are not talking about [...]

Identity is very important for online communities

Many people complain about it: “I want to stay unknown on the web. Nobody has to know who I’m.”
I don’t know why and I don’t what is behind this need. But I know that TRUST is very important both in real and in VIRTUAL life. So, as long as we stay hidden behind our [...]

Learning log – Week #5: final comments

“I was especially happy to be exposed to using tools (e.g. Dgroups, blogs, etc) which I had only seen, but never quite understood how they worked. I am glad we have been able to start one D-group as a result of this workshop. I’ll now be looking to identify & advise on areas where [...]

Learning Log – Week #4: tell the group you’re changing hats

“IF we are called on to shift our role, it is useful to tell the group what you are doing.
Transparency is even more important online – otherwise people can make assumptions which are often quite different than our intentions.”

Learning Log – Week #3: Trust is central

“Very related to norms and agreements is building relationship and trust in a group. Sometimes this is hard. There is a tension caused by a lack of time. When people are busy, they are less inclined to spend time building relationships, and developing trust with others in a network. Yet trust is central for [...]

Learning Log – Week #2: Start ONLINE

“I have found that pre-F2F work online makes F2F meetings more productive. For groups that have to go online and have a chance to be F2F, I usually suggest they start ONLINE first.
This helps people test their sense of others online, gain some identity and trust, then when they go F2F not only does the [...]

Learning Log – Week #1: Relationship&Trust

“We begun to build our RELATIONSHIP as a group through INTRODUCTIONS.
Relationship is one of the cornerstones for building TRUST. In professional networks, our professional credentials and experience are important, but by bringing other parts of ourselves online, we can discover other bridges that can help us when things get more difficult. In the end, the [...]