Telecentre Magazine's third issue is out!

Juanita, Vignesh and Jaya (self) have been delighted to work on this current issue of telecentre Magazine, our third issue since the conceptualisation of this magazine.

As a key ICT4D knowledge sharing tool, the idea was really born out of informal conversations between Mark Surman and Ravi, Jaya and Frank Tulus, Richard Fuchs and Ravi, about the need to really do an indepth analysis and research publication for the telecentre community.

The challenges that most grassroots telecentre leaders face is their difficulty in telling a story. Its often difficult to write and even more difficult to publish. Narration is the first part of the active documentation, but the vision of telecentre magazine is to make it a "Economist" of the telecentre domain.

Let's all celebrate this collective vision between telecentre.org and CSDMS.

eINDIA 2008 is just 11 days away!

At CSDMS where I have been working since April 2004, we have so far organised five major international level muti-track conferences. The upcoming event eINDIA 2008 will be held in Delhi's exhibition grounds called Pragati Maidan.

From July 29-31, the venue will be the hub of India's largest Information and Communications Technology Event, bringing in over 4000 delegates, 350 speakers, 125 exhibitors and specialists in seven themes.

Several partners, exhibitors, supporters from government, private sector, NGOs, international agencies, development organisations and networks have joined hands to make this a mega event. Conferencing, networking, knowledge sharing, making friends, and learning from demonstrations and workshops will be the key purpose of this mega event. There will be fun evenings too with Awards, Music, and magical transformation of the knowedge sharing space to a relaxing and rejuvenating space with live music and band.

The themes are: egov, ehealth, digital learning, eagriculture, mserve, municipal IT,and telecentres.

There is a grand eINDIA awards ceremony too. There are over 150 applicants for the awards in each thematic area, and six to seven awards under each theme. In all over 42/45 people will be felicitated.

For more information, log on to www.eINDIA.net.in/2008

How to improve intra-office knowledge sharing - Need to build trust

The other day, we came across persons (more than three) from a well known organisation and globally well linked, being at the edge of a communication failure, mistrust and concern. The fact that it is a reputed organisation, and small in size, it does not have the problem of big hierarchy, it came as a big surprise to us.

What really was the problem? As a key partner to the above said organisation, we often have to deal with more than one member from that organisation. And, this itself becomes a cause for concern. The members began to feel that we should or should not talk to one or the other members.

This is a clear cut case of failure/ break-down of intra-office knowledge sharing, and even though there are brilliant knowledge sharing ICT tools, they don't necessarily solve the intra-office communication issues.

Due to the multi-cultural nature of the said organisation, and being global in nature, different cultural ethos affects the way people communicate.

The most important of it all is Trust. If people have doubts... they are beginning to widen the distance and is a warning signal for management to take note of the problems. These are but first signals of serious problems.

I have been trained by Sam Kaner on facilitation techniques, especially for conflict resolution, and a trained facilitator have learnt that the mediator may become not only necessary but also critical to address the current scenario in the said organisation.

I am deliberately not mentioning the name of the organisation, as we continue to deal with folks from that organisation, and we don't really want to hurt or offend anyone. But how will they know? When should they be told about the problem that we can sense?? Comments are welcome.

Dignity and respect for people, in whatever position they are in, is a critical pillar to the development and nurturing of knowledge sharing.

Hope these inputs will help people.

December 2007 Annual CSDMS Party and Saraswati is having fun

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAhLPGV7Sxk

As you all know You Tube is the latest social sharing tool both for documentation and giving a new expression to all those who really hate editors, directors, etc.

Here we have an unedited version of the annual party that CSDMS and elets team enjoyed after the annual review process in December 2007. It was a fun party. And, most beautiful for me is the dance and joy in Saraswati's face (check out the lady with the long hair, and dancing away happily).

There is another longer version of the video clip of about 8 minutes, and is fun watching too. What is important to note is the ICT4D and Knowledge sharing has to be as much fun as lot of serious thinking and hard work.

Let your hair down, and chill... ENJOY!