The A Spot

Let me just get this out of the way first.  Even after all the warnings…I totally underestimated what it would take to sustain a blog.  But Matthew and I are back at it again with a very cool new resource to share.

Along with Anna Prymakova, in the ISC Ukraine office, we put together a pilot project to shed some light on online government information in Ukraine - www.tvoyaderzhava.org.ua/en/.  Mining the collective brain of the nonprofit tech community we set up a wiki website using a Customized Google Search engine and del.icio.us tag feed.  The result is a simple, user interface that allows Ukrainian citizens to search all .ua.gov websites and using tags browse the different interactive features of over 250 local, regional and national government websites.

We put these resources together after conducting a focus group with users of an IATP center (Internet Access Training Program) initially set up by IREX.  The group highlighted the overwhelming about of online information with little understanding on the part of citizens about what they could do with the information, how to best access it and determine if it was credible.

Anna recently demoed the wiki at an IATP center in Sevastopol.  In her words: she started with sharing with participants the top 5 gov websites of Sevastopol region and of other regions, introduced them to the structure and navigation techniques of uagov at del.icio.us and del.icio.us itself. Then shared with them tvoyaderzhava.org.ua, customized google search, tips for using the site, introduced them wiki-concept, and rss as well, then we analyzed more of online opportunities of forums, Q&A, chats, writing an electronic letter tips, problems government has to overcome while starting answering questions online, why some websites are actively updated and useful and some not useful.  The site was a hit with the users.

The site is in both Ukrainian and English and next steps are for Anna to create a wink presentation that can be shared with the network of IATP centers across Ukraine.

All told the pilot cost around 7500 USD including - domain registration, wiki set up and customization, content creation and posting, time to tag, translation, two site visits.  Thanks to Google for making their search engine available for free to nonprofits.  We used Dokuwiki which is an open source wiki tool perfectly designed to handle multiple languages.  We also contributed back to the code with further translation of parts of it into Ukrainian.  For more on what we did check out - http://www.tvoyaderzhava.org.ua/en/main/about/start 

I admit it, I am a geek, if you could not already tell from the last few posts to the blog. Matthew often has to reign me in when I geek out too much. But today a new resource came across my desk that not only spoke to the geek in me but also to the committed supporter of advocates around the world. Hat tip to Serhiy Danylenko in Kiev for pointing me to this.

The team at Tactical Tech has put together a new online resource called the DIY Communications Toolkit . This is a great new addition to the Security, Publishing, Audio/Visual Toolboxes.

(from the website) The DIY Communications toolkit from Tactical Tech offers a collection of tried and tested, accessible free and open source tools. The toolkit is designed for small and medium-sized NGOs, advocates, and citizen journalists to help them create and distribute content for their advocacy efforts while exploring the constantly evolving world of campaigning and communications.It contains a series of how-to’s, hands-on-guides and tutorials that walk you through the processes of creating and distributing content for awareness raising and online activism.

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There is alot of buzz (some deserved and some not) about the potential of web 2.0 to revolutionize how we reach out to supporters and mobilize them around certain issues. As great as all that is it helps to understand how social networks - live, breath, eat, grow - and you cannot always see that with a web-based tool.

The folks with Net-Map have put together a great, resource rich, website to help folks understand and use Net-Map: Net-Map is an interview-based mapping tool that helps people understand, visualize, discuss, and improve situations in which many different actors influence outcomes. Relying on pens, paper, colored tags, stackable pieces you can create sophisticated network maps which help you better understand the network you are trying to influence. (more…)