ODI has launched a Forum on the Future of Aid.  The project seeks to broaden the debate about ‘new’ aid modalities, such as country ownership, the MDGs and the potential pressures of increased aid flows.  The forum seeks to bring Southern voices into a debate that has been dominated by Northern donor agencies.

The forum seems at first glance to be like…well…many other forums.  But always interesting to see if this one succeeds where so many other donor-driven development discussions seem to flounder.

Forum on the Future of Aid

• IT|Redux » Office 2.0
  (tags: business management software technology tools web2.0 office)

• Panarchy – Panarchy.com
  interesting site on networked governance
  (tags: policy networks governance)

• Resources — CooperationCommons
  Interesting Stanford site on cooperation.
  (tags: collaboration video cooperation)

This is interesting in more ways than one. First, Yochai Benkler of Yale Law School has just released what looks like a very interesting book on networks and social production. The Book, titled: “The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom” is set to make a significant impact on economic and political theory. Second, the book is offered online in complete form and free for download – even though it has been published by Yale University Press and does not seem to carry a Creative Commons License or any similar open copyright. But finally, and most interestingly, the author has developed a Wiki site for people to write summaries and discuss the book. Think of it as a seminar online:

The basic idea is to make this Wiki a place where people who read the book can do at least four things. First, collaborate on writing a summary of the ideas and claims of the book, as an initial point of entry. Second, provide an easy platform through which to access underlying research materials: both those used in the book’s notes, and more importantly, resources that are useful for further research, refinement, and updating. Third, the Wiki should be a place where participants can describe, link to, and analyze examples of the phenomena the book describes. The purpose is not to “make the case” for the book or find “gotcha” counter examples. What we are trying to do is provide a real research tool, annotated bibliography, and platform for collaborative learning. Examples and counter-examples should be selected and described with that purpose in mind. Fourth, the Wiki is itself a learning platform about what is valuable in a learning platform. Through separate pages devoted to ideas and experiments of what can be done with an online book to make it a learning platform, we hope to expand the range of uses to which this Wiki can be available.

To see the book and the Wiki, visit: http://www.benkler.org/wealth_of_networks/index.php/Main_Page

The LA Times is doing a four part series on remittances and the role that they play in the developing world. Titled The New Foriegn Aid”The New Foriegn Aid” the series sets itself up to “examine the worldwide flow of remittances.” The series will look at Mexico, Haiti, the Philippines and Kenya.

The read the articles go to www.latimes.com/foreignaid

• The New York Review of Books: The Global Delusion
  John Gray on globalisation.
  (tags: globalization)

I’ve spent a lot of time over the past year exploring how different tools can assist dispersed groups in the nonprofit sector to better collaborate with each other. My experience has been mixed. Multiple languages and cultures, chronic overwork and a general unease about technology often dominates workgroups in international development.

There is an ever increasing amount of basic how-tos on the web that can be useful for nonprofits who want to make better use of communications technology. Social Signal has a good overview of how the many tools of Web 2.0 – RSS, tags and social bookmarking can be used in the non profit world. See the link here.

Unfortunately, the Achilles heel of many of these ventures is that many (though certainly not all, or even most) in the nonprofit world don’t read very much! Online collaboration and knowledge sharing tend to work when the collaborators are intellectually curious about their field and when they are interested in engaging. For those who do not feel that they have the interest or the time, RSS simply offers a flood of more information that is of limited use.