[wsfii-discuss] Re: taking lead and self organization

Thu Jun 28 20:11:09 UTC 2007

*All,

Sorry, but I was kicked from the list due to a DNS error with my MX, so
I am just now catching up on some of the discussion.

I see some strong refutation to my suggestion to not forget about the
principles of self-organization. I don't want to get into some kind of
flame war on the subject, nor argue about the virtues and faults of open
source etc., my suggestion was that I think that that value
(self-organization) should not be lost in whatever way we decide to
organize the event. As I indicated subsequently, there are perhaps ways
to arrive at a hybridized solution, but so long as the end result is
that we have something that encourages participation and allows for
contribution from all interested. So, to be clear, I am not opposed to a
coordinator, in fact I support the idea of having some key people more
actively involved, but I am opposed to someone taking outright
authority. Whomever is appointed should be willing and interested in
seeking input from the stakeholders, local and international.

One note, regarding Thomas' posting, from my recollection the idea to
have this conference did not originate with the local group, unless
perhaps they had an event that we have merged with WSFII and in fact,
this event began as a self-organizing event. So, it would not be right
to say that we are taking it and making it a self-organizing event. But
to return to the topic of engaging this group, again, we need to really
find a way to engage with our local people so that they can participate
in these discussions. Perhaps we can figure out a way to do that?

What we are doing here is more important than just this meeting, we are
forging two interesting paths, one, an inclusive process of
self-organizing for the international ICT4D community and second, we are
figuring out new ways to engage local groups into this process. If we
advance these concepts, than we have done something, IMHO, much more
important than the conference itself.

Ian

Thomas Maketa* tmaketa at gmail.com
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/Fri Jun 15 11:19:22 BST 2007/

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I'm seeing a lot of people contributing to the discusion but so far the
minutes of the ganaheein comittee is the first contribution I see from  the
ghanaien people on the ground.

I would really want to know what they think of the discusion of this mailing
list, are they understanding that, it's how I perceive it, "WE" want to
somehow use this event and turning it to a  self organized event, perhaps
far from what they are planning and that they risk to lose control of it ?