Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Helmut Leitner on February 10, 2012 at 11:09am

The gap at wikipedia could be closed easily, one need not wait until someone outside recognizes the importance of GKP, it's more logical that a secretary or GKP member does this job. In case that there is lacking know-how, I can offer advice or a helping hand. In principle all activities of GKP, like conferences and important publications, should reflect in Wikipedia. The same is true for members of GKP. What sense does it make to do something good and not make it public?

tbc

Permalink Reply by Helmut Leitner on February 13, 2012 at 8:40am

In reading the website and referenced publications, I feel confronted with a FOA, a flood of acronyms.

Looking at central ones, like ICT4D (information and communication technology for development) and K4D (knowledge for development): where are the fundamental questions answerered, that must be connected to these concept? What kind or quality of ICT? What quality or format of knowledge? What kind of development is meant? What models for knowledge and development are used?

There is the implicite and founding assumption of GKP, that MSP (multi stakeholder/sector partnership) and looking for win-win-situations for all is the way to go. This is a sound assumption and puzzle stone within any development theorie, but it works only if and only if, no-one is excluded, if no losers are created. This needs an air of openness, to bring all into the boat, an ethical attitude.

There is no separating out development. We are all in systems in development, that are parts of systems in development. All is connected.

The development of GKP is not just GKPs business, because of its global mission statement ("Improving Lives - Reducing Poverty - Empowering People"). If this is taken seriously, and why shouldn't we, then each and every person in the world is a potential stakeholder of the GKP, and should be eager to see it succeed, and has a right to interfere/help when GKP is not on course.

     

Permalink Reply by Helmut Leitner on February 17, 2012 at 4:33pm

It's interesting that the responsible people here think that ignoring my contribution is a valid strategy. The internet as a field of virtual community has its own rules, that are quite different from ordinary life. People from all over the world, from different cultures, using different cultural assumptions come together in the internet and have to find a way to get along, in respect and equal footing. It's not sufficient to come to the virtual world thinking that rules, let's say from white-collar conferences, can be enforced and will work here. It's not more sufficient than if party people walking into the jungle, wearing their dinner-suits, meeting a tiger or an elefant, being in danger and afraid, would decide to ignore that biest. Trust me, because I'm a prime expert in this internet jungle.

Permalink Reply by Helmut Leitner on February 24, 2012 at 12:09pm

I see the ice broken.

The visionary mapping of Franz could have met all kinds of reactions. The immediate and genuine enthusiasm of Klaus and Alain is the joy of potent creators that now see clearly. And I have no reason to doubt that they are the leaders that can make this happen.

I have become aware during the past week that this thread and my intervention was partially misunderstood as anti-GKPF, although it was meant to be the very opposite. I resonate with Klaus, when he talks in the other thread about the "vertical-horizontal synergy". It has to do with the enabling of social interaction across boundaries, e. g. the insider-outsider-boundary, which is also in my focus. An interaction that is not rooted in linear marketing, but rooted in open dialogue potentially creating a wealth of opportunities. To put it into drastic words: if one feels to interfere with this world, one should respect people and their needs but one can't stop at each and every garden fence.

Maybe I should have introduced myself more completely. As a former natural scientist, software developer, online community veteran and system theorist, I am very far on the analytical side of thinking. Think of me as a person with a disability, an inbuilt x-ray-system for seeing structures and potentials, where others see little or none. I need others, and others need me. Typically I'm in the role of an advisor, I show options, I'm not in the role of a leader. I work less with hopes, visions or declarations, but more by making the real potential of things understandable and accessable.

To consider a glass as more or less full is in my eyes a useless judgement. The GKPF is an organism of its own, in its own right. But, there is also an urgent need outside, connected with expectations towards the GKPF to grow, to fill that need. It's like a vacuum that "wants" to be filled, that will be filled one way or the other. I'm interested in the unfolding processes, in the development of us all from the current situation. Semi-commercial win-win thinking can be embedded within social all-win processes. I wish to help with that. My observations may be real or you may doubt them, but let me reword them very clearly: GKPF with all its past achievements and records has a historical opportunity to grow into something bigger, like morphing from a puppet to a butterfly, into  a true global community for development.

I don't know, whether my analytical/critical words here have contributed to breaking the ice. It's unimportant. As far as I'm concerned, I declare this monologue closed, and obsolete now, as the situation is.

Fly, GKPF, fly!

 

 

Permalink Reply by Alain Berranger on February 25, 2012 at 11:22pm

Dear Helmut,

I for one have not ignored this... I just opened your monologue for the first time now!... Apologies for not catching on... I find your contributions exceptional and hope you will become our in-house x-ray machine!!!! You are bang on! GKP WAS EXCLUSIVE!... GKP FOUNDATION IS NOW DESIGNED FOR INCLUSION. We populated the new website with GKP archives, so as not to lose the lessons learned from all those ICT4D pilots.

I battled with the governance of GKP for years on that very point... In a GKP members' debrief in Kuala Lumpur after the fastuous 2008 GK3 meeting, I said: "... We have one hundred members paying thousands in membership fees...we are exclusive... research has already shown networks were sustainable if inclusive (necessary but not sufficient)... we should have thousands of members paying $100..." ...I was almost booed out of the room... In retrospect, I should have said, we should have millions of members paying nothing!!!!"

So I consider the ice broken... and a discussion started... Can you please take a look at the business model (2010 annual report -page 13) - my schematic by the way - please x-ray it and tell us what is there? Should it be scrapped? alternatives? If not, can it be improved...

Thks again! Alain

Helmut Leitner said:

I see the ice broken.

The visionary mapping of Franz could have met all kinds of reactions. The immediate and genuine enthusiasm of Klaus and Alain is the joy of potent creators that now see clearly. And I have no reason to doubt that they are the leaders that can make this happen.

I have become aware during the past week that this thread and my intervention was partially misunderstood as anti-GKPF, although it was meant to be the very opposite. I resonate with Klaus, when he talks in the other thread about the "vertical-horizontal synergy". It has to do with the enabling of social interaction across boundaries, e. g. the insider-outsider-boundary, which is also in my focus. An interaction that is not rooted in linear marketing, but rooted in open dialogue potentially creating a wealth of opportunities. To put it into drastic words: if one feels to interfere with this world, one should respect people and their needs but one can't stop at each and every garden fence.

Maybe I should have introduced myself more completely. As a former natural scientist, software developer, online community veteran and system theorist, I am very far on the analytical side of thinking. Think of me as a person with a disability, an inbuilt x-ray-system for seeing structures and potentials, where others see little or none. I need others, and others need me. Typically I'm in the role of an advisor, I show options, I'm not in the role of a leader. I work less with hopes, visions or declarations, but more by making the real potential of things understandable and accessable.

To consider a glass as more or less full is in my eyes a useless judgement. The GKPF is an organism of its own, in its own right. But, there is also an urgent need outside, connected with expectations towards the GKPF to grow, to fill that need. It's like a vacuum that "wants" to be filled, that will be filled one way or the other. I'm interested in the unfolding processes, in the development of us all from the current situation. Semi-commercial win-win thinking can be embedded within social all-win processes. I wish to help with that. My observations may be real or you may doubt them, but let me reword them very clearly: GKPF with all its past achievements and records has a historical opportunity to grow into something bigger, like morphing from a puppet to a butterfly, into  a true global community for development.

I don't know, whether my analytical/critical words here have contributed to breaking the ice. It's unimportant. As far as I'm concerned, I declare this monologue closed, and obsolete now, as the situation is.

Fly, GKPF, fly!

 

 

Permalink Reply by Franz Nahrada on February 26, 2012 at 8:57pm

Alain, I am very much impressed by your words and your openness. Also by your appreciation of Helmut, he is also my "x-ray machine" and holds me accountable for my own highest goals. Thats not always agreeable,we have had quite a lot of arguments, but at the bottomline there is a very constructive approach. One of the most important points between us is financial sustainability, Helmut shows me time and again that we must be very precise in our arrangements and plans.

But back to GKPF. This reminds me very much of my experience that I had in 1995 with the World Business Academy, where there was also the disagreement about Membership. They ended up with raising the entry barrier from 100 Dollar to 500 Dollar a year - so that they stayed an exclusive club. It was immediately after a real transformation of that organisation had started, I remember the 95 annual meeting facilitated by Medicine Wheel teachers Wind Eagle and Rainbow Hawk. The sparked a storm of enthusiasm throughout the membership, I was guest but we were soon starting to build WBA Europe as part of this explosion!  I flew to Paris just to learn that the direction had changed 180%.

Now we are really in a similar situation here. We wanted the powerful players, the decisionmakers, to stay aboard, to understand that they are really the ones that can make a difference. The mantra of the WBF was "With Power Comes Responsibility to All, But Business Never Learned Responsibility To Stakeholders". We have nowadays this whole buzz about CSR, but at the time and in that group it was clear that "responsibility" was much more than a marketing gag. Responsibility meant really being able to influence the world together. This would have meant what Klaus called the horizontal - vertical cooperation.

So your thought is exciting that the contributions might be totaly different. In earlier years, GKPF had considerable core contributors, which enabled GKPF to play an important role in the field. It is in my view part of the advantages of GKPF to cherish the connection to these important players, and show them entirely new ways their money can make a difference. Their money can help unleash "horizontal" energies.

I also should stress the point that there are fine but important differences between various types of organisations, and its hard to mix them up. I see GKPF more as a filter, broker institution than a social business. A social business is profit oriented, although the profit is reinvested in a beneficial social mission. A membership organisation usually seeks to serve the members by maximising a contribution to their goals. in one way or another, either by enabling their businesses or acting as the joint force to achieve something that a singgle entity cannot achieve. There might be subtle and disintegrative interest conflicts emerging if these two forms are mixed. I am sure Helmut can elaborate on that.

GKPF in my perception  has decided to use their substantial "heritage" to find new, effective ways of "bootstrapping" development, enabling horizontal energies to really unfold their potential.It is obvious that this works only if GKPF in itself becomes a transparent axis between the parts of the "establishment" that agree that the capitalist development model is an outdatet myth (I am not being radical here, this was almost the prevailing opinion in Davos recently) and the new social potentials that have largely grouped througth and by the networks and that I see as the harbingers of a new local renaiscance fostered by empowering technology. If we can and if we get the means, we will deliver more and more proofs of concept.

Permalink Reply by Alain Berranger on February 26, 2012 at 9:53pm

I too see GKPF as a broker, but only for GKPF members, albeit, GKPF membership with a very low entry cost for individuals and institutions of various sizes...so nobody is excluded if they want to play and have a contribution/innovation to make. The financial sustainability of the brokerage function is still mission critical, you will agree I think! The best current GKP example is the COMAGA project in Ecuador - technology driven rural infrastructure development in the Amazon and the Galapagos (really many many villages needing infrastructure of all kind - roads, schools, libraries, telecentres, etc...). Ecuador is decentralizing its public services and that's very good news for regions and municipalities and their citizens! Hope many other countries follow their lead BTW. I signed the MOU in Quito for GKPF last year. Klaus, as Executive Director, is in the midst of the first implementation steps. The idea is to bring innovation of all kinds to this new type of integrated rural/regional development and we are going to encourage all GKPF members to bring their ideas forward... so members can sell their goods and services with the brokering and facilitation of GKPF. GKPF will earn its brokerage fee which will be included in the cost of goods and services supplied by the members... GKPF does not behave as a profit centre but as a cost-recovery centre... one of a number of revenue flows that keep GKPF going... GKPF driven by serving its members and caring about real services going to the beneficiaries of the various villages, municipalities and regions served by the various projects (typically multi-stakeholder partnerships [MSP across civil society, public sector agencies and private business/individual working in a coordinated fashion). I know this construction is viable but it requires a bit more finesse than simple traditional buyer/seller transactions. One of the most successful MSP I know of is the computers in school program in Costa Rica... but that is a case for another time...

Alain

Franz Nahrada said:

Alain, I am very much impressed by your words and your openness. Also by your appreciation of Helmut, he is also my "x-ray machine" and holds me accountable for my own highest goals. Thats not always agreeable,we have had quite a lot of arguments, but at the bottomline there is a very constructive approach. One of the most important points between us is financial sustainability, Helmut shows me time and again that we must be very precise in our arrangements and plans.

But back to GKPF. This reminds me very much of my experience that I had in 1995 with the World Business Academy, where there was also the disagreement about Membership. They ended up with raising the entry barrier from 100 Dollar to 500 Dollar a year - so that they stayed an exclusive club. It was immediately after a real transformation of that organisation had started, I remember the 95 annual meeting facilitated by Medicine Wheel teachers Wind Eagle and Rainbow Hawk. The sparked a storm of enthusiasm throughout the membership, I was guest but we were soon starting to build WBA Europe as part of this explosion!  I flew to Paris just to learn that the direction had changed 180%.

Now we are really in a similar situation here. We wanted the powerful players, the decisionmakers, to stay aboard, to understand that they are really the ones that can make a difference. The mantra of the WBF was "With Power Comes Responsibility to All, But Business Never Learned Responsibility To Stakeholders". We have nowadays this whole buzz about CSR, but at the time and in that group it was clear that "responsibility" was much more than a marketing gag. Responsibility meant really being able to influence the world together. This would have meant what Klaus called the horizontal - vertical cooperation.

So your thought is exciting that the contributions might be totaly different. In earlier years, GKPF had considerable core contributors, which enabled GKPF to play an important role in the field. It is in my view part of the advantages of GKPF to cherish the connection to these important players, and show them entirely new ways their money can make a difference. Their money can help unleash "horizontal" energies.

I also should stress the point that there are fine but important differences between various types of organisations, and its hard to mix them up. I see GKPF more as a filter, broker institution than a social business. A social business is profit oriented, although the profit is reinvested in a beneficial social mission. A membership organisation usually seeks to serve the members by maximising a contribution to their goals. in one way or another, either by enabling their businesses or acting as the joint force to achieve something that a singgle entity cannot achieve. There might be subtle and disintegrative interest conflicts emerging if these two forms are mixed. I am sure Helmut can elaborate on that.

GKPF in my perception  has decided to use their substantial "heritage" to find new, effective ways of "bootstrapping" development, enabling horizontal energies to really unfold their potential.It is obvious that this works only if GKPF in itself becomes a transparent axis between the parts of the "establishment" that agree that the capitalist development model is an outdatet myth (I am not being radical here, this was almost the prevailing opinion in Davos recently) and the new social potentials that have largely grouped througth and by the networks and that I see as the harbingers of a new local renaiscance fostered by empowering technology. If we can and if we get the means, we will deliver more and more proofs of concept.

Permalink Reply by Helmut Leitner on February 28, 2012 at 1:15pm

Dear Alain,

thank you for your kind reaction, this means a lot. Also that you share your experience of being booed, which a lesser man wouldn't talk about. It's heart-breaking that your individual insight did not find immediate resonance. I think this clash of perspectives can still be felt, like ripples on a pond, in the structures of the current situation, e. g. in the new business model. I would like to contribute to heal that, to correct that "boo" and transform it into something like a "yoohoo". Whatever form that may need to materialize.

There is nothing wrong with the AR2010-p13 in itself, because it just adds an additional option of financing, by providing services in a form similar to a social business. This could be an option producing additional freedom and opportunities and allow for direct involvement of GKPF in show-case projects. But, in the context given, and the ripples I talked about in the last paragraphs, it seems to results in a strong pressure to self-finance to a high degree. To use a metaphoric story: This sounds like supporting someone with a vaccination project in Africa with suggesting that he should self-finance the vaccine development and fabrication.This sounds cynical to me.

Alternatives? I think there is no need for a different business model, because it is flexible - only, there is no need to draw an option. *IF* the way of GKPF is to grow big, if this is really a good concept, then according to your own (GKPF) stance I rephrase "money is not the problem, a good concept will always be financed". So the simplest alternative would be to look for resonance with an old or new core contributor, to finance this transition phase. This is much simpler and more efficient than involving GKPF in the partnerships and project management of dozens of projects over years, and bind the lions share of GKPF core-man-power there.

I also followed your discussion with Franz about wiki. I'm a wiki veteran, developer and online community pioneer since 2000, long before wikipedia, did 130+ wiki projects, was as a non-ACM-member with Ward Cunningham in the ACM-committees of the first wiki conferences WIKISYM 2005 and 2006, did 130+ wiki projects, and so could provide some know-how in this field.

Last but not least, it's an honor that you consider an in-house expert role for me. I neither know what this means and how to cope with that task. But if you can explain and suggest steps to implement that, I'll try to do my best. I'm really convinced that the GKPF is at a furcation point of global importance.

Helmut

Alain Berranger said:

Dear Helmut,

I for one have not ignored this... I just opened your monologue for the first time now!... Apologies for not catching on... I find your contributions exceptional and hope you will become our in-house x-ray machine!!!! You are bang on! GKP WAS EXCLUSIVE!... GKP FOUNDATION IS NOW DESIGNED FOR INCLUSION. We populated the new website with GKP archives, so as not to lose the lessons learned from all those ICT4D pilots.

I battled with the governance of GKP for years on that very point... In a GKP members' debrief in Kuala Lumpur after the fastuous 2008 GK3 meeting, I said: "... We have one hundred members paying thousands in membership fees...we are exclusive... research has already shown networks were sustainable if inclusive (necessary but not sufficient)... we should have thousands of members paying $100..." ...I was almost booed out of the room... In retrospect, I should have said, we should have millions of members paying nothing!!!!"

So I consider the ice broken... and a discussion started... Can you please take a look at the business model (2010 annual report -page 13) - my schematic by the way - please x-ray it and tell us what is there? Should it be scrapped? alternatives? If not, can it be improved...

Thks again! Alain

Permalink Reply by Michel Bauwens on March 2, 2012 at 8:55am

Dear friends, I have been invited in by Franz Nahrada, with whom I have collaborated on several occasions, even though I'm not a formal member of GKP. Franz asked me to look at the thread and to see whether I had any input based on my experience with open source projects. To see what the P2P Foundation is about, see p2pfoundation.net or this very recent opinion piece, http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/02/20122277438762233....

Here is some input based on the social and institutional innovation that I believe 'peer production' represents.

What is really new  in my opinion is the split between the organisation and the authority in production.

At the core of peer production is always a shared innovation commons that is universally available, in other words, knowledge belongs to humankind as a whole, and anyone can contribute to the commons, with quality control mechanisms built in.

Nearly every FLOSS project is accompanied by a nonprofit association, which does not direct the work, but enables and protects the infrastructure of cooperation. Financing are used to maintain that overall infrastructure, so that the collective knowledge base can grow. It can also support the social life of the community, through conferences, etc .. The organisation may possess the common licenses, defend the trademark (but NOT of course copyright)

Then there is the enterpreneurial coalition, which consists of all the players which add market value on top of that commons. These added value can be their expert labour sold on the market, services, teaching, packaged information that is easier to use, project management services, etc .. They are at the service of the produsers and users of that knowledge commons. Most often they are for-profit, but they could very well be a new type of ethical companies, with more commons-friendly values. Through these enterpreneurs, the commoners, i.e. the contributors to the commons, get salaries, and very often these companies subsidize the nonprofit as well, since their own success depends on the vitality of the commons.

Would this model apply to GKP, is it already, or could it in the future?

Michel bauwens

Permalink Reply by Alain Berranger on March 2, 2012 at 8:08pm

Dear Michel,

Thank you so much for this clear statement (monography and taxonomy) on the subject. I think of http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/ and see the model very much at play there with Firefox... 

I encourage GKPF to start thinking in those terms. It may find us ways we had not thought of yet!

Alain

Michel Bauwens said:

Dear friends, I have been invited in by Franz Nahrada, with whom I have collaborated on several occasions, even though I'm not a formal member of GKP. Franz asked me to look at the thread and to see whether I had any input based on my experience with open source projects. To see what the P2P Foundation is about, see p2pfoundation.net or this very recent opinion piece, http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/02/20122277438762233....

Here is some input based on the social and institutional innovation that I believe 'peer production' represents.

What is really new  in my opinion is the split between the organisation and the authority in production.

At the core of peer production is always a shared innovation commons that is universally available, in other words, knowledge belongs to humankind as a whole, and anyone can contribute to the commons, with quality control mechanisms built in.

Nearly every FLOSS project is accompanied by a nonprofit association, which does not direct the work, but enables and protects the infrastructure of cooperation. Financing are used to maintain that overall infrastructure, so that the collective knowledge base can grow. It can also support the social life of the community, through conferences, etc .. The organisation may possess the common licenses, defend the trademark (but NOT of course copyright)

Then there is the enterpreneurial coalition, which consists of all the players which add market value on top of that commons. These added value can be their expert labour sold on the market, services, teaching, packaged information that is easier to use, project management services, etc .. They are at the service of the produsers and users of that knowledge commons. Most often they are for-profit, but they could very well be a new type of ethical companies, with more commons-friendly values. Through these enterpreneurs, the commoners, i.e. the contributors to the commons, get salaries, and very often these companies subsidize the nonprofit as well, since their own success depends on the vitality of the commons.

Would this model apply to GKP, is it already, or could it in the future?

Michel bauwens

Permalink Reply by Michel Bauwens on March 3, 2012 at 4:37am

Thanks Alain ...

Permalink Reply by Helmut Leitner on March 5, 2012 at 9:16am

Dear Michel, thank you for coming here. Although I know your name, and although we are on each others Facebook friendlist, we never found a reason to actually make contact and talk to each other. After you have introduced yourself and Alain appreciated that, although in a rather diplomatic way, it would be great if you could actually join in our thinking together. Both, you and Alain are representing organisations on a global level, very different in structure and thinking but similiar in their goals. This suggest a potential for all kinds of synergies. The p2pfoundation seems bottom-up, the GKPF top-down. You are open-source, most GKPF members seemingly prefer a more classication approach. How do you perceive the GKPF? How could the GKPF relate to your organisation, or how could the p2pfoundation relate to GKPF? What is your most pressing problem just now, and how could GKPF or Franz or I help you to solve it?

Helmut

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