admin – Dgroups Foundation

Reflecting on the Dgroups partnership

admin — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 20:53:37 +0000

Earlier today, members of the Dgroups Partnership completed their meeting in The Hague. It was followed by a brief meeting of the new Board. For the first time, members could participate virtually in some parts of the discussions, opening a new chapter for Dgroups.

New Helvetas Board member Riff Fullan reflects on the discussions:

[youtube_video id=PxPfnT152Lc width=”445″ height=”280″]

Yesterday’s meeting was in plenary and provided an opportunity for participants to re-connect, to reflect on past progress (see Peter Ballantyne’s report), and to explore different future directions and priorities for Dgroups.

Today, participants broke into groups to discuss and set short-term priorities for issues clustered around ‘the partnership’ and ‘the platform.’

SDC’s Patrick Kalas reflects on the first day:

[youtube_video id=1zWlGB5lZCk width=”445″ height=”280″]

So, what are some of the things that Dgroups users expect to see in coming weeks and months?

more usability improvements on the platform;
a public directory of groups on the new platform
extension of Dgroups help and FAQ resources
plans for two Dgroups training and outreach workshops sponsored by ICCO

Dgroups elects new Board

admin — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 11:54:36 +0000

Today in The Hague, members of the Dgroups Partnership elected a new Board to guide the Partnership in the coming years. The organizations elected were:

Joining the Dgroups migration

admin — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 17:19:49 +0000

Here at Euforic, we have had a chance to participate in the ‘beta’ testing of the new Dgroups platform.

As a heavy and long-time Dgroups user, Dgroups creator, and overall Dgroups coordinator, I have many interests in the new platform.

I was immediately very reassured by the reliable email system in the new ‘D2’ … in the past months, not being sure that messages would pass through ‘D1’was a continual worry, and a source of many many frustrated email messages from around the world. Good job D2!

One change I have noticed is that I seem to use the web much more to manage my D2 groups that I did on D1. Since email is at the heart of Dgroups, I hope this is not something permanent.

Logging on to D2 today, I was immediately struck by the many new arrivals on the new platform. The big migration of groups has begun. It feels a little bit like what it must have felt to be on Ellis Island in New York all those years ago! I look forward to meet up again with groups from the old platform, connecting and re-connecting.

One of my major concerns is to ensure that the new platform helps and encourages us migrant groups to meet up again, and not be lost forever in closed ‘communities.’ The current web interface certainly gives me a full screen of information, we need to ensure that basic information on all groups is open and that we do not encourage people to close themselves off. They can go to Google for that!

So far so good …

Peter Ballantyne

Dgroups speed-geeking

admin — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 05:21:38 +0000

At a recent FAO and CGIAR knowledge sharing course, participants chose Dgroups as the application they most wanted to learn (share?) about in a ‘speed geeking‘ session.

See what they thought of Dgroups!