In the opening chat show moderated by Peter Ballantyne, we heard from Louise Clarke, Steve Agbenyo, Ivan Kulis, and Nawsheen Hosenally, presenting their stories on how they got started with online collaboration. Together we reflected on the changes, challenges, and successes we have experienced – where were we, where are we now, what are our predictions for the future.

See the recording of the video here below. And check the other posts from the online partnership dialogue.

See also Nancy White’s visual notes from the chat show:

He ended by posing some questions for participants to help identify the critical issues around online collaboration that could help guide and focus follow up activities and a planned online e-conference about online collaboration, dialogue and interaction.

See the presentation on Slideshare and a video summary from the event.

Participants were asked to work in groups to respond to these two questions:

1. Which factors are the most critical to successful online collaboration, conferencing, dialogue and CoPs? [eg: technology, participation, facilitation, connectivity, capacities?]
2. Which issues or topics do we need to know more about? To improve how we operate

Responses shared were clustered into four groups, see below, which we hope can guide deeper discussion later in the year.

Which factors are the most critical to successful online collaboration, conferencing, dialogue and CoPs? [eg: technology, participation, facilitation, connectivity, capacities?]

Which issues or topics do we need to know more about? To improve how we operate.

Responses shared were clustered into four groups, see below, which we hope can guide deeper discussion later in the year.

Critical success factors for successful online collaboration, conferencing, dialogue and communities of practice

Technology, platforms …

• Usability
• Accessibility
• Connectivity
• Which platform for which purpose? For which community?
• Capabilities

Facilitation …

• Processes, events
• Purpose, Design, Leadership, Management (of Participation, Inclusion, Interaction)
• Skills and capabilities

Trust building …

• Values
• Ownership
• Relationships
• Safe spaces
• Freedom to speak
• Responsibility
• ‘Communityship’

Engagement and interaction …

• Participant-centred and customized design and processes
• Human connections
• Involving the right people
• Group dynamics; encourage formal interactions, discovery of shared interests, networking
• Full participation
• Conversational leadership,
• Meeting dynamics and motivation
• Engagement over time

We express our appreciation to KM4Dev and the participants in the café who eagerly participated and shared their ideas and insights.

Report compiled by Peter Ballantyne

So what is Dgroups?

During a recent webinar organized in partnership between FAO-Dgroups, Saskia Harmsen from the Dgroups Board gave a short introduction to Dgroups, what it is, the organizations behind it, and why it is the platform of choice for online communities of practice and communication for development.

(see also the slides used in the webinar)

Dgroups as a Partnership

Dgroups is a partnership of development organizations (UN agencies, bilateral agencies, NGOs) who collectively support global communication for development. Our shared vision is a world where every person is able to contribute to dialogue and decision-making for international development and social justice. At the moment, Dgroups has 15 Full Partners, 9 Associate Partners, and 3 Project Partners.

The Dgroups partnership is formally constituted as the Dgroups Foundation, a non-profit foundation registered in 2009 in the Netherlands. The Dgroups Foundation is owned and administered collectively by the Full Partners.

Currently, there are three different Dgroups membership options, each with different levels of financial contribution and different rights. This means that the spaces for dialogue and decision-making are opened up and information is shared much more broadly than in the silos – perhaps technical silos or organizational silos that exist within our sector. This is something that we all believe in and that we can make happen – by being part of the partnership.

Dgroups as a platform

Dgroups is also a web-based platform that hosts, powers and connects the groups. The Dgroups platform is hosted and maintained by WA-Research, a small company in Switzerland that has for 20 years been building and refining its communication software, CommunityCloud, driven largely by the needs and priorities of Dgroups.

Dgroups Partners and WA-Research collaborate to ensure the platform meets a diverse range of needs for online groups, communities of practice and communities of interest. Instead of each developing their own in-house systems to create and manage online communities, the Dgroups Partners have joined forces and resources to develop a common tool and system that can also support cross-organizational communities of practice and foster collaboration across different organizations.

Some key figures are useful to give a sense of the scale of the Dgroups platform:
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• At the moment there are more than 700 communities created on Dgroups – they take different shapes and different forms, from public to private, closed or open to the public, moderated or unmoderated. Communities have also many different sizes, some having many thousands of members while others are very small technical groups with just a few people. It all depends on the specific needs of each group.
• Overall there are almost 300,000 registered users on the Dgroups platform – ranging from members of international organizations or government agencies to local and national NGOs, interested individuals and professional groups. So there is a very diverse user base in all of the different communities.
• The platform enables the delivery of more than 400,000 email messages daily – this is the power of the Dgroups platform as many of you will have experienced. The Dgroups platform works better than any other communication tool for meaningful, global, multi-stakeholder communication.

[/bulletlist]
So what are some of the key features that make Dgroups powerful?
[bulletlist]

• Dgroups is very simple to use for administrators and for end-users – Users do not have to log in to a web-based platform to participate. Instead, they receive and send directly as part of their everyday email experience. No technical knowledge is needed for users to engage in dialogue – everyone knows how to send and reply to an email!
• Dgroups is multilingual – the user interface is available in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, and Russian. Users can just use the tool in the language in which they are more confident with.
• Dgroups is flexible and scalable – each Dgroup workspace allows for customizable individual profile members and they can be grouped by tree or customizable email delivery preferences from immediate delivery to daily delivery to weekly summaries. There are also RSS feeds and an open API that allow you to integrate a Dgroup into your own web page.
• Dgroups is non-commercial and respectful of privacy – this is very important for many users and administrators. Unlike other services such as Google Groups or Facebook Groups, on Dgroups there is no advertising and data is not being shared with third parties that are then using it for their own purposes. This is one of the very big reasons why people and organizations opt for the use of Dgroups.

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Dgroups targets low bandwidth users – it is really email focused and its technical developments are carried out to make sure that email remains at its core and that the web interface remains as light as possible.

Dgroups as a global public good

Last but not least, Dgroups can be described as a global public good – with the Dgroups Partnership making the platform available to actors across the development sector and thereby hosting a large family of discussion groups related to international development. This is a real strength and an opportunity of Dgroups.

Making the case for Dgroups

So if your organization is looking for a solution for online communities, why should you consider joining and using Dgroups?
[bulletlist]

• Because Dgroups is about appropriate technology – the focus is not about building fancy technology but about what works and what is sustainable over time, not just in terms of financial sustainability but also and especially in terms of access and use.
• Because Dgroups is an effective and flexible tool – group administrators can focus on the content and do not need to spend time with technical setup, or supporting users in answering technical questions. This way, group administrators can really focus on communication, collaboration, information sharing, etc. – basically, to get their work done.
• Because of its shared ownership model – the different Dgroups partners invest just a fraction of the resources that they would need to develop and maintain a similar system in-house.
• Because Dgroups can contribute to reducing the duplication and fragmentation of online communities, which are a barrier to effective development and social justice

[/bulletlist]
We encourage organizations that share our vision and are looking for a solution for online communities to join us!

Dgroups can offer you the perfect solution. Dgroup is a longstanding successful development initiative that promotes dialogue. Supported by over 20 organizations, it currently engages over 290 000 people in all countries and territories of the world. It offers an easy to use email tool and an online platform for small or large groups that benefit from networks and discussions.

Join us on 22nd of March 2018 at 4 pm CET for a webinar organized in partnership between FAO and Dgroups. Listen to the experiences from FAO, CTA, and HIFA, three organizations that are active users of Dgroups and ask our experts the remaining questions you might have.

Suzanne Phillips from FAO will share her experience using a Dgroup to connect a global community of FAO Farmer Field School practitioners all over the world. She is in charge of the coordination of the global Farmer Field School Platform at FAO and decided to use Dgroup as an additional tool to ensure inclusion of all stakeholders, even when they have a poor internet connection, low IT-literacy and little time to engage in exchanges.

Giacomo Rambaldi from CTA will talk about the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) for Agriculture Dgroups – and how it has been instrumental to carry out a mapping of existing and forthcoming policies, laws and regulations governing the use of UAVs.

Neil Pakenham-Walsh will present how Dgroups is being used by the HIFA forums. These groups bring together more than 15,000 people from 175 countries to explore ways to improve the availability and use of health information in low- and middle-income countries. Dgroups is the platform enabling the conversation and dialogue on the HIFA forums.

To register for this webinar, please fill in the registration form.

For any further questions please contact dgroups@fao.org.

Global Healthcare Information Network CIC (GHI-net) is a “non-profit organisation established in 2005 to administer the global initiative HIFA (Healthcare Information For All). […] HIFA continues to grow, with more than 17,000 members in 177 countries, and is supported by more than 300 health and development organisations worldwide, including the WHO (main strategic partner) and the British Medical Association (main funder).”

C3 Collaborating for Health is a small, global charity, based in London, and focused on prevention of chronic, non-communicable diseases (NCDs), particularly cardiovascular disease, diabetes, many cancers and chronic lung disease. These diseases are responsible for the majority of premature deaths and disease throughout the world, with an increasing burden in low- and middle-income countries. As part of a three year programme, funded by the Burdett Trust, C3 is establishing an email based global network of nurses, nursing organisations, employers and other stakeholders to facilitate sharing of information, materials and resources. They have chosen to use Dgroups as they believe it provides an ideal platform to enable them to achieve their goals.

Charter for Change (C4C) is a global movement initiated in 2015 and endorsed by a growing number of international organizations involved with humanitarian relief (list). By signing the Charter for Change, these organizations “commit to changing the way they work to enable more leadership and space to be taken by national and local NGOs providing disaster preparedness and response work.” C4C is using Dgroups to support the communication requirements of the group of signatory organizations, as well as the C4C coordination team.

Personas Facilitadoras DT is a project lead by Orkestra – Basque Institute of Competitiveness, in the context of a wider initiative called Zubigintza (Building Bridges, in the Basque language). The project focuses on the role of facilitators in territorial development – not just “professional” facilitators but different agents with a specific set of capabilities that allows them to drive complex territorial problems forward (researcher-facilitators; policymaker-facilitators, firm-manager facilitators, development agency facilitators…). The project aims to create – using Dgroups – a virtual community of practice for such facilitators in Spain, Argentina, and other Latin American countries.

You can see the full list and map of Dgroups members on our Partnership page.

Neil Pakenham-Walsh, chair of the Dgroups foundation and founder of HIFA (Healthcare Information for All: five Dgroups with >16,000 members interacting in 3 languages) presented Dgroups to a diverse audience of more than 200 development professionals (many of whom already use Dgroups). He underlined the vital importance of Dgroups and communities of practice to help achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals.

He called for CoPs to be specifically included in the Agenda Knowledge for Development, and for all stakeholders to support the key recommendation made in the new publication Knowledge Management in the UN System: namely that UN agencies and others should embrace CoPs and realise their full potential.

Neil pointed out that CoPs are more environmentally sustainable, more inclusive, more transparent, and much less expensive than international F2F conferences. While the latter are still needed, there is a case for a smarter approach with fewer F2F conferences linked by continuous 24/7 CoPs.

View Neil’s presentation here:

https://www.slideshare.net/dgroups/dgroups-communities-of-practice-for-development-74789229

About K4D Conference

The Global Knowledge for Development [K4D] Conference aimed to review and advance knowledge management practices in the field of sustainable development, and to present a new agenda to strengthen knowledge societies and economies for development. The Conference provided insights in current practices and explore future developments in the use of knowledge management in the area of development. Knowledge is at the heart of global development. (Source: Conference Agenda)

See also:

Dgroups representatives Neil Pakenham-Walsh (Chair, Dgroups Foundation) and Ivan Kulis (ECDPM) were delighted to give a presentation on global trends and challenges for Communities of Practice in International Development.

The presentation emphasised the central and growing importance of CoPS in promoting inclusiveness, value and collaboration among all stakeholders.

Neil and Ivan highlighted the role of CoPs in progressively realising the Sustainable Development Goals and the 2030 Agenda, which requires “all countries and all stakeholders, acting in collaborative partnership”.

http://www.slideshare.net/dgroups/communities-of-practice-increasing-inclusiveness-value-and-collaboration-real-trends-or-wishful-thinking

From the over 226 discussions in the [redesign] community, here is an updated list of top issues and requests, in no particular order:

• Search should  be improved
• “Make public” function seems not always to be working
• Incorrect building of strings in email that results in Messages in a thread not always being filed together on the web archive
• Allow multiple email addresses for each Dgroups user account
• More granular approval policies (toggle option for admin messages to not be moderated)
• Better statistics needed (users, downloads)
• More/less detailed user profile needed?
• Metadata for groups (in progress)

In parallel with (and in part as result of) the discussions around present and future platform development, you may have noticed in the past months a range of improvements, some big and some small:

• Option to upload your own banner
• Option to choose colour theme (also impacts suggested banner images)
• Option to send an custom welcome email to new invitee when they join a community
• Password reset text added in Spanish
• Calendar date sorting changed to newest first
• Within member list, option to allow members to see each other’s email address
• Basic stats download at /admin/stats/downloads.csv (available to group admins only)

If you are working with Dgroups and are interested in discussing how to improve Dgroups functionality, please let us know and join us in the [redesign] discussion group: it is important to hear what issues are key for you, and what is working well for you. Often [redesign] members are an excellent resource for ideas and solutions, as is the platform host.

And if we missed any recent improvement, let us know in the comments section below!

by Kristin Kolshus and Pier Andrea Pirani

A new membership and financial contribution structure was proposed. This was then explored further, adapted and ratified at the subsequent Board meeting on 14th March 2014, as follows:

1. 1. The annual contribution for Full Partner Dgroups membership has remained the same for the past 4 years at 4,000 Euros, and it will remain at this level for 2014. In order to cover costs, from 2015 the annual contribution of Full Partners in increased to 5,000 Euros.

1. 2. Starting with immediate effect, a new form of membership – Associate Partner – will be made available for new organisations with a turnover of less than 1 million Euros. This option will become available in 2015 for existing Dgroups Partners with turnover less than 1 million. The annual contribution for such membership will be banded according to annual turnover:
   1. – 1000 Euros for organisations with annual turnover less than 1m Euros
   2. – 500 Euros for organisations with annual turnover less than 500,000 Euros

1. 3. New organisations with an annual turnover below 500.000 Euro may opt to pay 500 Euros for Associate Partnership, or seek affiliate status with a Full Partner (as previously).

1. 4. Full Partners and Associate Partners will have full use of Dgroups. Full Partners only will have voting rights.

This session will look at “Email forums for health and development professionals.”  Two presenters will share their experiences:

• Angela Nash Mercado will present how the Knowledge Gateway (which uses the same underlying software as Dgroups) connects people working in health and development through email discussion forums;
• Neil Pakenham Walsh will give us some insights on how Dgroups is used by HIFA2015 (Healthcare Information For All by 2015) to promote the availability and use of essential healthcare information in low- and middle-income countries.

This is an open session for all with an interest in virtual communities and networks for heath and development, to discuss how to support communications, knowledge sharing and learning.

A facilitated Q&A will follow to allow participants to compare notes and foster peer learning.

If you are interested in participating, please register on this Eventbrite page.