Riff Fullan

From Web2forDev

Hi, Riff Fullan here...

Beginning with the Technology...

I started working in the ICT area in the early 1990s with a couple of member networks of the Association for Progressive Communiciations (APC), which at that time provided email, discussion group and later web-based connectivity for civil society organisations around the world.

Linking it to Development...

Because of my academic background in international development, I was from those early days most interested in ICT4D, and the uses ICT can be put to in different environments.

From APC I moved to Bellanet, where collaboration, transparency, participation and ICTs were intermingled, all of which for networks and partnerships in the development community. At Bellanet, in addition to the ICT focus, from around the year 2000, an increasing amount of our work focused on knowledge management(KM)/knowledge sharing(KS), and in particular arounds tools and approaches to help create the conditions for people to share their own knowledge with each other. This was mostly about how people interacted and *not* about technology solutions.

Hoping to Pull the Threads Together

Now as KM coordinator at Helvetas, I am trying to use my various experiences to look at how we can work within a grassroots development organisation with offices in 20 countries or so, to think strategically about both the ICT and the KM side of things, and to diffuse practices and knowledge, both throughout the organisation and with partners.

What is crucial for me in all this? The existence and nurturing of communities, which I believe are ultimately the social spaces where much of the KS necessary for development - and necessary in a globalized world - will be enabled.