Creating a knowledge sharing community: Nobody's owning anything

Via Twitter I received the request to explain a bit more about the Focuss.Info Initiative. Unfortunately, such an explanation demands more characters than only the 140 characters we can use with Twitter. Additionally, such information can already be found on this website. However, let's elaborate on the introduction given to the Focuss.Info Initiative on the website.

The Focuss.Info Initiative’s knowledge sharing environment 

The Focuss.Info Initiative (www.focuss.info) is maintained by, on one hand, a collaboration between students, researchers and individual practitioners and, on the other hand, local, national and international institutes. These different parties have all in common that they are working in the field of global development aid.  The aim of Focuss is to promote new information sharing and networking skills among peers in the domain of global development aid. Through this objective Focuss improves access to information and knowledge, a fundamental human right that strengthens democracy, and supports human rights. This objective also correspondents to the work of UNESCO, which helps to develop effective 'infostructures', including developing information standards, management tools and fostering access at the community level. 

The knowledge sharing structure of Focuss consists of two social media tools. These are the Google Custom Search Engine (Google CSE) and social bookmarking. 

The Google CSE is a social media tool provided by Google that allows you - as a web developer - to include a search engine on your own website. Additionally, web developers can select which websites should be indexed by the search engine. As a result, web developers create a specialized search engine rather than a generic search engine. 

Social bookmarking is the second social media tool used by and embedded within Focuss.    Social bookmarking is a way to store, organize and share favorite e-resources on the Internet. By saving favorite e-resources on the Internet instead of on the local computer, the e-resources are also open to others who might be interested in the area(s) you are bookmarking in. 

By mixing these two social media tools in Focuss, the initiative offers a specific search engine that indexes e-resources from the social bookmark collections of students, researchers and individual practitioners in the field of global development aid.  

However, should students, researchers and individual practitioners actively be involved in selecting and saving their e-resources for the sake of Focuss? No! As Focuss is an initiative that is promoting new information sharing and networking skills among peers in global development aid, it emphasizes more on how peers should manage their valuable e-resources through social bookmarking rather than to promote the search engine. The search engine is just an example of how personal knowledge is re-used for the benefit of the group - the field of global development aid - and the creation of collective knowledge. Therefore, the initiative stresses that peers should acquire the newest information sharing and networking skills in order to work more efficient for themselves and more effective in their own domain of global development aid.

To make sure the field of global development aid is up-to-date with these new kind of information sharing and networking skills, Focuss is a collaborative initiative with partner institutes from all over the world. Through these institutes, the Focuss coordinators are influencing members of these institutes about what the new way of working is. However, as the initiative also aims at bridging the gap between the Global South and North, it is also required to induce peers from areas that used to be less accessible before.

That is why Focuss supports the work of workshop facilitators from Africa, Asia or South-America both financially - by giving out awards - and intellectually - by providing workshop facilitators with direct access to support via the Focuss coordinators and the visitors on www.focuss.info. After giving out an award, the workshop facilitators from the Global South will roll-out local workshops for scholars and professional in global development aid in the use of information sharing and networking tools.

There are only two requirements the workshop facilitator needs to comply to. Firstly, he or she needs to emphasize on social bookmarking with regards to information sharing and networking. This is a requirement, because the search engine incorporated in the website of the Initiative is only harvesting and indexing the websites that have been selected as value and stored in social bookmarking accounts (such as Delicious.com) by peers in global development aid. The ones who are social bookmarkers and who save valuable e-resources in their social bookmark collection are also being shown on www.focuss.info. This makes the initiative transparent, because everybody can see who is adding what to the search engine. As a result, the person who often saves something in his/her personal social bookmark collection, will automatically also become more visible on www.focuss.info and could become a knowledge broker among his/her peers.

News ticker on www.focuss.info indicating latest entry to search engine 

Secondly, the workshop facilitator is required to maintain a dairy of the workshop on a weblog located on the website of Focuss. Every workshop facilitator will have his or her own space on the website. Through this, the workshop facilitator can get more information from the readers and connect with workshop participants before and after the workshop, but it also gives the workshop facilitators a platform to show how they persuade a local community to use social bookmarking.

The value that the initiative is getting out of this, is that an increasing number of peers in global development aid are starting to embrace social bookmarking as a tool to organize their favorite e-resources and they are indirectly sharing their favorite e-resources with everybody who is interested in these resources, because it is saved on the Internet.

Focuss is also a valuable tool, because it gives an overview of different ways to persuade people to use the latest information sharing and networking tools and technologies from local communities in Africa, Asia and South-America. This means that the area of global development aid gets a better understanding of how global knowledge sharing works best by engage peers intelligently in promoting the latest information sharing and networking tools.

Conclusion

The Focuss.Info Initiative is a good example of a knowledge sharing environment. By sponsoring peers to become workshop facilitators, Focuss encourages engagement. Focuss also reward engagement by giving workshop facilitators and the ones who start with social bookmarking a global platform - www.focuss.info - on which their contributions are visible. As a result, the reward of engagement is that the person who is actively involved in social bookmarking strengthen his/her position as an indispensable networker or knowledge broker within the field of global development aid. 

All with all it should be clear by now that a knowledge sharing environment can be realized by encouraging the use of the latest information sharing and networking tools, because these tools enhance information and knowledge sharing through networking. Additionally, because these tools are open, informal, direct and easy in use, the knowledge sharing environment - such as  the Focuss.Info Initiative - becomes transparent. And transparency is required in order to establish an impartial, proper and professional knowledge sharing environment.