Building Online Communities of Practice

I’m all excited because this is a WSIS follow on meeting and the room is full of ICT leaders who are looking forward to my presentation. I’m about to speak on two topics of interest to this crowd: 4P Computing and online communities of practice.

The first topic, 4P Computing, or the rise of a new class of computing devices that are responsive to the performance, power, portability, and price constraints of the developing world, speaks directly to the crowd – they’re all interested in low cost user devices as that’s the stated topic of this session.

The second, online communities of practice, is of interest to the meeting organizers, infoDev at the World Bank and UNESCO, because they hope to develop an online community of practice around low-cost ICT devices for education.

Funny enough, after an exhaustive search, they’ve hired an expert in developing communities of practice in technology for development, someone who’s even developed one for the premier low-cost ICT device for education, the XO laptop from One Laptop Per Child. Yes, I am now a consultant to infoDev at the World Bank! Who would’ve thunk it? Definitely not me.

But here I am, in the basement of the International Telecommunications Union building, on a panel with representatives from UNESCO and the World Bank, all of us presented as peers in using technology to empower development.

A humbling experience for sure, but also a gratifying confirmation of my OLPC News efforts over the last two years. All that blogging, forum building, and media outreach built a rather comprehensive community that now is taking on a leadership role itself, driving OLPC as much as responding to it.

And now its time to build a new community, this time with real resources and funding. A dream challenge I excited to respond to in this basement conference room in Geneva. So if you’ll excuse me, it’s my time to shine. I’ve just been called on to speak and I’m gonna wow them.