New Case Study Online: African Peer Review Mechanism Process

“It’s a very important tool, from the way we came out with the members. I was picturing how I was going to form this committee all alone, there was a big question mark as to who to choose, but through this method I have seen that certain groups are inevitable, looking at the coordination. The [...]

Jennifer Hauck in Action

Her thoughts on Net-Map on the village level: see below.

Reaction from Accra

Jennifer Hauck, who is still busy with her research about local fisheries governance, is in Ghana at the moment and at reading my latest musings, sends me the following insights fresh from the field: “Maybe a cobbler should stick to his last? Tying up to the last blog: Do African villagers learn less from Net-Mapping [...]

Do African villagers learn less from Net-Mapping than African policy makers?

And if so, why? Those who have heard me talk about Net-Map know that I get really excited when I talk about the learning experience of my participants of Net-Map activities. They jump off their seats afterwards, praising their new insights, thank each other (and not the facilitator) for all that they have learned etc. [...]

Less techy

What I love about blogging is that I can throw my ideas out there as they come and someone might catch them, add their own experience and together we create something new. Nancy White of Full Circle Associates does want to use Net-Map online, but does not want to bother the participants with too many [...]

Mapping together

Below I have explored the idea of using Net-Map (through two computer applications called Visualyzer and GoToMeeting) in real time with groups all over the world online. While looking at ways how people can think together online, I came across this very instructive post about Online Graphic Organizers by Miguel Guhlin. He explores different free [...]

Facts are Facts – Perception is Reality

A colleague said this to me yesterday and after I stopped laughing it got me thinking. Because with a method such as Net-Map you basically record people’s perceptions. Some of them are rather easily consolidated with what we could call hard facts (e.g. flows of funds, formal lines of command). But if you ask: Who [...]

Do people or organisations form a network?

When I ask: “Who can influence this-and-that?” as a first step in a Net-Map exercise, it depends very much on the “this-and-that”, on the context and on the interviewees, whether they will come up with a lot of organisations (Ministry of XY, NGOs, women’s groups, etc.) or groups of people who do similar things or [...]

Social Networks and the evaluation of development projects

If this headline catches your eye, I believe that Rick Davies’ website is an interesting spot for getting more information and thought about why and how development projects unfold in network manners, how we can understand the drivers of Most Significant Changes and what paradigm shifts are necessary to incorporate this thinking into mainstream monitoring [...]

Shaping a brighter future: Net-Map in post-conflict situations

Evans Omari sent me a comment (see “about” section), asking how Net-Map could be used in “capacity development for local governance in a post-conflict transitional support situation”. While I don’t know the particulars of this specific case, I can think of two possible lines of application. As tool to understand the conflict and facilitate the [...]