How to find out everything about small reservoirs

If you want to understand the use and usefulness of small reservoirs in developing countries, you need to know about water, landscape, people, agriculture, fisheries, politics etc. etc. Working with my colleagues of the Small Reservoirs Project (funded by the Challenge Program for Water and Food of the CGIAR), I was often amazed about the [...]

“Imperfect” is the new “perfect”?

“Why use messy pen-paper-and-checkers-pieces – can’t you do it on the computer?” At a Brown Bag Seminar at the World Bank, Regina Birner (IFPRI) and I presented how we used Net-Map to understand innovation systems in Ethiopia. As for the quasi inevitable question afterwards… see above.  “Inevitable” not because it was the World Bank but [...]

Web-find: How to say these names…

Hildegard, Aghajan, Bozorgmehr, Olekorinko… Did you get them all right? It’s a sign of respect to pronounce someone’s name correctly, but, sadly, when working internationally, it’s a pretty difficult task… Or do speak German, Armenian, Farsi and Maasai? Howtosaythatname is a website that does just that, tell you how to say names in the different [...]

Researcher, Facilitator, Advocate?

I just talked with a colleague who wants to do some Net-Map research about water governance in a big irrigation project in Africa, where commercial interests and small farmer needs clash. She has a number of different goals with her research, ranging from “getting a PhD” through “doing high quality exciting research” to “facilitating a [...]

Do you know how to use EgoNet?

Or do you know where to find a manual? EgoNet is an open source software for collecting network data online and I’d love to use it. But unfortunately it’s not really intuitive and I just can’t figure it out. If you know how to use it, I’d be grateful for some hints!