AKVO's Clouds

It’s been a while but as I promised you, I have had an interview with a network organisation. Without expectations I started the interview with projectmanager Luuk Diphorn, and fell right down in the media world of AKVO…

AKVO is a digital platform that facilitates the water sanitation sector. The organisation is established in The Hague and works as network organisation. The clients of AKVO are mostly NGO’s in the Netherlands but AKVO is expanding their platform abroad. AKVO finds projects or donors to finance these projects and report about them. They also share everything they know about water and ask everyone to contribute too.

Cloud computing, a new phenomenon taught in class AKVO knows all about… The clients and partners of the organisation can use the Internet business applications (the clouds) developed by AKVO. AKVO computes these applications on their website. One of these so called clouds in AKVO’s media world is called Akvopedia, an open water and sanitation resource that anyone can edit. The wiki works almost exactly like the world famous Online Encyclopaedia Wikipedia.

According the book I mentioned in my first blog, The starfish and the spider[1], ideology strengthens a starfish like AKVO. Open systems offer a sense of community; all users are motivated by a desire to create a better product. Users believe in an open system and respect on another’s contributions. A specific Wiki like the Akvopedia, facilitates information to the water sanitation sector and therefore only attracts interested people. The users of the Akvopedia contribute not because they have to but because they want to. As you can see, the center of power spreads trough all legs of the starfish, to the contributing editors. When I asked them, the answer to the question if people sometimes edit wrong information on their Wiki, AKVO answers negative. They have never experienced something like that.

The wiki is easy to navigate through, AKVO has spent al lot of time designing parts the interface of the Wiki. First, the Akvopedia looks a lot like the Wikipedia, which almost every frequent Internet user is familiar with. This interface makes the Akopedia not only easy to use but also recognisable as a wiki. Second, the wiki contains three portals which are divided in more than 20 groups each. Every group is clickable and has an icon, especially designed for the waterwiki.

AKVO does not put al its money on one horse; it uses more applications to facilitate their clients. One of the most important business applications is their Ebay-like project application, sounds interesting doesn’t it? In my next blog, which will come out soon, I will tell you more about this system.

PS. If you want to check AKVO out, visit http://www.akvo.org/ !
PS2. Interested in water? AKVO is bloggin almost every week! http://www.akvo.org/blog/

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[1] Brafman. O., Beckstrom, A. (2006). The Starfisch and the Spider. London: Penguin Group.