A widget with a purpose

As the final part of my last two blogs about AKVO I would like tell you about their widget. A nice little application you can display on your website or blogger to support a water project! People who already placed the widget on their blogs:

http://newsbieonict.blogspot.com/
http://karinvenner.blogspot.com/
http://benstevensmuo.blogspot.com/

AKVO is a digital platform that facilitates the water sanitation sector, their clients are mostly NGO’s in the Netherlands but AKVO is expanding their platform abroad. A large part of these NGO’s are running water projects in the third world for which they seek funding. All projects have to do with water and have the purpose to help the local population to clean it, gather it or make it controllable. To help these NGO’s to find sponsors and donators, AKVO offers them a spot on their ‘Project’ page. On this page NGO’s they have the possibility to find funding for their projects, through their own personal page. The personal page enables the organisations keep visitors updated on information about the progression of the project, in addition the visitors can subscribe to the projects’ RSS Feeds.

The widget AKVO has developed allows its donators, partners and sponsors to display the project they funded in a small screen on their website. The widget is easily written in HTML and can be displayed on your website or blog, as you can see on my page.

I would like to use this opportunity to encourage you to put this widget on your own blog, so maybe your visitors will donate a euro or two to the project. Just follow the following steps for your blogger page:

1. Go to http://www.akvo.org/rsr/projects/ and choose project you find meaningful and click on it.

2. On the right side of the page you can find page tools, click on een widget maken (make a widget).

3. Fill in your website (www.yourblogname.blogspot.com) and click on selecteren en verder gaan… (Select and go on).

4. Choose your own colours for your widget and click on voorproefje (sneakpreview).

5. Copy the HTMLcode which is displayed in the bottom of the page.

6. Log in to your Blogger and make sure you land on your Dashbord page.

7. Click on Layout (Indeling) and then on Page Elements (Pagina-elementen).

8. Click on Add a page element (een gadget toevoegen).

9. Choose the option HTML/Javascript

10. Paste your HTMLcode in the frame, name your widget and save your changes.

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.