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.

Aplication Specific Programs.

Some organisations use different types of Application-Specific Programs to support their CRM (Customer Relationship Management), resource planning, data mining and knowledge management systems.

An organisation I interviewed for a school assingment has developped their own intranet, on which all applications are built. In order to serve their clients perfectly, the organisation developed a Wiki containing very specific information about their clients. The CRM tool is a application-specific program which is edited by the support team every time new information about the client occurs. The wiki contains not only general information about the client, but also about their wishes, earlier orders, loyalty and the service they have to receive. The Wiki is only used by employees, the information is strictly private and the program is fully integrated in the intranet.

For their calendar, the organisation uses a Ajax-based web software called Zimbra. Zimbra is an open source system that enables the employees to share calendars, schedule group meetings and easily look up free-busy times of others and rooms. For accounting the employees use KING, an information system developed by Quadrant in order to get a hold of the financial as well as logistic administration in a medium sized organisation.

Overall, a very effective media mix!

The starfish and the spider

Since I read the book “The starfish and the spider” I can see them everywhere. I am not talking about the actual animals but about organisations. According to Brafman & Beckstrom (2006) organisations are comparable to starfish and spiders. A spider stands for a centralized hierarchical organisation while a starfish stands for decentralized organisations. Because this might sound a little vague, let me explain…trend towards professionalization in organisations. When the professionalism of an individual or an organisation increases, a person may experience a hard time receiving orders from the top. If this person is specialized in a case, why should someone else, with less knowledge about the case, decide what to do with it? Because of such issues, organisations - with hierarchic elements – can be incapable to make decisions. These so called spiders have one head, which is its control centre, its centre of power. When you chop of its head, the spider is dies; it is not longer able to function.
Other than a spider, a starfish has no head and no centre of power, it has got legs. When you chop off one of those legs, the starfish will continue to function and a new leg will grow back. The starfish stands for an organisation with a decentralized network structure, where all the individuals in an organisation depend on each other but the power of decision making is spread.

As I said, I can see them everywhere, and that is the reason I am writing this blog. Transforming a spider into a starfish is a huge task. A big part of the power, which is centred in the head of a spider, must be spread into its legs until there is no head anymore. This transformation goes hand in hand with the use of a lot of media. Because the decision-making in the organisation will happen in different ‘legs’ this must be well communicated with other legs; internal communication systems are a must for these starfish. Which systems these starfish use I don’t know yet, but I’ll definitely find out. Next week I have an interview scheduled with a network organisation. I’ll keep you posted!