TRENDY^(and anonymous) + HOT^(Post-2015/JMP monitoring) + COOL^(People at a conference) = ?
The presentation is partly meant to be entertaining but also suggests that there are new trends taking place in the sector and eventually monitoring may look quite different.
Published on: 25/05/2011
TRENDY^(and anonymous) + HOT^(Post-2015/JMP monitoring) + COOL^(People at a conference) = something warm and trendy?
A Facebook page called watermonitors2015 was setup. This presentation explores the meaning of that page. It is partly meant to be entertaining but also suggests that there are new trends taking place in the sector and monitoring is already starting to look quite different. The facebook page was anonymously setup by a group of people at discussions in Berlin 2011 on post-2015 monitoring. It was shown as an example of how web/social/mobile technologies may change the business of monitoring of development objectives. It was also setup in one evening.
See the explanation below the slides.
TRENDY because unbranded anonymously created sites are all the rage. Who is Brains Web Guru anyway?
HOT because the FLOW and Water Point Mapper are the newcomers that are changing the way organisations monitor. They are partly tools and partly methodologies tied to the idea that one should monitor over time. FLOW combines data in a distributed database and allows data to be collected across a country and easily generate summaries. Water Point Mapper gets points for the local ownership of data (in an excel sheet) that can be immediately used for decision making. It is a quickly growing and changing field where we will see the combination of approaches leading to easy web-enabled mobile phone-toting monitoring. The use of these tools is popping up all over the place like mushrooms after rain.
COOL because Facebook has grown in Africa by 50% in the last 6 months as reported in February. While this is impressive, penetration in Africa as of today (15 May 2011) is reported as a not so impressive 3.12%. We probably shouldn't expect everyone and especially not the rural poor to join this exclusive private club anytime soon.
Check out the site and leave comments or reply to me on Twitter (@waternote): http://www.facebook.com/watermonitors2015
What's your opinion? Will it lead to tyranny of the facebook masses lead by an unknown page creator? Will it be the democratisation of monitoring and the opening of data for real evidence-based decision making?
Nick Dickinson
http://www.twitter.com/waternote
