An update on the number of unique logins elicits an “oh, cool!” Organizers beam over the participation share from Azerbaijan. A video recording shows a U.S. high-ranking political appointee discussing his interest in empowering women and girls.
The headquarters of Global Pulse 2010 has brought together an amalgamation of techies and international development junkies at the offices of IBM in Washington. The online conference, sponsored by the U.S. Agency for International Development in partnership with the departments of State, Education, Commerce and Health and Human Services, is bringing together voices from across the globe. The three-day “online collaboration event” closes at 6 p.m. of March 31 and will remain open to the public until then, according to Hanna Jung, USAID program manager for Global Pulse.
Last year in Cairo, President Barack Obama pledged to engage the global community in shaping his administration’s approach to foreign assistance. So, USAID, along with other government agencies, began brainstorming - or “imagineering ” - means to make that happen.
“We had two main objectives. One was to demonstrate the U.S. government truly is committed to the president’s vision for global engagement,” Jung said. “Two, we wanted to create an opportunity for us to engage with people, and obtain ideas through a collaborative dialogue process that hopefully would identify more innovative ideas than we could develop on our own.”
DAI, a USAID contractor working on engagement strategies, helped the development agency to settle on a “jam,” a platform created by Liam Cleaver, IBM’s program director for collaborative innovation, and his team. Parties from the private sector to the United Nations have sponsored jams previously, but Global Pulse is a first for USAID.
“We found IBM’s jam technology to be really exciting,” said Seema Patel, a USAID contractor from DAI. “The platform is action-oriented, and I expect at the end of this, we will see teams forming organically to solve some of these issues.”
Ultimately, jams and other technologies have the potential to flip the traditional development workflow, according to Patel.
“Usually, we get priority areas where USAID is working, they develop some programs, and people respond to those programs,” she said. “This is starting with the people first, and so we can’t really judge where it’s going to go or how many programs will come out of it.”
To populate and power its jam, USAID issued an open invitation to people interested in international development. Inside, participants, or “jammers,” interact with other attendees, facilitators and distinguished guests — from USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah to best-selling author Deepak Chopra — on around 10 core topics: empowering women and girls; enabling essential education; building stronger partnerships; exercising political and civil rights; inspiring a new generation; promoting global health; advancing entrepreneurship, trade and economic opportunity; foster science, technology and innovation; supporting a sustainable planet; and, pursuing grand challenges. Jammers are given individual accounts and may track particular personalities and dialogues that they find pertinent.
Global Pulse jammers are more active than typical jammers, according to Cleaver. Global Pulse participants tend to return between four and seven times for stints between 45 minutes and two hours. Global Pulse reminds Cleaver of the United Nations-sponsored Habitat Jam in 2005. The U.N. took 70 recommendations to inform its platform at the 2006 World Urban Forum in Vancouver, Canada.
As of 6 p.m. of March 30, more than 11,000 jammers from upwards of 150 countries had combined to write approximately 7,000 posts. The discussion threads will remain available to registered attendees even after the event concludes.
In the meantime, USAID and partnering agencies, with help from IBM and DAI, will compile all of the comments and draft a report based on selected suggestions. The findings will be presented to executives at participating agencies, as well as to USAID and State Department mission directors overseas.
“Our facilitators are in the process of identifying some of the best ideas, best practices and actionable recommendations that we are going to be filtering and accessing at the end of the event,” Jung said.
Jill Klein, information technology executive in residence at American University’s Kogod School of Business in Washington, D.C., completed three shifts as a facilitator in the science, technology and innovation forum. Three of her students served as interns at IBM and worked on Global Pulse.
“I was here when this particular jam was launched and was amazed at how quickly we had people from all over the planet communicating and how constructive the conversation has remained,” she said. “I thought I would get the U.S., Canada, Latin America and Mexico, but in my first session, I was everywhere, including sending e-mails back and forth with people in China.”
As one of the few facilitators from outside of the development and aid spheres, Klein believes Global Pulse also could provide non-governmental organizations and donors outside of the government with great lessons in idea generation.
“There’s a certain amount of democracy in the voices because everyone is equal,” she said. “So, what I hope the development community gets to take away is that you can get ideas from people with a lot of experience, you can get ideas from people with limited experience, and you can really get information from people in other countries.”
Anyone wishing to participate in Global Pulse 2010 can sign up here before Wednesday evening.
“Registration is open as long as the jam is on,” said Patel of DAI. “All they would need to do is get on the registration page and boom they’re in — they can see all of the VIPs coming online, read all of the threads intriguing to them, and post.”
Highlights from the final day include the participation of special guest Dalia Mogahed, senior analyst and executive director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies.
