Dadamac OK (Open Knowledge) is the most important way that Dadamac has developed. Details below:
- The key resource is people, not money
- Why work the Dadamac OK way
- Practical benefits
- Dadamac OK works (examples)
- An example in more detail
1 - The key resource is people, not money
In Dadamac OK we believe that true wealth creation is to do with people working together and we can often get started on something wihout money (although obviously we all have material needs - and we have bills to pay - so our projects tend to be labours of love fitted in during our "disretionary time"). in Dadamac OK projects people give their time. knowledge and skills freely. (When money is needed for some external goods or services then we dig into our own pockets or find some other way to raise funds - such as through Dadamac Foundation).
2 - Why work the Dadamac OK way?
There are various reasons people collaborate freely:
- Because they want the end result to happen
- In order to learn
- To meet people - and then to come back and meet them again and enjoy working together (online and/or face-to-face).
- To go places
- Because it is fun / satisfying / interesting / worhtwhile etc
- To develop skills
- To build a reputation
- Other
3 - Practical benefits
In a Dadamac OK (Open Knowledge) project, everyone who is involved benefits by sharing what they know, and something practical happens as a result.
One of the benefits of working in our OK way is that we don't need complicated formal agreements or funding before we can get started. We just "rub minds" and then go forward in small steps. Everyone has their own reason for taking the next step, and so we can just agree to take that nest step together. If we decide to go in the same direction for quite a while then we can help each other better and faster as time goes by, and everyone gets closer to their chosen destination more effectively. Things emerge. The details become clear as we do what we are doing.
4 - Dadamac OK works
Various projects have been launched, speeded up, or done in their entirety through Dadamac OK. The full list will be added here later, with links to further information (we could use more help in Dadamac OK to make that happen, and help to add photos and make videos, report on our work, change pages of text into visual representation, and generally accelerate the process of explaining what we are doing in a way that will help poeple to see how they could be involved). Meanwhile this list gives a flavour (with more details to be found through the search box) :
Teachers Talking
People from four continents worked on-line to develop resources for an ICT course for teachers in rural Africa. Then they provided a welcoming online support group for the participants, most of whom were meeting computers for the first time.
Dadamac Days
The annual online celebration of Teachers Talking and other projects
The friendly wiki
A spin off from Teachers Talking and its related wiki. A software experiment to make the resources more easily findable. It taught us a lot about crossing the techie-to-non-techie communication barrier. about roles and permissions - and the anguish of losing all your data.
DIY-solar UK-Nigeria collaboration
A project that didn't work the way we hoped it would, but taught us a lot about structures and systems to enable collaboration at a distance.
Cawdnet Campus
A spin off from the friendly wiki, this time using Moodle. This proved its worth on several projects. It also led us to experiemnts with Drupal and the dadamac.net website, and a Moodle implementation for Dadamac
Peoples-uni.org
A spin off from the lessons of DIY-solar, made possible becasue Cawdnet Campus was available. Proof of concept and two pilot courses, then idependent existance.
People and Place
Through our network the Children's Computer Club in Nigeria and a school in India were incuded in a photo sharing project with two schools in the UK
Fundraising through Dadamac Foundation
The only administrative support that Dadamac Foundation has is given freely through Dadamac OK
The self-directed learners group
This grew out of Teachers Talking. One fo the participants was Folabi Sunday, a teacher. The course helped him in his subsequent work, including initiating the Dadamac outpost at Ago-Are in 2011.
Dadamac outpost at Ago-Are
This grew out of a previous project (Information Centre at Ago-Are 2003-2010). That project was initiated by Oke-Ogun Community Development Network (OCDN), which included people now in the Dadamac Community.
First Thursdays
Another spin off from Teachers Talking - an online open meeting for people connected with Dadamac (mainly in Africa, Europe and North America). Meetings happen for an hour or so, every month - started in 2007
Dadamac meetups
Face to face meetups in London, on th Third Thursday of the month - seem to be developing into something similar to the online First Thursdays
Collaborators connect
Set up in response to a need in 2011, then fed into First Thursdays
The eco-dome at Attachab
Technology transfer in action
5 - An example in more detail
Building the Ecodome with Marcus Simmons illustrates the Dadamac OK approach.
We all contributed what we knew, and went forward when we had sufficient resources for the next steps, such as travelling and buying building materials.
As a result of a Dadamac OK approach:
- Marcus had the opportunity to go to Africa and experiment with building an eco-dome there
- John and his network in Nigeria met Marcus, and built an eco-dome at Attachab Eco-village
- Pamela and Nikki developed more of their systems for facilitating UK-Nigeria collaboration, and had an example to point to.
Not only did we build an eco-dome. We also built a wider, stronger network of relationships, knowledge, skills and trust. (Marcus built the ecodome in 2008. He returned to Nigeria in 2009, contirbuting to permaculture progress at Attachab)
Building an eco-dome - a story in pictures
