2012 has been a year of great changes for Dadamac in many interrelated ways: some visible, some invisible, some internal, some external. I won't try to tell those stories now, I won't even refer to them all except to say that I expect to revisit some in detail in 2013.
The stories
As I revisit the stories and themes in my thoughts, I will do some 'thinking aloud". Some of that thinking aloud will probably emerge as blogs - or stories. If I do write them then they will grow out of what happened in 2012 and further back. I will try to make each story into something that will stand alone, but will also obviously be part of a much wider, richer, inter-related whole.
I don't know quite what this colllection of stories will look like. The structure is something that will emerge as I do it (if indeed I do do it). I have been influenced by "pattern language" ideas. I'm thinking that if I write and rewrite the stories, and recognise the key elements in them, and define some shared structures, then maybe I will have some kind of pattern language structure in the end.
Looking back at 2012
Looking back at 2012 there is a mixture of good, bad and interesting. I think it's hard for an individual to review the bad in a balanced way, so I'll focus on the good and interesting, under the headings of outcomes and inputs.
Outcomes
I'm satisfied with the learning that has emerged as a result of the time and resources put into Dadamac in 2012 and earlier. This isn't measured anywhere, but, at the simplest level I know what it looks like to me:
- I know how much I've learned.
- I know what people have said to me about what they have learned
- I'm aware of practical projects that have happened (key ones recently written up at dadamac.co.uk)
- I'm aware of a "community" that is Dadamac - with a core group who have been shaping its character, and other people who connect with it (or have connected with it) in one way and another, who also influence its ongoing, emerging character and directions.
Inputs
Various people have contributed generously to Dadamac (and to previous related initiatives in the names of Cawdnet, CAWD and Oke-Ogun Community Development 2000 plus). Some of their contributions have been financial and have shown up in the annual accounts of Dadamac Foundation, and its predecessor: CAWD. Other contributions have been less visible and has gone largely unrecorded - work done freely, advice given, information provided, skills shared and so on. I hope in future there will be an accounting system that makes those valuable inputs easily visible. When money has come in it has gone effectively to support the targets to which it was directed. People who have given invisible inputs know for themselves what those inputs generated.
I can't speak for how other people feel about their contributions, but I can reflect from a personal viewpoint. I have a rough idea of what I've contributed over the years although I've never added it up. (At some point it might be a useful exercise, so I could make an informed judgement, rather than a subjective one, on whether my time and money would have been better directed elsewhere.) I know I feel very positive about the results when I compare outcomes with contributions.
I celebrate all the outcomes we have achieved. Not surprisingly I would have liked more to show, but that would have needed more people contributing their resources. I know we have spent time and effort going in some directions with little in the way of results that are visible to outsiders. However we are explorers and pathfinders. If we were never going the long way round - or even sometimes in completely the wrong direction - then we would just be following established routes. As it is we are exploring things for ourselves. We are permanently on a learning curve, and we have certainly learned, even when nothing else has come out of our efforts. That is an achievement in itself and well worth doing. Dadamac is as much about learning as it is about doing. They are intertwined.
Ingredients for 2013
At this point - thinking back to what I have done so far, and all the experiences of 2012 - I can write some of the "ingredients" that I'll be taking forward to 2013 and its blogs and stories. In typical Dadamac style they will be a mixture of theory and practice. The following list gives some of the possible ingredients (something to be picked from) rather than a recipe for the year ahead. (A recipe would give a good idea of what to expect in the end - I don't know that yet). The list may not make much sense until I have "cooked it up together", which I hope will happen during 2013.
As I write my list of ingredients I'll put a few headings, just to give an idea of themes. The items under the headings do belong there - but might equally well appear under one or more other headings as well. This list is nothing like a tidy library classification system it's a Dadamac memory-jogging no-particular-order kind of a list.
The ingredients
Possible ingredients to be included in 2013 are:
Education and learning:
- Virtual academia
- Established academia
- Everything unplugged
- Wikiiquals
- Dadamacademy
- GlobalNet21 education group
- Community Intelligence
- School of Commoning
- The Knowledge Resource Centre at Fantsuam
- Fola's ICT centre in Ago-Are (AKA the Dadamac outpost)
Collaboration
- Collage-network
- GlobalNet21 collaboration group
- Wow society
- FocalLocal
- Various other individuals and groups or organisations where shared interests are becoming clearer and collaboration may result
Development
(I mean "development" related to all the locations Dadamac connects with - including my own - I don't mean the development-for-"developing"-countries idea of development)
- Appropriate technology
- Financial systems
- Accounting systems
- Climate change
- Permaculture
- Responsiveness /resilience /sustainability
- Work and livelihoods
- Education and training
- ICT
- Shared language/vocabulary
- Emergent-culture
- Local and global perspectives
Inter-connectedness of practice and theory
- Pattern language
- Networks and organisations
- Individuals and communities
- Knowledge creation
- Collaboration or competition
- 21st century systems
- Landscape of change
- ICT4Ed&D
- Information flows
- Digital-analogue interfaces
- Effective collaboration/division-of-labour between "the human" and "the digital" regarding knowledge creation and information processing
Identities for 2013
The identity and direction of Dadamac is inevitably tied in with the identities and directions of its co-founders - John Dada and me. We plan to continue working together in similar ways in 2013. Dadamac in Nigeria is directed by John. It is entwined with his work with Fantsuam Foundation, at Attachab and elsewhere. I"m hoping Nikki will be able to continue her work blogging the ongoing episodes of the UK-Nigeria stories, despite all her work as director of Collage-network. I direct what Dadamac does in the UK and online. In the new year I'm intending to be less pro-active; more reflective and responsive. I will write the long term stories so far, and leave them in easy-to-find places. I will be available to collaborate with others, to respond to them, to think things through about what I have been learning, and to make those lessons visible.
I always struggle to know how to introduce myself. I have miscellaneous profiles scattered across the Internet: incomplete, out of date, and variously unsatisfactory. I'm thinking that next year will be my "gap year" from "doing" and I will spend it in virtual academic "thinking" under the umbrella of WikiQuals - with Dadamac as my fieldwork. .
Well it's more than a week until Christmas, and even longer to 2013. Anything could happen, and probably will, and this is conjecture, but it might be interesting to check back here this time next year.
Meanwhile Season's Greetings to Everyone and All Good Wishes for the New Year, whatever it brings us.
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