Sharing knowledge and helping each other using microblogging and text messaging

Last Saturday, I was on a panel at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, discussing online media and social activism. I talked a lot about telecentre.org — and particularly our move to a "social networking"-based website and an online strategy that would support (rather than compete with) our partners and that would build on spaces that people already know and trust, like Wikipedia (rather than re-inventing the wheel).

I explained that as we worked on previous versions of the site we kept thinking that we needed something like Facebook (without the privacy nightmare) — more addictive, more focused on each other as people. And here we have it. We have not even yet officially launched and already the site has gone viral. I think this is because it allows us to see each other's faces, to leave little notes, to post comments that support each other, and most importantly to "fall in love." It's this connection that underpins successful collaboration and partnerships. Because mutual trust, affection, and respect is what sees us through those difficult times when we work on a project together and start to annoy each other (or worse).

Wow, I'm really digressing here.

What I wanted to share with you was an insight I got from speaking to Evan Prodromou, one of the other people on the CCA panel. Evan is the guy behind Identi.ca (an open network micro-blogging service) and Laconi.ca, the open source platform that powers Identi.ca (learn more). Microblogging — you may have heard of Twitter or Yammer — allows users to post small (140 chars or less) text notices about what they're working on, doing, or thinking about. These services are social: "friends" follow you, you can subscribe to the notices of your friends (or other people you're interested in), and follow them on the Web or using an RSS feed. There's been lots of discussion on how these tools can be used for development.

Now the key thing here is that you can post via the web or SMS (mobile phone text message). This is something the telecentre.org knowledge sharing team hasn't really thought about. But it excites me because while many of us struggle with Internet access, most all of us have a mobile phone. How can we use this to share little bits of knowledge straight from the field? Or provide real-time support? Or simply stay connected by sharing what we're working on or struggling with? I'll be thinking about this some more. Please let me know if you have any ideas.