Development Roast Giving international development a proper roasting
Over the last two days I have been involved in a global experiment – a 48 hour brainstorming session between 1,600 people, from 50 countries who identified the barriers to solving poverty and put forward ideas for solutions.
The experiment was set up in a form of a game called Catalysts for Change. The more you contributed by putting down your thoughts, critiques, questions and ideas in less than 140 character soundbites, the more points you collected. In the end, the two short days yielded over 18,600 soundbite playing cards covering a range of topics from improving education to challenging capitalism itself.
It was fun and definitely educational with some ideas providing serious food for thought and generating lengthy discussions:
Some controversial:
Others were bordering on the offensive and possibly immoral:
Throughout, the ‘game-makers’ kept up a blog and gave out awards for the most interesting, innovative and controversial cards (no prizes, just kudos). Dr Lykke Andersen of Bolivia’s Institute of Advanced Development Studies scooped up the Youth Spirit Awardfor her contribution to re-imagining education:
A list of Celebrity awards, mainly related to technological solutions, will be handed out shortly.
Now that the game has ended, a call to arms has been announced to have statisticians, mathematicians, researchers, analysts and others with relevant skills to analyse the enormity of the data generated. You can view all threads and ideas for yourself on the Game Dashboard. I will update you once any conclusions have been drawn.
What are your thoughts on something like this: the crowd sourcing of ideas? Is this just a waste of time or a pilot for much more collaborative forms of knowledge generation, development and sharing? Share your thoughts in the comments box below.
Ioulia Fenton leads the food and agriculture research stream at the Center for Economic and Environmental Modeling and Analysis (CEEMA) at INESAD.
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