All of Akvo, together (*)

May 15th, 2012 by Mark Charmer

We only hold a few all-Akvo staff meetings each year, because everyone’s spread around the world. So they’re quite special.

Last week’s, held in Amsterdam, was by far our biggest yet. We had 27 people together.

We’re now too big to fit the entire team in the Amsterdam office comfortably, so we used a beautiful venue called The Playing Circle, a short walk from our office (can I move in there please?).

Trying to capture everyone together in a photograph or video is hard when you reach that number, so instead I camped like a paparazzi in the street as everyone headed to and from lunch and snapped them talking. I really like these pictures because they capture a lot of character dynamics and a little of what it feels like to stroll through Amsterdam where we’re based. I will caption them properly when I have the time, with who’s who. They may also provide the basis for a set of new “team pages” on the website, somewhere down the line.

It’s set up as a slideshow below, if you want the full experience.

Mark Charmer is a co-founder and communications director at Akvo.

* apart from Luuk, who was in Nairobi. Oh, and Emily, who was in Brooklyn. And Jo, who’s about to have a baby.

Posted in Akvo development.

Putting the “Simple” back in Really Simple Reporting

May 3rd, 2012 by Emily Armanetti

Since it first appeared in 1955, Parkinson’s law has rung so true that it has been adapted to apply to almost any area of life. The task always expands to fill the time allocated, data stored on your computer always expands to fill the hard drive, and yes ladies – the bigger the handbag, the more you carry. So we weren’t surprised to see that this law also applies to Akvo Really Simple Reporting (RSR).

Originally, most of the project fields in RSR were designed to limit the number of characters that could be entered. For example, a Project Summary field was originally limited to 200 characters or less. Lately, the length of this field has not been limited, which means we are seeing much longer project summaries in RSR. In other words: our summaries have expanded to the space that is available.

When a Project Summary gets too long, the additional content that brings your project to life – your maps, photos, etc. – are eclipsed by text and not as visible to casual visitors to the website. We want to help you make your entries shine and entice people to read beyond the Project Summary so we are in the process of fine tuning RSR.

Some of the improvements you can expect include:

1. Length limits on project fields
A re-introduction of length limits for project fields for all new projects. For existing projects, we will work with you to align existing information so you do not have to worry about losing any information.

2. An extra tab in project info
Reorganised public display of project information into four tabs so you can present information in a more logical order.

3. Score more goals
Three additional Goal item fields, for a total of 8.

4. More space for goals
Increased character limit in the Goal item fields from 60 to 100 characters so you can include more information on your project goals.

5. Changes to the “who will benefit” area
A “View More” drop down menu for the “Who will benefit?” section.

6. “Add update” is easier to find
A new, much more prominent, “Add Update” button on partner websites, as well as www.akvo.org.

You could say that Akvo is returning to our roots on RSR. Our goal has always been to make reporting, well, really simple. Our team is working hard to ensure that our metaphorical handbag does not get too heavy. So watch this space for these improvements, which we believe will put the “simple” back in Really Simple Reporting.

Emily Armanetti is communications manager at Akvo, based in New York City.

Photo: Emily’s handbag. Brooklyn, New York. Thursday 3 May 2012.

Posted in Akvo development, Akvo partner news, Akvo RSR.

Jeroen van der Sommen on leading the Akvo FLOW business

May 3rd, 2012 by Mark Charmer

Akvo’s chairman and co-founder Jeroen van der Sommen has just changed roles, joining the staff full time to lead the development of the Akvo FLOW business. Here Mark Charmer talks with him about his plans.

Jeroen you’ve been our chairman for four years now, but now you’re coming back into an executive role. Tell me about this new role?

If you look at Thomas and I, we stay quite close to where we started. I came from the partnership side, the network, bringing the network together, coming from the assumption that problems are so big, challenges are so large, that they cannot be solved by NGOs alone, not by the private sector, not by the government, not by the knowledge institutes. So the change within the development world should be that collaboration happens between all those different groups.

On the other side, we were limited because partnership alone is not enough, especially if you want to use hi-tech applications in difficult circumstances then you need really good software guys – people who really understand what it takes to scale, to bring it to an operational level at an affordable price. That’s why Thomas came in.

So what I’m doing now is I’m managing the FLOW development – not the technical part, but it what it takes to really bring FLOW to scale.

So your role is to establish Akvo FLOW as a business that can sustain itself?

Yes, that’s the goal and it’s our operational model, like we did with RSR. We have a tool where there is a need – a market for Really Simple Reporting. And you can build a tool but you need investments. And our business model is such that within 3 years the investments should be transferred into a viable business model. That is what we’ve been doing with Akvo RSR and we did it successfully, so it’s now sustainable. And the same thing we are doing for Akvo FLOW. We have some setbacks because the development of Akvo FLOW was not at the level it needed to be for lots of people to adopt it, so we need some time – 6, 12, 18 months to make it what we want. But already it’s being used. We need now investments, grants, to bring it to the level that’s self-sustainable. And we can sell it as a service.

So who is the competition for Akvo in this market?

There are tools being developed by several organisations. But they sell a product – we are more than a product, we are a network. That’s the difference. If we find very useful tools, like we did with Water For People and FLOW, we approach them and ask them to open source them and then work to spread them out widely. And we work with them, together, because we couple good ideas to our things, and vice-versa.

For the full interview, click “More” below…

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Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Akvo development, Akvo FLOW, Akvo partner news, Partners.

Updater of the month – April 2012

May 3rd, 2012 by Emily Armanetti

This month we highlight Dorcus Musubaho, who has provided a number of deeply inspirational updates on the work that the Diocese of Jinja has been doing in Uganda. You can follow her update feed here. Recent project updates range from in-school maternal child healthcare education, to identifying and treating malnutrition, to jigger prevention and treatment.

I should warn you that some of these photo updates aren’t for the faint-hearted.

Kathelyne interviewed her in May 2011. You can see the video below.

Posted in Akvo development, Akvo partner news, Akvo RSR, connect4change, Partners.

Training Akvo RSR users in Ghana

May 3rd, 2012 by Laura Roverts

Last week, Kathelyne and I gave a workshop on Akvo Really Simple Reporting (RSR) for the Dutch WASH Alliance (DWA) partners in Tamale, Ghana. This is part of the Dutch government’s MFS II international development funding programme for 2011-2016. In addition to WASH Alliance partners from eight organisations working on water, sanitation and hygiene projects around Tamale, we also hosted six participants from organisations representing Connect4Change.

This was my first field visit for Akvo. Before we went to Ghana, many things needed to be arranged. I’d like to thank Prosper Sapathy, country lead for ICCO, and especially Eric Chimsi, country coordinator, for helping with the arrangements. The Modern City Hotel “where life is beautiful” was chosen by Eric and proved ideal – we had all the facilities needed for the workshop, such as internet connectivity, a projector and sound system, and it was a serene environment where we could focus on making great progress.