Piensa globalmente, actúa localmente: mapeo de la cultura libre en un sistema mediático híbrido

From the nineties, the Internet has been providing new political hybrid action forms. At the same time, some communities make a disruptive use of technologies aiming to subvert network power relationships at the current capitalized and centralized cyberspace. Addressing a collaborative mapping, we identified 290 free culture communities in Spain. Their characteristics suggest the relevance of offline spaces and local areas to deliberate, propose and perform political participation towards a neutral, centralised and free Internet.Desde los años noventa, el ciberespacio ha propuesto formas acción política híbrida. Asimismo, algunos colectivos realizan un uso disruptivo de las tecnologías para subvertir las relaciones de poder en la Red. Mediante un mapeo colaborativo, identificamos 290 grupos relacionados con la cultura libre en España. Sus características sugieren la relevancia de los espacios offline y de los territorios locales para deliberar y activarse políticamente a favor de un Internet libre

Exploring the Impact of Socio-Technical Core-Periphery Structures in Open Source Software Development

In this paper we apply the social network concept of core-periphery structure to the sociotechnical structure of a software development team. We propose a socio-technical pattern that can be used to locate emerging coordination problems in Open Source projects. With the help of our tool and method called TESNA, we demonstrate a method to monitor the socio-technical core-periphery movement in Open Source projects. We then study the impact of different core-periphery movements on Open Source projects. We conclude that a steady core-periphery shift towards the core is beneficial to the project, whereas shifts away from the core are clearly not good. Furthermore, oscillatory shifts towards and away from the core can be considered as an indication of the instability of the project. Such an analysis can provide developers with a good insight into the health of an Open Source project. Researchers can gain from the pattern theory, and from the method we use to study the core-periphery movements

Emerging Opportunities: Monitoring and Evaluation in a Tech-Enabled World

Various trends are impacting on the field of monitoring and evaluation in the area of international development. Resources have become ever more scarce while expectations for what development assistance should achieve are growing. The search for more efficient systems to measure impact is on. Country governments are also working to improve their own capacities for evaluation, and demand is rising from national and community-based organizations for meaningful participation in the evaluation process as well as for greater voice and more accountability from both aid and development agencies and government.These factors, in addition to greater competition for limited resources in the area of international development, are pushing donors, program participants and evaluators themselves to seek more rigorous – and at the same time flexible – systems to monitor and evaluate development and humanitarian interventions.However, many current approaches to M&E are unable to address the changing structure of development assistance and the increasingly complex environment in which it operates. Operational challenges (for example, limited time, insufficient resources and poor data quality) as well as methodological challenges that impact on the quality and timeliness of evaluation exercises have yet to be fully overcome