Wednesday, February 07, 2007

Imagination and development 2.0

The folks at the World Bank site, Private Sector Development Blog, had some fun with the possibilities of applying web 2.0 principles to development activities. Read here to find out what they have to say about D-oogle, D-eBay, Dev-ipedia, and SecondProject. Though the name games are catchy, the ideas behind them - how to use tools like mashups, social networking, and search to give poor people around the world a say in the kinds of investments that get made - are worth considering. Some of the ideas already have real life counterparts, as both the author and comments note, pointing specifically to gapminder (and this Google-enhanced version).

Other ideas - like using SecondLife for immersive, virtual prototyping with broad participation - are intriguing and worth consideration by any funder/NGO interested in rapid and inclusive prototyping.

Given the market-solution-oriented nature of the site and its sponsors, there might be a business model in there somewhere.

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