IDRC Open Development Workshop

I just got home from the workshop Open Development in Ottawa. The meeting was quite stimulating and has helped me to better think through an number of not-quite-fully-formed ideas that I've been playing with.

Some of the questions that we were trying to answer are:

• What is openness, and what are the theoretical and empirical connections between openness and promoting human development?
• What are some implications of increasing openness in different spheres of social, economic, and political activity?
• What are the participatory or collaborative activities which, enabled by ICTs, will catalyze developmental benefits and be applicable across domains?
• What are the connections between openness, innovation, and development?
• What is the relationship between open principles and a knowledge society?
• Is more openness inevitable? When is openness a public good?
• Are there differential issues that distinguish the meaning of openness in developing versus developed economies?
• Do the new possibilities of openness through ICTs have any implications for development approaches?

For those that are interested, my draft paper can be accessed here. There is also a recording of an interesting panel discussion that took place on the first day (with Yochai Benkler, Sunil Abraham, Michael Geist, Anita Gurumurthy and Ron Deibert).