Ah-ha, that looks like a useful thing, Krischan. It looks like phoning in is also an option for those low bandwidth. Happy to give it a try with anyone else who wants to experiment.

joeturner wrote: I was thinking we should do some more research about available meeting services to test to see which are best to use for those with limited bandwidth. One thing is that this system maybe causes problems as it tries to load video and images even for those who (maybe) can't use it. I wonder if there is something which could be used which has two options (ie one which loads all the videos and one which doesn't). It is nice to see each other's faces, but maybe this is causing a problem for some.

There is the open-source option called Big Blue Button bigbluebutton.org/ that could be directly integrated into the SuSanA website and which uses modern WebRTC audio that might solve some of the issues.

Dear SuSanA secretariat
Thank you for organizing the revitalizing chat yesterday. I have not been that active on the forum lately but this was a nice comeback, hopefully there will be more opportunities.
Yesterdays open mic session indicates the strength of SuSanA. The convening power of SuSanA mission and vision bring together people with a lot of experience within the sector people who want to connect share experiences and learn together.

It is also timely to reflect on the ICT development that has taken place with the development of SuSanA. The possibility of global connection is truly amazing and SuSanA has also been able to make a very good and timely use of the technology. WE could probably use the technology out there much more. Based on yesterday´s conversation I think we actually more than ever need a communication and capacity development strategy in place. Already from the start we worked to develop a capacity development strategy and the initial drafts have ended up in a file somewhere in a members hard desk. It would be a good investment to develop a strategy that would enable us tailor and organize our resources making them accessible by using different communication tools for our different target groups referring to practitioners , researchers, students etc

As an example I think SuSanA could use Twitter much more efficiently to lead people into interesting resources, articles on the website etc. WIKI is powerful and so is indeed Twitter and requires less work . Twitter can be programed long time a head and it is an easy channel to present our interesting resources on a regular bases.

Furthermore my recommendation is not see other sanitation online communities as competitors on the a contrary they are complementary and attracts other very important user groups. More than ever before we are working towards the same goal sanitation for all and Susana take the additional step to make this goal sustainable.

To blame limitation in growth of SuSanA on a ecosan stigma is contraproductive in a time where we are heading toward integration of the development goals and in time where the agriculture sector is proactively posing a demand on the nutrients and want reuse to become part of national and global food security strategies www.fao.org/cfs/cfs-hlpe/en/. In Sweden the agriculture sector has pushed forward certification standards for Urine and Blackwater to make the agriculture products acceptable for the Swedish market see the resume from the Emilie Jung and Ola Palm attached.The long term connection with the productive sectors is rather a merit than a liability for future growth of the network.

This and much more will be discussed in Stockholm please share the invitation for our SuSanA meeting in Stockholm on August 22 and we will really try to prepare the meeting so that it can be a productive online meeting as well.

Greeeting from a Sweden in midsummer time : Madeleine

I liked it. Kind of new experince for me. First had to get used to it. Of course face to face is better but this still a possibility to get the feeling of community. I am sure if we do it on regular basis we find the format it will work as close to live conference as possible and also solve the technical problems. I actually do not tink that presentations are useful in that kind of meeting. They can be downloaded separetely and we'd better stick to words and discussions . Maybe some occasional pictures to support what we say but very limeted.

I am mysef would be very interesred to talk on technical issues of sanitation systems.
Like say the subject "Public Compost Toilet problems" or "Competition aspects of CW and compact SBR" or even "Toilet ventilators".

Thank you very much everyone! Was very nice to hear you and I hope to do it again.

I was thinking we should do some more research about available meeting services to test to see which are best to use for those with limited bandwidth. One thing is that this system maybe causes problems as it tries to load video and images even for those who (maybe) can't use it. I wonder if there is something which could be used which has two options (ie one which loads all the videos and one which doesn't). It is nice to see each other's faces, but maybe this is causing a problem for some. I don't know if, for example, skype or google chat systems might be better for some.

Another thing maybe we could think about is to not try to have slides on the same service as the conference - if they are available on the forum to download, maybe participants can download them beforehand and we can have an audio-only conference with each of us looking at our own copy of the pdf.

I think most people had a better experience than when we were talking about the SDGs with the JMP the other week. So that's good

Thank you all for attending the open mic webinar. As Joe said a few folks had audio problems, but I think perhaps the old saying here rings true "practice makes perfect". In other words we should probably have more frequent open mic session for the SuSanA community.

During my train ride home today I was thinking about how to achieve having more frequent open mic sessions without increasing anyone's work load excessively. The effort that goes into organising such sessions behind the scenes is a few skype calls, number of emails, writing of promotion / advertising text and then circulating that all through various media channels. What if one could cut all that effort out?

My idea / proposal would be the following:

Timing:
Choose a weekday, lets say Thursday, and then one of the four weeks in a month, lets say the first week of each month, and then simply schedule an open mic session for the SuSanA community every first Thursday of the month.

Topic:
We have a monthly digest that lists the top 20 discussed topics of the month, it comes out on the 1st of every month for the previous month, so we could base our open mic session on this monthly digest to get the discussion going.

If we took up an idea in this direction, it would simply become a regular event in all of our diaries and we would all attend as often as we could. Not sure if anyone would manage to attend all 12 sessions in a year.

Anyhow, just wanted to float this idea with you all and happy for you to add to it and refine it further.

All the best
Trevor

Dear Sowmya,

Thank you for your post. I'm glad that you went to the mosque with your friend and, I trust you had a great experience!

You have given very nice proposals and suggestions. I'm sure, Elisabeth will take a note of it.
Your suggestion of "SuSanA courses on Coursera," is very interesting. Sanitation in schools is a important topic. Here, the toilets of schools are most pathetic.

Thanks again for your excellent post!

Regards,

F H Mughal

That was fun - although unfortunately some people were having connection problems. This is a drawback of this kind of seminar, I'm not sure how it can be resolved.

Dear Elisabeth;

First at all I would like to congratulate to the SuSanA leading team for the great work they are performing in particular for the open mic initiative that allow us to express our opinion straightforward.

In my participation I would like to highlight on the contribution of regional conferences on sanitation, such as Africasan, Sacosan, Latinosan, to put sanitation on the top of the development agenda at a top level. I believe that SuSanA could play an important role by systematizing best practices presented in each conference and editing a global document on sanitation. The document could become a guideline for policymakers, cooperation agencies, local governments and sanitation practitioners on the benefit of people with no access to improved and decent sanitation.

Best regards

Rafael Vera
Cochabamba - Bolivia

Thank you for organizing this webinar, I would be glad to join and looking forward to saying hello to so many of you I have enjoyed interacting with and learnt so much from in the Forum. Thanks Arno for the post, I have downloaded the app.

I was disappointed that Chris, Mughal, Dorothee and Carol are not able to join because I always love to read their posts but I understand the prior commitments. This is special for Mughal, I will be going to a mosque during the Ramzan month and participate in the prayers with my friend (she is a Muslim and very nice). I read the Wiki page and hope that you receive all the blessings granted during the Ramzan month.

My apologies for this last minute post.

It would be great to focus on Madeline’s suggestion of increasing SuSanA’s role in capacity development (#13709 dated 15 June 2015). Loved Dorothee's questions and would be great to discuss them.

A couple of suggestions:
1. Training materials section: Would it be possible to organize the materials into courses with 1-page containing purpose, difficulty level, who for, URLs etc? We have so much material on our library. I have only read a few but, from what I have read so far, the documents are truly awesome! So, content for the courses is probably already available.

2. SuSanA courses on Coursera: Would it be possible to organize SuSanA course(s) on Coursera and other self-learning sites? With possibility to continue the discussion on SuSanA. Also, apart from core sanitation courses, the perspective of other SuSanA courses could be from the perspective of other sectors. Also explore how to link with other courses. For instance, a SuSanA course on how to start a sanitation business (which links to our Sanitation As A Business) and provide contents for a project report could link to the Business Administration courses on Coursera. Given present & future SuSanA’s mandate, it would be great to collaborate wherein SuSanA content (case studies, for instance) is included in modules of other courses (business administration, technology & society, other).

3. Course flyer: It would be great to have some 1-2 page flyers for courses organized on SuSanA Resources section. It is easier for people to forward the flyers than having to put together specific content.

At the World Toilet Summit held in New Delhi, India in January this year, a senior official from the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), Education Dept., Govt of India was amongst the panelists in one of the discussions. He spoke very encouragingly of sanitation in schools and also said that we could post some content on CBSE website if we want. One letter from him sent to at least a few schools would definitely have the school administration ensure their students have at least one session (or probably, enrol all their students on a short course and follow-up till completion). One letter from the Department of Education (State / Central / other) is all it will take for large-scale enrolment of school students & follow-up until course completion. Given the current enthusiasm for the Swacch Bharat Campaign (the national sanitation campaign), involvement of the Education Department would accelerate achievement of capacity development goals. My mother was a school teacher until her retirement and I know the Education Department as well as the schools take these matters seriously. Probably, the same can work for other countries as well.

For this to work, we need the content organized and a 1-2 page summary that the Education Department can enclose along with a letter. It is really wow that SuSanA is going to start its India chapter to participate in the Swacch Bharat Campaign. Taking this up with the Education Departments could be on the agenda. Similarly, a letter from the respective ministries to the respective govt agencies / public sector organizations for their employees to complete the course would ensure it gets done.

And it would be great if a course can be organized (with materials translated into regional languages - translation should not be a huge problem) which the national labour unions can take up. The labor unions have huge membership and have strong support of the members. If the labor union leaders take it up, we can reach population who might not be ordinarily reached through internet and other one-to-many or many-to-many communication / networking formats. The Central Govt started the ‘bank accounts for all’ programme and, within months, increased enrollment by huge numbers (I don’t have the stats at the moment but this is one of the govt’s success stories) - to give an idea of implementation capabilities of the govt. The State govts are also enthusiastic and would take this up.

So, it is important to have specific courses, downloadable in print-friendly version (low bandwidth, black & white instead of color, can be easily cyclostyled as this printing technology is still being used & is very low cost, hindi and each state’s home language) along with a flyer that can be enclosed with the letter from the govt departments / trade unions. A similar flyer can also be posted on student groups on social media / list servs.

Another suggestion linking to the above and SuSanA starting the India chapter to participate in the Swacch Bharat Campaign, it would also be great to discuss SuSanA’s organizational mandate in the context of the SDGs. Sanitation links with 10 other SDG goals. There has been a lot of emphasis on making the SDG goal-setting & negotiations as participatory as possible. This would also be followed up with making programme & resource planning, implementation, monitoring & evaluation as participatory as possible - this can only help with increasing transparency & reducing overall programme costs.

This is just a thought. Every person on this planet has to link with several SDGs because they are directly affected / direct participation is necessary. Additionally, the SDGs require high level of inter-sectoral collaboration. It would be very difficult if each person has to interact with several knowledge hubs, forums etc., to access all the info required for full participation in the SDGs achievement. What is, perhaps, more feasible is for one organization / forum to become the platform for a given SDG goal - it is much more easier for everyone to keep repeating the same forum name in all communication, and also make it possible to collate all the knowledge generated online. We would, of course, interact with all social media but everyone should know this: for sanitation, go to SuSanA; for health, go to HIFA2015. Well, SuSanA is "sanitation information for all"!

It would be great if the SDG website of the UN could list one forum / knowledge hub for all the SDG discussions for everyone to participate in - during the discussions and later (planning, implementation, M&E). This list should preferably have only one hub / forum per SDG goal. When the discussion of which forums etc comes up, SuSanA should be in a strong position to be considered as that forum. We already have huge membership (both individuals and organizations), knowledge resources, forum in which experts from all over the world participate very actively and with enthusiasm. We already have discussions in which other sector experts have been happy to participate (gender, ebola, health, to name a few), collaboration with other sector forums as well (SuSanA - HIFA2015) and interaction with other knowledge hubs (WikiDoc James from Wikipedia, for instance). It would be really great if we can develop a constructive plan for cohesive action for this purpose.

See you all at the Webinar!

Warm regards,

Sowmya

Great, looking forward to e-meet you, Bogdan. We have nearly 50 people registered for the webinar now which is great. The webinar will start in five hours and the excitement behind the scenes here at the SuSanA secretariat and core group is rising, as we do last minute preparations and advertising.

I copy here an e-mail that Carol McCreary from PHLUSH sent yesterday in response to Dorothee's post in this thread on Page 1:

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From: Carol McCreary
Subject: Open Mike Webnair on SuSanA Capacity Building
Date: June 17, 2015 at 9:37:34 AM PDT


This is a wonderful idea. Hayley Joelle Smith would like to attend and will be reporting back to PHLUSH. Hayley has special skills as a sustainable sanitation educator that we need here.

I doubt I can participate but I loved the focus that came from Dorothee’s questions.

Especially this one: - Could you imagine your organisation becoming a regional hub for SuSanA knowledge sharing and dissemination and if yes, how could that happen?

Thanks to what we have learned from SuSanA, to say nothing of SEI,eawag, & cewas, PHLUSH (Public Hygiene Lets Us Stay Human) is starting to be acknowledged as a platform for a wide range of sustainable sanitation issues. So, yes, as we consider our future and write a business plan that can sustain us, we have indeed considered becoming a regional hub for North America.

We have still in draft form this purpose statement: We address through education and advocacy, the need for urban public restrooms and for ecological sanitation, given the realities of drought, climate change, and documented seismic risk.

Interestingly, our national media attention comes from cities who are struggling with public toilet provision. You could say that urban poverty and houselessness are the fourth emergency we’re addressing: success here requires operationally and financially sustainable sewered and non-sewered amenities.

Please feel free to quote or to post. Sorry to always be in a hurry. Need to jump back on the boat to catch slack tide through Seymour Narrows, a difficult passage on the British Columbia coast. (More in blog.)

Best wishes,

Carol

Carol McCreary
S/V Aurora
503.984.4081
baggywrinkles.wordpress.com/

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Regards,
Elisabeth

Thank you! I will attend.