Ubuni most definitely comes from a slow hunch. Have been working on social and collaborative online courses for many years and had noticed that it was not so much content as the journey which changed the impact. More traditional Instructional Design i was doing as a freelancer, while looking great ,seemed to create output rather than impact whereas the more content unrich but social online courses were often more transformative. Don't get me wrong i am not dissing packaged eLearning or the merits of ID or generalising but instead observing things as i have seen them on my horizons from a personal perspective.
The transformative collisions which slow burned to create ubuni are firstly my unexpected trip to Kenya last year working on a music project; So that something which started out as a way to progress a larger music project, became a more generic model; for online courses which impact on real change in peoples lives. At the same time, aid and development organisations were talking about how old aid models were not working and how sustainable change comes at the bottom of the pyramid where people can create and own their own solutions. On my trip to Kenya I was bitten by the issues here, the huge needs for social change; and then the work coming out of Behavioural science research labs worldwide about drive, motivation and change, was the catalyst to put something together. The need for a mobile solution was sort of obvious.
Now I'm here networking and connecting, colliding with what other social innovators are doing, i see that partnering with other organisations is going to be crucial - organisations which have face2face solutions who want to reach wider, have learned lessons and have valuable collateral to share - being a mobile course delivery partner will be a critical part of the ubuni mission. Where ubuni is different is the in the social change aspects, so that courses are not just courses but social and collaborative engines for empowerment and enabling mindset change and change making behaviour.
I have to say that most of my collisions have been virtual, but in a connected world does it really matter where those collisions of ideas come from?
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