Hi there, hope you had a good break (if you took one). Mine was great – highlights included sorting out the spice cupboard and watching lots of really crap TV. Life in the fast lane eh?
Everyone else did their top blogs of 2022 before Christmas, but I’m coming in a bit late with mine to kick off 2023. In reverse order
10. Deconstructing this year’s Oxfam Davos report – what makes it so good?
9. Is behavioural economics (aka nudge theory) blocking the path to progress?
8. Thinking and working politically: What have we learned since 2013?
7. Rethinking monitoring, evaluation and learning in complex systems
6. Are we there yet? Five key insights on localisation as a journey towards locally-led practice
5. East Africa v Ukraine. Two tragedies; two very different responses
4. ‘We the Helpers’. White Saviourism or a Smart Defence of Aid?
3. The Shameful Implosion of UK Aid
2. Theories of Change, the muddy middle, and what to do about assumptions
Couple of thoughts:
First a health warning. All of these are from the first six months of the year because we had all sorts of tech interruptions after that. V annoying, but the wonderful James Heywood now seems to have got the site sorted (let us know of any remaining glitches, please).
This also meant the numbers of visitors fell year-on-year. I immediately went into ‘OMG, no-one wants to read (my) blogs any more’ mode, but James provided a welcome alternative explanation.
‘Traffic is lower in 2022, due to a variety of factors. The biggest of these:
- In 2021 major security problems forced us to leave our home of 13 years for a temporary location. We had redirects in place but the move reduced Google’s trust in the website, resulting in a drop of 30% in traffic from Google searches in the second half of 2021 and all of 2022.
- In July 2022 we had to move again – to a permanent location. This again reduced Google’s trust, and unavoidably broke 1000s of historical links into the website that brought visitors.
Google will grow its trust in the new location in the medium-term, and people will make cross links to the newer posts, replacing -in part – those historical links.’
All this stuff about earning Google’s trust is a bit beyond me, to be honest (and sounds pretty unpleasant), so in 2023 I’m just going to keep blogging and cross my fingers.
Second, readers continue to be attracted by an eclectic mix of posts – breaking stories (Ukraine, UK aid cuts), hot topics in aid (localization, white saviourism) and nerdy ‘inside baseball’ aid stuff – theories of change, thinking and working politically, complex systems. I will try and keep serving up a mix of all 3 next year, but the frequency of posting has fallen off a bit, due to pressure of work – sorry about that.
Third, one of the best bits about the blog are the comments – most posts get a minimum of 3 or 4, some many more than that. Keep them coming, please!
As ever, I’m up for suggestions for guest posts, but please note, I tend to avoid proposals from PR firms and my fellow OWMs (Old White Men). Just email me at dgreen[at]Oxfam[dot]org[uk]