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I've been pushing my company to run digital comms from within our organization for more than a year now, and so far it has worked really well for us. However, third-party providers haven't stopped asking us to give them that work, and the question of whether to run it internally or externally has occasionally continued to arise at meetings. Of course, it's more costly to run it from the outside, but also less of a burden on the organization. The most important benefit that I see as running digital comms internally is substance . If content - the very voice of an organization - is being generated from the outside, there is simply no way it can provide 100% of the fabric and turnaround that people and firms who really care about their digital voice/appearance require. I may need to develop this more fully and say something out loud. I see the tendency to run digital comms externally, and I think it defeats the purpose of saying/doing anything online. 

So much to think about here, but needed to throw  this link in here along with the following quote: “We have not yet become good enough at the kind of pedagogues that make the most of technology; that adding 21st century technologies to 20th century teaching practices will just dilute the effectiveness of teaching.” This is not news, especially not in Tanzania. But thinking broadly about the situation, here is what will be on my mind for the rest of the day: Why is technological innovation in education surpassing the needs of those who teach and learn today? If technology is made up of tools that support needs, what needs is ed tech supporting? What will it take for pedagogy to adapt practice + content to current tools? Or is this a reverse-logic problem?

Two recent observations: First, it makes sense to me that a manager should hire/work with staff that have better skills than the manager him/herself. Otherwise, if the manager was better-skilled, then managing would be an unproductive use of time (as opposed to operating). Second, the hiring tradition in TZ seems to cultivate an opposite scenario, one in which managers are often better-skilled than their supervisees. Getting things done, therefore, is commonly a function of the manager's direct input in operations. 

"In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time." - Leonardo Da Vinci

“Conservatism, however, is too often a welcome excuse for lazy minds, loath to adapt themselves to fast changing conditions.” ― Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams