KS Workshop Seeds - KS Workshop Fruits

Vanessa Meadu who works for ASB (Partnerships for the Tropical Forest Margins) and who is based at The World Agroforestry Center in Nairobi, attended the KS Workshop and got quickly known among participants as THE Flickr resource person.. She said nice things about her workshop experience like:
“I had a fantastic time in Addis and found the workshop to be extremely invigorating. I feel like I can approach my work with new enthusiasm,  and also new skills!” and: “The KS workshop has really helped at least sow the seeds for how to do things.”  But Vanessa did not only have fun and it seems that the seeds that were sowed collectively are carrying quickly fruits:
Vanessa shared with us proudly her brand new ASB blog! The blog is replacing the news section of the ASB website and features an interesting tool. The delicious account that she created feeds directly into the blog, which means that every time that a bookmark is created on delicious, it appears as a blog post. Vanessa says she has started to get ASB scientists excited about the collective bookmarking approach. 

Some interesting tips on how to train scientists in Web 2.0 tools can certainly be found in Pete Shelton’s recent post: Three lessons from a year of teaching 2.0 to researchers

Well done Vanessa!

 

Institutional Knowledge Sharing: A Framework for Action

The Institutional KS project is suggesting and looking for feedback on a framework for action that has two main objectives:

• Imbed KS action into a strategic and practical  framework.
• Create a baseline for monitoring and evaluation of future KM/KS interventions.

This is an initial attempt which should be fine-tuned over the next months through:

• Discussions with the ICT-KM Program, and a wider KS practitioner community.
• Collaboration on the evaluation activity of KS project Phase 1
• Preparation and the outcomes of the CGIAR KM strategy workshop which is currently being prepared for December 08.

Rational

Knowledge sharing and organizational development

We argue that institutional KS is to be analyzed and developed as an integral part of organizational development. Organizational development “is the process through which an organization develops the internal capacity to most efficiently and effectively provide its mission work and to sustain itself over the long term. “ (see Wikipedia).

Organizational development takes place in a constant interaction between Power (decision making and effectiveness managed from the top) and Empowerment (processes that allow us to gain the knowledge, skill-sets and attitude needed to cope with and influence the changing world and the organizational circumstances in which we evolve). We also argue that organizational development is unfolding in a constant effort to the cope with the duality between Complexity and organizational Effectiveness. Complexity is increasing by the scientific research problematic itself, the scope, and the geographical spread and cultural diverse teams that are involved nowadays in our research work to mention only a couple, and Effectiveness is a condition for sustainability. Power, Empowerment, Complexity, and Effectiveness are main pillars and challenges in the path towards beneficial and positive organizational development and are represented in an axes chart (see below).

4 interrelated fields of action

• Three of the four fields of action created by the axes represent possible areas of KS intervention whereas the forth field between empowerment and effectiveness is the desirable stage where all organizational development efforts are aiming at: Momentum of adoption, impact and satisfaction.
• The field between Complexity and Empowerment is an area of action that aims at improving skill-sets, knowledge and attitudes. They address issues related to capacity building, and strengthening, M&E, Impact assessment and organizational learning.
• The field between Power and Complexity deals with strategic planning, development, or change management, as an effort to approach them in a systemic perspective and inclusive approach, based on an active interaction with the whole organization.
• The field between Effectiveness and Power deals with corporate aspects related to: administrative issue, business reengineering and development, as well as communications, all those efforts that intend to make organizational processes more effective, visible, and transparent.

The left side of the axes is the area of organizational development that deals with transformative issues; the right side is the area that deals with practical aspects of organizational development.

The circle around the four components reflects their constant interaction; they are all essential to organizational development. We can for example state that: Empowerment which is based on the acknowledgement of organizational complexity and which benefits from management support and participatory decision making processes leads most probably to organizational effectiveness.  We could also say: An organization that empowers its personnel but does not manage a momentum of decision-making is going to reach levels of complexity that are difficult to handle and are getting in the way of effectiveness.   

A framework for Institutional KS project activities
 
Within this suggested framework, the activities of the Institutional KS project can be clustered as follows:

• The KS Workshop, the KS Toolkit, the evaluation study of Phase 1 of the KS project (2004-2006) as well as the involvement with the KM4Dev community are activities that aim at empowerment of CGIAR staff  based on the acknowledgement of the complexity of organizational realities and our related KM/KS efforts.
• The involvement in the CGIAR Change Management Process, and AGM events, as well as a planned KM strategy workshop are activities that support strategic planning processes in order to evidence the usefulness of KS approaches in that area. The pilot project with CIFOR on their strategic planning process is also part of this group of activities.
• The pilot projects with IRRI (research data management) and WorldFish (effective communication through ‘storymercials’) are to be considered as an effort to showcase innovative ideas to make CGIAR daily business more effective and attractive. The KS Web site featuring Web 2.0 tools, and this blog are also to be considered part of this area.

 

Connecting Us with the CGIAR Change Management Process

The Institutional KS project has started to reflect with the ongoing Change Management Process coordinators on ways for effective engagement with all kinds of stakeholders.
The current opportunities to feed back to the process in general via a blog and the working groups outcomes (currently the Visioning group paper) through a discussion forum seem for the moment not generating lots of interest.
Many reasons can be found. Some are included in the following post on the Change Management blog post here.

But there are a number of things that we could do to encourage participation. Here are some ideas:

• The Center directors could send an encouraging message to their staff and role model by participating in the blog and / or forum.
• The working group members could forward the invitation to their networks and colleagues.
• The Centers could organize short seminars followed by group discussions and feed back the results via the blog or forum.
• The visioning paper could have an executive summary (if possible in Spanish and French to support all staff and stakeholders) in order to facilitate the scanning of the main messages and ideas.
• The Steering Committee and working groups could choose among them a blogger who updates the wider audience regularly

Those are just a few… I am curious to know if there are other ideas…

 

Tools and Methods for Sharing Knowledge: The CGIAR’s Wiki Approach

written by Gerry Toomey

For knowledge creators, brokers, and users alike, it’s perhaps stating the obvious to declare that we live in an increasingly interconnected and complex world. While this modern truism has some annoying consequences – information overload being among the most pervasive – we shouldn’t lose sight of the enormous opportunities on offer. At least that’s part of the thinking that drives the Information and Communications Technology and Knowledge Management (ICT-KM) Program of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).

The Institutional Knowledge Sharing (KS) Project of this Program together with its CGIAR Center partners has been experimenting with a range of KS tools and methods over the past five years and has recently been assembling these and many others into a toolkit (http://kstoolkit.wikis.cgiar.org). This evolving resource – continually updated, edited, expanded, and critiqued in wiki fashion – is targeted mainly on scientists, research support teams, and administrators in the 15 international centers of the CGIAR. But it also serves their partner organizations, as well as development organizations working in areas other than agriculture. And it benefits from their diverse feedback too.

Science has traditionally relied on a few key vehicles for sharing and validating new knowledge. The most important are experiment replication, the publication of research results in peer reviewed journals, literature searches, and formal and informal communications at conferences, workshops, and other meetings. In addition, the patent system serves as a complementary knowledge broker in instances where research spawns technical innovation. With such longstanding  institutions already in place, why is there a need for new avenues to share knowledge? The answer to that question is surprisingly complex; but a few key reasons stand out.

Read the full article

 

CGIAR Participation at KM4Dev Meeting 2008

This year we were 4 CG participants at the annual meeting of the Km4Dev Community:

• Andrea Pape-Christiansen from ICARDA. Her participation was sponsored by the Institutional KS project as a means to further foster the KM capacity of a KS workshop participant. Andrea was very interested in the KM strategy discussions that the International Labour Organization (ILO), FAO and Care have been initiating as Open Space topics.
• Eva Schiffer who just left IFPRI, but will be working with the CG as a consultant. Eva volunteered to lead a session on Day 0, an attempt to map the KM4Dev network and make us realize that we are all linked at some point! (see earlier post) The exercise raised some controversial and rich discussions, and led also to the project of one Open Space working group: Map out our sister and brother communities.
• Pete Shelton from IFPRI was another participant invited by the Institutional KS project. Pete has proven to be an important resource person for many people in the CG and other agricultural organizations because of his knowledge in ICTs and information management.  Not surprising then that Pete went to the techie sessions, like the one on “speading up the Km4Dev Web site”, or the one on “Personal Learning through social networking” or “Using Mobile Phones for KS”.
• Finally myself. It was my fourth participation in a Km4Dev meeting and every year it proves to be inspirational and energizing. I attended amongst others sessions on KM and the private sector, the future of KM4dev, and I led a session on the KS Workshop and toolkit as a means to encourage developemnt organizations to re-use the materials produced for their capacity building efforts. I also presented a poster on the KS project. More on that in a seperate post….

See the Km4Dev wiki for the Open Space session reports: http://www.km4dev.org/wiki/index.php/Open_Space_Discussion_Reports

 

KM4Dev Core Group Meeting

On Saturday morning the KM4Dev core group was joined by all those participants who were interested in KM4dev community “business”. The morning was divided in two sessions: One that was looking at the history, context, purpose, challenges and opportunities of the Km4Dev core group, and a second session where we explored in groups issues, and ideas related to our community.
The first session was handled in a Fishbowl format and generated quite a lot of interest, the second session was again an Open Space and participants came up with the following topics / ideas for discussions:

• Technology issues in relation to Dgroups and the Re-structuring of our KM4Dev Tech Infrastructure
• What are possible Criteria & KM4Dev quality standards of joint projects?
• Writing a  proposal to fund a Km4Dev incubator
• Create KM4Dev Regional chapters
• What are the expectations from KM4Dev for sponsored participants?
• How can we finance our meetings?
• Lets organize a Community Action Day
• Ways to move forward the Network of Networks work

You can find already some details about each idea and the notes from the reporting back session at the Km4Dev wiki:
http://www.km4dev.org/wiki/index.php/KM4Dev_Workshop_-_Lisbon_(Almada),_June_2008:_information_for_participants#Core_Team_Meeting

Some points that pooped up very strongly in the discussions:

• The need to coordinate funding efforts
• The need to crystallize some principles for the community with respect to governance and finances if we go the path of fundraising
• The strong feeling that it is time to open regional chapters and that there is lots of energy out there to go ahead. Yeah!
• The wonderful idea of the community day: straightforward, easy, and energizing!

 

Knowledge Sharing fair at IFAD - releasing trapped knowledge

With construction going on all around us at the new IFAD building, it seemed quite symbolic to have a panel discussion on knowledge sharing emphasizing the need to build it into the foundations of a project, not just at the tail end.  The panel, made up of IFAD staff and management in addition to Enrica Porcari, discussed the different aspects of knowledge sharing and its importance.

Panel members highlighted that knowledge management is the key to remain competitive, and that it is up to staff to release the knowledge trapped in projects.  This is all part of IFAD’s new action plan which places knowledge management at the core of its activities (http://www.ifad.org/pub/policy/km/e.pdf)

Enrica was invited to share her thoughts and lessons learned through the ICT-KM Program.  She raised the point that knowledge sharing is no longer optional, as we can no longer afford not to practice KS in any organization.  She emphasized the importance of placing people at the heart of knowledge sharing and that the key to success is to build a enabling framework, networks, and environment for knowledge sharing. 

While the discussion was going on downstairs, upstairs many IFAD project offices (in addition to the CGIAR ICT-KM Program) shared their KS experiences. The exhibits, tables, leaflets, and handouts demonstrated various KS techniques being used, allowing an opportunity for trapped knowledge to be released.

 

KM4Dev Meeting - Day 0: Mapping our Community

The KM4Dev workshop started with a Day 0, a day for newcomers to discover the community, it’s core group of people, it’s history, it’s communication channels, and the context and challenges that community members are involved in.

“This first day was much about identity issues”, said Ewen Leborgne from IRC.
After a first icebreaker (would you define yourself as a Northern versus Southern, Newbie versus oldie, KM versus Development orientated member, techie versus process focusing?), we had a chance to discover the history of KM4Dev commented by Lucie, the “oldest and wisest “ community member present at the event, accompanied by a live and visual illustration done by Nancy White and Allison Hewlitt. A chat show hosted by Nancy White gave us the opportunity to discover different contexts in which KM4Dev members are developing their activities: rural development, development communication, international research…

When we reconvened in the afternoon we already have had a chance to talk to many participants, but the real first in-depth interaction took place around a network mapping exercise led by Eva Schiffer. Eva is passionate about SNA and she was brave enough to use us as guinea pigs for a first attempt to make “individuals map individuals”. We were 8 at a table and as a first step we shared among us sister networks we are involved with. The result was a huge and impressing list that we put together in plenary. We then started to draw individual network maps and to link them at our tables of 8. Things got a bit complicated when we were asked to identify content and community drivers within these network maps and give them a number between 1 and 5 as an expression of importance. At our table people felt reluctant to put numbers on people’s names and rate them. Other’s had a problem with the exercise as a whole: what is this useful for? Here are three of the many reactions that were shared afterwards:

• We could have done the mapping exercise around the sister communities to highlight their importance and relevance
• It seems that some people here are very into the community and enjoy mapping it whereas other participants are users of KM4Dev resources and don’t feel the need to map relationships.
• It was incredibly brave that Eva took the lead on the exercise and showcased the value of experimentation with Km tools.

All the reactions and workshop notes are documented on the KM4Dev wiki.
If you want to know more about Social Network Analysis, go to the KS toolkit
Follow the KM4Dev workshop blog.

 

Instututional KS Supports Participation of KS Champions of Two Centers in the Upcoming KM4Dev Meeting

The Institutional KS Project is proud to announce supporting the participation of two CGIAR staff to attend the upcoming annual KM4Dev gathering.

Andrea Pape-Christiansen, in charge of knowledge management at ICARDA, participated in phase 1 of the KS workshop and applied for sponsorship, an offer that was expressed to workshop participants as a means to support further capacity building of “KS champions” in CGIAR centers.

“Past interactions with the ICT-KM Program have been viewed as stimulating and beneficial to ICARDA’s work, and I would like to widen this interaction on the KS front by becoming an active member of KM4Dev. Reaching out to this community can help me bridge some knowledge gaps so I can serve the Center better,” says Andrea.

Peter Shelton is an Information and Knowledge Management Specialist at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). IFPRI has been engaging effectively with KS tools for its internal and external communication and has been a key contributor to the ICT-KM Program through the CGVLibrary project. From the Library and Knowledge Management Unit at IFPRI, Pete acts as an important resource person for many people in the CG and other agricultural organizations by providing pragmatic examples and implementations of web tools to give more visibility and access to CGIAR research. Furthermore, Peter has been contributing to promote KS thinking beyond IFPRI through training, blogs and social networking.

“We at IFPRI are looking forward to share knowledge and best practices with KM4Dev, and contribute with our recent experiences. We are specifically interested in the discussion around KM and impact, and to understand the roles of production of knowledge and the roles of practitioners, academics and policy makers and the best ways to reach them.”, says Luz Marina Alvaré who leads IFPRI’s Library and KM initiatives.

The KS project is looking forward to their active engagement in the meeting and for Pete and Andrea to feed back their learnings to their Centers, the ICT-KM Program and colleagues CG-wide.

 

 

New Glossary Section on the KS Toolkit

Nancy White is an amazing woman. Nancy helped us to set up the KS toolkit, and also “her job is done”, we benefit from her continuous input and energy to move projects forward that are close to her passion. Have a look at the KS toolkit. It has now a new section with links to glossaries that can help to find our way through the KM terminology jungle. Nancy says: “There are a lot of technical terms related to tools and method. What makes sense to one person, is jargon for another. Instead of creating (or recreating) a new glossary, we decided to link to some other good existing glossaries. If you know of a good glossary, please add the link!

http://kstoolkit.wikis.cgiar.org/Glossaries

Thanks Nancy!

 

KS Workshop Report Phase 2 Now Available

The workshop report covers the face-to-face Phase 2 of the KS Workshops.

• See the Executive Summary
• Download the Full Report (272 kb)

“I had a fantastic time in Addis and found the workshop to be extremely invigorating. I feel like I can approach my work with new enthusiasm,  and also new skills!”  Quote from a participant

 

A Discussion around KM and Impact at the Upfront of the KM4Dev Meeting

This pre-workshop discussion was launched as a follow-up of the KM4Dev workshop survey, and as an attempt to involve all members prior to the workshop.

The initial questions were:

• W hat are your big questions re. impact or measurement of KM initiatives?
• Alternatively, what have you been trying to do to find out how well your KM initiative is doing?
• How have you been able to “prove” that it has born fruit?

The 50 contributions reflect the following 5 interlinked areas:

1. Complexity: Impact of KM and KM as a complex, long-term process. Many examples, tools and methods have been shared that can help, like participatory approaches, storytelling, Social Return on Investment, process documentation etc.
2. KM efficiency and effectiveness: Versus the attempt to embrace complexity: cost effectiveness, demystification, looking at interventions, concrete obstacles. Quantitative requirements are coming from our organizations and donors. Within this topic a discussion thread is about oprganizational and donor requirements and how to meet their mostly quantitative data requirements.
3. Empowerment, KM and behavioral change. Is behavioral change our goal or is it a means or a condition for KM? KM consolidates new thinking…
4. Power: “Knowledge is power”. In the era of information overload K can be power. Collective/corporate versus individual power. K to empower people…
5. Importance of Knowledge Sharing: Share or perish, open source attitude, KS is our contribution to development.

The full summary is available at the community knowledge wiki: http://www.km4dev.org/wiki/index.php/Impact_and_M%26E_of_KM

The following is an attempt of a visual summary of this discussion:

 

 

KS Workshop Report Phase 1 Now Available

The workshop report covers the online Phase 1 of the KS Workshops. It contains descriptions of the processes used, content summaries, as well as participant’s and facilitator’s evaluation.

• See the Executive Summary
• Download the Summary and the Overview of Results and Evaluation (72 kb)
• Download the Full Report (682 kb)

 

Why Knowledge Sharing in Research?

The 15 Centers supported by the CGIAR and their many national partners are together creating a wealth of knowledge that can help rural communities in developing countries build sustainable livelihoods. Yet, formidable obstacles to uptake and use of generated knowledge as well as impact of CGIAR agricultural research remain. One of the missing elements which has reduced the effectiveness of our research and development (R&D) efforts, is appropriate and effective knowledge sharing, both within Centers and between them and their partners.

There is a longstanding tradition that separates researchers from those that take up their results. The traditional linear, transfer of technology approach has worked at different times for different purpose but does not offer the best solution for agricultural research to contribute to development outcomes. While this approach may have had some success in the past, the ever-changing nature of agricultural products, research development, actors and needs, this approach is no longer appropriate for all the whole of the agricultural research and development arena.

The CGIAR Centers and their partners need to shift to a more demand-driven, interactive approach, in which such methods are developed collaboratively through a shared process of learning and innovation. A key requirement for achieving this shift is that knowledge sharing should no longer be a mere afterthought in research. Instead, it must become an integral part of the whole research process, involving all stakeholders.

 

New Tool on the Kit: RSS

Thanks to IFPRI’s Information and Knowledge Management Specialist Pete Shelton the KS Toolkit has a new section on RSS. He shares with us the following tips:

• Although RSS and newsreader services are often promoted as potential time savers, they also can be highly addictive. Thus, instead of resulting in less time following your favorite websites and blogs, you often spend the same or more time following more and more (and more!) websites and blogs. As Lee Lefever warns, “Be careful- it’s addictive!”
• There seems to be a general pattern from passive RSS use to a more proactive approach that involves sharing your subscribed and favorited items with friends, family and colleagues. To offer one analogy, users often begin by setting up an iGoogle page featuring feeds from their favorite sites, blogs, etc. and may even go about organizing them by topic, etc. using the tab feature. As you get used to using iGoogle, however, you may find that you only follow feeds featured in your home tab and you may also want to keep better track of your favorite articles, blog posts, etc. Subscribing to these feeds using a newsreader like Google Reader will allow you to save these items by tagging, starring or sharing them in your reader while also acting as a searchable database for all the content in your subscribed feeds. Moreover, Reader allows you to remix these items into your own customized feed, which you can then publish to your own website, blog or share with your email contacts.
• Try doing a Google News search for coverage of your organization in the news media. These results can be used to create a dynamic feed (i.e., automatically includes new stories as they are published), which then can be published directly to your organization’s website or you can subscribe to this feed using your newsreader software of choice. Using newsreader software such as Google Reader allows you to selectively tag, star and share which items to publish to a new feed produced by your newsreader that can then be republished to your site.