ICT-KM Program

Klaus von Grebmer

During the recent CGIAR Strategic Communications Workshop in Penang, Malaysia, Klaus von Grebmer, Director of Communications, IFPRI, spoke about the need to implement collective communications activities among the CGIAR Centers. In an interview conducted at the conclusion of the first day of the event, he elaborated further.

“To illustrate my point,” he said, “take the recent food price crisis. The public had three questions during this crisis: What is happening? Why is it happening? What can be done to mitigate the effects or ensure that it does not happen again? IFPRI responded quickly and effectively to this situation and was also able to coordinate with some other Centers to get certain key messages out to the public, but the task was really too big for this core group alone.”

Although the key messages were available and accessible to everyone in the CGIAR System, Klaus does wonder if they couldn’t have gained even more mileage if all the Centers had pooled resources and amplified these messages in their respective regions and from the point of view of their own areas of expertise.

“If there is an expert organization on agriculture in this world, it’s clearly the CGIAR,” he said. “It needs to coordinate and pool its resources on occasions like this one to provide clear messages and respond quickly to questions from the public.”

Focus on the System
A System-wide communications strategy would also require staff to be more outward-looking.

“Currently, only a few Centers seem to care about the reputation of the CGIAR,” explained Klaus. “If you want to promote the System, then you have to promote System activities and System media events. If you are too Center-focused, then the System suffers. This was something I also experienced when I chaired the Marketing Group. I saw a discrepancy between authority, responsibility, and accountability. Some communications colleagues didn’t deliver on collaborative work because they felt they would be acknowledged more for the work they did for their own Centers than for the work they did for the System.”

Still, Klaus feels the new CGIAR has an opportunity to address the current lack of a collective communications strategy.

“Presently, the Transition Management Team responsible for revitalizing the CGIAR is mostly focusing on the development of content, such as the mega programs,” he said. “This is natural and very important, but the next area of focus must be on a System-wide communications strategy. You can have the best research in the world, but if the results are not communicated to the right audience, they will not have any impact. It is negligence to invest in research without appropriate investments in communications. If the System wants to enhance and maintain its leadership role in agricultural research, it is vital for it to communicate its research effectively to its key stakeholders, and also to its donors.”

 We are covering the CSI workshop via a number of social media tools–one of which is Twitter, a microblogging site

So check out the ictkm account on Twitter–www.twitter.com/ictkm

Today on the ILRI Campus in Nairobi, Kenya- a large group of people have gathered to discuss, learn about and plan around spatial analysis. This is the Annual Meeting of the Consortium for Spatial Information (CSI). This event includes:

• Two days of meetings around the CGIAR CSI
• Two days of a AgCommons workshop
• WhereCamp

The theme of this meeting is ‘Mapping our Future 2009-2014: Collective Action and Advocacy to Improve Spatial Solutions for Sustainable Development’.

Today-Tuesday 31st March 2009- is the CSI Business Day. In today’s program the group will:

*Be welcomed by John McDermott from ILRI

*Hear an opening address from Bashir Jama, Director of Soil Health, AGRA

*Discuss the objectives of the meeting

*Review some key aspects of CSI Status, Issues and Opportunities

*Define expectations

*Using a World Cafe approach–discuss a number of key topics in relation to CSI

*Look at vendor agreements and opportunities

*End the day with a report out, synthesis and next steps

We will be covering this event on this blog, so stay tuned for more information on what is happening in this exciting event.

From the length and breadth of the CGIAR they came, communication experts eager to be reunited as a group and keen to examine collective possibilities together. Despite their obvious enthusiasm, though, many of them admitted to a certain cynicism about another item on their agenda: a dialog session with the Transition Management Team (TMT) charged with overseeing the revitalization of the CGIAR . Such was the mood as day two of the CGIAR Strategic Communications Workshop began in Penang, Malaysia.

All of the core members of the TMT were present at the meeting: Stephen Hall (CGIAR Alliance Executive Chair, Director General, WorldFish Center), Mark Holderness (Executive Director, Global Forum for Agricultural Research), Jonathan Wadsworth (Senior Agriculture Research Advisor, Department for International Development, UK), and Ren Wang (CGIAR Director).

Ren Wang got things underway with a brief overview of the strategic objectives of the new CGIAR. Then Ellen Wilson, Burness Communications, kicked off the Q&A session by asking the first question.

Who asked for this reform?
Jonathon Wadsworth: The call for change in the CGIAR was largely driven by a shift among key members of the donor community who feel that the CGIAR could and should do more but that the complexity of the current System undermines efficiency and effectiveness. Indeed, under the present System, donors are not harmonized and long-term funding is not guaranteed. Although the two previous CGIAR attempts at reform failed, the new change initiative is tackling these issues head on.

Ellen Wilson: “Is this a more profound reform, then?”

Jonathan Wadsworth: “It is the first one with legs. The other reforms were very academic and looked good on paper, but there was no real systematic follow-through.”

The floor was then turned over to the participants. The following are some of the questions and answers from that session:

What’s being eliminated from the old (present) CGIAR?
Jonathan Wadsworth: Some things in the present CGIAR will be replaced to make the System more efficient. The component parts that make up the CGIAR won’t necessarily change, but how they fit together will. Also, the way in which the CGIAR functions as a System needs to be streamlined and clearly defined.

Stephen Hall: There’s a leadership vacuum in the CGIAR: the whole notion of strategic leadership is missing. It’s not yet known exactly how the 15 Centers will fit together into a collective whole, but what is known is that by working together there will be less individual scrounging around for resources in the future.

Ren Wang: We are still developing the Consortium and don’t have all the answers. The ultimate goal of this reform or change is not to reduce the number of Centers, it’s to improve the competence of the System. The number of committees will be reduced; the reporting process for M&E will be more harmonized; and the accountability framework of the Fund and the System will be simplified.

What are the major risk factors that could possibly derail the change process?
Stephen Hall: Establishing the centralized Fund, a process that could affect cash flow at the Centers, obviously involves a certain amount of risk. However, the TMT is working to develop plans for the transition to ensure funding will not be disrupted while the new CGIAR becomes fully functional.

Scientists are not onboard, because the reform is not clear. How will they get their research funds?
Stephen Hall: We don’t even know the answer to that ourselves yet. We do know that we will ensure their work is not negatively affected by the transition and that a driver for the reform is to build a well-resourced and exciting research agenda that attracts and retains the best scientists in the world. As this becomes clearer and the reform changes start having a tangible impact on the research agenda, scientists will certainly be brought onboard.

What’s the partners’ take on the reform initiative?
Mark Holderness: The key risk is “business as usual.” Partners are not satisfied with the CGIAR’s impact or value when it comes to meeting partner demands. There are other players emerging, such as those in Brazil, India, and China, who are enabling national development outcomes. The CGIAR needs to recognize that there is a bigger game going on out there and it needs to be player. Partners want to see a CGIAR that is more open and more partnership-based; a System that focuses on development outcomes and not just technological fixes and research outcomes.

Are donors still behind the CGIAR despite the Financial Crisis?
Stephen Hall: The donors are expecting the CGIAR to change and if there isn’t change, regardless of a Financial Crisis, there may be some donors who will reconsider their funding position.

Jonathan Wadsworth: Several donors are sending out positive funding signs. During the Food Price Crisis before the Financial Crisis, world leaders committed to funding agriculture and doubling funding for the CGIAR. Meeting this ambitious target might be difficult during the Financial Crisis and may take longer, but CGIAR change is critical to strengthen the inflow of resources.

Won’t a more centralized structure stifle initiatives/research and create more bureaucracy?
Stephen Hall: Yes, if it’s not done well. But it’s not likely – that’s why we need leadership.

What about the role of communications in the new CGIAR?
Jonathan Wadsworth: Although the CGIAR has orphaned communications in some respects, people are increasingly aware of the crucial role it can play. At DfID, we’re doubling our spending on research across the board, with 20% allocated for communications.

Mark Holderness: The CGIAR has great potential for communicating what needs to be done and changed. Right now, communications are fragmented because most activities are carried out Center by Center. So we need to have a message on the role of international agricultural research – and there are some very important messages that need to go out. Let’s think big, otherwise, it’s not just the CGIAR that won’t get investments. The knee- jerk reaction to the Food Crisis has been seed and fertilizers, with not much focus on long-term needs.

Stephen Hall: When we talk about “the voice of the Consortium,” we are referring to communications.

What messages should we take to the Centers?
Stephen Hall: There’s a continuum or spectrum of expectation at the CGIAR Centers: there’s a wide range of people, some who care more and some who have interest in only specific aspects of the transition. We need communicators to help us figure out how to handle this divide.

We need to give real power to communications. It’s also okay to have doubts and not know everything.
Stephen Hall: We need a professional strategy for communications.

Jonathan Wadsworth: There seem to be issues with information sharing and communications across the System, with some information not flowing freely into Centers, which seem to be a bit Stone Age. The blockages to free access to information must be addressed.

Will WorldFish become a CGIAR office in Penang?
Stephen Hall: In terms of legal structure, it’s likely that WorldFish will continue as is. The Consortium will be “owned” by the Centers and be a single corporation driven by the Centers. It can be expected that the Center Boards will remain intact and the Directors General will likely go unchanged. Ideas on other structural changes will be considered later in the process, if appropriate.

Mark Holderness: Over time, the purpose of the Centers must be driven by their respective benefits, and we need to see how effective these institutions are. Centers need to be managed so they deliver according to their individual purposes.

At the end of the session, the participants came away with other questions that were in need of answers. Check back here to read one of the participant’s thoughts on this session, and find out what happened during a follow-up dialog the next day!

Yesterday, TechCrunch published a guest post by Vic Gundotra, Vice President of Engineering for Google’s mobile and developer products, with the title: Follow the Mobile User.

Kudos to the editor for combining in one short title the three very keywords that made all ring bells go off in my monday-morning-challenged brain, on day 2 of daylight saving time. They worked better than a caffeine shot.

The post is a fully disclosed Google take on what will enable the growth of mobile Internet usage (in the US, with projections sort-of worldwide) based on a fair amount of hard data, some of which from Google’s internal sources.

Gundotra builds his argument around three enabling factors: “simpler data plans, better web browsers, and a smoother on-device experience“, which equal:

• cheaper mobile Internet connectivity: tough to disagree here;
• better browsers, that let us go on the Internet the way we’re used to with PCs. That is, give us a browser that works like the browser we’re used to;
• more usable applications, that make it easy to find, try and access mobile data services. In short: improve the usability.

Good reading to start off the week mumbling on future trends.  It’s a view on infrastructure and software as enablers, takes for granted 3G network coverage and may be a one-sided view (as remarked in the comments, also worth reading). Still, it’s got some figures, not only opinions, and highlights three key preconditions of technology adoption that can easily apply beyond the industrialised world.  Food for thought for the ICT4D community’s attempt to identify the content and context enablers of the mobile Web in research, agriculture and development at large.

Should you decide to read the full post on TechCrunch, you may want to mind this slang alert:

• phat: acronym for “Pretty, Hot, and Tempting” (source)
• fugly: very, very ugly (source)

The photos of the CGIAR Strategic Communications Workshop are now online. Here are some snapshots

We started the Strategic Communications Workshop with a round of introduction in presence of the Transition Management Team (TMT) with the question: Please share one piece of work that has been exciting in the last six months or so.

Obviously we wanted to impress the TMT with all the interesting activities that happen in the centers, but we also wanted to kick the workshop off with some energizing ideas for our communications work. Here are some of the replies:

• We started to design the campaign for the International Year of Biodiversity
• We got huge coverage of the food price crisis and our Indian state-hunger index generated enormous interest and reactions
• We were successful in communicating our EPMR
• The last issue of the Climate Change Caravan was very successful
• We achieved high levels of staff engagement around our center strategy
• We started to use social media
• We were able to cover 7 media stories
• The journalists who have been visiting our center got very excited about our work
• The work around the Passion Beyond Normal book was rewarding
• We had a energizing workshop of our knowledge management group

The prospect of more collective action among centers with regards to communications seemed the most exciting for participants. This became very clear during another but related workshop activity that happened during the River of Life where participants shared their ideas for improvement related to our collective work.

• Build capacity at different levels, from scientist to director general, for communications and media work.
• Expand our media coverage into languages beyond English with French and German translations.
• Develop performance agreements between communications staff and their directors general that include collective action work.
• Provide centre communications staff with incentives for collective work.
• Develop a matrix of shared activities and projects.
• Develop central, shared resources such as media database.
• Communicate big global themes and issues.
• Energize collective communications so that campaigns are not driven by the Secretariat alone but rather get everyone involved and taking ownership.
• Unify messages for common purposes.
• Do more collective communication events.
• Place communications high on the agenda of the CGIAR chief executive officer.
• Understand the communities we are trying to reach so that we can control our messages better.
• Use innovations to target our audiences (e.g., start with social media.)

Three-quarters of Africa’s food is produced in the often remote rural areas by small-holder farmers who largely rely on their instincts in deciding what and when to plant, weed and harvest their crops.

These farmers have seen their entire season’s crop wiped out by unexpected droughts, floods, frosts, diseases and pests. Even in the best of harvests, they still lose substantial amounts of their produce due to poor road networks, and do not get the best prices in the absence of up-to-date market and price information.

Research has found that a farm’s location greatly affects its chance for success and productivity. Providing farmers with location-specific (geospatial) information on their soils, the best crops, the most appropriate farming techniques and which markets are offering the most competitive prices, presents an effective way to maximize their crop yields and market access, thereby improving livelihoods and reducing uncertainties in production.

To address challenges and opportunities in these areas, the Consortium on Spatial Information (CSI), of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) , the world’s largest alliance on agriculture research, in partnership with the newly launched “Geospatial Technology for Agricultural Development in Africa” Program (AGCommons) , has organized the African Geospatial Week, to be held in Nairobi 31 March – 4th April, 2009.

The week will include three events : the CGIAR-CSI 2009 Annual Meeting, a two-day workshop on the AGCommons Program and finally the WhereCampAfrica day: the first event of its kind to be held in Africa.

With the theme “Mapping our Future 2009-2014: Collective Action and Advocacy to Improve Spatial Solutions for Sustainable Development”, the CGIAR-CSI Annual Meeting will open the week. Recognizing the importance of geospatial information to agriculture decision making and the inadequate access to data, tools and analyses, especially in Africa, what role can CSI play in helping its members best tap new opportunities in the geospatial arena to foster action around improving the packaging and delivery of CSI data, tools and analysis to a broader range of users? This is the question that will be addressed by this gathering of geospatial scientists and researchers from within the CGIAR Centers and key technology and development partners.

The primary goal of the AGCommons Program is to identify and develop data, tools and services that deliver relevant, timely and targeted information directly to farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa and those working on their behalf. Developing specific recommendations on strategic opportunities to the AGCommons Program will be the theme of the AGCommons workshop. Phase I of the Program is underway with consultation activities underway in Africa and the implementation of five “Quick Win” projects; the workshop will provide guidance for planning the second Phase of the Program (2010-2012).

With real-time, location-specific information, farmers will be able to plan and decide more effectively which crops or livestock will perform best on their farms, anticipate and manage disease outbreaks and rainfall shortfalls, as well as decide when to harvest and to which markets to sell. The farmers’ rich knowledge on various aspects of farming will feed into the upcoming information toolkit in AGCommons that will deploy high-tech geospatial technology to the service of Africa’s farmers.

WhereCamp Africa is the closing event of the week: it is a free “un-conference” for geographers, mobile location experts and social cartographers and anyone interested in “place” or locational information and technologies.

The idea comes from FooCamp and BarCamp as a way to give everybody an opportunity to bring to the table the things that interest them the most and lets them talk about topics that are still new and exploratory. Part of what is important to hearing new voices and getting new ideas is lowering barriers to participation – this event is free and it is driven by the participants. Wherecamp will bring together software developers, artists, geographers and academics for a one day extended discussion, as an opportunity to present on ideas, questions, projects, politics, technical issues and get feedback from other people.

Society is being transformed by new maps and new mapping technology. WhereCampAfrica is an opportunity to help create a free forum in Africa for people to talk about, present, explore and learn about projects that involve “place” and relevant technologies.

With over 100 participants expected, the African geospatial week will be held at John Vercoe Conference Room, ILRI Headquarters, Nairobi, Kenya

Day one of the CGIAR Strategic Communications Workshop kicked off in earnest in Penang, Malaysia, with a history lesson of sorts. Chronicling the joint efforts of CGIAR communication specialists over the last two decades, Collective Communications in the CGIAR: A short history of a longstanding effort elicited a lively discussion among participants, some of whom were around when the Public Awareness Association (PAA) was established way back in 1988.

Ruth Raymond

Ruth Raymond, Head of Public Awareness Unit, Bioversity International, recalls the early days of the Association and its role with Future Harvest.

“The PAA supported an attempt to rebrand the CGIAR System,” she explains. “It established a small office in the CGIAR Secretariat that was tasked with promoting the work of the Centers under the new brand of Future Harvest. As a result, each of the Centers became a Future Harvest Center. For example, IRRI became known as ‘IRRI, a Future Harvest Center’. Although we kept the formal acronym of the CGIAR, the Centers were promoted collectively under the new brand.”

As the Chair of the PAA from 1998 to 2002, Ruth was active during the establishment of the Marketing Group, which succeeded the PAA.

“In 2002, the PAA merged with the Resource Mobilization Network (RMN) to become the Marketing Group,” she says. “This arose from a recognition that the resource mobilization people and the communications people needed to collaborate and coordinate their efforts since the activities are (or should be) dependent on each other. So the PAA and RMN started meeting together during the annual CGIAR meetings. Then we had a big meeting in Annapolis in 2001, where we decided that we would merge the two groups and become the Marketing Group.”

The rise
At the time the Marketing Group was created, there was a good relationship between Future Harvest and the CGIAR Centers.

“Future Harvest was helping the Centers get their stories into the media” explains Ruth. “The Centers were working together on a lot of different projects and often attended major international conferences representing the System. Although this did not discourage individual Centers from promoting their own roles, it told the outside world that we were a system: an alliance of scientists working together to support agriculture research for the benefit of the people. We appreciated the association with Future Harvest: the name is easy to remember and has a certain ring to it, unlike the alphabet soup of Centre acronyms.”

The fall
Although Future Harvest was successful in raising awareness of the Centers’ work, the initiative was to be short-lived

”For a time, Future Harvest had strong support throughout the System. Certainly, the communications specialists in the Centers appreciated the support they received from the initiative. But the overall support seems to have been more personal than institutional and it was questioned by new donors and managers coming into the System who had not been involved in the design and development of the new brand. Many donors identified closely with the CGIAR brand. Also, there was a feeling that Future Harvest should have led to additional resources coming into the System following its success at awareness raising. We were probably overly optimistic about how quickly that would happen.”

With support ebbing, it was only a matter of time before Future Harvest was forced to close down operations. The apparent lack of support for collective action under Future Harvest led the Marketing Group to lose its way, and some Centers didn’t see the benefit anymore of being part of the Group, so they backed out altogether.

“It was heartbreaking for those of us who had worked for years to try to get Future Harvest and the Marketing Group up and running,” Ruth says of that time. “The resource mobilization people never really integrated themselves with the communications people and vice-versa. Despite the obvious link between the two areas, coordination is still lacking in many Centers. In some cases, they are still in different silos and don’t talk to each other nearly enough. It’s not a fight that’s easy to win.”

The future
“There is formally a Marketing Group, but other than sharing information and experiences on a listserv, we really don’t do anything much together anymore. I hope that as a result of this workshop we can come to some sort of an agreement on how collective communications will work in the future, because I feel there are real benefits from working together.”

Twitter, Yammer, Social bookmarking, Facebook…facewhat?…are you feeling overwhelmed? 

Well not to worry. Fresh from the Online Social Media Workshop that kicked off early this month, ICT-KM is ensuring that the wealth of knowledge generated is distilled into golden nuggets that are bound to keep you coming back for more. The workshop featured discussions on several Social Media tools (yes that’s what Twitter, Podcasting, Facebook etc. are known as) and we want to show you why you’ll want to get your hands on these tools.

Look out for our Blog series on Social Media tools, featuring one tool every week on this blog space. We’ll tell you in plain English – what it is, how you can use it but more importantly, why you should consider using them. 

For example, here’s something new I learnt today (thanks, Enrica!). Many of us know how to cut and paste ‘urls’ into emails when we want to share a webpage with someone. That’s fine and easy, but ‘urls’, which are really webpage addresses found on the top left hand window of a webpage, can occasionally be very long.  Sometimes, long ‘urls’ tend to break or expire when sent via email, which can be frustrating. Solution: Go to http://tinyurl.com/ and copy your lengthy ‘url’ into the box provided. Click on ‘Make TinyURL’ and presto- you now have a tiny ‘url’ which you can share with others. This tiny ‘url’ can also be used in Twitter…but that’s another story.

Watch this space… 

The latest newsletter of GFAR features an article about the ICT-KM Program’s Knowledge Sharing in Research project and its Pilot Projects. See links and article below.

See: GFAR Newsletter

See: article on KSinR project and Pilots

The CGIAR: learning how to improve its research effectiveness and impact through knowledge sharing

The CGIAR Centres and Programs together with their many partners, are creating a wealth of knowledge that is aimed at helping to increase productivity within agriculture and improve livelihoods of people, primarily in developing countries. While all players are doing much to ensure that this knowledge is widely shared and applied, certain obstacles to the uptake, use and impact of this wealth of knowledge continue to exist. One of the missing elements between knowledge generation and the application of such knowledge is knowledge sharing. Knowledge sharing involves learning from stakeholders what knowledge gaps exist and what is needed to close these gaps; increasing collaboration and interaction of all actors throughout knowledge generation processes; and finding more effective ways of delivering knowledge in a manner appropriate to the particular target groups whose decision-making and actions we seek to influence and support. This requires better understanding and support of new knowledge systems, knowledge sharing approaches, and innovation mechanisms.
To address this, the CGIAR through its system-wide program on Information Communication Technology and Knowledge Management (ICT-KM) initiated a two-year project starting in 2007 entitled ‘Improving the effectiveness of the CGIAR through knowledge sharing’ with a major component focused on Knowledge Sharing in Research (KSinR). The goal of the KSinR Project is to help improve the effectiveness and impact of CGIAR research through providing options and lessons around good practices of knowledge sharing in research.
KSinR’s main learning vehicle is six on-going CGIAR research projects which are using knowledge sharing approaches integrated into various stages of the research process, representing a new way of doing research aimed at greater impact. This includes the use of a multi-stakeholder framework for conducting research as being tried by IWMI through its use of the Learning Alliance approach in the ‘Wastewater , Agriculture and Sanitation for Poverty alleviation’ (WASPA) project aimed at improving coordination amongst stakeholders and getting research into use. This project is also developing a process mentoring method to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of the Learning Alliance approach. The ICARDA Farmers’ Conference project is providing lessons on mechanisms for sharing knowledge with and learning from farmers to help with better design and carrying out of plant breeding research. The CIFOR Pilot is exploring better ways to share research priority assessment methodologies and the experiences around using them, as this is an important tool in figuring out those areas and types of research which can provide the greatest impact. The IWMI Wastewater project is testing various dissemination methods to improve uptake and use of research results.
This includes use of radio programs, training videos, contribution to curricula, and flip charts with printed messages and visuals to get across good practices in using wastewater.
Similarly the IRRI-lead Pilot is also exploring innovative dissemination methods through the development of the Laos Rice Knowledge Bank (LRKB) as a mechanism to make research accessible for extension agents to use with farmers.
Information packets based on research identified by a variety of stakeholders are being developed in appropriate formats to be included in the LRKB. The WorldFish Centre Pilot Project is also trying out participatory monitoring and evaluation, as well as impact assessment methodologies with the aim of learning together with stakeholders throughout the research process, and gaining their perspective on progress and impact.
Synthesis of the results across KSinR and all of its Pilot Projects and other activities will be documented in a variety of media including the KS website (www.ks-cgiar.org), the KSinR blog, and through the development of practical how-to documents to be made widely available and presented at upcoming CGIAR and other fora.

Twittering away...

Attending a workshop in a time zone vastly different from your own can often tax your powers of concentration, especially when you have to participate in an afternoon session after a heavy lunch. Full stomachs and jet lag can lead to diminished attention spans, putting pressure on facilitators and presenters to come up with ways of re-energizing participants.

Someone who certainly knows how to deal with post-lunch fatigue in others, even while combating her own jet lag, is workshop facilitator extraordinaire Simone Staiger-Rivas, who successfully led day one of the CGIAR Strategic Communications Workshop in Penang, Malaysia.

In a lively half-hour lunchtime session, Simone introduced participants to Twitter and Yammer, social media tools that can a have huge impact on the way we communicate our work to colleagues, friends and the world.

Simone excitedly recounted a recent experience with Twitter, a real-time short messaging service that works over the web or mobile phone.

“Last week, I conducted a seminar at CIAT on social media entitled Let’s Really Go Online! The Potential of Social Media for Improving Organizational, Project and Personal Impact,” she said. I was a little disappointed because only 20 people came to this face-to-face meeting.

“However, prior to the meeting, I’d uploaded the presentation onto SlideShare, a Website for sharing presentations, and put the link on my Twitter and Facebook pages, and also on my Skype Status tab. By 3:00 pm that day, just before I gave the presentation at CIAT, 20 people had seen the presentation online, and I’d received about nine comments on Facebook.”

By the following afternoon, more than 180 people had viewed the slide show, and Simone began to get really excited.

“My Twitter contacts, some of whom have a huge number of followers, had ‘re-tweeted’ the link to the presentation, sharing it with all their contacts. And that was the beginning of a snowball effect. Then two days later, almost 300 hundred people had seen the presentation.”

Three days after the CIAT seminar, more than 400 people had viewed Simone’s presentation, with seven bookmarking it as a favourite. As a result of the number of hits her presentation received on SlideShare, the site listed the slideshow under the ‘Technology’ section, giving it even more prominence.

Now, 400 isn’t an enormous number, but when you compare it to the number of people who attended the face-to-face session, it’s huge.

Yammer

Simone also talked about the usefulness of Yammer, often called Twitter for organizations. Like Twitter, Yammer is a micro-blogging service that allows users to post short messages (140 characters maximum) and follow updates from others. Unlike Twitter, Yammer focuses on work-related networks comprising users with the same organizational email address. Yammer users can update colleagues on events or ask each other questions without clogging e-mail inboxes. Users can also search Yammer to find people working in similar fields and subscribe to RSS feeds on a specific topic.

Participant Mike Listman, CIMMYT, was excited about the possibilities of such social media tools after listening to Simone’s demonstration. “I’d never heard of Yammer until today, but I’ll certainly get my team to explore how we can use it in our work,” he said.

Ellen Wilson, Senior Vice President, Burness Communications, on the other hand, is already a convert. She and her colleagues, who are spread across four different offices, use Yammer regularly to update each other on their respective activities, share cool articles, and answer work-related questions.

“If you are reluctant to use services like Yammer, the messages can also be sent to your email account,” said Ellen.

Such was the enthusiasm for Yammer that the CGIAR communication specialists attending the workshop have decided to establish their own Yammer group.

This not the first time Twitter has been highlighted during a CGIAR event. The ICT-KM Program conducted a training session on the tool during the recent Share Fair held in Rome.

Please visit the Program’s Twitter by clicking here!

Technology continues to change; the way we collaborate with others has changed; and the way the CGIAR conducts its business is currently undergoing radical change. With the present air of change that is permeating the entire System, it was inevitable that CGXchange would, sooner or later, have to answer the call for a portal that meets current needs. As such, CGXchange’s intranet concept has been exchanged, so to speak, for a dual-concept application that satisfies both the need for public content and the need for ‘private’ collaboration spaces.

Past and present in the CGXchange 2.0 logo

Last month, we introduced the new, improved CGXchange 2.0, a platform based on Google Apps that satisfies our current needs by facilitating online collaboration and exchange both inside and outside the CGIAR.

“Why Google Apps?” you might ask.

Well, with a highly decentralized set up like that of the CGIAR, over 8,000 staff in 120 offices, mostly in countries where connectivity is a challenge, and with a dire need to collaborate with colleagues and partners, we are always on the look out for solutions that simplify our work. So last year, we tried out Google Apps as a suite of collaboration tools and were suitably impressed. You can read the results of our experiments in the CGIAR Google Apps report.

A few months later, during the first half of March 2009, a selected group of testers evaluated a beta version of the site. The summary report of the test results is just out on CGX 2.0: tried, tested and passed with flying colors! We have included our replies to the comments and questions from the test participants.

“So what’s so new with CGX 2.0?”, you might as well ask. In a nutshell:

• Public content: the tutorials, guides, links to useful resources, outcomes of our tests are open to anyone who wants to learn how non-profit institutions such as the CGIAR are taking advantage of online tools for improving communication, sharing and collaboration.
• Openness is our main driving principle: while CGIAR staff benefits from the availability of the Google Apps collaboration tools, then anyone with a Google account can be invited to collaborate and view the information CGIAR staff will create with Google Apps.
• Freedom of choice is our other driving principle: we aim to inform you and show you the possibilities that the Web offers to share knowledge and collaborate more efficiently online. The available tools can be safely used for closed and/or geographically distributed groups. We can guide you through the tools available, but you will make the final decision as to what is best for you.
• We walk the talk and share the lessons by doing our best to test the tools in our context and share the circumstances in which they proved to be suitable and useful and referring to more than two years’ experience with the ICT-KM Program’s Knowledge Sharing projects.

“What do I do now?”, you might, again, ask.

You have a few options (and NOT necessarily in this sequence):

1. Visit CGXchange 2.0
2. Take a quick tour of the collaboration tools
3. Request access to the Apps for yourself and your colleagues (if you’re CGIAR staff)
4. Browse around the CGX 2.0 Newsfeeds Aggregator to experience keeping up-to-date with RSS feeds
5. Sing along

The concept of paying it forward fits in nicely with Vanessa Meadu’s idea of the nature of true knowledge sharing. She strongly believes that when you benefit from someone else’s experiences and knowledge, you can optimize that gift by passing it onto others who can profit from it, too. As such, it’s possible for a single knowledge sharing event to create a ripple effect capable of touching a large number of people outside of the event.

Not only did this Nairobi-based Communications and Project Officer benefit from the recent Share Fair held at FAO Headquarters in Rome, but she also has great respect for the CGIAR’s burgeoning Knowledge Sharing community.

“It’s certainly advantageous to have a knowledge sharing community in the CGIAR,” she said. “Among other things, the members provide a great support system. If I have a question about, say, blogging, I can email Simone Staiger-Rivas (Project Leader of the ICT-KM Program’s Institutional Knowledge Sharing project), and if I have a question about technology, I can email someone else for assistance. It’s good to have someone to turn to for advice.

“Being able to communicate with knowledge sharing experts is invaluable. Events like the Share Fair helped reinforce that feeling, and that’s what I’m trying to do at ICRAF now. I let people know that there are knowledge sharing examples from which they can learn, as well as people who are willing to share their knowledge with them. So I’m going to try to bring that out a little more in the sessions I conduct and also encourage other people to give innovative knowledge sharing examples of their own. The KS community needs to keep growing, and we can only do this by continuing to share knowledge and experience with our peers.”

Walking the Talk  

This dynamic woman admits that the Share Fair has already had a spin-off effect at her Center. “The Fair has been a big incentive towards a movement for better knowledge sharing at ICRAF,” she explained. “Since the event, I’ve held two seminars, one of which I wrote about on the ICT-KM Program’s blog. I conducted a small lunchtime session with the Center’s communications unit and shared with them some of the experiences we had with newsletters and blogging for the ASB Partnership for the Tropical Forest Margins (ASB), a CGIAR System-wide program.

“I then conducted an open session for the entire ICRAF campus called Blogging for Impact. I talked about how the ASB blog has been used to enhance dissemination and knowledge about our research and our activities. I also gave participants information about our web stats and publication downloads, to show the tangible impact it’s had on research dissemination. This session was extremely well attended. We even had people coming in from off-campus. Most people attending had heard of blogs and had read them, but they’d never had experience using them in their research and in their project activities. I’d say that for about 90% of the people this was a fairly new concept.

“People got really excited. One guy even asked me if we could do a week-long course. It was also heartening to see a lot of scientists in the room. These are the people we want to reach, and these are the people we also want inspire to think differently about communications.”

E-News is not Old News

Getting back to the Share Fair … Vanessa also shared some ideas and insights at this event.

Drawing on her experience coordinating and distributing the monthly email newsletter for the ASB partnership, Vanessa participated in a panel session called E-News is not Old News, which was based on a proposal she developed with her Nairobi-based colleagues at ICRAF, Gender & Diversity, and CIMMYT. The panel responded to questions about the strategic use of email newsletters to reach a broad audience, specifically in the African context, and also discussed this tool as an appropriate means of reaching people who may not have regular or fast Internet access.

“The panel session was well received,” said Vanessa as she summed up the event. “Many participants simply wanted advice on how to put together an effective newsletter. As such, they really hadn’t thought about the great potential of this tool. People asked very practical questions, but I think the more interesting questions concerned the use of email newsletters to broaden knowledge sharing impacts. I think an e-newsletter should be a way of bringing people to an organization’s website. It should be both a standalone tool and a means of increasing hits and drawing people to a site by posing summaries of the stories in the newsletter, with links to the full story online. Many people reacted very positively to this idea. Although it’s a very simple idea, it has so much potential to make a difference.”

The Big Picture
As the interview wound down, Vanessa contemplated the impact knowledge sharing could have on the larger CGIAR.

“There is such a wealth of knowledge and expertise within the Centers, and it’s vital that we encourage people to learn from each other, and let them know about the resources that are out there and the good practices they can build on. We can have a high standard of knowledge sharing throughout the CGIAR System if we capitalize on these kinds of events and keep the momentum going at each of our Centers.

Click to read the latest ASB e-newsletter: March 2009 – ASB endorses call for US leadership on Forests and Climate Protection

The Consortium on Spatial Information (CSI), of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), in partnership with AGCommons Program, has organized the first African Geospatial Week, to be held in Nairobi 31 March – 4th April, 2009.

The week will include three events, the CGIAR-CSI 2009 Annual Meeting (31 March – 1 April),  a two-day workshop on the AGCommons Program (2 – 3 April) and finally the WhereCampAfrica day (4 April): the first event of its kind to be held in Africa.

With the theme “Mapping our Future 2009-2014: Collective Action and Advocacy to Improve Spatial Solutions for Sustainable Development”, the CGIAR-CSI Annual Meeting will open the week. It is in the context of growing recognition of the importance of location as well as potentially major institutional change that the CSI holds its annual meeting. The CSI needs to respond coherently and responsibly but also with boldness and imagination to this unique time and opportunity.

It will be followed by the AGCommons workshop: Phase I of the Program is underway with consultation activities in Africa and the implementation of five “Quick Win” projects; the workshop will provide guidance for planning the second Phase of the Program (2010-2012).

The primary goal of the AGCommons Program is to identify and develop data, tools and services that deliver relevant, timely and targeted information directly to farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa and those working on their behalf.

With real-time, location-specific information, farmers will be able to plan and decide more effectively which crops or livestock will perform best on their farms, anticipate and manage disease outbreaks and rainfall shortfalls, as well as decide when to harvest and to which markets to sell. The farmers’ rich knowledge on various aspects of farming will feed into the upcoming information toolkit in AGCommons that will deploy high-tech geospatial technology to the service of Africa’s farmers.

 WhereCamp Africa  is the closing event of the week: it is a free “un-conference” for geographers, mobile location experts and social cartographers and anyone interested in “place” or locational information and technologies.

The idea comes from FooCamp and BarCamp as a way to give everybody an opportunity to bring to the table the things that interest them the most and lets them talk about topics that are still new and exploratory. Part of what is important to hearing new voices and getting new ideas is lowering barriers to participation – this event is free and it is driven by the participants. Wherecamp will bring together software developers, artists, geographers and academics for a one day extended discussion, as an opportunity to present on ideas, questions, projects, politics, technical issues and get feedback from other people.

 Society is being transformed by new maps and new mapping technology. WhereCampAfrica is an opportunity to help create a free forum in Africa for people to talk about, present, explore and learn about projects that involve “place” and relevant technologies.

Top ten reasons to participate:

§         To formulate a CSI vision of the enhanced role of spatially-referenced and location-aware data, analysis, and knowledge products for sustainable agricultural development, improved livelihoods, and food security.

§         To achieve consensus on a strategy (or as a minimum, agreeing a rapid, cost-effective process for developing such a strategy) for CSI’s engagement with the donor, development and science communities in making progress toward achieving that vision.

§         To have a scientific exchange on CSI member research and implementation activities

§         To develop specific recommendations on strategic opportunities to the AGCommons Program 

§         To participate in WhereCampAfrica, the first event of its kind to take place in Africa

… only 5 reasons? Find out the others in Nairobi!

 With over 100 participants expected, the African geospatial week will be held at John Vercoe Conference Room, ILRI Headquarters, Nairobi, Kenya