Conferences, workshops and events of all sorts are at the  heart of ILRI work. ILRI staff travel to many places to present some of the work the organisation does. A long piece of meticulous research work gets synthesised in one presentation that can really glorify or ruin the awareness, attention, dissemination and ultimately the uptake of that work by other actors in the livestock sector.

Public speaking, presenting with confidence, being able to influence others and letting them understand the value and unique opportunities of good research work are critical skills for ILRI staff.

The default presentation tool for such presentations is Microsoft Powerpoint. It is indeed a powerful tool, but if not handled well, this simple presentation tool can induce ‘death by Powerpoint‘. Another problem with Powerpoint is that most people are used to it and more often than not, in conferences, they automatically switch to ‘Powerpoint mode’: a rather active absorption of the presentation, without paying too much attention to the speaker.

An alternative has emerged in the past few years (it first appeared in late 2009): Prezi.

Prezi is a dynamic presentation tool that works in a very different logic to Powerpoint: the latter is essentially a series of linearly connected slides that tell a story. Prezi is a physical canvas – like a drawing board – where all elements are plotted and you navigate around that canvas, zooming in on elements of it and out to other elements to tell the story.

Both tools enable embedding various media: audio, video, graphs and pictures, though Prezi even allows embedding Powerpoint presentations.

Since ILRI’s recent annual program meeting, we tried using Prezi, here’s the presentation by Alexandra Jorge on Napier Grass:

More ILRI presentations on Prezi

Why bother using Prezi?

Perhaps one of the following reasons might want to make you try Prezi?

• Prezi gives a very dynamic slant to your presentations, which is more likely to keep your audience awake than a series of Powerpoint slides.
• Prezi forces you to put less text in a ‘slide’, which means people can read the text easily and listen to you carefully at the same time.
• As you have less ‘support text’, you can more easily talk around the text on the screen. It strengthens your narrative, your sense of telling stories, and perhaps forces you to rehearse a bit more, which is a very good precondition for success in public speaking.
• Prezi allows you to move around your canvas so you can go anywhere in your presentation without having to clumsily move back on the  menu of your slides.
• Your audience may not know about Prezi yet, and you may capture their imagination like you never have.
• It’s a new tool, and every new tool requires you to think slightly differently about your work, stimulating your creativity and parallel thinking skills.

Mind that Prezi, like Powerpoint, can also be used in really bad ways and create a nauseating experience induced by motion sickness. On the other hand, mastered well, Prezi can display great creativity that strengthens the narrative behind the presentation, and give a sense of confidence to scientific speakers, and a good reason to believe that their work might be listened to and perhaps used more as a result.

Prezi may work for you or not, but trying it will be useful to think about your work and learn from your own practice. Many people condemn tools for what they do, though usually the practice of the tool is what causes bad experiences, not the tool itself, but until you try it and see successful examples, you can’t really tell, so when it comes to Prezi, you might as well…

For more information about Prezi, its advantages and disadvantages you can see: 

• Top 10 Prezis of 2012
• How to use Prezi
• 5 reasons to use Prezi
• The problems with Prezi and two reasons I rarely recommend Prezi
• Prezi: a dynamic presentation or nauseating experience?
• Why the best prezis use grouping and layering
• Prezi for dummies cheat sheet

The Institute for Development Studies (IDS) hosted a ‘Climate Change Knowledge Exchange‘ on 5-6 March 2013. The exchange which was designed with the intention of being ‘an antidote to death by Powerpoint‘, was co-created on the Climate Change and Social Learning (CCSL) sandbox - which was set up by ILRI and the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) in 2012, as recently explained on this space.

Social learning featured highly on the agenda of this event from the start, thanks to the inputs of various sandbox members including the sandbox facilitation team – which was invited to co-facilitate the Knowledge Exchange – including Ewen le Borgne from ILRI’s Knowledge Management and Information Services.

A group of about 70 participants engaged in the event with the intention to learn, share, reflect and act, in various plenary sessions and working group slots around the four main strands of the event:

• Whose knowledge counts? Locally-held knowledge for climate change adaptation (convened under the auspices of IDS and the CCAFS Climate Change Social Learning Sandbox)
• Brokers, translators and intermediaries: new roles and challenges for putting knowledge into practice (convened by the International Development Research Centre of Canada and IDS)
• How to learn from climate change evaluations in and between organizations (convened by the Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN), the Evaluation Office of the Global Environment Facility [GEF-EO] and IDS)
• Extreme events and disaster risk reduction (convened by IDS)

Two loops of learning

With intellectual and financial sponsorship of the CCSL initiative, the idea of the organizing team was to turn this Exchange into an exciting opportunity to undertake an experience through three learning loops. The table below – adapted from CCSL sandbox work – served as a basis to explain some of the differences between the three loops of learning.

 

First loop

Double loop

Triple loop

Nature Instrumental Communicative Transformative Use of knowledge Acquiring new knowledge Understanding / reinterpreting knowledge Examining assumptions behind (particularly dominant) knowledge Focus (also temporal) Efficiency (now) Effectiveness (next) Dynamic relevance (over time) / adaptive capacity Key questions What are we doing now and how can we improve this?
WHAT IS What could we do to improve the pursuit of our aims?
WHAT COULD BE What should we do to improve the way we think about improving our approach?
WHAT SHOULD BE Approach followed Static, unilateral information flows e.g. dissemination of case studies etc. Participatory communication, bilateral knowledge flows Dynamic experience building, multilateral knowledge flows

Each of the conversation strands explored what is currently going on (experiences and results), what could be (ideas to bring people together and solve issues) and what should be (through a transformative process). The Exchange indeed allowed participants to develop rich pictures of the current state of work around intermediaries and knowledge brokers, learning from evaluation, disaster risk reduction and the issues of power that affect climate change initiatives (in the ‘Whose knowledge counts’ strand).

The second group’s work was also very rich and unraveled many good ideas, possible ideals to go forward, based on strong discussions, a thorough exchange of ideas and a joint formulation of possible solutions.

The intermediaries’ group explored the central question of whether knowledge brokers and intermediaries are indeed a role (embodied in a position) or a function, i.e. a set of tasks and responsibilities that can be spread across people and time.

The learning & evaluation group worked around three different topics: how to communicate evaluations in more effective and compelling ways, how to possibly influence policy and policy-making through the results of evaluation and finally how to develop some space for theory-based approaches to evaluation (approaches that explicitly address assumptions and look at a broader context than just one intervention).

The ‘Whose knowledge counts’ and the ‘disaster risk reduction’ groups developed a series of steps to undertake to progressively achieve the ideal vision that they developed after the first session’s back-casting exercise (visioning exercise and working out steps from there to now).

Locally owned knowledge in policy – a future #climatelearn twitter.com/petecranston/s…

— petecranston (@petecranston) March 5, 2013

There was a lot of good learning in this case, but was that really enough to transform participants and lead them to action?

Transformation and action?

In his opening address and in a supporting blog post, Lawrence Haddad, Director of IDS, reminded all participants that it is notoriously hard to learn and act upon that learning. This Exchange was alas no exception. Perhaps the ambitions to bring participants to reflect in totally novel ways were too high, due to the short duration of the event, to the nature of the participants’ group which -not diverse enough- and to the very limited opportunities to combine the two in a joint working experience that could seriously and deeply challenge everyone’s assumptions.

Not much triple-loop learning happened, therefore, although some participant mentioned that it sometimes takes months or even years to realize the effects of being exposed to a conversation – as though learning would go dormant and wake up at a future moment when its fruits are ripe for harvest.

As for action, the ‘marketplace of actions, ideas and commitments‘ suggests that some action will come out of this Exchange. It is certainly the intention of the organizers to review these actions in a few months’ time. However one of the (learning and evaluation) group was also ‘shockingly honest’ in admitting that the ideal picture sketched about influencing policy is fundamentally flawed and doomed.

Shocking honesty #climatelearn ideal evaluation process will never happen. Huge barriers – Political context, donor incentives + many more.

— Tan Copsey (@tancopsey) March 6, 2013

Learning, transformation, action… we might want to think about the transitions between these rather than focus on each of them.

Frances Seballos of IDS reflected on learning about learning. Her blog post should follow shortly and might give additional impressions on the challenges of a complex social process around an event for an even more complex agenda – climate change.

Read notes about the event

Read more about the Climate Change and Social Learning sandbox

Between November 2012 and February 2013, the Nile Basin Development Challenge (NBDC) ran two major events to help steer its efforts in this last year of the Challenge. On 15 and 16 November, a largely internal planning workshop gathered 25 participants representing the four NBDC  projects. On 20-21 February 2013, about 70 people – project staff, partners and other related parties – gathered at the ILRI Addis campus to attend the fourth meeting of the National Platform on land and water management and to reflect on past achievements, current questions and insights, and future plans for the NBDC.

Communication has been central to the program (2009-2013) through various interventions. After a rather intensive and successful first period in the new phase of the NBDC vis-à-vis its communication, the management of the NBDC have officially requested additional support from the ILRI communication team to assist with the regular organization and documentation of monthly team meetings, in addition to ongoing tasks (publishing, sharing stories, facilitation and documentation of special events).

Planning NBDC activities for researchers (photo credit: ILRI/Le Borgne)

The communication team supported this planning workshop through co-designing the event, facilitating it and documenting it on a wiki. This type of support is quite typical of the services rendered by the team for other projects as well (see the list of events).

The priorities of communication work in the program had already been reviewed a few months ago. With this planning workshop and National Platform stakeholder consultation, these priorities are likely to be updated, with added emphasis on repackaging existing information for specific audiences (farmers, researchers, planners, policy-makers and the NBDC team) and to engage them in the last phase, progressively preparing the embedding of the program’s legacy in the institutional context of the Ethiopian land and water management sector.

As the NBDC is increasingly becoming one integrated program – rather than several projects, and as the partners and other Ethiopian institutional actors are expected to play an increasing role, the need for more coordination, cooperation and indeed more communication has never been as strong.

Read notes from the February National Platform meeting

Discover pictures from the February National Platform meeting

Read notes from the November planning meeting

Discover pictures from the November planning meeting

In late 2011, the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) issued a call for proposals to help develop a CCAFS ‘strategy on communication and social learning’.  This was the start of a collaboration between CCAFS and ILRI’s Knowledge Management and Information Services (KMIS) team on Climate Change and Social Learning (CCSL)

In May 2012, CCAFS organized a workshop on communication and social learning in climate change to examine how social learning and communication could further CCAFS objectives to generally support better local decision making on climate change in agriculture and food security. The event brought together participants from CGIAR centres but also non-governmental organizations and donor agencies. Out of the workshop, the CCAFS teamset up a series of followup activities.

Social learning is a fuzzy concept which was debated at length in May and led CCAFS social learning work to focus on five promising themes: endogenous social learning, documentation of social learning, time scales, social differentiation and social learning in CCAFS. Several projects were undertaken to unpack the concept and existing experiences.

In particular, a CCSL ‘sandbox‘ was set up as a space to source ideas and discuss these issues. The sandbox is also intended to help seed joint initiatives that could lead to social learning ventures supporting CCAFS’s objective to improve local decision-making about climate change adaptation. Essentially, the sandbox consists of a wiki and a Yammer network.

CCAFS also funded a stock-taking exercise of social learning and related initiatives across CGIAR – looking for expertise and experiences to build on.

These were discussed in a November 2012 workshop to review the lessons and insights gathered through the years. In addition, this workshop planned some additional activities around priority areas for CCAFS (and possibly other CGIAR research programs).

Through the three days of the event, participants have thus heard about the stocktaking project they organized a ‘show-and-tell’ marketplace featuring some of these experiences in more detail; they pictured what social learning in climate change could look like (see here and here).

To better make sense of the rich CGIAR social learning experience – as represented by the 128 social learning cases compiled by consultant Julian Gonsalves, participants agreed to develop a narrative to explain the rationale of social learning (in climate change and food security and beyond, as there is value for all other CGIAR research programs), and to try and pin down a framework that explains how the different social learning initiatives fit today’s research for development challenges. The workshop paved the way for additional work on these two tracks and on a number of other ‘next steps‘.

Over the course of 2012, the KMIS team has worked closely with CCAFS – on the event design and facilitation, establishing the sandbox, helping connect the various project partners (IDS, IIED, Euforic services, and others), and generally moving the process forward.

In March 2013, CCSL moves to the UK and the USA with a series of events planned to bring these ideas into other forums. From the sandbox, social learning is stepping into the wild – but the unknown is where social learning thrives…

Read notes and see products from the November meeting.

See a selection of pictures from the November workshop.

Find out more about the climate change social learning sandbox.

Since 2011, the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) has been organizing various training courses on social media, communication and knowledge management, with the brand name ‘Komms Klinics‘.

Looking back

In 2011, the various sessions were organized for staff to get acquainted with different communication and social media  tools they could use in their research work, such as Yammer, iGoogle, wikis, blogging among others.

Last year the focus shifted away from tools and sessions were organized around six blocks of communication and knowledge management. These included:

• Engaging audiences in our research (see the presentation)
• Organizing effective events and conversations (see the presentation)
• Public awareness (see the presentation)
• Finding and managing information (see the presentation)
• Working with multimedia (see the presentation)
• Publishing and design (see the presentation)

Facilitated and organized by the ILRI communications team, the idea was to help participants understand the value of communication in research and how they can apply it in their work. The sessions were web streamed to other ILRI offices around the world. More than 150 ILRI and hosted institutions’ staff participated in them.

Evaluations conducted after each session revealed areas to improve including: quality of the sound especially when web streaming the sessions; targeted sessions instead of general audiences; more practical hands-on ‘tools’ sessions rather than theoretical presentations.

Plans in 2013

We are drawing lessons from past cycles to organize a better cycle this year. A survey aims to gather a more solid feedback and recommendations for improvement. A new set of klinics will kick off in the second quarter of this year.

If you attended a Komms Klinic in 2012, please share your feedback.

For 2013, we anticipate to focus on communication tools training,  for instance, repackaging our existing materials and incorporating content from the social media guide for African climate change practitioners.

More information

• Keep updated about upcoming sessions on the Komms Klinics training wiki, on ILRI’s Yammer (restricted access), on our Google Calendar, and on posters across ILRI campuses.
• See all Komms Klinics ever organized on this ILRI training wiki page.
• To join a session or for more information, contact Tsehay Gashaw or Ewen Le Borgne in Addis Ababa, Angeline Nekesa or Evelyn Katingi in Nairobi.
• See the communications tools used across ILRI
• ILRI staff: Find answers to ILRI communication questions at http://ilri-comms.wikispaces.com

Last week I attended an Open Knowledge for Agricultural Development Convening organized by Michigan State University (MSU), OER Africa, and The Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM). The aim was to explore ways to “accelerate agricultural development through open knowledge practices”; we discussed innovations in open learning from the AgShare project, as well as mobiles, quality assurance for Open Educational Resources (OER), ‘Massively Open Online Courses’ (MOOCs), content repositories and sharing, and ways to measure impacts on open research, open content and open data …

The various presentations and other information are online

Some of my take-aways:

• MOOCs are getting massively talked about (see this COL post or wikipedia) and we heard some experiences from MSU and the Sloan Consortium. It seems to  be a heavily academic-driven trend with MOOCs seen as massive tools to democratize access to higher education (and to create delivery efficiencies).  While online and distance and open learning has massive potential in our world, also for CGIAR with its massive knowledge assets, I found the focus on the ‘course’ to distract us from the purpose …. learning. So maybe rather than focusing on the course as output we need to focus on the outcome learning … making sure it is massively useful rather than massively open or online.

• Mobiles are another buzz and Dileepkumar Guntuku (ICRISAT) took us through the range of opportunities they provide. One of the challenges mobiles present to research and educational organizations like ILRI is around the relevant and purposing of the content we generate. I recall once hearing from Nokia that their ‘live tools’ application had to re-write/re-purpose almost all they content they got from public bodies; none was in a format they could easily re-use. So we tried in this session to look at the open content we produce and how it can be connected via mobile devices with rural communities.

My colleagues Paolo Ficarelli and Sharbendu Banerjee (CABI) kindly contributed insights from the m-Kisan project via yammer.  Sharbendu argued, yes, ‘formal’ open knowledge of the type we have can flow through mobile channels, but only if the content has been interpreted and repackaged before entering the repository (eg to convey scientific information in 165 characters!). Paolo emphasized that the processes of validation and verification with local practitioners are heavy and time-consuming … and that really we need to be able to work with many well-informed and effective intermediaries.  So, yes we can get our ‘formal’ knowledge on to mobile platforms and out to rural communities – but it needs a lot of re-packaging, validation and especially strong intemediary partners much closer to farmers than we are!

• Quality assessment of the open educational resources that are being produced was another popular topic. David Kernohan from JISC took us through the various aspects arguing that some of the processes with ‘regular’ educational resources are the same as for open resources. I sensed an underlying concern here that much of this new ‘massively’ open content is not as good quality as it could be, that the actual delivery is not always up to standard, and indeed that the educational platforms and resources are not properly checked against a range of technical, pedagogical, legal, and other criteria.  We undertook a group exercise to map possible quality assessment steps n the production of OER … where the focus disappointingly was mostly on the ‘product’ and not on the process leading up to it (our group started from excellent participatory problem/demand definition as the necessary first step in assuring quality of the resulting product).

• The work of student innovation scholars in the AgShare project (phase 2 is just approved by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) was discussed in several sessions. We learned how MSc curricula at some universities in Uganda, Kenya and Ethiopia were adapted to enrich the student experience, provide a wider range of action research ‘products’ for communities and to co-create further (open) learning and teaching materials.  It’s a very interesting approach, not least as it encourages the students to adopt open rich diverse communication and knowledge sharing approaches. The final thesis remains; it is complemented by the many other knowledge products generated in the course of the action research. This complements the approach we try at ILRI to make much more knowledge open along the entire research process and to produce much more than just ‘final’ articles…

I was asked to talk about ‘Methods for Measuring Impacts of Open Research, Open Content and Open Data’ and then facilitate a discussion around some of the challenges this entails (see the presentation). I drew on an earlier presentation on ways we support learning and reflection through more open knowledge.

In this presentation I shared some basic metrics (views of services and content, going up massively after we began using more ‘open’ channels and platforms) and asked if this was enough. Can we prove, through views or downloads, that being open is more ‘impactful’, and on what? What other types of indicators might b want to use?

Using a very simple structure, I hesitate to call it a theory of change, I suggested we could look at openness in terms of the content, knowledge, tools, platforms, process etc that we use (the outputs). Making these more open is indeed probably desirable but how do we measure the usefulness of this.Thus I suggested we could try and link more openness of an output with a larger outcome – such as research or educational quality, transparency, efficiency and so on.  These types of outcomes are where the knowledge management group in ILRI is mainly focused. Open knowledge is OK, but effective research is what we want to achieve. We can also move beyond outcomes and try to associate more open knowledge through research outcomes to impacts in communities … such as more money, better education, less hunger. But this seems to be very difficult.

Taking this simple outputs, outcomes, impacts framework, I shared some examples where these can be seen. Thus, the open data people seem to be making a direct link between (more) openness and impact on citizens’ lives; the value proposition of OER is more about educational outcomes; and the open access movement is getting beyond open articles to the outcomes these can have on scientific productivity.

Summarized, some outcomes we may achieve through more open knowledge (and all it entails) include:

• Cost savings, efficiency and product acceleration [of service providers]
• Empowerment and engagement [of ‘customers’, of partners?]
• Greater transparency [of decisions, of actors …?]
• Access, availability, visibility [of content]
• Return on investment [by funders]
• Improved quality [multidimensional - of education, research, government …]

View the presentation:

Carbon sequestration, GHG emissions, NDVI, GIS…..these are some of the words that routinely fly in a conversation around my workspace. You see, I sit with subject matter specialists and that subject is  the environment. The words are perfect for scholarly publications but my raison d’etre is to put them in everyday language so that farmers, staff of non-governmental organisations, government officials and others who need to understand and possibly make decisions can have their “aha, that is what it means”, moment.

‘Putting science into use’ is now the buzz phrase and indeed it has always been the case…practically. Once upon a time, there was no useful electricity. Then in 1792, one Benjamin Franklin after much work found that electricity could be tamed and three short centuries later it is hard to imagine a world without electricity if you are a city dweller like me. Where would the world be in terms of travel if the Wright Brothers had not made their first crude plane? It is the improvement made subsequently on their crude object that has given us today’s jet and each moment one cruises above our heads, we never imagine life without it.

Why am I writing this? Because thanks to science being put into use, I don’t have to go down the hill and across the ridge to the next valley to get water for my household. I belong to the privileged few in Africa that can turn on a tap and voila! There is running water (most of the time). So I have energy to spare to, think, reflect and put my thoughts into writing because someone else improved the art of sharing by multiplying my pen…I can use this computer then put my article on a blogpost that you will read and we never need to meet!

Writing to put science into use requires the scientific innovators who spend most of their day dreaming, questioning, cross-checking and searching for yet more evidence. It also requires those light-hearted people we call cartoonists and illustrators because someone once said “a picture is worth a thousand words”. I don’t know how many words an illustration is worth but I do know it helps to break the monotony of the reading but also explains better what the words are saying. Then there is the bully editor, like me, who constantly asks “can we please say it in a simpler way”. Often this is not possible and each person waits for the previous one to complete before they move to the next step.

Here is where the ‘Writeshop’ process comes in. Have you ever thought of bringing together scientists, writers, administrators and accountants for the sole purpose of talking, understanding and writing a proposal? Or farmers, writers, extension workers, researchers, the community you work in – both literate and illiterate to write a community adaptation manual?

At a recent CGIAR knowledge and communication workshop, I learned that this process can bring together people who routinely don’t work together even though they are involved in the same things from different angles. And after stripping all the big words to their bare bones, each person can walk away with their famous elevator pitch for Bill Gates (funding) or to explain to grandma what exactly it is you do at work.

Listening to writeshops guru, Paul Mundy speaking at the workshop was, simply enlightening. Several writeshops later, I learned a different approach from Mundy. Leave with a draft of your chapter, policy brief or manual. Until then, in every writeshop I had participated in, we brainstormed, took notes and everyone went back home to write on their own. In some cases, we had disastrous results.  There were times when the draft that later came was completely different from what been discussed previously. This meant the notes had not even been used, rendering the previous writeshop a complete waste of time.

Three things I learned from Mundy: A writeshop is for writing; the quick formula involves advance preparation, writing at the writeshop and being critiqued, revisions often being done away and then publishing. Finally, it is the editors who steer the process, moving with authors to a particular direction.

Other posts from this workshop:

http://wle.cgiar.org/blogs/2012/11/26/blurring-the-boundaries-between-research-and-communications/

http://infoilri.wordpress.com/2012/11/10/co-creating-knowledge-in-r4d/

group discussions to identify good practices

In October 2012 the Knowledge Management and Information Services (KMIS) team at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Addis Ababa worked day and night to help make a success of an AgriKnowledge ShareFair ‘Towards Food and Nutrition Security in the Horn of Africa.’

The Horn of Africa has suffered several droughts in the last 10 years. Each time, governments, the international community and NGOs agreed that long term measures were needed to prevent another tragedy.

In October 2012, FAO and other partners convened an ‘AgriKnowledge ShareFair‘ that brought together people from fifteen countries from Africa’s most drought prone regions to address recurrent droughts and chronic food insecurity in the Horn of Africa. They discussed and shared good practices and ways to scale them.

The event took place on the ILRI Ethiopia campus; it also received substantial organization and communication support from ILRI.

Some of the organizers of the ShareFair

Ideas for the event germinated in May 2012 during informal discussions; they concretized in August and September and turned into  a major logistical activity with 200+ participants, tents, stands, discussions, and of course heavy communication.

The KMIS team contributed to:

• Preparing the overall event organization, design and facilitation;
• Producing posters, banners and brochures
• Setting up communication tools and platforms – a blog, wiki, and photo sharing;
• Producing content updates through blogposts, twitter, a daily newsletter and video interviews;
• Training FAO staff on how to use the tools.

It proved to be a challenging and a learning exercise – organizing the content, organizing and structuring the issues, and managing the print process. Luckily we were able to draw on other similar large events such as the Livestock Exchange and the AgKnowledge Africa share fair that adopted similar engaging and participatory approaches.

In the closing session, Dr. Castro Camarada, FAO Coordinator for Eastern Africa congratulated the team for their great communication support, especially for social reporters that helped make the event more visible.

The ILRI ‘communication’ team comprised: Apollo Habtamu, Liya Dejene, Peter Ballantyne, Tigist Endashaw, Tsehay Gashaw and Zerihun Sewunet. Colleagues in ILRI operations (housing, catering, ICT and engineering also played important roles in making the event a success!)

Read the Daily Tail:

• 23 October Issue
• 24 October Issue
• 25 October Issue

See some of our photos

Most of our blog posts are here

Videos

Story by Tsehay Gashaw, Zerihun Sewunet, Liya Dejene and Peter Ballantyne

Local, indigenous, knowledge is essential in any country. It is a crucial asset that people can tap into in their struggle for survival. Local knowledge is meeting renewed interest in multi-stakeholder processes where scientists, farmers and other stakeholders work together to share and co-create knowledge on an equal footing in the pursuit of achieving mutual goals.

In a recent workshop co-organized by Water, Land and Ecosystems and Livestock and Fish research programs on: ‘Organizing, Managing, Communicating and Leveraging Information and Knowledge to Support and Deliver CRP Results  in Addis Ababa, Beth Cullen a researcher currently working at ILRI emphasized the role of knowledge co-creation in agricultural research. Beth pointed out that co-creating knowledge can lead to:

• The breakdown of knowledge/power hierarchies that exist between scientists and farmers hence better collaboration between scientists and farmers;
• End users of research become active partners in production of knowledge rather than objects of research and passive receivers of research outputs-which are necessary for easier adoption of best practices, better uptake and impact of research outputs;
• Creates a range of insights and potential solutions especially in an era of unpredictable change;
• Co-creating knowledge helps to ensure that institutional and policy issues as well as power dynamics are taken into account, rather than ‘magic bullet’ or blueprint approaches.

Organizing, Managing, Communicating and Leveraging Information and Knowledge to Support and Deliver CRP Results (photo credit: ILRI/Zerihun Sewunet).

Co-creating knowledge can be strengthened by communication tools such as participatory radio, video and the use of local languages. These tools ensure that research outputs are appealing to end users, are developed in a simpler language and that their outcomes are mutually owned.

Research that is made simpler and more compelling through such means tends to reach more people and get them to take action.

During the same workshop,Freyhiwot Nadew – Ethiopia Country Director of Farm Radio international described a case study of co-creating knowledge using participatory radio. She reported that Farm Radio’s participatory radio strategies have contributed significant changes in the knowledge and practices of farmers and their communities.

Nadew explained the process of engaging farmers in Farm Radio’s programming: “Farmers participation in radio is allowed at all levels – from planning to implementation and evaluation of the project, we involve farmers in the decision-making process, including making decisions about the contents, duration and program schedule”, she said. The farmers, or their representatives, also have a voice in the management of radio program projects.

Nadew assured participants that participatory radio is a great strategy of co-creating knowledge and supporting farmers to adopt new technology in agriculture.

At the end of Beth Cullen’s presentation, it was clear that local knowledge creation has become more widely recognized as a key contributor in sustainable development. Most successful development efforts leverage local technologies, local systems of knowledge, and the local environment in their plans. This in turn creates mutual respect between the stakeholders involved, encourages local participation, and builds partnerships for joint problem resolution.

The 4 day workshop which targeted participants from various information, knowledge, science and communication domains revolved around;

• Communicating for wider influence and impact – Reaching and engaging with and influencing wide audiences,
• Research for impact – Translating outputs into research, development and policy outcomes, getting knowledge into use,
• Knowledge sharing and learning –Enriching organization/program/project learning, interaction and exchange,
• Publishing – Capturing and disseminating research products and outputs,
• Internal communication – Linking and connecting teams among other important issues in knowledge management and communication.

More resources on the workshop can be accessed on:  http://kmc4crps.wikispaces.com/

See Beth Cullen’s work on participatory video

See Farm Radio’s work with ILRI’s IPMS project

Other posts from this workshop:

http://wle.cgiar.org/blogs/2012/11/26/blurring-the-boundaries-between-research-and-communications/

http://infoilri.wordpress.com/2012/11/27/writing-our-science-for-development-a-new-look-at-writeshops/

Workshop participants sharing lessons

From September to late October 2012, the Africa RISING program held a series of review and planning workshops. These followed a series of other inception, design and project workshops held since January 2012.

The Knowledge Management and Information Services (KMIS) team of ILRI contributed to this series of workshops: through design, organization, facilitation, social reporting and sometimes formal reporting. This role grew out of initial meetings in early 2012 when the project leaders came to recognize the usefulness of communication and facilitation in their activities. This facilitation support was to help participants tease out results and stories from, for example, the early win projects as well as shaping plans and directions for the coming years.

The communication team from The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) also contributed to these efforts, joining the ILRI team, supporting the organization of the recent workshops and generating important media stories in East and Southern Africa or supporting the visit of members of the US Senate and of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) on official visit in Ghana.

What are some lessons from this work?

The end of an inception phase is a good period to harvest lessons and insights from the early work – particularly as they are expected to contribute to a broader research program as is the case with the new phase of Africa RISING in Ethiopia and the other mega sites (East and Southern, and West Africa).

• The complexity of Africa RISING means that a lot of important questions have been explored iteratively. This is very useful, yet challenging, as some key questions remained unanswered for too long – such as site selection, the development of a research framework and of a monitoring and evaluation framework.
• The absence of definitive and clearly localized answers regarding site selection meant that some concrete details (of research planning, monitoring etc.) were postponed.
• Many of the workshops helped clarify some aspects of the work. At the same time, different workshops involved different people and some participants were not aware of progress made in previous workshops, opening up new cycles of negotiations and conversations that were once thought finalized.
• We concluded that it would be useful in future to develop a short set of presentation slides summarizing the key advances and results of each workshop, to build ‘the Africa RISING story’ all along and inform everyone of the boundaries set and results achieved at each step of the process.
• The early win projects and other areas of Africa RISING showcased the creativity of the staff involved in developing new tools and methods/approaches, developing new or strengthening existing partnerships, and they also testify that Africa RISING teams are dedicated to working in an integrated manner across institutions.

As the program starts a new stage, communication and knowledge management support will be all the more important to ensure Africa RISING research informs the people that need it most, from farmers to policy-makers and donors.

Last week, International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) staff in Nairobi and Addis Ababa Ethiopia attended a Komms Klinic session on ‘working with multimedia’. Nairobi participants enjoyed the live presentation while Addis colleagues joined in Via WebEx.

Paul Karaimu , ILRI’s corporate writer led the session and engaged participants in a captivating presentation and discussion on:
• Multimedia: What is it? Why use it? How to use it?
• What multimedia can do for you?
• Working with multimedia: How it’s used at ILRI
• Using multimedia in your work. Practical session on how to make multimedia products.
• Challenges of working with multimedia

In the presentation, it was clear that multimedia is a powerful way of reaching many audiences as it combines text, images and sounds in ways that make research or projects very interesting to almost everybody. The most remarkable thing about multimedia is that it is dynamic and easy to adapt. It can also be used differently and creatively by anyone, not necessarily a multimedia geek.

Paul Karaimu on multimedia (photo credit: ILRI/Susan MacMillan).

The facilitator took participants through the process of making multimedia products such as photofilms and short videos. During this session, participants expressed their challenges in using multimedia with reasons ranging from; lack of time and technical skills to produce multimedia products. Other participants stated that they were ignorant on the power of multimedia in research; some said they lacked facilities such as cameras, audio and video recorders to produce multimedia products.

Paul informed participants that they didn’t have to go through the technical process since communication personnel in their units could help them produce multimedia products. He also advised them that with multimedia, one does not necessarily need professional cameras, audio and visual recording facilities. “You can use your mobile phone to record captivating images and sounds which can be converted into multimedia products such as interviews and photo films”, said Paul. He urged participants to work with communication personnel whenever they needed to incorporate multimedia in their projects.

Most participants felt that the presentation was an eye-opener which motivated them to start using multimedia in their work and suggested that such sessions be conducted on a regular basis to enhance their capacities on different ways of communicating.

View his presentation

The next komms klinic will be on publishing and design.

Visit our komms klinics training wiki: http://ilri-training.wikispaces.com.

Seminars are a key instrument to unravel the power of ‘conversations’ in any research institution. In the case of ILRI, seminars are meant to generate agendas within research groups, partners, would-be partners, donors and the public at large. They help take ILRI to the next level as a convener, thought leader and results-oriented research developer.

ILRI has organized and hosted thousands of seminars in its 40 years of existence. In the recent past, ILRI seminars have been organized by specific teams and individuals for specific purposes and have therefore been relatively narrow in focus, with little promotion and documentation. Such seminars have also been attended by relatively few staff. Or they may have been attended by new staff members who are often less interested in the subject matter being covered than to ‘meet the people’ and know more about ILRI.

ILRI managers have resorted to giving priority to high-level seminars as a way of improving the organization’s internal communication and create an agenda within and outside the institute campuses with its varied publics. The management proposed instituting a new seminar series – Livestock live talks – that would address ILRI-wide issues, mobilize in-house and external expertise and audiences and engage the livestock community around interdisciplinary discussions that ask hard questions and seek to refine current concepts and practices. The seminars are also meant to simplify technical research outputs to enhance understanding and ownership of research projects by ILRI staff. The seminars will give scientists, research technicians, programme managers and other staff an opportunity to learn, share and communicate knowledge of ILRI’s research to the world.

What topics will be covered in the ‘Livestock live talks’?

The  Livestock live talks series will kick off with a seminar on ‘food and feeds’ on September 27, by Michael Blummel. Other anticipated livestock live seminars will cover;

• Urban zoonoses
• Livestock and climate change
• Research for development – the IPMS experience
• Innovation platforms and collective action

How will the seminars work?

‘Livestock live talks’ will be held monthly, usually on the last Wednesday of the month, between 3 and 4pm. They will be run from Nairobi, Addis and later from other ILRI offices. The hosting institution will present live seminars while the participating campuses/offices will join the conversations via WebEx. The Livestock live talk seminars will be facilitated in Nairobi and Addis. To ensure strong participation, the seminars will be systematically promoted on various channels and documented on the ILRI Yammer and through a summary blog post on Maarifa, ILRInet, ILRI Clippings and on specific thematic blogs.

The seminars will take two forms:

• Interactive seminars, with 20 minutes of presentation followed by 40 minutes of facilitated conversations cum debates cum responses.
• Lectures, with 40 minutes of presentation followed by 20 minutes of questions and answers.

Whether the livestock live talk is an interactive seminar or a lecture, it might be presented by more than one person and could also involve an interactive debate (by two people or a panel).

All ILRI staff are invited to the talks and they are free to suggest an idea for a seminar to the committee through Silvia Silvestri (s.silvestri[at]cgiar.org) or  through the seminar committee comprising of Ewen Le Borgne (KMIS), Tezira Lore (Market, Gender and Impacts Theme), Susan MacMillan (PA), Vish Nene (Biotech Theme), Silvia Silvestri (PLE Theme), Iain Wright (PLE Theme in Addis Campus) and Angeline Nekesa (KMIS).

‘Livestock live talks’ resources can be accessed at: http://ilriseminars.wikispaces.com

Planned seminars are listed at: http://ilriseminars.wikispaces.com/Upcoming+seminars

On April 29th, 2012 a full house of national journalists from government and private media joined UN Communication Officers in a national workshop on the status of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in Ethiopia and the role of media in taking these forward. The presenter from UNDP coordinating the MDG programme in Ethiopia highlighted that only three years remain until 2015 for the goals to be realized – a lot is expected from journalists to advocate on the goals starting from the grassroots level. The goals are:

• Goal 1: Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger
• Goal 2: Achieve Universal Primary Education
• Goal 3: Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women
• Goal 4: Reduce Child Mortality
• Goal 5: Improve Maternal health
• Goal 6:  Combat HIV/AIDS Malaria and other Diseases
• Goal 7: Ensure Environmental Sustainability
• Goal 8: Develop Global Partnerships for Development

More on MDG’s

Participants discussed the various goals and suggested ways the media could promote them. Most groups mentioned that media needs to be proactive in covering stories around the MDGs – advocating for both success stories and those lagging behind.

After this ‘diagnosis’ phase, Wanjaro Kago (Institute of Communication and Development International from Kenya) explains ways to make development news more interesting and engaging for the general public as well as other stakeholders including decision makers. She gave some key recommendations on how to make the development news more about our day to day lives. Some include:

• Journalists need to dig deeper to get to the issues behind the concept;
• In-depth reporting beyond the newsworthiness of issues – analysis that can catalyze debate;
• Relate MDGs to our everyday lives – service delivery and good governance;
• Link issues to political processes – e.g. gender and the constitution;
• Demonstrate with concrete examples;
• Illuminate MDGs by telling stories with vivid examples and figures;
• Illuminate and package attractively;
• Engagements and people that attract media;
• Use of catchy taglines.

She remarked that NGO’s and international organizations have much knowledge, experience, surveys, case studies and research, but, they:

• Often use terminology only familiar to themselves;
• Recognize media as an important partner in in their work, but reach out to media only when they want their events covered.

Thus, they need to:

• Step away from technical terms and use everyday familiar language;
• Provide useful leads and insights to the media;
• Involve journalists in processes so as to build true partnerships;
• Provide media with regular progress;
• Provide platforms on different media outlets for debate;
• Use high profile personalities as necessary;
• Utilize citizen journalism and new media;
• Get the real MDG stories – from the rural communities.

Adela Barungi concluded with a presentation on media and volunteerism for MDGs from the United Nations Volunteers (UNV). She stressed that media:

• Needs to tell the untold stories;
• Is a very powerful intermediary to the public and and influence specific groups;
• Has great potential to exemplify the impact of volunteerism in development through interesting human interest-led stories.

The workshop ended with a call for journalists to volunteer to be ‘ambassadors’ on the three MDGs that are not on track in Ethiopia – those on gender inequality, maternal health and environmental sustainability.

Since January 2012, the Challenge Program for Water and Food (CPWF) is holding more and more structured learning events. Communication specialists from five out of the six basins of the program (Andes, Ganges, Mekong, Nile and Volta) have been gathering every month at a fixed date to engage in ‘peer assists’. These social learning events have been very helpful so far to stimulate reflection about concrete problems in the five water and land management basin projects – particularly framed under the overall agenda of ‘How to develop more engaging communication processes leading to more engaging scientific research results?’. The CPWF peer assists are now growing beyond the simple remit of communication specialists.

What are peer assists exactly? 

The video below explains quite well what a peer assist is in general and how you can run one.

How are peer assists run in the  CPWF?

In the case of the CPWF, the peer assists are not face-to-face but virtual: they are run as a Skype conference and are complemented with live note-taking on an online writing pad called ‘MeetingWords‘.

Typically, one of the CPWF basin communication specialists comes up with a practical issue they face. The case or issue is shared with all participants a few days before the peer assist. After hearing the case again on Skype, other participants ask clarification questions to make sure they understand the case. In a second round they provide one by one some suggestions to address the issue raised. The case presenter reflects on the suggestions for a few minutes and shares what suggestions s/he will try and apply. In a final round all participants draw generic lessons from the case  presented, to document how to ensure engaging processes leading to more engaging scientific research results.

After the discussion, the notes are edited and saved on a Yammer network page so that all participants can always find it for the record.

In the subsequent peer-assist, the case presenter explains what happened, what actions they took, since their case was shared. These peer assists are facilitated to ensure that the 1.5-hour sessions are run as effectively as possible. ILRI communication staff usually facilitates these peer assists.

So far, six topics have been addressed in monthly peer assists:

• How to convey and communicate research through participatory video?
• How to make the best use of the CPWF website?
• Documenting processes, why bother?
• Yammer, a conversation space for 4-5 people only?
• Engaging Ganges scientists in the communication work?
• Why use innovation platforms and how can we link local with national platforms?

Usually the cases are presented by people working in different river basins. So far each basin and the global communication team have all presented a case for a peer assist.

Benefits, challenges and lessons learned of (virtual) peer assists

After six months it is a good moment to draw lessons from past practice.

On the positive side, these peer assists have helped in various ways:

• The case presenter receives lots of useful and concrete feedback on their issue(s);
• Other participants also collect feedback on an issue which they might very well be facing themselves;
• The cases not only bring about concrete solutions but also a handful of questions that concern more programmatic or theoretical foundations of CPWF work; therefore they contribute to improving project design;
• The cases help us understand a bit better what is happening in the other basins. This is a strong mechanism to get to hear about other basin work, which would otherwise happen only during the team leader and topic working group meetings;
• They create an opportunity to work with each other, support each other and build a stronger rapport among CPWF staff from various locations, building more solid foundations for joint work;
• The approach has attracted people outside the CPWF (e.g. from Bioversity International and from the Climate Change Agriculture and Food Security [CCAFS] program);
• The virtual peer assists have been a great experiment to pave the way for a series of online learning events which will help document CPWF work – the model is expanding and recently also involved a few scientists (as opposed to only communication specialists).

On the negative side, we have faced various challenges: The failing internet connection across locations means that some time is spent trying to get people back in the discussion – although the MeetingWords pad (used for live documentation by several people) has been a great help in ensuring everyone can follow the conversation even if they drop out; the cases need to be as practical and clear as possible to generate useful results, otherwise they end up being very vague discussions; some cases presented are complex and take time to take shape so it is  unclear how each basin team has really taken advantage of the peer assists to inform planning and activities; finally, although this is slowly changing, it has proven very difficult to attract non-communication specialists to these peer assists.

In the next few months, peer assists will be on hold to make way for online learning events aiming to document recent results and processes of the Challenge Program for Water and Food. They will resume later in the year, and perhaps reappear in other arenas of the CGIAR work.

Read more information about the CPWF peer assists on the ‘Comms4uptake’ Yammer network (restricted access).

More on ILRI’s support to the communication and knowledge sharing in the Nile Basin: Communication priorities for the Nile Basin Development Challenge, 2012–2013

Information is vital to communication and research, and it is a critical resource for effective performance to any organization. Many organizations use different sources of information for planning, trend analysis and managing performance. Finding relevant and good quality information is essential to  inform all these processes, yet information can also be overwhelming.

Staff at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) spend much of their time in meetings, workshops, research, reading, writing, and communicating with other stakeholders within and outside ILRI on the telephone, face-to-face, using e-mail or across social media channels. This intense gathering, processing, and disseminating often leads to information overload. This is where good information management comes in.

Good information management involves handling a myriad of information sources and ultimately making decisions about what to do with it. To help staff, ILRI’s Knowledge Management and Information Services (KMIS) group helps ensure that ILRI’s information-processing systems are properly integrated, and that staff can gain access to necessary information from trustworthy sources.

On 28 August 2012, we organized a  ‘Komms Klinics’ on ‘Finding and Managing Information’  to support smarter information, knowledge and communication in research. The team in Addis Ababa hosted this session for colleagues in Nairobi and Vietnam.

The needs assessment for this training was done on Yammer (a social media tool designed for company/organization collaboration, file sharing, knowledge exchange and team efficiency). The facilitators then prepared content using our training wiki. To create awareness, an advert was posted on Yammer, Twitter, physical noticeboards (the ‘Kampus Kalendar’, i.e. ILRI’s corporate calendar), email and by word of mouth. This attracted some people to participate.

The Komms Klinics session covered a range of ways that individuals and teams can find and manage information, deal better with information overload, leverage the power of social media to their personal benefit, manage academic references and work in smarter ways for individual, team, and organizational benefit.

To address these, facilitators engaged participants in discussions and presentations on;

• What finding and managing information is;
• Tips on finding information as an individual or organization;
• Why, what and how to manage information, as an organization;
• Tips and tricks of personal knowledge management (PKM) and the ‘working out loud‘ approach

View the presentation:

The next session on ‘Working with multi-media’ is scheduled for October 2012; the final awareness-raising session for this year is scheduled for 16 November 2012 addressing ‘Publishing and design.’

http://ilri-training.wikispaces.com/ has updated information on all our Komms Klinics sessions.

Social media have turned the information and communication world upside down. Africa is not the most prominent continent when it comes to social media use, but penetration is increasing rapidly. Fashion, sport and pop culture in Africa are all making use of social media, but so is development. Particularly for complex issues that require inputs from various people and organizations such as climate change. As social media are on the increase, the African climate change community needs a guide to tap into social capital.

Such a guide is now out: The social media guide for climate change practitioners in Africa is now available on Mahider and on the AfricaAdapt website, as a PDF document.

AfricaAdapt, a knowledge sharing network on climate change adaptation, commissioned the Knowledge Management and Information Services team (KMIS) of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) to develop a social media guide that would specifically look at climate change adaptation issues and investigate sources that promote African knowledge on the subject.

The ILRI team developed this guide with colleagues at AfricaAdapt to:

• Explain what social media are and why this guide might be helpful
• Emphasize how social media can help promote African knowledge about climate change adaptation
• Look into various needs and profiles of social media and how they can complement each other
• Address doubts and pitfalls behind social media use
• Remind readers that social media are best used in combination with other media and approaches such as face-to-face
• List various useful resources on social media, in Africa, around climate change adaptation (or any combination thereof)

The guide was developed on a wiki (a collaborative website) to facilitate multiple inputs in the process, and to allow the guide to be updated more easily in the future. The full wiki guide is available at this address: http://socialmediaguideafrica.wikispaces.com/

This guide is part of a broader series of guidelines that the network released to support African practitioners and researchers involved in climate change adaptation work.

Social media have been widely used to support communication and knowledge sharing within ILRI and in its projects, hence our interest in using this guide in our own work.

The guide is a resource that can hopefully inspire other people and organizations to consider taking advantage of social media to enable endless possibilities to connect, engage, share and learn.

 

From 13 to 15 August 2012, the Knowledge Management and Information Services (KMIS) of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) supported a training workshop for the ‘European Union and African Union cooperative research to increase food production in irrigated farming systems in Africa’ (EAU4Food) project which takes place in five countries (Ethiopia, Mali, Mozambique, South Africa and Tunisia).

The project, led by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI)  in the United Kingdom, uses a trans-disciplinary approach to “develop, test and implement locally-appropriate, robust and affordable innovations for improved farm performance in irrigated areas, building on existing and traditional practices and irrigation strategies, and driven by farmers and key stakeholders.” At the heart of the approach, EAU4Food is relying on learning and practice alliances (or LPAs, at regional or national level) and communities of practice (or CoPs, at local level) – multistakeholder platforms that are very similar to the innovation platforms that ILRI has been using in other projects.

The training workshop aimed to equip the facilitators (from Ethiopia, Mozambique and South Africa) of these platforms with a useful set of concepts, tools and skills to perform effectively and navigate around the uncertainty and complexity that is inherent to such processes. Multi-stakeholder processes (MSP) are indeed complex, perhaps even ‘complex adaptive systems‘. They are usually put in place to deal with complex agendas, perhaps even ‘wicked problems’. In these circumstances, the job of  MSP facilitator is not straightforward and it requires a certain mindset to embrace complexity and deal with uncertainty.

 

Over the three days, participants went through various sessions to work around complexity and uncertainty:

• An introduction to dealing with complexity and uncertainty (the video above);
• Explaining what the CoPs and LPAs are and what are key ingredients to make them work;
• Introducing the ideal profile and skillset of a facilitator of these platforms;
• Understanding how to better facilitate meetings;
• Zooming in on other aspects of facilitating the wider process of engagement with multiple stakeholders;
• Using communication and monitoring/documentation to support the project (organizing useful conversations);
• Organizing peer-support mechanisms, including a peer assist;
• Evaluation and close.

ILRI is not involved in the EAU4Food project. Nevertheless, various ILRI projects use innovation platforms and the teams involved in these projects have stressed the importance of documenting experiences of facilitating such multi-stakeholder processes and of developing training materials. This training workshop is contributing to that end. Other materials developed by ODI for the EAU4Food project might also prove useful to inform subsequent ILRI training or awareness-raising for  innovation platform facilitators.

Challenges and lessons learned

The workshop was somewhat challenging with respect to the different focus and level of work for CoP (more local) and LPA facilitators; the workshop had to cater for both needs. The three countries are at different stages of engagement with their platforms and participants had very different experiences. As any workshop, but more so because this was a training workshop, the agenda was full of ‘information to share’, which had to be balanced with the capacity of participants to absorb, own and question that information. Unfortunately there was too little time to really practice event and process facilitation methods. Participants emphasized the importance of examples and stories to share aspects of the facilitators’ job – the experience of another MSP facilitator from another project was very well received in this respect. In contrast, the facilitator had not been working on MSPs since joining ILRI and it took a tiny bit of ‘dusting off’ to refresh his knowledge about the topic and prepare adequate materials and mention some stories.

The training workshop also highlighted a number of relevant lessons about the topic of facilitating MSPs:

• The importance of having sometimes a ‘patron’ support the facilitator to give them extra credibility and open doors among key stakeholders;
• The necessity to focus on engagement between meetings, to ensure the latter run smoothly and keep the group gelling and moving forward;
• The subtle balance between respecting inputs from everyone and holding the space and being recognized as one player (not just a secretary at the same time);
• The challenges of dealing with power issues (having all the important actors around without biasing the course of the process towards their needs only);
• The sensitive issue of sustainability of the platform which needs to be elucidated early on as it usually takes a lot of time before sufficient interest and resources can support the handover of the platforms at the end of the projects that set them up;
• How to manage expectations – one of the most delicate acts of facilitating MSPs – particularly for research projects that do not have ‘implementation’ budget and are therefore likely to deceive stakeholders (e.g. farmers) who are looking for concrete contributions from such projects… and the related potential risk of ‘platform fatigue’ if too many platforms are out there, organize too many meetings with the same stakeholders and lead to too few results…

Participants were pleased with the workshop as shown in their evaluation of the workshop and they commended the facilitation, documentation and organization of such a workshop.

In the future, training courses like this may become an important piece of the ILRI ‘support infrastructure.’ One small brick in the engagement wall to get ahead of uncertainty and complexity.

Read notes from all workshop sessions and background materials on the project wiki.

Find the presentations that were used in this workshop: http://www.slideshare.net/ilri (this presentation, presentation about MSPs and presentation about facilitating MSPs)

See some pictures from the event.

Find out more about the EAU4Food project: http://www.eau4food.info/

ILRI scientist Alan Duncan was recently interviewed by the USAID Feed the Future/Agrilinks web site on ways he communicates research. He talks about how, since joining ILRI, he is working with ILRI’s Knowledge Management and Information Services to communicate beyond articles – writing blogs, putting more provisional research outputs (and processes) into the public domain, using wikis to prepare and record meetings, sharing updates on yammer …

Read the interview

Watch the video:

 

 

We all work with information and knowledge and we communicate continuously. We generate lots of knowledge and valuable ideas; we meet partners and colleagues in events; and most of the time we need to organize, find and track our and others’ knowledge and information. Communicating and sharing information and knowledge have been a great challenge in most research institutions.

To aid this, the ILRI Communication group (Knowledge Management and Information Services [KMIS] and Public Awareness [PA] teams) organize Komms Klinics sessions. The sessions either focus on training around specific communication tools or give an overview of important communication issues, including engaging audiences, meetings and events, public awareness, finding and managing information, multi-media, publishing and design.

On 10 July, we hosted a Komms Klinic session at the ILRI Nairobi campus, linked virtually (via WebEx) to the Addis campus. The session gave an overview and tips on Public Awareness and specifically on ‘how to grab public attention to your work’. The session aimed to:

1. Demonstrate how PA can make a change in the way we work,
2. Show the danger of poor public awareness for ILRI and
3. Explain some of the ways PA is changing and impacting our work in novel ways.

The session attracted over 50 participants across the two campuses, including research technicians, consultants in various projects, administrative staff, students, communication personnel from ILRI and hosted institutions, and a number of scientists.

The session seemed to generate a large appetite for tailor-made communication Komms Klinics sessions in their departments and more public sessions within the two campuses. One participant suggested the need for a KK session on how to translate research findings, meetings, and workshop outputs into interesting and powerful blog stories, tweets or yammer posts. Another one asked us to help scientists kill the culture of information and knowledge hoarding, emphasizing that sharing raised their research output profiles. Other participants proposed that we send regular communication tips to ILRI staff.

Participants expressed a mutual feeling that for their work to grab public attention, they needed to work as a team and engage the communications team from the inception of their projects.

Overall, the session was a good opportunity for KK facilitators and participants to discuss, share and reflect on the significance of public awareness in raising personal, team and institutional profiles.  Plans are underway to have more sessions on specific communication tools used at ILRI, to complement such ‘awareness-raising’ sessions as this one.

The next KK awareness-raising session will focus on ‘Finding and managing information‘ and is scheduled for Friday 24 August 2012.

Find more resources about the Komms Klinics Session on the ILRI training wiki.

The imGoats project aims to increase incomes and food security in a sustainable manner by enhancing pro-poor small ruminant value chains in India and Mozambique. It is running until December 2012 and five months before its end, project members recently examined what the project can contribute in terms of useful lessons and outputs of different sorts to put into use.

From 2 to 6 July, the project teams from Jharkhand and Rajasthan in India and from Mozambique gathered in Udaipur for a reflection and learning workshop. The objective of the workshop was to share project progress and approaches across the two countries, to distill learning on processes and outcomes thus far and to identify potential communication products and develop a strategy around these.

Communication support has been essential for this event and will remain critical for the rest of the project. Three ILRI communications staff attended the meeting: Tezira Lore (communication officer for the project, based in Nairobi), Kara Brown (communication intern) from the ILRI Delhi office and Ewen Le Borgne (knowledge sharing and communication specialist) from the ILRI Addis Ababa office.

Before and during the workshop the communication team provided the following services:

• Preparing the organization of the workshop with the coordination team;
• Preparing the workshop pages on the wiki and documenting all sessions on the workshop agenda on the wiki (with one page per session);
• Carrying out some interviews with workshop participants and blogging about it (see interview of Dr. Hegde, forthcoming interview of Ann Braun, Outcome Mapping consultant);
• Taking pictures of participants and saving them on a dedicated FlickR set;
• Reviewing, every day, opportunities about communication work raised in the  discussions;
• Organizing a session on communication work so far and another one on developing a communication plan for the next six months.

After the workshop, communication support will likely entail:

• Helping the teams develop their ideas for communication products;
• Reviewing and copy-editing these outputs;
• Formatting the outputs according to standard ILRI design and layout guidelines;
• Channelling all outputs in the appropriate IMGoats collection on the common repository Mahider;
• In parallel, and crucially, supporting the proper engagement process in innovation platforms and within the teams.

This approach highlights the importance of working with the communication team early on. Indeed, the earlier and the more consistently communication specialists work on a project, the more likely a) each and every formal output is available, accessible and understandable, b) processes are documented and shared to inform planning and reporting on a regular basis, c) all internal staff and external partners are aware of the project progress, process and outputs and feel part of a larger whole, d) conversations (both online and offline in e.g. workshops and conferences, but also team and innovation platform meetings) are well prepared, facilitated and documented to ensure everyone feels listened to and can find traces of these conversations for future work.

Involving the communication team late requires a lot of extra work for everyone, work that could be better used for solving the original objectives of the project and for trying to reach some impact.

All workshop outputs are publicly available:

• Notes from all sessions on the project wiki;
• Updates on the project blog;
• Pictures from the workshop.