KM4Dev Addis Ababa/Ethiopia - take 11

Event Details

Time: July 25, 2014 from 2pm to 5pm
Location: ILRI campus - Information Centre
Street: Between Megenagna and Gurd Shola, right after Kaldi's (on the way to Gurd Shola)
City/Town: Addis Ababa
Website or Map: http://maps.google.com/maps?h…
Phone: 011 617 2463 / 0924 11 77 95
Event Type: informal, gathering
Organized By: Ewen Le Borgne
Latest Activity: Aug 1, 2014

Probable topics:

KM tools share fair (Gashaw Kebede to lead organisation and check our Facebook page)
UNICEF's 'communication for development' approach (person to be identified)
Social implications of knowledge-sharing / contextualisation... (Nadja Shashe)

And possibly also... (parked from earlier sessions)

Organisational learning and KM (Tigist Endashaw) KM of social media (Elshadai Negash)
A (possible) peer assist case about taking up the communication/KM lead of the Nile Basin Development Challenge program (Aberra Adie)
How to work on comms/KM without internet, as is the case (Frehiwot Yilma)
Follow up / feedback from peer assist on moving away from tacit to explicit knowledge at SNSF, around job rotation and departing staffs... (Etsegenet Awash)
Follow up / feedback from the peer assist on the KM audit survey (Adrian Young)

Comment

Comment by Ewen Le Borgne on August 1, 2014 at 8:20am

Some comments from our discussion...

If we want Ewen to step down and the rest of this group to take over, these are the things to think about:

What are the motivations for being part of this community?

Innovation, problem-solving, learning new tools (and ways to handle the process).

What structure / contents do we want for our gatherings?

Overview of tools and methods
Peer assists
KM experiences (e.g. KM in my organisation, stories etc.)
Conceptual discussions
Community projects (e.g. initiatives where members from this group pull their efforts towards a common agenda)

What functions need to be addressed to facilitate this community:

Overall coordination
Logistical coordination
Facilitation
Documentation
Community facilitation (ongoing conversations on the channels etc. - this was not mentioned in our gathering but seems a useful thing to consider)

Ideally we would have a group taking care of this, with someone based at ILRI to help with the logistical aspects (when gatherings are hosted there).

Who could be in the group taking over (all tentative):

Tsehay Gashaw, Zerihun Sewunet, Gashaw Kebede, Fanos Mekonnen...? Possibly Abeba Asmelash (ILRI) for logistical coordination.

Practical next steps

Set up a member survey to find out how they appreciate the current gatherings and how we can improve them and prepare the handover (lead on this survey: Ewen, with Gashaw)
Set up an email to all members explaining the background of this conversation and inviting them to reply to the survey

What could we touch upon in the survey

Do you want to see this group continue in the future?
Is it useful? What is the value of this community?
What type of sessions do you enjoy most/least?
What content/focus do you like in our conversations?
What can you do for this group (what are you prepared to commit?)
How to promote this group?
What do you think of the channels we use?
What about accountability measures to make sure that people keep to their commitments? Is that desirable at all given that it's a community, not a 'project' or an organisation?

Also see this checklist that I prepared for such gatherings.

Comment by Ameyu Fekadu on July 29, 2014 at 10:51am: Sorry for not coming .because I have been getting some overlapped time frame.

Comment by Ewen Le Borgne on July 25, 2014 at 2:58pm: A really disappointing attendance today: five people (including me). So the gathering didn't really happen. No notes to expect.

But we had a good conversation anyhow:

We are working on some progressive handover plan from me to the entire community, for a more sustainable solution. Expect some communications by email and Facebook about this in the coming week or so.

Thank you *VERY MUCH* to Gashaw, Ethiopia, Etsegenet and Yodit for believing in this group and coming anyhow.

I am happy it's the weekend. And a bit sad.

Ewen