Preparing Online Activities

From KM4DevWiki

Notes from May 20 meeting

Blog

• We use the blog as the main communication tool for the workshop and parcel out info
• Point to blog from main KM4dev list
• Nancy & Josien get blog going but we all post, Josien send to email to the KM4dev list (done)
• We all have blog authoring rights but can add anyone else who asks (send to Nancy, Lucie or Josien)
• We ask Wed night in Almada for people interested in documentation and help them if needed (blog, wiki, flickr, pod/vodcasts)
• We also need to ask participants to bring laptops, cameras, MP3 recorders and power bars!

Wiki

• Will use the KM4dev wiki to capture the OS reports
• Lucie (and Nancy to help) makes sure every Almada participant has wiki login (will need the final participants list from the logistics team)

Pre-wshop discussion

• We are proposing something informal and organic
• Start with the most popular topic of survey (KM and impact measurement)
• Lucie start online conversation on Monday 26 and we all support/chime in
• Will see how it goes and start another topic (future of KM4dev) before the wshop

Synchronous stuff

• We determined we would try to be "semi-synchronous" posting videos on YouTube, pictures on Flickr and live blogging during the wshop to be as reactive as possible

Suggestions for online interaction

• Marc: "I am currently participating in the "Presencing Global Classroom" of Otto Scharmer at the MIT in Boston, a distance learning training course. There are 157 participants from about 26 countries on all continents (well, not the Antarctis) in the "classroom".

We usually have sessions in the following format:

  1. We get an e-mail invitation with 2-3 questions for step 2
  2. People meet 30 min before class in small groups of 6 in a Skype conference (quite funny, I'm with a series of elder persons, and most of them were using Skype for the first time in their life, let alone did they have experience with conference calls - but they all got totally excited!). We discuss about the questions we got by e-mail
  3. We have a 60 min lecture by Otto Scharmer, which is broadcasted by RealVideo. Works quite ok, obviously depending on the internet connection.
  4. The next 30 minutes we can send in questions by e-mail, which then are live answered by Otto Scharmer over RealVideo.
  5. We have another 30 min. of Skype group discussion in our small group.

What I like is that we only use 3 applications, which have become quite standard: e-mail, Skype and RealPlayer. For next time they suggest an even more interactive session with a link SkypeVideo - RealVideo. Do you think we could get such a session going during KM4Dev 2008?"

• Maarten: "For the on-line part I could imagine that most of it would be asynchronous (blogging, wiki'ing, emailing). But it also could be an experiment to have one morning and one afternoon synchronous session (that way making it possible for people from different time zones) in which part of the Lisbon participants could tell and discuss things with interested not present people (each session 3/4 of an hour). These sessions could start on Wednesday afternoon and could consist of showing, explaining and discussing notes or graphics which were made on flip over sheets (photographs) or other presentation materials. A few of us would have to facilitate/prepare these sessions during the workshop itself (oefff) but I guess it is doable. As I said earlier Interwise could be used for these sessions. Interested people would have to install the programme on their PC's and I can provide them with the link which will be used during all those days, that's all."

• Ana Maria Ponce:

1. What can we do *beforehand*? What type of online interaction would you prefer? (e.g, what kinds of technologies do you think would be mostuseful/interesting for online interactions): Based in my previous experience during the past 10 years with the Mountain Forum, I would suggest to use the e-conference methodology to facilitate focused interaction among the workshop participants. The results of this e-conference can be summarized in a document which can be shared with the presencial workshop participants, allowing off-line participants to provide their feedback around selected themes.
2. What would you think of holding thematic discussions, based on the themes identified in the survey, in the lead-up to the event on KM4dev?: It is very important to have discussions with thematic focus in preparation to this event. They can be organized in parallel or sequentially before the presencial event.
3. How best can we involve you *during* the event? A blog? Something else?: I would be available to support off-line interactions whichever modality would be selected, maybe a combination of e-conference and blog waould be the best..
4. What kind of online *follow-up* would you like to see?: I would love to see concrete actions as result of the event, such as real projects related to the selected topics which might be implemented by working groups around the world. Most initiatives from this group start and remain in the virtual stage, it is time to touch ground with real projects in order to ensure impact and incidence and be sustainable in the long run.

• Josien: about blog: I see it as important also PRIOR to the meeting. for "implicitly managing expectations, pointing to openspace and cop resources (the theoretical framework :-)), building excitement, and plain info transfer. I can a.o. do a post on Lisbon, touristic info etc.

Suggestions for online discussion themes

From the survey, in order of % of interest:

1. KM and measuring impact
2. The future of the KM4Dev community
3. Role of social networking technology in KM
4. Complexity in KM for Dev
5. Effective linking of the virtual and the face-to-face

In addition, a number of respondents to the survey added more areas they are interested in, which are:

• "Learning with and from partners and donors. KM throughout the whole dev spectrum. M&E, accountability and learning, etc"
• "KM and agriculture (research, knowledge creation, indigenous knowledge, ...)"
• "KM/OL at the 'field' level; KM/OL and partnerships; KM/OL and organisational change"
• "Putting large amount of data in networking - staffs like that"
• "Monitoring and evaluation."
• "independent networks/communities and their management"
• "All issues related to networks and networking in development."
• "KM without social networking technology"
• "I don't know where to put my comment: I am interested in a follow up session of the KS curriculum. We have been working with Nancy White and Lucie Lamoureux on a CGIAR KS workshop and toolkit. I would like to talk about a review of what we have done and how this could be useful to the community."
• "Equipping 'recipient' communities with KM capabilities and linking them with internal KM processes"
• "Involving the communities and other local stakeholders in KM initiatives."
• "I would be interested in talking about change within organisations related to KM4D"
• "KM in Southern Organisations"
• "I am not sure how to title the theme but I am interested in the theme of community - building, nurturing, supporting, learning from/within, being part of, making a case for etc. It kind of ties in with the 'Future of our community' but I think only broader in scope."
• "Taking stock of km4dev Website: Do we know what we know (what is written in Wikis, etc.)?"
• "Interlinkage of KM with M&E"
• "metrics, is this the same as impact? am keen to explore ways that ks and associated tools can be tracked and 'measured' - but innovative and creative beyond analytics that captures the unintended"
• "If it's the first, you should figure out ways to have virtual members also weigh in."
• "The knowledge people have"
• "No particular area, but I do hope we can have opportunities to explore new techniques (see Q.6)"
• "Particularly interested in practices on information and knowledge support urban local governments using multiple channels"
• "Making the case for KM and OL in Development"
• "difficult to choose, but the main topic would be how the KM 'we are talking about' relates to development and change"
• "Role of SDI/GIS in KM"