Wednesday, February 08, 2012

UNDP is now a sponsor of the Knowledge Sharing Toolkit!

KStoolkit Partners 

The United Nations Development Programme has recently joined the KSToolkit as a sponsor. The toolkit is alredy co-sponsored by CGIAR, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the KM4Dev Community and the United Nations Children's Fund. These organizations help manage, promote and provide support for creating and growing the Knowledge Sharing Toolkit (http://kstoolkit.org),  an excellent resource of knowledge sharing tools and methods.

It is a living wiki based site where a wide range of individuals from the sponsor oreganizations and others have written or pulled together materials about a wide range of knowledge sharing tools and techniques. It's open to all to participate, whether ity is just to consult the tooolkit as a resource, or whether you would like to add new material or improvbe what's already there.

What can you do with the toolkit?

1. Use the Toolkit and share it w/ colleagues - the simplest step. You don't even need to join the wiki to read it. Bookmark http://www.kstoolkit.org/ Tweet it out!

2. Improve an existing page - every page on the wiki is editable. All you have to do is join the wiki (upper right hand corner - you will have to wait for one of us to approve - we do this to keep out spammers), then go to the page you want to improve, click edit, and have a go! (See also http://www.kstoolkit.org/Tips+for+Editing+and+Improving+Exiting+Pages )

3. Create a new page for a method or tool that is not yet in the Toolkit (see also http://www.kstoolkit.org/How+to+Make+a+New+Toolkit+Page ) - Go to either KSTools or KSMethods (the lists are in alphabetical order), click edit, write in the new message in the appropriate alpha order, click on the link creator in the editor window at the top, and choose wiki link. The system will create a new link. Then click save. After the page reloads, click on the new link you made. That will take you to a page that has to be created (by you!) Then on that page select the KSToolkit template and start editing! (yes, we built a template to make it easy)

4. Comment on any page... just click on the little "comment" balloon on the upper right of any page - you have to be logged in though!

This is a common resource - so it is as good as WE ALL make it!

Thursday, December 29, 2011

Best Knowledge Management book for the holidays?

Recently, @jschunter asked a question on the KM4Dev mailing list on recommendations for KM related books to read during holidays. In the true spirit of knowledge sharing, he received a series of recommendations. I put together a summary of the recommendations for my own benefit but have decided to share it via the blog for others who are not on the list but are interested in KM/Leadership/Change Management. Enjoy!

Recommendations in no specific order:
These books were recommended by: Adrian Walker, Boris Jaeger, Charles Dhewa, Daan Boom, George de Gooijer, Jaap Pels, John van Kooy, Malaika Wright, Matt Moore, M Taher, Richard Lalleman, Yaelle Link.

Do you have a favourite KM/Leadership book which has not been mentioned here?

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

You can be part of the #sfrome social reporting team. Here is how..

sfrome, banner
As you may already know, we are counting down days to the Second Global AgriKnowledge Share Fair which is scheduled to take place at IFAD from 26-29 September. This event, jointly organized by Bioversity International, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD), Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA), The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) and World Food Programme (WFP) brings together colleagues from Rome-based agencies as well as partner organizations to share projects, lessons learned and emerging trends in the areas of food security, price volatility, climate change, ICT4D, social media and green innovations.

The Share Fair promises to deliver a wealth of knowledge featuring over 160 presenters from all over the world who will share their creative and innovative experiences and knowledge. Participants will have an opportunity to learn, share, connect and influence future direction.

We encourage all participants to use social media channels and report live from the event. Here is how you can engage:
When tweeting, please use the following hashtags:
The organizational tags are:
The draft agenda for the event is available from: http://t.co/KYK73dqp

For more information, contact us at share-fair [at] cgiar.org.

Thursday, August 04, 2011

Tips and Tricks for working with Wikipedia

Wikipedia -- the free online multi-lingual collaborative encyclopedia -- is a treasure trove of information about food security, crops, livestock, forestry, fisheries and other " FAO subjects." FAO staff are now being encouraged to edit Wikipedia articles in their areas of technical expertise. To this end, we organized a discussion session on the basics of Wikipedia for which I prepared few "Tips and Tricks" (PDF) on editing and working with Wikipedia. They are based on experiences our team had while organizing the social reporting for the WSFS 2009 as well as those shared by my colleagues Michael Riggs, George Kourous, Mehmet Korkmaz and Alexander Jones.

References:

If you have additional tips please share them here.

Tuesday, August 02, 2011

Publication compiling case studies of the 2010 Latin American and Caribbean Knowledge Share Fair now online



This publication, Feria del Conocimiento América Latina y el Caribe: Casos destacados en agricultura, desarrollo y seguridad alimentaria, only available in Spanish, is now available on line. The publication gathers the highlights and conclusions of the Knowledge Share Fair Latin America and Caribbean, held 25-27 May 2010, at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) in Cali, Colombia.

The main objectives of the Fair were to demonstrate how the active and strategic participation of knowledge improves the effectiveness, efficiency, and impact of any work, while giving participants, some 200 professionals from over 70 organizations and 18 countries, an opportunity to experiment with knowledge sharing tools and methodologies and share and learn good practices. Participants were also able to socialize experiences related to knowledge management in agriculture, development, and food security.

The event, organized by the Information and Communications Technology and Knowledge Management (ICT-KM) Program of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), and the Knowledge Management for Development (KM4Dev) community, served to gather experiences related to rural development, mainly agriculture and livestock production, and exemplify what’s happening in terms of knowledge management in Latin America.

Of the numerous case studies presented at the fair, eight related to agriculture, development, and food security—key issues addressed during the event— were selected for inclusion in the publication and serve to illustrate how knowledge-related processes involve complementary technological, technical, and human factors.

Five case studies (Condesan, Prodarnet, Preval, INIA, CIAT) illustrate purely regional experiences while three (CIARD, Vercon, and SGRP) provide an interesting global perspective.
As matter of conclusion, the authors pose the need that knowledge sharing be explicitly used to promote learning between actors. “Knowledge currently plays a key role in many development policies, accompanied by a important effort of the informatics sector and ICTs in general. Nonetheless, the learning and social engineering that accompany knowledge should become the main forces promoting knowledge and innovation, not the contrary, which is what happens nowadays.”
Although the publication is in Spanish, a translation of titles of sections and case studies has been provided.

Click to download:
Individual sections:
  • Conclusion (by Sebastião Ferreira, Simone Staiger and Camilo Villa)
The Fair’s organizers gratefully acknowledge IICA’s collaboration in the design and layout of the publication.