Can we move out of mailbox and into wikis?

This week's knowledge sharing tools session, co-facilitated once again by Romolo Tassone, Tania Jordan and myself (@gaurisalokhe), looked at Wikis. These trainings are part of an ongoing series of workshops on the methods, tools and services that can facilitate knowledge sharing at FAO. The trainings are offered by my division, Knowledge Exchange and Capacity Building Division (KCE), in collaboration with Staff Development Branch (AFHT).

Tania Jordan, Gauri Salokhe, Romolo Tassone

Like last week, the 2-hour session was attended by 15 staff members from across the organization.

The session started with the usual introductions of facilitators and with background information from Stephen Katz, Chief Knowledge Exchange Branch, on the purpose and motivations for the KS training courses.

This was followed by the commoncraft video about "Wikis in plain English".

Romolo Tassone

Romolo then explained what Wikis are and their specific characteristics such as inline editing/saving, easy and open access to history, versioning/differences information and the ability to role back, discussion tag, comparison of edits, notification of edits using emails or RSS, user management/permissions. He also talked about the need for to focus on accountability and transparency, rather than security/authority/ownership. He gave examples of how for a wiki to grow there is a need for "sense of community" and the role of culture (of an organization).

After doing an after action review on last week's session, we decided to stick to only one example per Wiki software (that is Media Wiki, Wikispaces and Google Sites). Each Wiki was described by focusing on the following questions:

1. Why does the Wiki exist?
2. long-term or short-term? Why – project, meeting, etc?
3. Who is the Wiki for? Type of people (technical, dispersed...)? Number of users?
4. How was the software chosen? How does it help/hinder?
5. Show and describe history tracking
6. Show and describe editing
7. Is it public or private – why?
8. Is it locked or unlocked – why?
9. Summary of experience?
10. What lessons were learned that would be useful for today’s participants?

The three Wikis shown were:

• FAO Web Guide - using Media Wiki
• CGIAR - FAO KS Toolkit - using Wikispaces
• CGIAR Collaborative Writing Site - using Google Sites

Once the examples were show, the discussion focused on how to get people involved in using Wikis.

What would be a good approach to ensure Wikis become part of the way we work?

Romolo Tassone and Tania Jordan

Very often, I have seen Wikis being created but either used by only the creators or not used at all. It is important to understand why this may be happening. Some of the reasons could be that we are too used to working in our mailbox or just not willing to try out new tools.

There are several scenarios where Wikis would be best solutions when compared to using emails, however, its value often remains untapped. The approach to take, when starting to think about a Wiki-based working environment, could be to:

1. Do a thorough needs analysis to ensure that Wikis ARE the appropriate tool. For example, if you would like to collectively work on a single document, the solution might simply be GoogleDocs.
   
2. Understand the skills level of those expected to edit the Wiki. The software choice should depend on the level of willingness plus ability of the participants in editing. Some might be able to edit Wiki text but most will not.
   
3. Ensure that all the expected contributors to the Wiki (the user community) are well aware of the value and importance of the "new way of working". Explain the benefits of using this approach when compared to the more traditional one (e.g. sending documents as attachments with different versions).
   
4. Provide training on how to use the Wiki. This could be a one-hour hands-on session where participants can try to add/edit, embed images, etc. Giving them a sandbox to play with helps to increase their comfort level. Explain the transparency aspect of the Wiki by showing how the history function. Ensure that credit will be given where it is due.
   
5. Nurture the community, get them involved in managing different aspects of the Wiki, regularly send out reminders for contributions. Create a community of "Wiki gardeners".
   
6. Don't push! Give people opportunity to learn and get used to using Wikis. Don't sell it as THE solution! The more they use it, the more the will think of innovative ideas for using it in other projects.
   
7. Promote the Wiki as a good example of using new social media tools for getting the work done in a better way.
   

Are there any other points you would like to add to the above list? What makes a Wiki work?

Some fascinating statistics about world, environment and hunger

@LisaCespedes recently shared a site that provides world statistics in real-time.

Some of the worrying statistics, as of today, were:

• Net population growth for today ~ 200 000
• Species that have gone extinct this year ~ 90,000

Working for UNFAO, the most alarming stats are:

• Undernourished people in the world right now ~ 1,017,200,793
• Overweight people in the world right now ~ 1,139,944,314
• Obese people in the world ~ 339,379,680

and finally..

• People who died of hunger today ~ 25,000

And as an aside, the total # of e-mail messages sent today (~200,000,000,000) is not at all impressive!!!

Icebreaker: Tell one fact about yourself..

Last month, we had Ana Lourdes Herrera from International Training Centre of the International Labour Organization over to talk about their e-learning program. The session was extremely interesting and their centre in Turin is impressive and (almost) tempts me to go back to Uni! But I am not going to talk about that.

During the meeting, she had a great icebreaker idea. She asked us to stand up (we were sitting in a formal meeting room -- around a big oval table -- the Canada Room for those who know FAO) and tell one fact about yourself that not many people know. I thought this was a great, easy icebreaker. Some people didn't have anything to say but others had some very interesting things like:

• My great grandfather ran for president of Mexico
• I was a practicing lawyer before I joined my organization
• I tried to open a restaurant and failed badly
• I am an avid supporter of Ferrari team in Formula 1
• I am trying to win the Superenalotto!
• My ancestors from Mom's side came from area which is now part of Afghanistan!

This method works well for introducing a subtle fact about oneself and worked well to liven up the mood in the room. It works well in groups of around 20 people, with larger groups it might take some time!

More icebreakers are available from: http://www.kstoolkit.org/Icebreakers

Have you used this method before? What has been your experience?

Wiki (Hawaiian for 'quick') session on Wikis at FAO!

Yesterday, @RomoloTassone and I (@gaurisalokhe) ran a 2 hour session on Wikis– part of an ongoing series of workshops on the methods, tools and services that can facilitate knowledge sharing at FAO. The trainings are offered by my division, Knowledge Exchange and Capacity Building Division (KCE), in collaboration with Staff Development Branch (AFHT).

The 2 hour sessions are designed to give participants brief introduction to a knowledge sharing tool or method. This week, we decided to see if there was any demand for Wikis. Given that it is August and most people are not around, we were overwhelmed with the response! In 4 working days, we had over 40 registrations.

The purpose of this session on Wikis was to:

• Introduce the concept of Wikis
• Show how Wikis are being used in FAO as well as partner organizations
• Identify possible cases for the use of Wikis in FAO’s projects and work

During each session, we try to invite a guest speaker who can give us views, experiences and lessons learned from their organizations. This week's invited guest speaker was Tania Jordan, ICT-KM Technical Coordinator.

The session started with introduction of the speakers. These sessions are a result of the Knowledge Share Fair held early this year - during the fair, we gave lot of hands-on training on KS tools and methods and saw that there was extremely high demand for similar sessions.

Romolo then explained what Wikis are and their specific characteristics such as inline editing/saving, easy and open access to history, versioning/differences information and the ability to role back, discussion tag, comparison of edits, notification of edits using emails or RSS, user management/permissions. He also talked about the need for to focus on accountability and transparency, rather than security/authority/ownership. He gave examples of how for a wiki to grow there is a need for "sense of community" and the role of culture (of an organization).


I then followed this by showing examples of 2 Wikis: the Knowledge Sharing Toolkit and Share Fair 2009. The KS Toolkit is an example of long term wiki, a wiki that has a long-term life span. Although it was started by few people, it has now a growing community of 120 participants who actively add/edit its content. The latter is an example of a "short term" wiki which has a limited life span, usually for the duration of an event, project, document preparation, etc. The latter was used in preparation of the Share Fair and has not been used/updated since.

Tania showed some great examples of short-term wikis such as:

• CGXchange 2.0 (site that gathers tutorials and trainings of the collaboration tools available for the CGIAR staff)
• CIMMYT Emergencies (site created to inform staff about the swine flu developments in Mexico)
• Alliance of the CGIAR Centers (the strategic framework of the new CGIAR process is being shared with a Wiki)
• CGMap Helpdesk (helpdesk site for a system-wide software used by all 15 CGIAR centers)

All of the above are done using Google Sites. Google Sites allows you to make complete websites with pages that have Wiki-like functionality. She also talked about "public" vs. "private" Wikis.

This was followed by a quick hands-on with Wikis. For the hands-on session, we had purposefully decided not to use media Wiki and instead created a test account on Wikispaces. The key differences between the two is the "What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get" (WYSIWYG) editor. The participants were paired up (lesson learned from social bookmarking session!) and asked to create and edit pages, add video or images and visit/edit each other's pages. This went extremely well.

Finally, we had some great discussion around how tools like these could be used within our work for policy development, meeting organization, participants lists or just using it for collaborating planning.

There are several issues that came out of discussion about the use of Wikis.

• FAO currently supports Wikis using Media Wiki software. This wiki software uses Wiki Text, special markup text. This requires extra learning effort especially when adding tables.
• Multiple people can edit the same document at the same time. Wiki is collaborative environment but its not a synchronous collaborative environment (as is provided by Google Wave). Sometimes, changes can simply get lost and its some work to find it through the history section!
• Many Wikis die a premature death because of the lack of incentives in using it. Trust is an important aspect of working with such tools. The rules of engagement - such as who can edit what, how, when to use discussion vs. direct edits - need to be clear and well understood by all involved.
• We still have a very e-mail heavy culture. If it is not in our in-box, we have a hard time accepting/working with it.
  

In summary, my two cents, as a Wiki-skeptic, are that Wikis are a great tool when the community is ready for it and there is shared understanding for its need. It is important to do thorough needs analysis before starting up Wikis. And, once it is clear that the optimal solution is a Wiki, then all involved should be brought together, informed, consulted and trained (in case of Media Wiki).

What has been your experience with Wikis? Have they worked in your teams/organizations?

Social media .. it ain't a fad!

@mongkolroek just shared this very interesting video...

It's important to fail.. and LEARN from it!

@RomoloTassone recently shared an article on why we need to fail. The article talks about how failing and learning and growing from these failures is an opportunity. I would like to share my recent experience that supports this.

Couple of weeks ago, we decided to run a session on social bookmarking. For each session, as the organiser, I develop a lesson plan. The plan covers the main objectives of the sessions, key messages that we want to relay as well as the timeline on how we will run the session. I have learnt that this is extremely important to make sure all the involved people (myself, session facilitators, invited guests, etc.) are on the same page.

The social bookmarking session was facilitated by my colleague, Kristin Kolshus, and myself (@gaurisalokhe). The main objectives of the 2 hour session are to make participants:

• understand what is social bookmarking and its elements.
• aware of various scenarios in which social bookmarking can be used.

The key messages we wanted to get across were:

• Social bookmarking provides opportunities to store, share, and discover web bookmarks.
• There are various ways that social bookmarking can be used for sharing information (within distributed team environments, documents related to topics, events, knowledge discovery, etc.).
• Social bookmarking is being used by partner organizations to disseminate and share information.

The first session involved hands-on combined with theory. The overall feedback from the session was extremely positive but we had realized that the session had not completely gone the way we had planned/thought it out. After the session, my colleague and I sat down to do an after action review.

Some of key lessons learned from the session were:

• Ensure that you have adequate IT support to set up the projectors and computers.
  
• Don't allow participants to start interacting with the tool immediately; they need to have basic understanding of the tool before.
  
• Each participant has different level of IT knowledge. The questions ranged from how do I open a new browser to how do I create "network bundles".
  

What did work during this session were the two accounts we had "pre-created" for use during the session. Participants were not immediately asked to create new accounts. Those who did wish to eventually did but not everyone had to create accounts which eventually they would not use. One important aside here: If you are using same account on multiple computers, make sure that when logging in, you keep the "Keep me signed in." ticked otherwise, every time someone wants to tag resource, they are automatically logged out!














Based on the above experience we came to the conclusion that we needed to change a few things for the repeat session scheduled for the following week. Some of the changes we came up with and implemented were:

• Contacted the IT people to help with the set-up of the projector/screen.
  
• Set up the computers and turn off the screen. This way, the participants don't immediately start to interact with the site or check their emails!
  
• We had turned on only half the number of computers as participants. We paired people up and got them to work together rather than individually. This way, they could support and learn from one another.
  

We also divided the session into theory and practice. The first hour was spent giving the basics of special bookmarking. The agenda was as follows:

1. Introduce the concept of social bookmarking using the Common Craft video



2. Explain the anatomy of the del.icio.us page.

3. Show how to tag publicly and privately.

4.. Show how to add del.icio.us buttons to the browser.

5. Explain how to add people to the network and bundle them together

6. Show how links can be sent to other del.icio.us users.

7. Show how del.icio.us can be used for knowledge discovery.

8. Show examples of how social bookmarking is used by other divisions/organizations

9. Explain briefly how using RSS the same information can be embedded in other websites.

Once this was done, and having answered all the questions that arose, the participants were asked to pair up and start experimenting by tagging a link and sending it to someone else. Some participants immediately created a new account while others just worked with the test account.

Result, you ask?
This session went superbly well, I thought! The fact that theory was separated from the practical, the screens being kept turned off for the first part, and the pairing of participants for the practical part worked wonders.

So, it was important that we failed the first time around. And, it was even more important that we followed up the session with a discussion on what worked and what didn't (as well as why) so that we could learn and improve the following session.

What we learned from the AAR for the second session was that we should have set aside time for some "final" discussion on how the tool could be used within the organization, in our day-to-day work. Next time, we will surely do that!

This process was a great learning experience for me as we work on doing more such trainings on other social media tools. There are some key lessons here that I will take into consideration as I work on the upcoming Wiki session.

Are there any other tips you would like to share? What has been your experience?

Some book recommendations..

A friend recently asked me to make a list of fifteen books I've read that will always stick with me. Here is the list I shared.

1. God of Small Things -- Arundhati Roy
2. Jane Eyre -- Charlotte Brontë
3. Rebecca -- Daphne du Maurier... Read More
4. The King's General -- Daphne Du Maurier
5. Wuthering Heights -- Emily Brontë
6. To Kill a Mockingbird -- Harper Lee
7. An Instance of the Fingerpost -- Iain Pears
8. Pride and Prejudice -- Jane Austen
9. Princess: True Story of Life Behind the Veil in Saudi Arabia -- Jean Sasson
10. The Namesake -- Jhumpa Lahiri
11. Harry Potter Series -- JK Rowling
12. White Swan -- Jung Chang
13. The Pillars of the Earth -- Ken Follett
14. Freedom in Exile: The Autobiography of the Dalai Lama -- Lama Dalai
15. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings -- Maya Angelou
16. Maps for Lost Lovers -- Nadeem Aslam
17. Miss Smilla's Feeling For Snow -- Peter Hoeg
18. Restoration -- Rose Tremain
19. Fingersmith -- Sarah Waters
20. The Dragon's Pearl -- Sirin Phathanothai
21. Guards! Guards! -- Terry Pratchett
22. Effi Briest -- Theodor Fontane
23. The Lady and the Unicorn -- Tracy Chevalier
24. Baudolino -- Umberto Eco
25. Life of Pi -- Yann Martel

Of course, I went over the fifteen requested but couldn't help it! I can add few more to this list but for now will leave it at this. Have you read any of the above? Do you have some other recommendations for me?