Survey results show the recent KM4Dev Rome meeting was a success!

The recently held KM4Dev-Rome event has been a success! The survey results (taken by 30 out of 35 participants) show that in summary, everyone's experience was positive and encouraging. Apart from learning about knowledge sharing methods and tools, and knowledge sharing in our organizations, we broadened our networks, met likeminded people and felt inspired to do positive change in our work. We thought there is a great value and potential behind the Rome KM4Dev community, as well as a need for regular Rome KM4Dev events and gatherings.

Here are some of the key results:





Some key lessons to take ahead for next KM4Dev-Rome meet-up:

• If a peer assist is organized, make sure the questions are well developed ahead of time.
• Ensure that the agenda is not so packed and the case studies represent issues rather than organizations.
• Give time for hosts to digest information coming out of sessions so that they can give a more meaningful summary.

Although most of us have not been able to put up summaries yet, they should be available from: http://bit.ly/7PfxO0.

On a personal note, the experience was great for me as it was the first time I facilitated a full-day event. I blogged about my experience on co-facilitating the event with Nadia at: http://bit.ly/2VyOav.

And, here is the social reporting team!

I posted earlier this week about our social reporting during the World Summit on Food Security. And, of course, it was a team effort!

Social reporting during the upcoming World Summit on Food Security

During the upcoming World Summit on Food Security, a group of around fifteen volunteers at FAO will be doing "social reporting".

What is Social reporting?

Social reporting is aimed at people organising a face-to-face event and who want to use new social media for both capturing moments of the event and for stimulating different types of conversation. Events provide good opportunities for social reporting before, during, and after the day. They push you to think about reaching people "in the room" and those people who could not make it. - From the Social Reporting Toolbox http://www.eudaimonia.pt/CoPIM/documents/CoPIMSocialReportingToolbox.pdf

During the recent KM4Dev, Social reporting was one way we used to capture and share the outcomes from the Agriculture Huddle. During the same event, Josien Kampa, gave a short presentation about various aspects of social reporting which I am sharing here.

Social Reporting

View more presentations from josienkapma.

During the upcoming summit, we will be using the following tools for sharing information with those who can't be physically at the Summit.

• Twitter - http://twitter.com/faonews
  
• Yammer - http://www.yammer.com/
  
• YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/user/FAOVideo
  
• Delicious - http://www.delicious.com/FAOoftheUN
  
• Flickr - http://www.flickr.com/photos/faonews/
  
• Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/pages/Food-and-Agriculture-Organization-of-the-United-Nations-FAO/46370758585 (become a fan!)
  
• Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Summit_on_Food_Security_2009
  

All these sites will be linked to from the Summit homepage: http://www.fao.org/wsfs/.

Watch out for all the news coming out and for the summit tag #wsfs09!

Support the petition to "End world hunger"

Sign-on petition to end chronic hunger and make it a priority!

1 billion people worldwide live in chronic hunger.



In the time it takes to watch the above video, at least one child will die of hunger.

This is the status quo in the world today.

If this situation is unacceptable to you, make your voice heard by signing on to the ‘I don't agree’ petition on http://www.1billionhungry.org.

Twitter tip - Adding hashtag (#) to Tweet This!

I just spent sometime trying to find solutions to add the "Tweet This" button to a website/blog post. So, here is how to do it!

The syntax is basically:

• http://twitter.com/home?status=custom+tweet

So, to tweet this article, the syntax would be:

• http://twitter.com/home?status=Twitter+tip+-+Adding+hashtag+(%23)+to+Tweet+This!+http://bit.ly/1x4RDe+%23Twitter
  

Replace space with "+"and the hash sign(#) with "%23"!

Helpful? TweetThis!

Facilitating as a team - few dos and don'ts

At last week's knowledge sharing event, my colleague Nadejda Loumbeva and I (@gaurisalokhe) facilitated a day of discussions and conversations using World Café, rotating Peer Assist and the ToP Workshop Method. Although we have facilitated together before, this was the first whole day event!

In this post, I would like to share a few tips with you based on my experience as a co-facilitator at a recent event.

1) Know your co-facilitator - like in any relationship, it is important to know the other person: how they think (in terms of facilitation - here!), if they are introvert/extrovert, what is their style, etc. This understanding helps you figure out who is going to be the "lead" the dance moves and where you may need to support the other person. For example, some facilitators are excellent with time management, some aren't! Know what the other person's strengths as well as their weaknesses.

2) Find someone who is slightly opposite of you. - This tip is actually not mine but that of one my facilitation teachers - Eunice Shankland. And, I agree with her completely! It is important, especially when facilitating events that span over a day or few, that the participants see two or more different types of personalities, methods and energy levels. You should complement each other and ensure that the participants are getting the right blend! It is also important that you find a co-facilitator when the event is longer than half-day to not only help the participants (by providing them variety) but also to rest yourself!

3) Prepare in advance who is going to do what! - Day before the event, I prepared a session by session breakdown of who was going to do what, what were the key focus areas for us to keep in mind for the event, which methods will be used (world café, etc.), etc. This step-by-step two-page itinerary helped us know when who was in-charge.

4) Improvise and support each other! - During the abovementioned event, we had a critical problem because the questions for the rotating peer assist were not formalized! The solution was that we sat with the group who were going to be peer assistees over lunch and ironed out the questions. Of course, in reality this should have been done during the preparatory phase of at least a week prior to the event, due to last minute volunteering from our side and everyone's busy schedules, we were not able to dedicate time to it.

5) Do an after action review. - At the end of any major facilitation event, I think there is lot to learn from what worked and what didn't go so well and needs to be worked on for future such events. Have a discussion on how it went and see how things that didn't go so well could be improved in the future.

In summary, although Nadejda and I had volunteered on our own free will to facilitate the event at the very last minute, the results of the after event participant survey rated facilitation as Good (46.7% ) and Excellent ( 43.3%). This is positive feedback that helps and encourages us to do even better next time! :)

What are some of your tips for co-facilitating events?

FAO launches its vision

It's a milestone for the team which has been working on culture change team at FAO. The vision day is here!


The team was asked to develop an internal vision statement for the organization. The team did extensive consultations with staff at all levels from head quarters and regional/national offices.

"The final statement incorporates three components: FAO's mission, the Internal Vision and FAO's Values. These components address FAO and its work, FAO and how it works, and the values which guide employee actions and behaviours."

The statement was launched today at the HQ with colleagues from field offices joining via audio/video and reading it in Arabic, Chinese, French, Spanish and Russian.

It will be soon available to all in the next few days.

Follow-up event to Share Fair: ‘Knowledge Sharing: Getting Together to Do It Better’.

On October 29, the KM4DEV Rome group organize a one-day event, hosted in IDLO near Vatican, called ‘Knowledge Sharing: Getting Together to Do it Better’. The sessions were organized around common issues related to Knowledge Management and Knowledge Sharing in international organizations, in this case, the Rome-based ones (CGIAR, FAO, IDLO, IFAD and WFP).

It was a day of brainstorming, problem solving and creative thinking sessions to address specific challenges we've come across in our knowledge management projects:
how can we grow a community of practice?

• how do we get colleagues on board of innovative ways of working?
• how do we communicate the benefits to our prospective stakeholders (participants, adopters, beneficiaries, users)?
• are the tools we are using the right ones for the job at hand?

WHY THIS EVENT?
The event was organized:

• to reflect and find creative solutions to specific issues we encounter in our KM/KS projects, and particularly in the areas of fostering collaboration, nurturing communities of practice, spreading a culture of participation and sharing, selecting effective and efficient tools for geographically-distributed working groups, and ensuring buy-in and adoption.
• to practice knowledge sharing among the Rome-based international organizations.
• to mobilize attention towards innovative and efficient ways of working.
  

WHY A JOINT KM4DEV/SHARE FAIR EVENT?
In the spirit of KM4Dev and the Share Fair, we got together to share and learn from each other's experience with the goal of improving the impact of our work within our organizations.

KM4DEV is a community of international development practitioners who are interested in knowledge management and knowledge sharing issues and approaches. From this international community, a local group has been created known as KM4DEV Rome.

The Share Fair event took place in January 2009 in FAO and aimed to be an interactive event, providing the possibility for people to showcase their experiences in knowledge sharing and, at the same, time learning from each other.

WHO WERE THE PARTICIPANTS?
Around 35 participants (practitioners, information managers, project managers, facilitators and everybody involved in projects with knowledge management and knowledge sharing components) from the following organizations took part in the event.
• Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR),
• Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO),
• International Development Law Organization (IDLO),
• International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and
• World Food Programme (WFP).

MORE INFORMATION
You can find more information about the event on our Wiki.