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:

• FAO Web Guidelines on Wikipedia
  
• CGIAR/FAO/UNICEF Knowledge Sharing Toolkit on Wikis
  
• Wikipedia 101 for Brands
  
• What Wikipedia is not
  
• Wikipedia Policies and Guidelines
  

If you have additional tips please share them here.

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:

• Complete publication (11 MB)

Individual sections:

• Cover
• Content
• About the Fair (by Simone Staiger-Rivas)
• Introduction (by Camilo Villa)

• Condesan: E-forums of the Consortium for the Sustainable Development of the Andean Ecoregion: 17 years of learning between people and tools (by Musuq Briceño and Alejandra Visscher)
• Prodarnet: Virtual networks for promoting rural agribusinesses in Latin America (by Hernando Riveros and Marvin Blanco)
• Preval: Image assessment: A communications proposal for social learning (by Emma Rotondo)
• INIA: Participatory research as a knowledge management process (by María Marta Albicette)
• CIAT: Innovation facilitators in rural agribusinesses: Market knowledge as a compass for innovation (by Érika Eliana Mosquera and Jhon Jairo Hurtado)
• CIARD: From words to action: Information on agricultural research available to the public, fully accessible and applicable (by Nadia Manning-Thomas and Enrica Porcari)
• Vercon: Knowledge sharing among agricultural research and extension systems (by Sophie Treinen)
• SGRP: Motivating scientists to share knowledge in the Global Public Goods (GPG2) project (by Maria Alejandra Jorge)
  

• 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.

Registration for Second Global AgriKnowledge Share Fair, 27 – 29 September 2011 is still open!

The Second Global AgriKnowledge Share Fair will be an exciting and “out-of-the-box” event, offering participants creative and innovative learning and sharing opportunities, and equipping them with tools to better influence future rural development activities.

This three-day event will provide a forum to learn and share knowledge, experience and innovations on emerging trends relating to agriculture, food security, price volatility, climate change, changing demographics and other rural development related issues.

It will feature: talks by renowned practitioners in different fields; a vibrant market place; interactive sessions that will apply knowledge sharing methods; and a series of trainings on knowledge sharing methods/tools that will be offered on day zero.

You can start planning now!

• Registration
• How to get your Visa
• Insurance
• Accommodation and Hotels