April 1, 2009
From KM4Dev Wiki
Questions for discussion
1. Given that the SA workshop is not likely to take place, do we still want to propose a 2009 event to the community?
- Should we have an event? YES
- riff: if there are small groups with particular interests, that can be are we proposing something more general? do we want to give a theme?
- lucie: we need to have an idea broadly of what it is we want to propose
- denise: proposing a theme would make justifying the cost easier for people
- camilo: what do mean by type of event?
- lucie: format, type, learning and maybe content too
2. How do we communicate that the SA workshop will not be taking place to the community?
- Do we postpone, or cancel it? ARE we looking next yr?
- riff: unless we are confident it will happen, we should not mention it happening in 2010
- marc: we have already postponed it before. It is more appropriate to close it for now, let's not let it drag on and on.Keep it as a pleasant surprise for later if/when it happens
- Action: Marc will write a detailed msg to the event mailing list and another (brief) mail to the broader group. Latter email to combine with announcement for another meeting this year?
3. If we want to propose a 2009 event, how do we find out if they are able to justify spending money to come to an event? What type of event would be of interest to them and would entice them to come?
F-2-F and/or online
- Nancy: why do we want to have f2f - let's think about this, What can we do to be together when we can't be physically together? Monthly shared space to do something online, structured around a particular question, particularly for those that can never attend f2f events
- Camilo: that would be an alternative
- Nancy: but also mainstream. What helps us be stronger in our community life?
- Camilo: replacing f2f?
- Nancy: help us understand what "being together" means to our community, to our community health
- Peter: still organise f2f events but consider options to help each other to come together (not just core group)
- Lucie: we need to find different ways to engage the community, if we could have small events, that'd be excellent.... great if we can use Nancy's Skypable bridge for monthly online events
- Nancy: Right now I'm paying for it each month, so it would be good to get my money's worth! LOL We can also experiment w/ other live tools such as Vyew and DimDim
Making a F-2-F event more relevant with specific foci?
- Lucie: If we organize an f2f event this year we need to find a relevant topic(s) to justify people coming. We could organize something along the lines of KM in specific sectors, say with 1.5 days on KM in agric, water, health etc. happening in smaller groups and then coming together for cross-sectoral sharing. Could find ways of funding participants from south through some of the sector-specific orgs if more focused. Ewen mentioned it could be possible to fund partners if part is organized around KM and water for e.g... What do you think?
- Nancy: both the thematic focus and availability of a small amount of funding could help those who might otherwise have difficulty attending, crisis will hit only next year(s).We may need alternatives to F2F for more than a year. (or always?)
- PB: maybe have meetings with sectoral focus and then more general ones occasionally, KM in specific sectors, another option is addressing alternatives for F2F meetings.
- Nancy: So you are suggesting a F2F about remote meetings? ;) having a f2f on remote meetings sounds like a bit of cognitive dissent, ironic
- PB: I think we can organize both tracks
- josien: as a theme? like with social reporting, etc.
- CV: should a few of us sit together and draft something for wider discussion?
- LL: would like to know if there is agreement to hold something f-2-f
- NW: thematic focus would be good... we have a set of expertise, thematic focus could also suggest that we have expertise across the community to show that we have value across sectors. So are we offering our value and tag along or is it FOR the community?
- PB: could be parallel KM in sector meetings that are complemented by km4dev community meeting
- CV: this is a call to the km4dev community, sector approach is more to attract sponsors, it's the way we organize ourselves this year.Parallel: KM in a sectors and tag along for community "warmth"
- Lucie: sectors approach could bring new people to km4dev community. We want to bring people to the community who are not necessarily focusing on KM but are interested in KM/learning, or they have in their activities something that relates to KS/learning. A funder may be more likely to fund something that was for the sector and not just the community
- riff: energy to initiate a meeting would be coming from the core group?
- Nancy: How big would something like this be? I think there would be a lot of interest in the water sector.I think there is already some action in the ag sector, but not so much in water
- LL: Should be beyond core group, water sector people should be interested, agric sector people could be too
- PB: Ewen we are interested to get in water sector people in a (parallel) KM in WASH event, right?
- Nancy: So on the table options: water, agric, climate change (mitigation)
- Josien: Climate change interrelated to both, beautifully cross sector
- DS: Can make the case with a thematic focus, even if structure is open (i.e Open space)
- NW: possible to have a specific question or theme and still Open Space, specific intent and goal: i.e come up with cross org solutions, and come up with output. Still have some underlying conflict about the Europe centric nature of things -- can we also suggest at the same time support for regional and/or online stuff? I don't want us to appear to be self serving in any way. Does that make sense?
- LL: Leveraging people's real needs to fund participation --> so focus is probably key in getting people from other regions
- Nancy: Specifically ask community what topics/focus would garner org support for themselves /others
- PB: speaking for IRC (WASH) partners: the limitation we should be aware of is that the partners from dev. countries would be partners involved in a programme with IRC. LEDNA may have funding and probably very interested: local economic development (and linked to for instance PRODUCTIVE use of water)
- Riff: What about finding out from km4dev community if there is interest in a number of topics, then steering a process to discover whether there could be several events?
- Lucie: what I was proposing is many themes/sectors/areas in parallel. Part of the three days - meeting in small groups in themes/areas, Part of the three days - common coming together of everyone so that a lot of what has been discussed from sector groups could be synthesized at a cross sector learning level
- Camilo: umbrella = Knowledge strategies in a time of crisis
- Riff: so, not one theme, but several themes at ONE event?
- LL: yes
- PB: and cross sectoral learning as an umbrella topic?
- Nancy: I think we need to ask community early
Decision about proposed event venue
- Proposal by LL,50 double rooms right, big room 200m2 + 2 smaller rooms 50m2
- Nancy: (yes, but a significant group of people in Almada chose not to share rooms. Not sure what that means in terms of sleeping capacity)Do you have a sense of the max # people in the plenary room?
- LL: calculations: approx 50 eur pp per day, including food and room and venue, what we need to find out: is this feasible, ticket plus stay, for people to join the event. There are hotels nearby, like last year in Almada, for those who don't want to share.
- josien: I like the idea and LET's GO FOR IT!
- Ewen: Yes
- PB: i like it too
- Bertha: me too
- Riff: What sort of deposit is required for the venue? 20-25% of total, 1500 euros or so
- Q: Lucie, what happens if only 30 people come? A:With at least 50 people we can do it
- Josien: that is why we need to ask now with some high level of commitment
- Lucie: could try eventbrite.com or Survey Monkey, as Peter suggested
- venue: http://www.chant-oiseau.be/index.htm
- PB: location of venue on googlemap:
- PB: public transport : easy to reach, about 6 km from Zaventem airport
4. Who will do what? Next steps and timeline
- Lucie:need to have rough outline, ask for interest
- RF: put together a message, mention about a sector thematic workshop as f2f event and we want to find out if people are interested and could afford it.
- Peter: summarizes timeline. We must resolve Belgium offer by April 20
- LL: who would like to work on this? Camilo, Lucie, Ewen, Nancy, Bertha
- Lucie: what we need to do:
- A. Flesh out idea on wiki
- B. Go to community asap for feedback
- C. Make a go/no go for Brussels by April 20
Nancy: adding **D. Includes F2F and remote/regional offers that members may want to steward themselves
- Ewen: the idea is:
- have various focus (health, agric, water ec.) –
- Part of the programme is sector specific but at least 50% common (othewrise we create silos)
- We organise also presence online with other virtual friends from those communities and work upfront with that virtual group (a.o to prepare a virtual interaction during the f2f event)
- We organise looking around at what other sectors propose, their key challenges and useful approaches they've used + evidence that KS/learning works (in times of crisis, we need to prove our worth even more)
- We bring together our lessons in f2f and virtually during the common part of the f2f event
- LL: also there is a proposal to piggy back the Francophone KM4Dev meeting
- Ewen: will talk to Sarah tomorrow.And we either host it in Brussels or in Paris But either way is fine for Mike from IKM-E. If anything, 2x meetings is even better a Paris event and a back2back event in BXL, there's some funding for southern participants to come to those discussions
- Riff: still, could be nice to link the two meetings
- Denise: also suggests mining sessions from Almada - follow up, seeing what might be further developed
- LL:Peter B also could be training around social tools, Euforic could help out in that sense, pro bono
- Nancy: Flesh out ideas, then survey. Before we go into event planning. Comments on wiki by Wed
- Lucie: by April 7 or 8, the wiki link is sent to the the core group. then we try to send by the end of the week to km4dev, 10 days to respond
- Nancy: Designing the right questions takes time. Setting up the survey is easy
