Francophone KM4DEV

A Francophone KM4DEV CoP?

Starting point

The IKM Emergent project ([1]) has set aside some funding for 2009 to initiate a meeting with parties potentially interested in setting up a Francophone CoP that would be affiliated or related to KM4DEV, and to introduce IKM-E's key concepts, particularly the 'multiple knowledges' concept in French and other Francophone networks.

Mike Powell, Sarah Cummings and Ewen Le Borgne have been in touch on this and would like to bring the idea forward, inviting other KM4DEV members to join the reflection and later on to contribute to the Francophone CoP. Other members such as Lucie Lamoureux or Sophie Treinen have indicated their interest early on and will take part to the discussions to prepare the meeting. The meeting is now scheduled to take place on Monday 5 October in Brussels, in back-to-back with the KM4DEV annual event (get more information on the annual KM4DEV event on this wiki: http://www.km4dev.org/events/kskm-in-a-world-of-change).

There are chances that this event coincides with an IKM-E working group 1 event yet to plan.

Initial plan

The first step is to organize a kick-off meeting with two intentions:

• to introduce the concept of multiple knowledges and feature some of the work carried out under IKM-Emergent to Francophone audiences.
• to have a working group meeting with people that would be keen on setting up a Francophone CoP 'a la KM4DEV'.

The first part may take various shapes, Mike and Ewen are currently looking at the best way to organise this event among Francophone audiences. It may be a short-span event with a discussion of 2 h, it may be a mini-workshop or any other way deemed appropriate to organise it. The second part will really urge volunteers (and perhaps some other people that we know have something to say about such a francophone CoP) to come and share their ideas on such a Francophone CoP in terms of:

• Scope of the CoP: same as global KM4DEV?
  • What services / products to develop? (community wiki, annual event, website etc.)
  • Focus on certain things to start with?
  • Promote IKM topics Y/N?
  • Relation with global KM4DEV (completely same branding but different language, partner, distinct etc. with bearings on governance, funding, organization of events, where to synthesise discussions etc.
• Technical infrastructures: do we host a platform on the global KM4DEV CoP or a different system – what kind of tools do we want to use (bearing in mind that each system brings maintenance chores);
• Roles and responsibilities (who will do what) as regards:
  • Setting up the CoP and inviting people to join, managing membership and other facilitation tasks that e.g. Lucie is taking care of;
  • Synthesising discussions and other content work as required – perhaps including translations of key topics/summaries to/from global CoP;
  • Maintaining the technical infrastructure (taking care of systems);
  • Fund raising for the future;
• Funding: what plans for the future of this CoP?

At the end of that workshop we should have a plan to set up the mailing list and platform fairly soon, and some initial ideas to turn into a fundraising proposal to chase funding for this, perhaps together with KM4DEV.

Idées proposées par Lucie pour la deuxième partie: pourquoi on ferait pas un exercice genre "future story" pour commencer? Et puis quelque chose genre "world café" pour le brainstorming sur les différents éléments?

Who is interested / who to contact?

Multiple knowledge event

Mike Powell and Ewen Le Borgne are working on this, for the time being still brainstorming. People that would be great to invite on this topic are: Caroline George, Sylvie Robert and Annik Ollitrault-Bernard (authors of a book on capitalisation), Michel Menou, Marie-Jose Cooke and Olivier de Sardin. To this list, we should add other Francophone people working on KM/learning, particularly in Francophone Africa. Obviously all people that show interest on the KM4DEV discussion list are welcome, although they will have to sponsor their participation. Kemly Camacho from Working Group 1 of IKM-E is also fluent in French and interested in joining that discussion.

CoP working meeting

So far Lucie Lamoureux is interested in helping to set up the meeting and the initial steps of setting up the CoP. Sophie Treinen indicated strong interest in the Knowledge share fair of Rome in Jan. 09. Ewen Le Borgne is organising this together with Mike Powell and Sarah Cummings on behalf of IKM-Emergent. The idea is to quickly ask other KM4DEV members who would like to a) help set up the meeting and take part to it (on own funding or sponsored) and b) join the Francophone CoP. A list of other people will also be contacted as they may be very interested in this but may not be part of the existing KM4DEV CoP yet.

A key requirement will be to quickly identify funding sources (in combination with the global KM4DEV CoP or separately - though this option is not preferred (Ewen). Lucie would be able to provide more inputs if she was sponsored as well, and anyway whoever helps coordinate this Francophone CoP too.

The people who have shown interest so far:

• Lucie Lamoureux
• Sophie Treinen
• Gilles Mersadier
• Samir Bejaoui
• Peter Bury

• Ewen Le Borgne

Budget and other practical considerations

• It makes sense to source funds both for KM4DEV and its Francophone offshoot.
• The funding made available by IKM-Emergent however gives more weight to current fundraising efforts.
• Most of the funding will be used for organising the events, in particular renting the venue and/or other logistical costs, as well as to invite some key participants or some participants that cannot fund their trip to Brussels (particularly African participants?).
• Ewen's and Lucie's time will be taken care of by IKM-Emergent's budget in the form of daily fees.
• IKM-E has planned to translate the summary of every document produced by working groups in Spanish and French. These materials could be used for the multiple knowledge's part of the event.
• Although the preferred venue for the IKM discussion was either somewhere in Francophone Africa or Paris, the choice of Brussels is justified by the organisation of the KM4DEV annual event which will bring lots of potentially interested members and will allow a stronger mutual exposure between IKM-Emergent and KM4DEV.

Next steps

• To bilaterally contact people that we think would be interested or interesting for either meeting.
• To organize the meeting, together with Lucie (and Sophie), to take care of logistical side of things (Mike has quite a few ideas, Ewen will contact Office International de l'Eau);
• To prepare a short budget to see how much we need for the kick-off meeting (and for further development of CoP).
• To work further on either the IKM-Emergent francophone discussion or the Francophone KM4DEV CoP discussion on this wiki.