KM4Dev Core Group Meeting - 2013-04-15

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Agenda

No agenda is set for this meeting.

Minutes

No minutes are available for this meeting.

Among items to decide are:

  1. Acting upon insights from SNA, L&M etc. - what do we DO with all the stuff we have. There are also some inputs from the African KM4Dev community week.
  2. Setting in motion all other promised IFAD-funded activities for which we got the extension.


Carry over point 1 to the next Core Group meeting that Ewen has offered to organise date and time for. We suggest to Ewen that he looks for timing between 30 April and 3 May.


Concerning online discussions

a)· One of the first key activities was conducting a Social Network Analysis, which gave a much

richer picture of a variety of roles and growth vectors in the KM4Dev community than had

previously existed. There is room for further processing of this data, which should feed into

the community strategy plan. Timing for completion of this actiivity would be: end of

September 2013. Costs to date: USD13,723. Anticipated and budgeted additional costs:

USD11,000.

Action point SNA - what is the situation, what is planned? Lucie will ask Pete and Natalie and liaise with Riff. Note from LL: email sent April 16, no response so far.


b)· A second activity, conducted with a subset of KM4Dev community members, was the

Community Technology Laboratory (CTLab). The CTLab collected lessons from a variety of

community and network contexts around the issue of technology stewardship, in order to

provide both general insights into technology stewardship as well as pointers for KM4Dev

itself in its efforts to consolidate and manage its technology platforms. Costs to date:

USD9750.

No one from CT Lab on the call and no notes on this... do we need to follow up?


c)· In addition, a series of thematic dialogues were conducted within the community, including:

o What KM/KS activities do you do/organise in your organisation?

o KM4Dev community members’ dreams of the future

o How do we move people’s focus away from KM “products” to KM/KS processes?

o What is (or could be) the role of positive deviants for knowledge work in development

organisations?


d)It is planned to continue the series of dialogues with several additional topics (TBD).

Suggestions so far include: How to foster distributed leadership; How to engage more

practitioners from the field; Understanding and operationalising incentives to online KS; How

to achieve a strategic approach to learning and knowledge within an organisation; What

funding models should a community such as KM4Dev consider for the future? Timing for

completion of these activities: November 2013 (episodes in May, Jun or Sep and Nov)

Anticipated costs: USD21,000 (3 consultant-led activities @7,000)


This is a mix of community-focused and domain-focused convos. The above topics seem to be what Riff and Willem brainstormed. Some of these topics could be identified in Seattle (for the September and November ones)

ACTION: Ewen to check with Riff if we need to address precisely these topics or whether we can come up with different topics, and also if the timeline is flexible so as to discuss at the Seattle event.

  1. How to engage more practitioners from the field - Carl can do topic 1 in Sept
  2. Understanding and operationalising incentives to online KS
  3. How to achieve a strategic approach to learning and knowledge within an organisation - Lucie can take care of topic 3 in May-June - unless possible to do during/after the Seattle meeting
  4. What funding models should a community such as KM4Dev consider for the future? Topic 4 could take place before Seattle meeting - tentative lead Sophie T

ACTION: Ewen to liaise with Riff, inform all others on the core group and then the whole community. Ewen can coordinate the overview of these convos to make sure they happen and people are in charge of them

Concerning Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning

e)· Volunteers within the community contributed to a collaborative learning process about the

project, which was initiated by a baseline survey and resulted in a number of

recommendations for the community to take up. There is an opportunity to further consolidate

the monitoring and learning element of the project by creating an overview report that pulls

together key learnings from the range of activities funded by the project. This consolidation

would be contracted out to a consultant who is also a community member. Costs to date:

none. Timing for completion of this activity: end of October 2013. Anticipated and budgeted

costs: USD7750


Taken care of by a consultant, based on ToR we discussed in the L&M work etc. Sophie A could keep being involved in this but contracting and legal issues is not Sophie A's forte so would appreciate support from e.g. Helvetas. In the CT Lab the approach was to scout good consultants for this work

Carl Jackson suggested looking here, link to people in the KM4Dev Ning with evaluation in their job title: http://www.km4dev.org/profiles/members/search?name=&q23=&q24=evaluation&q25=&gender=&q32=http%3A%2F%2F&country=&location=&q22=&q33=

ACTION: Sophie A to take care of L&M synthesis:

  1. revise ToR and share them with core group? have a deadline for comments
  2. share the ToR with cherry-picked consultants [34 people on Ning who say they have some interest in M&E see link above] and if it doesn't work (no one interested or available) go for option c)
  3. share ToR with the whole list

Indicative fee rate: USD 500 / day. And this work will take into account results from SNA work and CT Lab: whatever data is available - without preventing further progress - i.e. if more work expected from SNA and CTLab this synthesis shouldn't be delayed (too) much...


f) All of the above activities will feed into the anticipated community strategy plan. Timing for completion

of the strategy plan: October 2013. This timing is partly driven by the intention to hold a regional

KM4Dev face-to-face meeting in July-August 2013, which will include discussions on the future of the

communty. Following that meeting, a consultant will be identified to assemble a collaboratively

created strategy for 2014-2015, which will include a funding strategy. Anticipated and budgeted

costs: USD6,000.


John D Smith might be one person to contact about community strategy: http://learningalliances.net/ Melissa Bator could be a good person to synthesise the results of L&M+SNA+CTLAb (and she might be in Seattle for the meeting too.) Also could as Ben Ramalingam for suggestions on consultant for community strategy as he ran the successful ALNAP network. Charles also suggested crowdsourcing ideas on the KM Strategic Plan from among KM4Dev members. Development work is happening in the South while ideas are still largely from the North.


Whoever coordinates the synthesis report AND whoever coordinates the strategy plan should work together (if they're not the same).We could also bring the strategy close to the synthesis meeting so that the synthesis speaks to the strategic activities? Perhaps we could bring the budget from both activities together (synthesis report and strategy)? Looking for a team would be good.


We could park this until things get clearer with the synthesis report - and we could dedicate a core group meeting specifically to it.


Action: Ewen will organise the next Core Group meeting to discuss this if it happens soon

Concerning the KM4Dev Innovation Fund

g)· In January 2013, four successful innovation fund applicants were identified through a process

of consultation of the wider KM4Dev community. Contracts have been agreed for all

activities, which begin before the end of February. Most activities will find it difficult to wrap up

before the end of March 2013, but this is the goal we have set due to the existing Project

Completion Date. The results of all activities will be shared through the KM4Dev wiki as they

come out (some activities require participation from the community as well). Timeline for

completion of these activities: end of May 2013. Anticipated and budgeted costs:

USD20,000.

Action: Ask Riff to ensure that activities from Innovation Fund completion get onto the wiki.


Concerning Global face-to-face meetings

h)· Significant support around content and facilitation of the Global AgriKnowledge ShareFair

hosted by IFAD Rome in September 2011 was provided by the KM4Dev community. Eleven

participants in the ShareFair were partly or fully funded to attend both the ShareFair and

contiguous KM4Dev face-to-face meeting, also held at IFAD Rome. Total costs were:

USD22,562

Perhaps go back to sponsored participants at Rome Sharefair to ask about their experience with KM4Dev pre and post the event - how valuable was the opportunity in Rome to you and your participation in the community etc.

Action: Sophie T to send short questionnaire to funded participants


i)· To-do: identify a second opportunity to combine Sharefair and KM4Dev meetings. This is

likely to be in the second half of 2013, depending on timing and location of the next Sharefair.

Anticipated and budgeted costs: USD27,000.


Little time to do this before end of the year, so need Core Group members to really start getting firm ideas from IFAD.

Action: Sophie T to ask Willem and Roxy about Sharefair plans they may have. Need to be firm and get yes no as if not we need to think about other co-sponsors, e.g. can we use money for a KM4Dev meeting without Sharefair/IFAD. Also need to check with Riff / Helvetas on this, if we were to use the funds to bring in participants at the Seattle meeting – what could Helvetas do to administer this?


Other business?

Charles Dhewa: if there are any other roles, just volunteer me. It’s just to keep squeezing ideas from this part of the world into KM4Dev.

Action: Charles to read through notes to see if he wants to take the lead on an activity.

Action: Lucie to put notes in wiki